JOEL WANASEK: Mixing Gojira’s “Toxic Garbage Island”, The Natural Drums vs. Samples Debate, Ditching Elitism

Speaker 1 (00:01):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Kush Audio, a premium manufacturer of top quality audio, hardware and plugins. The high end just got higher. Visit the house of kush.com for more information. And now your host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and

Speaker 2 (00:21):

Eyal Levi. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. I'm Eyal Levi. With me is co-host Joel Wanasek. Joey Sturgis is working on some much needed maintenance for our site. I guess it's getting to that point where we need to be one of those companies that takes the site down for a day to do routine maintenance.

Speaker 3 (00:41):

Yeah, they broke it. They definitely broke it and it needs to be fixed, but it will be better when it's back.

Speaker 2 (00:46):

Yeah, for sure. So here we are and we're doing a mixcrit Monday. I think that the one we did last month went over very, very well. Some of our listeners were skeptical about us picking nail the mix songs, but in the end they actually were very appreciative. So that's what we're going to do again, but before we start doing that, I want to hear about LED lights.

Speaker 3 (01:07):

You want to hear about LED lights?

Speaker 2 (01:08):

You said your cousin designs them or something? What?

Speaker 3 (01:11):

No, no, no, no, no. My cousin, I said, is an interior designer out in LA or California or Napa Valley or one of those places out west. I'm from Wisconsin, so I don't know anything about, but I was looking at LED furniture because we're designing the lounge here, or at least I am in my head. And the guy who I rent from who owns a building, he no nothing about design. So I basically said, paint your room this color, paint this wall this color, get this color floor, put this here. And I'm all into it right now. So I want to make this really dope nightclub looking cool bar, a place that I want to hang out and drink after I work and not go to the actual bar and no one else is into it. No one's feeling the vibe, so Damn.

Speaker 2 (01:50):

Man. I got to tell you that the studio that I have become a part of the audio compound in Winter Park Florida with Andrew Wade, it has LED stuff all over it. Lots of the acoustic panels in the ceilings all over the place. It looks incredible.

Speaker 3 (02:10):

Oh yeah, it does.

Speaker 2 (02:11):

Yeah. The guys in your office are dumb and you know what? I'm going to stand by that. And you know what else? They shouldn't have the right to tell you that your studio shouldn't look as good as it can possibly look.

Speaker 3 (02:22):

Well, they're allowed to talk about it. No,

Speaker 2 (02:24):

They're not.

Speaker 3 (02:24):

I'm just going to do it so

Speaker 2 (02:26):

It doesn't matter. You should, because I know that you're not like me, you're not a vampire, but

Speaker 3 (02:33):

Well, that

Speaker 2 (02:34):

Is the, no, come on. You're not a vampire, but you still like good looking shit. You still want your control room to look awesome. And that's a really, really cheap and awesome way to make it just look great. What can I say?

Speaker 3 (02:48):

Absolutely. I'm actually almost considering clearing out my little ISO booth. I don't really record vocals that often and getting all that crap out of there, putting it in the basement and then decking that out into some sort of cool vibey chill room or something like that. Well, why not? I don't know. It's a good, I can't think of any good reasons why not. I just have to,

Speaker 2 (03:06):

You could set up a camera and Facebook live from in there and people can be like, oh man, I just want to be like Joel. Well, they already are like, I want to be like Joel. But then they'll really be,

Speaker 3 (03:16):

I don't want be like Joel,

Speaker 2 (03:17):

We all want to be like Joel.

Speaker 3 (03:19):

Nah, definitely not. But it would be pretty cool and I feel like it would be very productive for those high stress days. You want to just go dim the lights, get the vibe, drink a beer and look at your cool LED table.

Speaker 2 (03:34):

I think you should.

Speaker 3 (03:35):

I think so too. I'm into it. I've been looking. I'm all stoked on it. Everybody else thinks I'm nuts, so I'm doing it. That's a good leading indicator of something worth doing

Speaker 2 (03:44):

Is that the underlings stink your nuts?

Speaker 3 (03:48):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (03:49):

The help that's I'm hoping that they listen to this. They probably will. Yeah, I said it. Have you ever seen Scarface?

Speaker 3 (04:02):

Not in probably like 10 years, but great movie.

