DAVID LEVY: Composing for Doom, The Composer’s Grind, and Overcoming Self-Doubt

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. And now your host, Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:00:08):

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. 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.

(00:01:10):

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-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 David Levy, who is a composer, audio engineer and sound designer, best known for his work with Rooster Teeth and the video game doom. Here goes, David Levy, welcome to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:01:57):

Hey man, great to be here. Thanks

Speaker 2 (00:01:59):

For being here. We were just talking about doing things for your own mental health before we started. One thing that I'm curious about is have you come up with any strategies for dealing with the stress involved with writing for games, and then also maintaining a normal human life?

Speaker 3 (00:02:20):

Yeah, that's a loaded question right off the bat, huh?

Speaker 2 (00:02:22):

Yeah, I just know that game composition, it's pretty intense. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:02:26):

It's intense, but honestly, my experience with working on animation was even more intense. The biggest thing I worked on in terms of animation was a show called Fabrica Teeth, and that was pretty nuts. I was the only guy working on it. Soul Composer, the biggest problem with those kind of things is just like when any other project is the deadlines, they're usually insane. But the difference with animation when you are writing a picture is, at least in this project, I was for the most part, working with a cut that wasn't timing locked. So I was constantly kind of aiming at a moving target. So I would write stuff and I would get a new cut, and now 40 seconds of it dropped. So I have to figure out a way to retain the essence of the cue that I wrote without completely destroying it by removing 40 seconds.

(00:03:17):

So that is a very, very stressful point to be in. With games, you're kind of taking the picture aspect out of it, so it's just writing a ton of music that obviously hits the right emotion, whatnot, and you just got to hit those deadlines. And for me, to answer your question honestly, it's just getting as much sleep as I can and working out seems to be helping a lot. And that's something I haven't done up until maybe six or seven months ago, kind of forcing myself to work out. The thing is when I get into a project, I get kind of super focused. I can't do anything else.

Speaker 2 (00:03:56):

I understand

Speaker 3 (00:03:57):

Literally I shut everything out, which is not good, but I get so anxious trying to get through the project and doing the best job that I can. I just tend to just completely put up a wall and not really reach out to any of their friends or not do anything. Really just get in and get out. And even when I go to sleep, my mind keeps working and I'm completely engrossed in it, and I just calculate every minute of the day what I'm going to do and how things will work out. And obviously none of it really matters. Once you get in the studio and you start working, things constantly change. You think you're going to hit a queue and it's going to sound great, and it doesn't. It doesn't happen. You got to force yourself to go through it and meet one of the many goals that you set for yourself for the day. So I'm starting working out the first thing in the morning before I get into the studio. Once I come up here and I sit down, it's over. You cannot remove me from here.

Speaker 2 (00:04:53):

I think imposing some sort of structure on yourself is a really healthy thing to do.

Speaker 3 (00:04:59):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:05:00):

That tunnel vision though, it's both a blessing and a curse. I mean, you kind of need it in order to be able to get the job done. You can't get the job done for this kind of stuff, in my opinion, without having that side to your personality. But I think it's important, especially as you get older, to not let that side of our personality destroy our entire lives.

Speaker 3 (00:05:22):

And it can very easily mentally too. When I was working on Genlock, I was working seven days a week for about 16 hours a day, and that lasted about five months. Three and a half months in, I was mentally and physically destroyed. I would sit up here and I would watch the cues and I would just stare at the screen. Nothing of my brain wasn't working. I'm like, this is not good. Lights on,

Speaker 2 (00:05:51):

Nobody's home.

Speaker 3 (00:05:52):

I'm like, oh my God, I think I'm burnt out. This has never happened to me before. And I always feel the burn inside, just go in and work and do it, and fucking white noise in my head. At that point, I'm like, all right, I guess I need to sleep more, but I can't sleep so anxious. So it's like a never ending cycle. What helps me a lot. I have severe a DD, and I'm on and off medications for that. When I was going through, I think I need to get back on it, so I literally had to medicate myself

Speaker 2 (00:06:22):

If you need that. That's the thing is I think that people who abuse that stuff make it difficult for people who legitimately need it,

Speaker 3 (00:06:30):

And

Speaker 2 (00:06:30):

I think that people who legitimately need it are going to have a very hard time if they don't take it. And then the difference between them taking it and not taking it is the difference between finishing projects and not finishing projects. Being mentally present or not mentally present. It's not a small thing.

Speaker 3 (00:06:48):

It wasn't that I wasn't able to move forward because I was procrastinating or just getting distracted. I was just burnt out. But that kind of helped me push forward a little bit and get back on top of things. And it also helps a lot with anxiety. That's a big thing for me too. I try not to be on it all the time, but when things get crazy, I need an extra push and I kind of jump on it again. It helps a lot.

Speaker 2 (00:07:11):

It makes perfect sense. I think that everybody needs to, I guess, take inventory on what it is that helps them do their best work or what they do to get in their own way or intentionally or unintentionally.

Speaker 4 (00:07:26):

I

Speaker 2 (00:07:26):

Think that if we know that we have a hard time focusing on things or a hard time focusing on things past a certain point or at all, it's important to deal with it. If our brain is getting in the way of productivity by creating all kinds of weird scenarios for us to focus on or creating anxiety, we need to deal with it somehow or it's going to affect the work

Speaker 3 (00:07:50):

And the things that we're asked to do are not normal. The workload and the deadlines are not normal at all. I mean, it's almost impossible. We're asked to do the impossible. We're asked to be incredibly creative and hit everything dead on within insane amount of times. So you really got to do what you got to do to make that work. And the funny thing is I feel like when you get to that breaking point that happened to me a few times, regardless of the medication, you do feel burnt out and you're like, I can't do this anymore. I got nothing left. At that point. When you push just a little more is when you hit something. It's when you cross over and you get a bird's eye view. It's weird to explain, but definitely happened to me. I remember the breaking point with Genlock. I was halfway through the season and then I'm like, I'm going to go up again.

(00:08:46):

I was completely out of it. I'm like, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to force myself to do it. And I did it and it worked, and then it was kind of like a smooth sailing from there. It's almost like breaking the chains of some sort and it happens. So I think you and I talked about this once very briefly. We talked about what happens when you burnt out or when unquote nothing. You can't come up with anything. What do you do? What do you do when you have a writer's block? I've mentioned that when you work on these kind of projects, there's no such thing as writer's block. It shouldn't even be an option. You're paid to do this at the highest level and you just sit down. You keep going at it until it comes out, and it will always come out at some point. It will. You just got to keep pushing.

Speaker 2 (00:09:31):

Yeah. I mean, it definitely won't come out if you don't go up there and get to work,

Speaker 3 (00:09:36):

But even sitting here and just getting in that mind frame of like, oh my God, I'm burnt out. I can't do this. I'm done. You got to push through those thoughts, you know what I mean? You can't let that cripple you.

Speaker 2 (00:09:45):

Yeah. It's important to note that those thoughts are completely natural and normal.

Speaker 3 (00:09:50):

Oh yeah, absolutely. It's your body and your brain saying, Hey dude, stop for a minute.

Speaker 2 (00:09:55):

Yeah, but you don't have to listen. No,

Speaker 3 (00:09:57):

You don't.

Speaker 2 (00:09:59):

It's one of those things where I think that when people feel like they're getting no ideas, what they're not doing is completing the sentence. They're not saying, I'm not getting any good ideas within this period of time, but they start to act like it's forever that they're

Speaker 3 (00:10:15):

Exactly,

Speaker 2 (00:10:15):

Yeah, I'm getting no ideas. It's this huge catastrophe. I might never get good ideas again, when really just sit there and work and you might come up with a few shitty things, but eventually something good's just going to come out.

Speaker 3 (00:10:30):

Yeah, you just got to keep going. You can't get in that mind frame. That's crippling.

Speaker 2 (00:10:35):

Do you have an issue with writing a bunch of shit and deleting it?

Speaker 3 (00:10:40):

No, not at all.

Speaker 2 (00:10:40):

Yeah, if you are feeling like that and you're working anyways and nothing good is coming out, just whatever.

Speaker 3 (00:10:46):

I usually don't continue. I am not going to move forward too much. If something doesn't sound right, I'll sit on that the first 5% of the track for a day or two until it comes out. Otherwise I'm not going to keep pushing forward.

Speaker 2 (00:10:59):

Makes sense.

Speaker 3 (00:10:59):

Yeah. The method is like you were saying, you just write star writing and evaluate as you go and see what happens. And if it sucks, then Nu can pave. But yeah, for me, I'm just going to focus on the very beginning and take it from there.

Speaker 2 (00:11:11):

If it's not working out, at what point do you say this idea sucks? Fuck it. Time for a new one.

Speaker 3 (00:11:18):

It could be a matter of time, two, three hours I'm putting into it. It's not happening at all. Or it literally could be half an hour. It could fail at many points of the initial writing process. It could fail at the point of not finding the right sound to start with or not finding the right progression or not finding the right rhythm. So there's many levels where you have to keep going back and forth on. So it's more like taking little baby steps with those things. For example, if I start a track with a certain progression, then I'm not going to move forward until I find the right progression, and that's just as long as it takes. Linked with that is the sound that I'm going for. So I usually kind of set up a template of sounds that I want to work with, so finding the right sound, finding the right progression, and it's kind of back and forth, back and forth. If the sound doesn't work, I go to a different sound, but I stick to the progression and kind of build it up like that. There's so many variables. That

Speaker 2 (00:12:10):

Makes sense. Do you bounce it off of anybody?

Speaker 3 (00:12:13):

I don't. Not really. That seems tough. It's horrible. It really is. With Doom, when we were working, I was working with Andrew, but we're working completely separately and on the first DLC, the first part of it, we barely had any time to work on it, which

Speaker 2 (00:12:28):

Andrew,

Speaker 3 (00:12:29):

Andrew ol,

(00:12:30):

He's the other composer for it. I remember we both finished it and we're like, Hey, let's sit down and send each other our stuff, because we had a couple of months to do it. It was literally no time. When I finished writing everything, I was more anxious than I was before I started the project, which I didn't think it's even possible. We can talk about that later, but because at this point I'm like, alright, I wrote all these things, all these things. But are they good? Is anyone going to like it? No one's heard it. I mean, the audio director liked it obviously, because if not, he wouldn't have approved it. Name is Chad Moss Holder. So yeah, at that point we're like, Andrew was at the same boat other than the audio director didn't really let anyone else listen to it to our stuff. And it was kind liberating hearing his stuff and him hearing mine. Although at that point it's already too late to make any changes, but just kind of bouncing something off of someone else. It was nice, even though it was a little late and the project,

Speaker 2 (00:13:27):

I've had this issue when I'm not writing with somebody else where I'll come up with something like a riff and I'll just feel like it's super pedestrian or something

(00:13:37):

And just overlook it or think it's bullshit. And then someone I'm working with thinks it's great and wins the argument and then six months later I hear it in the song and it's fucking awesome. And I don't know what the hell I was thinking and they were totally right. And then I realized I don't always have the best judgment on my own riffs. Sometimes I think that they are not that great when they're way better than I thought. And that makes it tough because I think that if I didn't have those thoughts, I would be able to create even better songs because I wouldn't be trashing key moments.

Speaker 3 (00:14:13):

First of all, I am in a hundred percent agreement with everything you just said. That's 100% me. And that's exactly what happened with Doom stuff. I thought it was garbage. And then Andrew's like, that's pretty good. I'm like, no, you're just being nice, but you're a perfectionist. So I think maybe the fact that you're trashing things, being so picky about what you're doing is what lends you to put out the best stuff out there. It's

Speaker 2 (00:14:38):

A double-edged sword

Speaker 3 (00:14:39):

For sure.

Speaker 2 (00:14:40):

I do know that some stuff that's gotten trashed deserve to get trashed,

Speaker 3 (00:14:43):

Right.

Speaker 2 (00:14:44):

Personally, I just find it difficult without a collaborator. I feel like a collaborator can be that voice of reason when we're being crazy. So I have a ton of admiration for anyone that writes music by themselves, start to end product by themselves. That is crazy to me.

Speaker 3 (00:15:03):

Yeah, I guess I've just always done it like that. I've never, never known any other way.

Speaker 2 (00:15:08):

How do you assess things, but also something that happens in collaboration with people is that they give you possibilities that you couldn't see on your own, which is what makes things better now. Anyone who writes on their own obviously isn't getting that from somebody else. They have to be the one creating the what have we try this? What if we combine this with that? You're the one who has to create your own possibilities with it. So how do you deal with that?

Speaker 3 (00:15:36):

I just try a lot of things, honestly. A lot of experimentation. That's about it.

Speaker 2 (00:15:41):

Just do it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:15:42):

I mean, it'll be amazing to have someone else working with me or bouncing ideas off of, but I've never really had that chance. It's not, I wish it was working with a band, sitting with a guitarist, with a drummer, whatever, and just kind of bouncing ideas together and working on something. You can't beat that. But as a composer, it's just me writing everything. So that's all I've known.

Speaker 2 (00:16:05):

So you just try a bunch of shit.

Speaker 3 (00:16:08):

Yeah, that's all. It's just storing fucking more shit at the fans really. And honestly, this is, it's a big reason why I don't think I will ever live stream me working because it's a pretty ugly process, anxiety filled process that every step of the way. I just get down with myself. I'm like, I suck. I dunno what I'm doing. This is horrible. This is not going to work. This is awful. And I just try everything until something works, until something clicks. The funny thing with that is that you never know when it's going to work or when it's going to click. Sometimes it will take to write a minute of music, it could take two weeks and sometimes it will come about within three, four hours. But regardless, the process of just the initial writing of the track, it's not a pretty thing. It's least not in my case.

Speaker 2 (00:16:59):

So once you write the initial version of a track or how finished is it? Do you go back and retract things or are you creating a finished product as you go?

Speaker 3 (00:17:10):

No, I never go back and retract things. I kind of finalize things as I go. I kind of mix and do all the processing, all the effects, all the printing through whatever analog equipment, all from the beginning. I'm building it to be almost perfect by the time I'm done, it's done. And also I think I'm kind of doing that subconsciously because I get to this point, this is a problem I have is I get burnt out on whatever it is I'm working on rather quickly. We can imagine listening to the same 30 seconds to two minutes of a track for 15 hours a day. You stop hearing things after a couple of days, you kind of become numb to it.

Speaker 2 (00:17:47):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:17:48):

That point scares me because what I'm trying to change and be more conscious of right now is when I'm writing something and say I'm 50% done with the track and I hear things along the way when I listen to it, I'm like, oh, I got to fix this. I got to fix that. I got to fix this. And if I don't sit down and do it right away, when I hear it, when it's fresh in three days from now, I'm probably not going to hear it anymore.

Speaker 2 (00:18:09):

Yeah, you're just going to get used to it the way it is.

Speaker 3 (00:18:12):

Exactly, exactly. So I'm trying to get to a point when I'm writing as fast as I can, while everything is still fresh.

Speaker 2 (00:18:19):

Preventing Ditis syndrome.