Speaker 2 (04:04):

So hang on a second. I'm looking up the line, Tony. I don't fuck the help. I think that's the line. Oh, I don't fuck around with the help when he's trying to get with Michelle Heifer and she's dating the boss and she's like, Tony, I don't fuck around with the help, one of my favorite lines. But with that said,

Speaker 3 (04:26):

That'd be a pretty good, I feel like

Speaker 2 (04:29):

Probably shall we create some mixes?

Speaker 3 (04:32):

Yes, we shall correct some mixes and I feel like we should try that again. Bringing it back to what we were talking about despite our little tangent about LED lightings and having a swaggy cool looking studio. We're going to do some GA Jira songs. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:45):

We're going to be doing Toxic Garbage Island by Gaira, which is our nail the mix track this month that Logan Mader is doing. And just like last month we went to our exclusive members only Facebook group for mixed crits, which is a bonus with your subscription. It's called the Tigon, and we just picked a few out of there. Just the reason that we've been picking them out of the Rock Toon, by the way, rather than just going with the submitted ones is because we don't get that many submissions. You guys are kind of scared, so

Speaker 3 (05:20):

Either we're really mean or they're really scared.

Speaker 2 (05:23):

I don't think we're mean. I think I'm the nicest guy. I

Speaker 3 (05:26):

Think we're just honest and giving good feedback that people will, if they listen to, will help them in their careers.

Speaker 2 (05:34):

Yeah, well I understand. I think it's scary for people to submit their work to be on the chopping block in front of thousands of people. I get it. I understand. But I mean this career is going to have that feeling. You're going to have that feeling in this career over and over and over again, whether you're sending it to a label or to a client or whoever. You're going to get judged and you just need to get used to it.

Speaker 3 (06:03):

What's scarier isn't that having to mix off against somebody like Chris Lord Alga or Andy Sneak or any badass a-list dude, and know that your mix is going to be directly compared to theirs and it better not suck.

Speaker 2 (06:15):

Yeah, man. Test mixes are always scary when it comes to that. It's kind of nerve wracking. I remember those days well, lots of sleepless nights and wondering what the other guy's going to do and yeah, you just have to submit your stuff and be cool. And since not many of you guys submit for mixed script Monday, a few of you guys do, but it's always the same guys over and over and over again and we are just starting to take some from the Tigon. We're not always going to do that. We will get to some of your submissions next month. We'll do that for sure. But we're just going to the octagon and picking off mixes where the guys probably don't even know that we're going to do this.

Speaker 3 (06:59):

Can I make one disclaimer here? Can you guys please send in some mixes that are something else other than Metal Core for once for Mix Crit Monday?

Speaker 2 (07:06):

Yes, please. That's the other thing. We want a little bit more variety in there, so I don't know how else I can say it, but I feel like we review the same, and this is funny now going to review the same song three times in a row, but I feel like with the mixed script Monday submissions, we're reviewing different songs that are the same song lots of times.

Speaker 3 (07:37):

I'll talk about mixed rescue for a second. That's something we offer for our enhanced subscribers. And I was doing mixed rescue a few days ago and I was looking for a good song to mix rescue and one of the songs that opened up, he literally went into one of the nail the mixes that we did with Joey and copied all of his settings, dragged them into his new session and then just did what Joey did except way worse. And I was just sitting there and I'm like, do I really want to mix rescue this? Do I want to teach people how to copy somebody or do I want to teach people how to mix? So unfortunately it was one I almost picked because I only had one or two other options of songs because just no one submitted and I was really hoping somebody would send me something fun and cool like, Hey, I've got a light rock song, or I've got a hip hop song, or I got a trap beat with some vocals. Give me something interesting. So I dunno, I'm just tired of creating metal mixes and I mean, I love it. It's fun, it's great, but there's so many breakdowns you can handle before your brain starts to invert and self implode. So if you guys are listening to this and you want to submit something, please submit something else other than just metal core. We would love to do something else other than that and it would be a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (08:49):

I would love it. All right, well, with that said, let's get into some metal. This is the mix of Toxic Garbage Island by GU Jira, by our subscriber Aristotle, mom and back. That was by our subscriber Aristotle Mall and holy, no high end in the kicks.

Speaker 3 (13:13):

I've got some notes on this. Yeah, me too. You want to go first or should I take the

Speaker 2 (13:18):

S Here? I'm going to tell you, here are my basic notes and you tell me what you think. Okay. No high end in the kicks. Can't hear the bass vocals are across the street. Guitar needs some cuts and they're so loud. Cys are also across the street. Sounds like it's in a weird guitar tunnel.