Speaker 3 (00:18:21):

Exactly. Yeah. That's the problem. I don't like when I get to that point and at that point that's when I would love to just have someone else. So, hey, I've been working on this for five, six days, I don't know what I'm hearing anymore. Can you take a listen to that please? What do you think? What are you hearing? That would be extremely valuable for me. That's the point I would want someone else not in the beginning. I'm confident that I can get it on my own. Obviously having someone else interject could help bring ideas to the tables that I wouldn't think of. Like you were saying, I can get it, it's just a matter of just give me enough time. But it's later on when I could use an extra set of fresh, fresh ears.

Speaker 2 (00:19:01):

So basically you're working against the clock, you know that the moment that good stuff starts happening, you basically got a timer on. Got to go.

Speaker 3 (00:19:11):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:19:13):

So when that happens, is it basically everything else that's going on just gets put on hold?

Speaker 3 (00:19:18):

Life gets put on hold as soon as I sign a contract and I go up here the first time and that's it. It's done. I remember when I started working on Dim, my best friend Mike, he lives in Florida. I talked to him three or four times a week and I just disappeared. I haven't talked to him in two weeks or so, and he tried reaching me and I call him later, I'll call him later. I get in the zone and I just ignore everything and I got a lot of shit from him after he's like, dude, you're gone. I'm like, yeah, I didn't even realize I was gone. I get so focused, you got to go fast, you got to do a good, and then every new project is a new opportunity and you don't know what's going to come out of it. So I'm just completely dedicated.

Speaker 2 (00:19:59):

You were saying that when you start a project, it's kind of difficult to judge the magnitude of the project at the outset as far as knowing how much work it's going to take. So how do you judge that against the deadline?

Speaker 3 (00:20:14):

I don't have an exact answer. I think it changes depending on a project. Look, if we can compare Doom to Genlock, which is two of the biggest projects I've worked on to date, getting into Genlock getting in was easy. I started getting animation on the first episode and I had a month and a half, almost two months to do pre-production, developed sounds, themes, this and that, and I got in pretty smoothly. It wasn't a problem. But once the first episode was done, all of a sudden I realized I started working on it in July of 18 or 2019, whatever. So I finished the first episode by Midgut or so all of a sudden I'm realizing that the first episode will be aired in January and the season's eight episodes long. Each episode is about 25 minutes and it's wall to wall music and it's really complex, orchestral, hybrid type music per episode, dozens and dozens of cues and each cue sounds completely different and there's a lot of themes and a lot of different things that need to go into each episode. And I realized that this is going to turn into a crunch really fast. So it started nice and easy, and then it was a race against the clock. By the time I was done with everything and now getting into it didn't feel big is what I'm trying to say. I felt confident. I'm like, it's going to go smooth. It's not going to be a problem with doom. It felt like a monumental task and a lot of it was also getting in after Mick.

Speaker 2 (00:21:43):

I was going to ask if part of it was just the psychological aspect of following him up, kind of fucking great.

Speaker 3 (00:21:52):

He's a fucking God man. I mean, guy is amazing.

Speaker 2 (00:21:56):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:21:57):

I really admire him. Understand that. When I wrote the demo, when I asked if I wanted to write it, I'm like, yeah, sure to know I'm going to fucking get it. I'll do it.

Speaker 2 (00:22:07):

Why not try?

Speaker 3 (00:22:08):

Yeah, why not? Exactly. I wrote it and I heard back from them after a month or so, and they're like, you got the gag. And I'm like, alright, I'm going to go vomit. I'll be right back. And just, man, just the thought of following this guy, I'm like, what the fuck did I get myself into?

Speaker 2 (00:22:26):

Yeah, I can imagine.

Speaker 3 (00:22:28):

I'm going to get demolished by his fans. I will never be able to write anything that's even close to what he's done. The biggest thing that I admire about what he did is now I would love, this is kind of like what I want to do One day, my dream is he established a new genre in a way. He made something completely, oh, maybe it was existing to a certain extent, but he made it more mainstream. So fucking cool. I mean, as countless people on YouTube trying to mimic that sound and learning how to do it, it's really unbelievable. So establishing something that groundbreaking is something I would love to do one day. It's his sound in a way. So following that was incredibly anxiety inducing. And as I said, the opposite from Genlock, the genlock started smooth. I'm like, it's not going to be a problem.

(00:23:21):

This guy with this project, I'm like, this is going to be a problem. And then I saw the deadlines. I'm like, no way. How are we going to do this? The trick was to just kind of shut the fuck up, sit down and start working on it and just kind of chiseling at it one minute of music at a time and breaking it down and slowly easing into it. And before I knew it, it didn't seem that monumental anymore. In terms of work, you kind of break it down to pieces and you rationalize it, set up your goals and your timeline and you kind of go at it.

Speaker 2 (00:23:57):

You just sit down and do it. You

Speaker 3 (00:23:58):

Sit down and do it. You don't think about it. That's the hardest part, really. It's psychological aspect of things with these projects. Don't overthink it, don't undertake it. Is that a word?

Speaker 2 (00:24:08):

Just go in and do it. It is. I think that in some ways easier said than done, but actually not really, because it really is as simple as just getting to work.

Speaker 3 (00:24:17):

And honestly for me it's just breaking it down to manageable chunks of work with doom. Since it's not episodic like an animation or anything else, a TV series. It was like, alright, I know that I'm working on this map. That's chunk one. Alright, put everything else aside. I still have the right music for 10 cinematics. I still have a boss fight I need to write for, but alright, I'm going to pretend like I don't need to do that yet. So what do I do with this map? Alright, I need a full music suite. How long is it going to be? Five to 10 minutes long, whatever it was. Alright, that's chunk two. Now what do I do? I need to write ambient music. I need to write light combat music. I need to write heavy combat music. Alright, more chunks. Alright, let's start with the ambient music. How long is that going to be? Five minutes. Okay. So you're probably aware, but at least with that game, everything was supposed to be modular in terms of writing.

Speaker 4 (00:25:11):

You're

Speaker 3 (00:25:12):

Writing a track and it has a bunch of chunks in it and they need to be interchangeable and the engine goes in for you and just shuffles everything around. So you're writing an ambient piece that's five minutes long and it has, let's say for simplicity sake, each chunk is about a minute long. So you need the chunks to be able to be interchangeable and they all need to make sense when they're played in the engine. So that was something new for me. I've never written music like that before.

Speaker 2 (00:25:38):

That seems very challenging.

Speaker 3 (00:25:39):

Very challenge. It's not linear. It's not working on a show. All right, we've got this scene and this happens and you write a Q, great, here's the next scene. Cool. Now I have this and in section A needs to work before second section D and B before A and vice versa. I'm like, what the fuck? How am I doing this? But as I said, you keep breaking it down more and more and more and more until it comes down to like, alright, let's write a 32nd long piece. And that's how you just kind of like one foot in front of the other and you go at it.

Speaker 2 (00:26:09):

Do you test putting one section before and after a section to make sure that it both goes into it and out of it?

Speaker 3 (00:26:19):

I had to, yeah. I wrote it knowing that it's going to have to move around and I shuffled everything and there were sections that didn't work and they sounded good. I'm like, that's not working. No matter where I put it, it's like it's too heavy or it's too whatever. So I had to rewrite things.

Speaker 2 (00:26:35):

Knowing and understanding the parameters. I think that that's something that actually creative people have a hard time with. They have a hard time with following directions and even comprehending directions because all they know how to do is vomit, creative things out. I think that being able to actually follow and understand directions is a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge thing.

Speaker 3 (00:26:59):

It is. It is. It's half the battle really, and being organized with this stuff, it's a ton of work.

Speaker 2 (00:27:05):

How do you stay organized with it? Let's talk about that a little.

Speaker 3 (00:27:08):

It's kind of what we just talked about. It's analyzing a project and really understanding what you're expected to do and deadlines are everything. I mean, I got to know what's due when and I'm going to try to beat that deadline and it's just a matter of being hyper-focused on things. Give me a for instance, I knew that I had about 10 days to finish the ambient music for Doom 10 days. And again, I broke it down. I knew one day I'm one or two days I'm going to sit down and just do sound design, just make sounds and then from there I'm going to start writing. Every day I'm going to do one section or something. And it's just kind of like a general thing. Once you sit down things, there's so many variables they change all the time. They

Speaker 2 (00:27:54):

Take on their own life.

Speaker 3 (00:27:55):

Absolutely. So it's just kind of have a general idea and just go at it. I know that I want to leave two to three days to mix and a couple of days just to have notes back from the other director and you just push through it and you don't stop.

Speaker 2 (00:28:10):

I think it's important to note that you should plan. I think you should plan, but you should also take plans with a grain of salt, which is very difficult for people to do.

Speaker 3 (00:28:20):

Yeah, yeah. Because you get frustrated like, oh my God, I was supposed to write two minutes of music today and still doing sound design. I'm still putting sounds together. So you can't let those kind of thoughts in too much. Don't let 'em resonate because alright, you spent three days on this, but now you have all this material to work with and tomorrow you're going to be moving forward even faster. So it's like there's a lot of ebb and flow to this stuff. So like you're saying, don't make a general plan, but just get ready for things to change on you. They do. They always do.

Speaker 2 (00:28:55):

I think the plan also helps big picture wise. If you know you're at a deadline and you have 20% of the time left and only 30% of the project done well, maybe that's a problem.

Speaker 3 (00:29:07):

You got to foresee that way before. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:29:09):

Exactly.

Speaker 3 (00:29:10):

Yeah, and I mean I would say if I'm halfway, if I have let's say 10 days to finish something, whatever it is, I'm on the fourth day and I'm still doing work that I should be doing on the first day. I'm going to give it one more day before I'm going to reach out and talk about deadline extensions. But a knock on wood up to this point, I've never had to do that no matter what. I'm very punctual with stuff. Guys that I work for always get everything ahead of time. The problem is that when you work in these kinds of projects, there's really no deadline extensions for the most part.

Speaker 2 (00:29:42):

I was going to say, it doesn't sound like they would be too happy about that.

Speaker 3 (00:29:46):

No, they're not. And if you do that, you look incredibly unprofessional in my opinion. Listen, unless it's some kind of medical or something like a real emergency, you're getting paid a lot of money and you are working on AAA projects, you better get your shit together. That's kind of how I talk to myself. So you're not getting out of this room until you finish what you need to finish. I dunno how else to explain it, but it just happens. You just sit and work and work and work until it happens and it always happens eventually. The only thing is they're going to get it, but am I going to be a hundred percent happy with it? No.

Speaker 2 (00:30:24):

And would you be a hundred percent happy with it anyways?

Speaker 3 (00:30:27):

No, never. I can't listen to anything I've done. It's a fucking disease. I hate everything I've ever put out. All I hear is mistakes. All I hear is things that could have been better. And then when other people hear it and compliment it, I'm always like, what are you talking about? It's garbage. What do you mean it's good? Yeah. I dunno, man, can't let them have that. No, you cannot enjoy it. Listen to the kick. It's completely off. It's too cliquey.

Speaker 2 (00:30:58):

So you're sitting there thinking the whole time that they must be on drugs or something?

Speaker 3 (00:31:04):

Probably.

Speaker 2 (00:31:05):

Yeah. Who the hell knows?

Speaker 3 (00:31:06):

Yeah. No way. They're liking it. What's the matter with them? Well,

Speaker 2 (00:31:10):

I think it's important to note that I feel like lots of people feel that way. They feel their work sucks and it's independent of how good their work actually is or what level they're at. I mean, sometimes their work does suck. Oftentimes it doesn't, but they feel that way and there are people who hold themselves back because of those feelings. They don't just ignore them and do the shit anyways. They'll actually take those feelings seriously and just stop.

Speaker 3 (00:31:38):

Yeah, they can't do that. Yeah, don't stop. Just keep going. You're not going to get better. And the thing I do is I hold my stuff against all the big Hollywood composers, all the AAA composers, and maybe that's why I feel like my shit sucks and I put my stuff against Mick and I'm like, oh, I'm going to go vomit. It's not even close. It doesn't punch like that. I don't have that low end and I can't tell you how many times I listened to this stuff and literally just out loud just screamed. How are you doing it, Mick? How are you getting that low end like that? How is it so clean? How is it so punchy? And the same with the orchestral stuff that I've done. It's never good enough. I would always hold it against the high standards and I don't know. I guess it's good and it's bad, but maybe that's why I'm never happy with anything. But yeah, I mean if any of the listeners are at that point when they feel like they're not good enough and they need to stop, don't ever stop because this is how you're going to get better

Speaker 2 (00:32:38):

And your feelings aren't an accurate picture of reality. They're just feelings.

Speaker 3 (00:32:43):

No, and this is a problem that I know we all have, especially us that just sit and work alone. We hyper focus on things that no one's going to give a shit about. The average listener is not going to hear those things, so just keep that in the back of your mind. It's good to be critical. You're going to get better and your stuff's going to get good, but these things that you're hyper-focused on that makes you think it's not good enough. A lot of 'em are maybe just, they're just negligible and no one is going to hear it, so just keep going through it and finish the track and write another one and the next one is going to be better than the first one. There's no doubt about it.

Speaker 2 (00:33:20):

I think it's the same with mixing.

Speaker 3 (00:33:22):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:33:22):

Yeah. It sounds to me like mixing and composing are intertwined for you.

Speaker 3 (00:33:26):

Yeah. My background is in mixing. I spent seven to eight years being a chief engineer in South Florida and recording studio called Power Station. I had the same fucking power when I mixed, I was mixed. I'm like, this doesn't sound like crystal algae. What am I doing wrong? How are you doing this, Chris? What are you doing? How are you getting that low end? Yeah, it's the same fucking thing, man. It's very challenging. I want to work at the highest level possible and it's amazing to me. Every now and then you see on the YouTube videos and people would say, Hey, one day I want myself to sound like yours. I'm like, what? Mine? Are you crazy? Mine's garbage. Yeah. I guess it's all its perspective, I guess. I'm not sure there's always going to be someone better than you and someone that's not as good as you.

Speaker 2 (00:34:15):

The thing is with the people that you look up to, I wonder how they feel about their own work.

Speaker 3 (00:34:19):

That's a very good question.

Speaker 2 (00:34:21):

Yeah, I'm sure a lot of 'em feel the same way.

Speaker 3 (00:34:23):

Yeah, I would love to talk to someone about this kind of stuff. Actually, no, to be honest. Yeah, no, I talked to Andrew about it and he was Andrew from Doom and he had his insecurities as well about his tracks. So yeah, I guess maybe we're all in the same boat.

Speaker 2 (00:34:39):

I think so. I've talked to lots of people who are super amazing and far along and audio or music and for the most part, they all kind of feel that way.

Speaker 3 (00:34:48):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:34:49):

Yeah. I actually think that that's part of why they keep getting better too.

Speaker 3 (00:34:54):

I think so.

Speaker 2 (00:34:55):

So it feels like shit when you have that mental condition, but at the same time that mental condition is what keeps you improving because the people I know who think that they're awesome generally suck generally.

Speaker 3 (00:35:07):

Yeah. That could be said about people who just are, let's take music aside. People who just know it all. People just think they got it figured out in life. A lot of times they're very far removed from reality.