Speaker 3 (13:36):

Alright, mixed cri over. I agree. Let's start with the vocals. I mean there's a lot of structural problems on this mix. I want to address what you just precisely named, but oh, these are fun sometimes. Okay, let's talk about the vocals. I feel like there's a reverb setting on the lexicon. It's called Lex Bathroom, right? Or maybe there's not, but maybe. Okay, maybe it's me and my assistant and Joe. We call it Lex bathroom, but it literally sounds like the vocals are in a bathroom. I don't know what reverb he used or delay. Whatever he used. It sounds like they're in a bathroom. And then when I hear them come in, I actually kind of started to laugh. I'm like, wait, what's going on with the vocals? It doesn't sound right at all. It's completely the wrong ambience. I just want to say that when you guys are mixing, it's really important that your ambience is match.

(14:20):

So if you have a certain reverb on your Toms, your snare, your drum kit, maybe your guitars, your leads, it's probably a good idea to use that same at least plugin and type of room sound on your vocals and other auxiliary instruments because what's going to happen is you get your ambiences aren't going to gel and they're not going to vibe and not going to match. So when the ambience of the song is a certain style and sound and then the vocals come in and it literally sounds like they're recorded in a bathroom, but not in the same bathroom that the rest of the band was recorded, and it just totally kills the entire vibe of the mix. That's not a good habit. So make sure your ambience is match. I feel like that's such an important thing that gets overlooked. I mean, okay, the first mix I ever did for the first record I ever made, I sent it to, I think I said this last time, but I sent our friend James Murphy and James said, yeah, mix is cool, but dude, your ambiences don't match.

(15:14):

He's like, what do I mean? He's like, your Tom's kick your snare. They all sound like they're recorded in different rooms. And I sat back and I thought about it and then I'm like, oh yeah, if I kind of want my drum kit to sound like an actual drum kit or my vocals to fit the mix or et cetera, it needs to be consistent so there's no consistency when you have a bathroom on your vocals, but a big drum room on your drums and some plate on your guitar or something crazy like that or a spring. So you got to have some sort of cohesion to the mix, some sort of coherency to the ambiences. It's very important.

Speaker 2 (15:47):

You know what, when we just did nail the mix with Kane Chico last week, I believe that he was using one reverb for everything and some of the viewers in the chat were like, what's going on? How's that possible? They

Speaker 3 (16:04):

Got to start listening to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (16:06):

Yeah. Am I remembering that correctly?

Speaker 3 (16:10):

I think you were. I wasn't in the chat. I was sitting next to 'em, but I remember you bringing that up to me.

Speaker 2 (16:14):

That's what I'm saying. You were there, bro.

Speaker 3 (16:16):

I mean, that's a great point. Okay, so Kane, who's mixing some really badass stuff, and as you guys saw if you were nail the mix subscriber last month on Papa Roach, Nick Cain is just a phenomenally gifted mixer. He only used four or five plugins 90% of the time, his entire mix. He used one eq, one limiter, used that Futz box thing and then just,

Speaker 2 (16:36):

Which is a great plugin by the way.

Speaker 3 (16:38):

And the point is all of it had a sound in a cohesion, and when you listen to his sound of his mix, it sounds like it's congruent and cohesive. I mean, obviously he's mixing number one singles and all kinds of top 40 radio stuff, but I mean, there you go. I feel like the proof is in the pudding. That's a great example of that. Okay, so let's talk about this particular song. So if you listen to Logan Mayer's mix of this, it sounds awesome. It's such a great mix and every part of the ambiances, there's just a nice cohesion. It all sounds like one mix. It doesn't sound like vocals taken out from a different session recorded in a trolley bus going down the street and the drums were cut outside in the alleyway and the guitars were recorded in ISO box and the bass was done through a speaker 400 miles away and into a large acram condenser in an airplane.

(17:32):

It all sounds like it's totally cohesive. So again, always reference the source when you're listening to this stuff because if a mix becomes a legendary mix, like this is for an entire genre and a lot of a-list guys are saying, yeah, dude, that's one of the best mixes in the entire genre to reference. There's a reason that it's there and that it's a standard and that has to be adhered to. In my opinion. I feel like that's a good practice. So if he's got some really weird effects on his vocals, then yeah, maybe go for it. Maybe what the band wanted. But if this vocals are not sounding like the recorded in a bathroom, don't put them intentionally in a bathroom.