Speaker 2 (00:35:22):

Yeah, exactly. I think that being delusional, I guess in any direction, being delusional isn't good, but if I had to pick between thinking things are too good or too bad, I'd go with too bad because then at least I'm going to work on improving them. If I think they're too good, then going to not do anything.

Speaker 3 (00:35:41):

Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 (00:35:42):

But still, I do think that it's normal for creative people to have those feelings. I think it's true with instrumentalists as well. Guitar players, for instance, who feel like they suck and feel like they need to get better, we'll keep on working at it and that's how they've become best in the world.

Speaker 3 (00:35:59):

Yeah. Does this happen to you too, when you write stuff and work? Of course

Speaker 2 (00:36:02):

Always has. So what do you do? Just keep going.

Speaker 3 (00:36:05):

We talked earlier about bouncing ideas off of different people. If you feel like you have something that's not as good, but maybe it's good, but you're not sure, you just send it to someone, one of your friends to listen to kind of validate it.

Speaker 2 (00:36:15):

Yeah, exactly that.

Speaker 3 (00:36:16):

How often does it come back with really positive feedback?

Speaker 2 (00:36:20):

Almost always

Speaker 3 (00:36:21):

Good. That's great.

Speaker 2 (00:36:22):

I mean, because if it got to the point where I actually recorded it and was confident enough to show somebody, that means that it passed through a bunch of filters already.

Speaker 3 (00:36:31):

Yes, I agree. It's a subconscious thing, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (00:36:35):

Yeah. If it was really shitty, I probably wouldn't have continued and wouldn't have even had the courage to send it to anybody. It's more like, got it to a certain point, but I'm not sure about this. What's weird about it?

Speaker 3 (00:36:48):

Or

Speaker 2 (00:36:48):

Is there something weird about it? Am I being crazy? And I'd say 90% of the time the feedback is, you're being crazy.

Speaker 3 (00:36:56):

See, that's good, that's great.

Speaker 2 (00:36:58):

Or some small adjustment, like one note or one rearrangement of a section or something. Right.

Speaker 3 (00:37:06):

But nothing that's going to make or break it.

Speaker 2 (00:37:08):

No. With business, it's the same sort of thing with ideas that I have for the companies. I have a lot of ideas, and I think a lot of people have a lot of ideas, but for me, ideas are worthless if you can't execute on them. So if I'm going to bring an idea to the team, I've already thought about whether or not it's executable or not. Even if I'm unsure about an idea, I'm not married to it. If I'm presenting it, it's at least past the filter. Like this can exist in reality, if it worked properly, it would be a good thing, otherwise I'm going to kill it.

Speaker 3 (00:37:41):

Yeah, and it's funny because it kind of like it goes back to the first question you asked me. Oh, one of the first ones, when do I scratch a track and start from the beginning? It's really, it's the same thing. If it's not doing something from the first two to three notes, I'm not going to move forward on it at all. So it's like you're having an idea, you're not going to get all the way through almost presenting it and saying, nah, it's a horrible idea. So you're going to know from the beginning, more or less if it's even worth investing in mentally to develop it and all that.

Speaker 2 (00:38:09):

Yeah. Because why would you work on something that sucked?

Speaker 3 (00:38:13):

Exactly. And if it's going to suck from the very beginning, more or less.

Speaker 2 (00:38:16):

Yeah. More or less.

Speaker 3 (00:38:17):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:38:17):

Hey, everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast and you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration and information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you're a member, you already know how amazing it is. The beginning of the month, nail the mix members, get the raw multi-tracks to a new song by artists like Lama, God Angels and Airwaves. Knock Loose eth Shuga, bring me the Horizon. GA Jira, asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others over 60 at this point. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song on the album and takes your questions live on air.

(00:39:09):

And these are guys like TLA, will Putney, Jenz Boren, Dan Lancaster, to I Matson, Andrew Wade, and many, many more. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, which is our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics as well as Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multitracks cleared for use in your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those of you who really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhance, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like game staging, mastering low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed.

(00:40:03):

Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to URM Academy to find out more. I don't know if you get this, but I feel like creativity needs to be warmed up. This goes back to the writer's block conversation, but when you're trying to get through that feeling and you're writing stuff that's not that great, what I've noticed is sometimes if say it's a song for a band or something, just write the riff, then write the next riff, and probably by the next one after that, the light bulb's going to go on and then you can trash everything that came before it. Because the first real idea is when the light bulb came on, but you kind of had to finish those first two just to, I dunno, shake the cobwebs off or something

Speaker 3 (00:41:04):

With, I wrote most of the songs around the drum parts because I'm a drummer. I would sit and I have sessions on here recorded that are over an hour long of me just playing the riffs and coming up with the riffs, and it was maybe 40 minutes in when I start coming up with stuff that's worth going in and investigating later on and developing. But 100%, yeah, you got to go through it for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:41:29):

So you will sit there and just record stream of consciousness until you're like, alright, this.

Speaker 3 (00:41:35):

Yeah, for the very, very initial parts. Yes. A lot of times when I'm searching for a progression, I learned that you always have it recording while you're doing whatever it's you're doing. If you're playing on a piano, guitar, drums, just have the shit recording in the background. I can't tell you how many times I came across a really good progression and when I was just fucking around and then immediately forgot it immediately and then couldn't go back to it, it was gone. So I would just have it tracking. Eventually when I'm playing, I'm going to come across what it is that I'm looking for. And at that point, when I have that is when I start seriously writing the track and developing it and building on that.

Speaker 2 (00:42:14):

That makes sense. At least you're not just starting off of bullshit, you're starting off of something that means something.

Speaker 3 (00:42:21):

Right, exactly. And that usually comes subconsciously. I know a lot of people do that and respect it. I'm not able to sit down and draw notes in the piano roll and write a track like that.

Speaker 2 (00:42:33):

Me neither.

Speaker 3 (00:42:34):

It needs to come from somewhere else. I had to put my hands on the drums, on the guitar keyboard or something and just feel it out until it comes out. But again, once I have that, I have no problem programming things after the fact, the initial progression of Melody, I need to play it.

Speaker 2 (00:42:49):

I mean, that makes sense. Two things. One, not everyone writes music in their head the way that they show in movies. I think a lot of people,

Speaker 3 (00:42:58):

Shit in my head,

Speaker 2 (00:42:59):

A lot of people need a physical medium for it.

Speaker 3 (00:43:02):

I have rhythms in my head, but I can't write melodies really or anything like that, or progressions.

Speaker 2 (00:43:08):

Everyone needs to find what works for them. I think that's kind of the moral of the story. But also I think that a lot of people have a hard time with writing and recording because they feel like the moment they sit down to write and they press record is the moment that they run out of ideas. But by doing it the way that you said, which is just record all the time and it be okay with 40 minutes of bullshit.

Speaker 3 (00:43:34):

Yeah, just forget that it's recording. A lot of times I'll hit record and literally minimize the cubase window, not even look at it, forget that it's recording and just play.

Speaker 2 (00:43:43):

Yeah, makes sense.

Speaker 3 (00:43:44):

Don't even think about it. I used to do this stuff in the studio a lot.

Speaker 2 (00:43:48):

I would be scared to do that in Pro Tools because it stops all the

Speaker 3 (00:43:52):

Time. Go fucking crash.

Speaker 2 (00:43:54):

But if I did it in, actually, if I just loaded it up in Garage Band, believe it or not, I'm using Garage Band for the podcast because it never crashes.

Speaker 3 (00:44:03):

It's great. It's stable.

Speaker 2 (00:44:04):

Yeah. Single track of audio, it'll never crash.

Speaker 3 (00:44:07):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:44:09):

God, I feel so embarrassed saying that.

Speaker 3 (00:44:11):

No, man, I mean, fuck man. It's just something to be said about those things. Pro tools

Speaker 2 (00:44:15):

Will crash. You cannot leave it running for 90 minutes or something. If you minimize it, you'll go back and it'll have stopped 10 minutes in

Speaker 3 (00:44:24):

And this is the most stable, I don't know what version you're using, but whatever they have now, it's the most stable version of Pro Tools ever. I'll never forget 12, 13, 13 years ago, it still stop. When I would record, I had a band that came in and they wanted to do everything on tape. We record on tape, but we also sent the Pro tools at the same time, and the whole point was they wanted to get just the transformers and everything off the tape machines. The shit could not stop. If it stops, it's going to be out of sync. It's going to be a fucking mess. And it stopped. Stopped every eight minutes. Of course it stopped. We couldn't do it. And that's like an HD system and everything. It still stops, it still crashes. It's a nightmare. Just minimize. It shouldn't cord it. I guarantee you're going to find things in there.

(00:45:08):

Even going back and listening to things later on, you might be able to find little nuggets of gold in there, even if it's depending what it is. If it's a chord progression, one or two chords that sound really good together, take that and that's what we do all the time. I'm like, alright, those two chords sounded awesome together. And then I would start a new recording and work off of those two and develop that into something and keep recording. And sometimes it's a matter of adding two, three quarters at a time until you get whatever you need to get. But at that point I'm going to have something solid I'm happy with. And then from there on, it's usually pretty, I wouldn't say easy, but easier,

Speaker 2 (00:45:40):

But you know what to do. Exactly.

Speaker 3 (00:45:41):

I'm like, that's it. I'm building off of that I initial idea. That's very hard

Speaker 2 (00:45:44):

After that. I mean, it's not that it's not creative, but that's where the craft comes in.

Speaker 3 (00:45:49):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:45:49):

Yeah. I feel like too many people are stuck in either the art or the craft and have a problem with combining the two or knowing when to switch it over or how much of which to use.

Speaker 3 (00:46:01):

What happens to me is I could be like, we talked about things getting stale. If you listen for too long, I get super nerdy with just processing and mixing, and since I mix while I'm writing, sometimes I need to stop myself from spending too much time mixing because at that point I'm like, I'm listening to the song for now extra couple hours a day because I'm doing mixing while I'm writing.

(00:46:27):

And that contributes to me getting ear fatigue faster. But I love the mixing aspect. It's so much fun. There's so many fucking plugins and so many tools and so many things to play with, but it is important to, if you shift back and forth to not spend too much time on whatever it is that you're doing that you don't need to be doing. If you're in a writing mode and you need to be writing focused on writing as much as you can just for me, a lot of times I need to shape the sounds because that affects how I write and what I'm going to write. So I'm learning to kind of do it as quickly as possible. Just I can keep moving with the writing and then come back and do processing and mixing later on.

Speaker 2 (00:47:03):

So either way, you're focusing on one thing at a time.

Speaker 3 (00:47:07):

I'm trying to, and if I need to process, I'm going to do it real fast, going to dip my toes in the water do and come back right to writing right away. That can really get lost in that stuff. It's bad.

Speaker 2 (00:47:18):

It's very easy to lose your momentum.

Speaker 3 (00:47:20):

Oh my God, absolutely. And that's what it is. Yeah. I mean, you hit it the nail of the head, it's the momentum. You got to stick on that and move what's hot.

Speaker 2 (00:47:28):

Yeah. I think momentum is everything, really.

Speaker 3 (00:47:30):

It is,

Speaker 2 (00:47:30):

Yeah. When you're having those long stream of consciousness sessions, you're just trying to find something to build momentum off of really some sort of a spark that will create that momentum in the first place.

Speaker 3 (00:47:42):

It usually comes, but there are plenty of times when I wrote stuff that it just wasn't there. I was sitting, wrote stuff for 40 minutes for Doom on the guitar for heavy stuff, and it still wasn't happening. So I went and did something completely different. I worked on a completely different type of track. If I see it doesn't come out within an hour or two, I don't want to get frustrated. I don't want to get upset. I'm like, all right, I'm going to do something else. I'm work on that. And if that doesn't work either I'm going to take a fucking break for an hour because obviously my head's not where it needs to be and then come back and go at it again.

Speaker 2 (00:48:15):

I think it is important to take those breaks. The thing is I want to make sure that people don't think that we're being self contradicting by saying the way to get over writer's block is to keep going for it and then say, well, the way to get over writer's block is to take a break.

Speaker 3 (00:48:29):

No, you take an hour break. You don't take a week off and say, oh, I have writer's block. That's

Speaker 2 (00:48:34):

You try. You take a breather, come right back. Keep going.

Speaker 3 (00:48:38):

It's a breather. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:48:39):

Do you feel when you're working on things like your brain gets to a point where it just slows down ever, like two hours into a session or something? Or three hours?

Speaker 3 (00:48:51):

Absolutely. Yeah. At that point, I'll take a quick break. They'll get a snack, watch something stupid on YouTube for 10 minutes and start again. Or change gears completely, like I said. Like, alright, I'm going to focus on mixing for the next hour. It kind of works in a different side of your brain, you know what I mean? And it's more technical, so you kind give them the creative aspect process of break, but you're still moving forward on a project, still doing things that need to get done on it, and then you go back to writing. A lot of times it will inspire me to write new stuff when I'm mixing, I'm hearing other things and getting more ideas. So switching back and forth between the two things that help a lot.

Speaker 2 (00:49:28):

Sometimes it's good to do nothing at all though,

Speaker 3 (00:49:31):

But I get too anxious. That is my biggest problem when I have those deadlines. I can't stop for anything. I can't let myself relax. I know that's bad and I dunno how to stop it.

Speaker 2 (00:49:41):

I have a hard time with it too.

Speaker 3 (00:49:42):

Yeah. What do you do?

Speaker 2 (00:49:44):

Try? I think there's a lot of good that comes out of stopping for a little bit, even for 10 or 20 minutes. So I used to not do that ever. I just do it now kind of same way that I make myself do work. I make myself stop. I work when I don't feel like it, so I should stop. I mean, I'm not going to stop when a good thing is happening, but what I'm starting to feel the burnout. I make myself stop even if I don't want to. I've noticed this too as a producer or at Riff Hard Video shoots that I noticed that we have reached a point of diminishing returns for the artist. They want to keep going. They have an insane work ethic, and I get it. I get those feelings too of we should keep going, keep going. But I also know that if we don't stop, we're going to just get frustrated and they're not going to get it. And then after we take the break, they're going to come back and get it in five minutes and it almost always happens that way, which is another reason that collaborators are good, is because sometimes they can understand what you need in those moments.

Speaker 3 (00:50:50):

I don't like getting to the point when I'm frustrated and it happens all the time at that. I'm just going to get up. I'm going to leave for a little bit and come back.

Speaker 2 (00:50:56):

Yeah, it makes sense.

Speaker 3 (00:50:58):

Yeah, you can't, then nothing is going to come out of working frustrated.

Speaker 2 (00:51:01):

Tell me about drums and how you incorporate that. I see the drums behind you. You said you're a drummer.

Speaker 3 (00:51:07):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:51:08):

Do you sit there and write on the drums? What role do they play?

Speaker 3 (00:51:13):

Mia? I feel like it was very rhythmic based, and I think in rhythms, I would write the riffs first in my head in drum form rhythm, and then kind of hash 'em out on the drums on a jump set, and then literally I would write all the different parts, and then I would go up here to Cubase and draw everything in because I already had it in my head and I would write the guitars and everything else around the drums.

Speaker 2 (00:51:41):

So you would remember them though from just playing them on the drums?

Speaker 3 (00:51:46):

Yeah. Once I play them, it's in my head. It's not going anywhere.

Speaker 2 (00:51:51):

Is that so that you know how it feels for real in real life? In the real world, it

Speaker 3 (00:51:56):

Comes from playing. It's just like writing a progression, a chord progression on the guitar or the keyboard. I need to sit, feel it. So it's the same thing with the drums. A lot of times I'll have a small idea just in my head thinking about rhythms, and I'll sit down and play that rhythm on the drum set and develop it on there and take it to wherever it needs to go.

Speaker 2 (00:52:16):

I've noticed that a lot of the best drum programmers know how to play drums to some degree. Doesn't mean that they're like a professional drummer or something, but they know how it works on a kit. That translates into programming very realistic parts.

Speaker 3 (00:52:33):

Yeah. You got to understand the drum, the instrument if you're going to program it.

Speaker 2 (00:52:37):

Now, since it is programmed, and this isn't a band that has to play live, do you put any limits on the reality of the drum parts?

Speaker 3 (00:52:48):

Yeah, if you need to play it live, you can.

Speaker 2 (00:52:50):

Four limbs, not eight. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:52:52):

No, no, no. Fuck no. This is like, I played 90% of those parts. There's only one part in No moura that kicked you on was so fucking fast. I couldn't play it that fast. It's like fucking 32 notes or something. Forget 180 something nuts. It was very fast. Maybe more than that. I added that after the fact. I kind of heard it in my head. I'm like, this would be awesome, and I added that. But no, if you need to sit down and play it, you can. I wouldn't say easily, but you can play most of the parts easily.

Speaker 2 (00:53:17):

Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:53:18):

It's all playable.

Speaker 2 (00:53:19):

That probably is part of why it works.

Speaker 3 (00:53:21):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:53:22):

I think when guitar players do this, but when guitar players write drum pars oftentimes they just suck. Just they can't exist in reality. So where does your guitar playing come from?

Speaker 3 (00:53:36):

My guitar playing is not great at all. I'm not a good guitarist.

Speaker 2 (00:53:41):

So how do you get a sounding good if you're not a good guitarist?

Speaker 3 (00:53:44):

A lot of mixing and a lot of takes.

Speaker 2 (00:53:46):

A lot of takes. So you do a lot of takes until you get one worth of tone and everything is right, however long it might take.

Speaker 3 (00:53:54):

If I were to go out and play a live show with the music I wrote for Duke, I'm going to sit behind a drum set for sure. Get someone that's more of an accomplished guitarist to do the guitarist. I'm a studio guitarist.

Speaker 2 (00:54:06):

How much technical practice do you do?

Speaker 3 (00:54:09):

Well, not as much now, but it used to be just like with the drums, I dunno, an hour or less a day, depending on my schedule. I'll grab different instruments I have here and practice whenever I have time during the week.

Speaker 2 (00:54:23):

Just enough to keep up.

Speaker 3 (00:54:25):

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I got to the point where my skill level, where it's at now years ago, and it's just, it's been stagnant. I'm not moving forward on it. I'm not going backwards either. Same with the drums, but I'm at where I'm at, so I can't spend any more time practicing any instruments, unfortunately. Piano too,

Speaker 2 (00:54:43):

But I mean it's all about priorities, right?

Speaker 3 (00:54:46):

Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:54:47):

So does that even matter?

Speaker 3 (00:54:49):

No.

Speaker 2 (00:54:50):

Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:54:50):

Not to me. Not right now.

Speaker 2 (00:54:51):

Makes sense. I think that that's a key thing too for people to make sure that they know is what their priority is at that point in time. Because if you start to think about all the different things you could get better at and you're going to not get better at anything, or you're going to get better at the wrong things

Speaker 4 (00:55:09):

Or

Speaker 2 (00:55:09):

Things that are irrelevant, because if you start to list out things you could get better at,

Speaker 3 (00:55:15):

It's depressing. Really.

Speaker 2 (00:55:16):

Yeah. Yeah. It is depressing. I saw somebody on the riff hard group the other day. They did something that I did when I went to Berkeley, which I quickly realized was a bad idea. Yeah. I went and I dropped out. I wrote out everything I needed to learn on guitar, so it was like everything, all kinds of sight reading, transposition,

Speaker 3 (00:55:38):

Every

Speaker 2 (00:55:39):

Single scale and every single position, every single mode in every position, every chord, every inversion, everything like down picking funk, like a tremble picking, sweep, picking, tapping, every thing, every style of music, everything. It was pages and pages long. And then I looked at it and I was like, this is stupid. This is really, really stupid. All I'm doing is stressing myself out. I need to just focus on the aspects that apply to what I want to do with it, and that's it. I saw someone in the Riff Heart group post that same thing now 20 years later, posted every single thing you could possibly work on guitar and a schedule of two minutes on this, three minutes on that, five minutes on this, two minutes on that. And it's like, dude, stop. Just stop.

Speaker 3 (00:56:32):

You don't understand how many times a week I have that exact thought. I'm like, I should spend five days, five minutes a day just playing my cello five minutes a day just doing scales and guitar.

Speaker 2 (00:56:44):

Sure.

Speaker 3 (00:56:44):

I never get around doing it no matter what. I always find something better to do. At this point in my life, priorities are completely different.

Speaker 2 (00:56:52):

The thing is that it's never just five minutes of scales.

Speaker 3 (00:56:55):

If

Speaker 2 (00:56:55):

It was just five minutes of scales to keep up, or five minutes of down picking, 10 minutes of down picking, that's one thing, but it's never that. It's like five minutes of down, picking five minutes of scales, five minutes of arpeggios, five minutes of legato, and then before you know it, it's six hours of shit. And you can't decide which five minute increments out of those six hours, you should focus on

Speaker 3 (00:57:18):

Too much fucking shit to learn, man.

Speaker 2 (00:57:19):

Yeah. So I think for instance, a positive way to do it would be okay, so you want to keep up with the instrument, but you're not interested in really getting great, but good enough to be able to fulfill the job requirements and what goes into it down picking, et cetera. Okay, so you can spend 10 minutes a day doing down picking exercises, leave it at that. The rest of the playing is involved with what's actually being recorded.

Speaker 3 (00:57:45):

Yeah. It depends what you're doing too. Well, if you're a touring musician, if you're living off of writing music for a band and yeah, you fucking sit there on an instrument all day long. Oh

Speaker 2 (00:57:53):

Yeah, that's

Speaker 3 (00:57:54):

All you do. You better practice all fucking day long.

Speaker 2 (00:57:56):

Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. It just depends on, again, what your priorities are.

Speaker 3 (00:58:00):

Right? For me, as someone, I'm using the instrument as a tool, so what am I focusing on here? The stuff I had to do for do most is the most demanding stuff I've ever had to do in guitar, and I knew that going into it, and you better believe I warmed up for months playing guitar before I started writing, but now I'm done and I dropped it. I'm just not really touching it right now. But when I need to, I see stuff coming and I'll start warming up again and bring things up to speed. But again, the instruments are just different tools that I use for compositions when I do. I used to do a lot of just orchestral stuff. Still was a lot of practicing of just working with the different sections of the orchestra when I was composing and finding the right voices to work together and what's complimenting what, and it was practicing almost like practicing an instrument its own, and I haven't done that for about a year. I'm not writing that stuff anymore. So I'm just applying myself depending on the project.

Speaker 2 (00:58:53):

Makes sense. I mean outcome-based practice.

Speaker 3 (00:58:56):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:58:57):

I do think though, when you're in your formative years, you won't have these kinds of projects or you won't really know who you, unless you're prodigy or something, you're not going to figure out who you are musically until way later. So it is important to just sit there and fucking practice stuff like scales and shit to a metronome and just do what people say. Do what people say and get fucking better and do the six hours a day when you're a teenager or your early twenties, do it. Do it. Do it because you're not going to have time to do it later, but also later, if things go right, you're going to get into situations where you have to put all your focus into one project and you're not going to be able to develop those things.

Speaker 3 (00:59:43):

Absolutely. And man, metronome is fucking key plate a metronome. You got to practice a metronome you don't understand. I'll never forget when I was working in the studio, I had a band that come in, some metal band and awesome nice guys, but

Speaker 2 (00:59:58):

You always know what's coming up. If someone says they're nice guys.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):

Oh yeah, the drummer, they were playing in BPMs that were just too fast for the guy, and I don't know if he's just, maybe he never practiced with a metronome. I don't know what the deal was, but

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):

The click was off. You

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):

Know what it is? It's not the speed, it's just I really believe he never played to a metronome in his life. He was just all over the place. And it got to a point where I had to go in and replace every single kick drum he did and line it up completely quantize everything he's done with audio. There's no midi, just chop every single KickUp. And it was like a lot of double bass and it was like 200 BPM. It took me maybe two weeks to do three or four songs.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):

Yeah, I remember those projects.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):

Just practice your instrument, especially as a drummer, you, you're the heartbeat of the band work to click and yeah, same thing with other instruments as well. So it is very fucking important if you practice, make sure you have a click check in the background.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):

Yeah, I feel like drummers now are much better about that than they used to be 10

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):

Years ago. Big difference. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):

I think that now it's kind of just part of the expectations. It's a good norm.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):

There's different breeder drums out there now,

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):

100% just different breeder musicians. Man. I feel like 20 years ago or something, even, I was one of the few people who understood how to practice to metronome in my immediate circle. There were one or two others that I knew, but in general, musicians didn't do that kind of stuff. They never fucked with recording. It was the only person I knew who was, even if it was a sound blaster, I was still trying. Not very many people were into that kind of stuff. Now everyone is, which I think is great.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):

It is, yeah. I mean, it's so cheap, but it's also a problem. As a composer, every kid with a laptop and native instruments complete is a composer now.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):

It just means you got to be better. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):

There's a lot of shit there, man. It's hard to fucking get through the noise,

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):

But to counter what you're saying, if you really are awesome, you're going to stand out that much more.

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):

Sure. But the problem is you got to get the people that matter, like audio directors and producers, to even get a chance to listen to your shit because they get thousands of emails a month from kids that no offense to anyone, they don't know what they're doing. They have no experience and they're self claim composers. So they're making it difficult for other people to get in touch with the guys that could give us work

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):

A shit tsunami.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):

Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):

How do you get around that?

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):

I will let you know when I figure it out.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):

I mean, you have,

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):

I don't know, man. So far it's been luck, honestly. I happen to know the audio director for a long time and he reached out and told me that there's an opportunity if I would like to submit a demo, and that's how I got it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):

I mean, that is how a lot of things work is somebody, if someone has zero contacts whatsoever, no matter how good they are, the chances of them doing something are way, way, way, way, way, way, way lower. It would need to be one of a freakish sort of thing that they go viral or something, which it's just super rare.

Speaker 3 (01:03:29):

Yeah, I think luck has a lot to deal with it. And to go on that, you really got to make your own luck as well. When I moved to Austin and decided to go full-time composer, I had zero contacts. I had nothing. I was getting into an industry I knew nothing about. I gave myself about a year to a year and a half to see if I can do something, and if I can't, I told myself, I'm going back to the studio. I kind of grabbed every little project I could. I got in on LinkedIn, I start connecting with people. I went to beer nights here in town. It's like a game, developers and whatever, they have a, I think that's what it's called, a beer night or whatever. And you get to meet people and talk to people. And I started getting super, super small, shitty projects to work on that did not pay anything.

(01:04:19):

But my plan the whole time, since I didn't know anyone, I had nothing to show for, is to really gain experience in mass, just a body of work so I have something to show for. So for two years, that's what I did. And I made sure to put everything on SoundCloud and build a shitty little website. And I didn't have much, and the music wasn't good, but I think it was maybe three years in. I kept writing, I kept doing stuff, and I knew that I'm working on a ton of projects that didn't pay, and 90% of 'em never even came out. I got a lot of video games that they just failed, but I wrote two to three tracks per project and whatnot, and I kept it and I put 'em together, put albums out and whatnot. And eventually a producer that worked here in town for Rooster Teeth was searching for a composer in Austin.

(01:05:10):

And I always made sure that my website had the whole SEO, whatever the fuck, and that my name would come up as much as possible. And it did. And he got to my SoundCloud and he left it on all day and listened to it, as he said. And he reached out and asked me if I want to work on a show in their production company called Red Versus Blue. And that was the first big things I've worked on. And it opened quite a bit of doors for me and started my career more professionally. So it's like you can make it even if you don't know anyone, but you got to have some kind of solid plan as to what to do. And again, it's kind of get your ducks in a row, make sure you have a website, make sure you have something to show for. And that takes, at least for me, it took years. And I'm very envious when I hear about people that have these insane trajectories when they get out of school or whatnot. And then I can't tell you how many times I've heard these kind of stories, dude,

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):

That's just super rare though, dude.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):

But you'd be surprised, man. I keep reading these things, these people like, oh yeah, I met Han Zimmer in a coffee shop, and then that's how I got my first break. I'm like, what the fuck? What is that? How do you do that?

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):

But the reason you're reading about that is it is so rare,

Speaker 3 (01:06:25):

I guess. Yeah, it still makes me very envious. Well,

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):

It took me, what, eight years to get to work on the triple A title like Doom from the moment I started. And I've been working nonstop, busting my ass. And then you hear about people that have been out in school for two years and are working on huge pods. I'm like, whoa, cool. Good for you. But also, fuck you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):

But it doesn't stop you from doing your thing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):

No, it doesn't. It does depress me sometimes. Understandable.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):

I guess we all just want to be as successful as possible.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (01:06:59):

Yeah, I feel like I'm very far from it still.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):

We can't put a timeline on it though.

Speaker 3 (01:07:04):

No, we

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):

Can't. No. It's different for everybody. And

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):

I'll never forget, I saw there was a video game orchestra here in town many years ago. It was maybe two years after I started doing this. I remember coming up to Austin Win Toy, I think I'm pronouncing his name right. He's a brilliant guy. And I just asked him after the show, they had a meet and greets ask them, Hey, what do you do not to give up at a point where I've been doing this for years, I'm not getting paid. I'm working on low quality projects and what do you do? And he looked at me and I and said, don't give up because you never know when something will click. And I'll never forget it. Something did click. It was maybe a year later, but

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):

It did.

Speaker 3 (01:07:49):

It did. So I like to pass that advice to anyone else that's listening and was in my shoes or is in my shoes right now or whatnot. Just don't stop and just keep going. If you have the passion, just don't stop.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):

Yeah, you can never predict when the opportunity's going to happen,

Speaker 3 (01:08:07):

But you really have to go out there and make your opportunity happen as well. I didn't sit at home in mope. I really did as much as I could with what I had. And I think these days it's easier than ever just putting your content out there and getting people to listen to it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):

I agree completely. And with that, I think it's a good place to end the episode. David, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to hang out. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:08:30):

Man. Thank you for having me. It was awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):

Anytime. Alright, then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post them to your Facebook and Instagram or any social media you use. Please tag me at al Levy 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.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):

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.