Speaker 2 (18:09):

Why? I think, can we talk for a second about why we think this might be used as a standard for people? I have some ideas on it.

Speaker 3 (18:18):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (18:18):

What I think is super special about this mix is that it's very clear, it's very punchy, it's very balanced, it's very aggressive and it has different kinds of sounds in it at the same time. And also through all that insanity going on, it's very busy at times. It also slows down at times. It's super heavy the whole way through. It's very, very hard to get a balance of all those different elements together and this kind of gets it all. You want ghost notes, it's got ghost notes, you want double bass, it's got double bass. You want slow doomy stuff. It's got slow doomy stuff. You want a consistent bass. It's got a consistent bass and the drums sound pretty natural too. It is kind of a tough thing to achieve all those elements together.

Speaker 3 (19:09):

I mean, I feel like you pretty much just nailed it, but I'll just say in a nutshell, he really nailed the mix when he did it the first time. It's just a great sounding mix. It sounds full, it's thick, it's tight. The drums are super punchy. There's so much clarity with, I mean, just everything that's a hallmark of a great mix. When you hit play on this mix, you're just like, yeah, that sounds awesome. So when we listen to these mixes, you guys are turning in, it's pretty obvious what the issues are. So let's move on to the next note. So the entire sub range, everything down below a hundred ale, in my opinion, is completely wrong and off like the kick and snare. I mean, that's a whole nother issue I guess, but the drums really are not delivering any sort of punch and power, which they need to be in this mix. But the entire sub, like the bass, the bottom of the kick, it's a real mess. And there's some really weird stuff going on in this mix that I'm having a hard time pinpointing what it is in my defense. I just moved into a new room and I've only been in here a couple of days and I'm still learning it, still treating it and still trapping it, but

Speaker 2 (20:09):

Yeah, but Logan's mix didn't sound weird in your new room, did it?

Speaker 3 (20:12):

No, it sounded ridiculously great. Okay, so I guess you just defeated my argument, but no, I mean, do you feel like the sub is completely out of whack?

Speaker 2 (20:23):

I don't even know what to say about it.

Speaker 3 (20:25):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (20:27):

I feel like, so you know how I said it sounds like it's in a weird guitar tunnel? Yes. I feel like the Guitar Tunnel is a setting on the master bus and it's called Guitar Tunnel, and what it does is it completely, I'm sorry for my non-technical fantasy here, but it sounds like

Speaker 3 (20:46):

You got to have fun doing this stuff.

Speaker 2 (20:47):

Yeah, he said it sounds like he just put it on guitar tonal setting and that scrambled the low end and made the guitars way, way loud, and I can't understand what's going on.

Speaker 3 (20:58):

Yeah, that's something I want to say, especially for people that are doing a lot of parametric eq. So at Enhanced, we have a fast track on EQing and think there's some time spent EQing guitars, and sometimes you need to get really surgical with EQs. The problem is if you over eq, and this is something I'm starting to hear a lot of, is you get into that guitar tunnel thing where you shift around the phase so much and in such a weird way, it literally sounds like the guitar is in a tunnel. So we should make a plug in that just guitar tunnel.

Speaker 2 (21:31):

You put it on your master bus and

Speaker 3 (21:33):

It digs a hole. A guitar appears in the bottom.

Speaker 2 (21:38):

Yeah, basically. I mean, I don't know what's going on. I can't tell if it's some weird MS processing that just did that, or if dude just has some weird settings or what.

Speaker 3 (21:50):

Yeah, it's pretty whack and I'm not sure how to fix it, which is kind of weird because usually you can hear something and you're like, okay, so I would do this if I was Aristotle, I would sit down, I would take all of the EQ off the guitars, I would completely re-sample the drums and get something punchier and more consistent. I'm not sure what he's got going on on his drums, but I would restart on the kick in the snare. I would then figure out how to get the bass under some sort of control. Maybe he needs to do some filtering, maybe he needs to do some eq, some limiting, et cetera. And then I would just restart the mix and see where it gets you without using more than two or three cuts. Because dude, I listened to the raw stems of the guitars on this and I was like, holy shit. I mean, so well micd that I feel like it's hard to screw them up. So I'm not sure what they did to the guitars or if they amped him or whatever he did, but if you would've taken the raw guitars, maybe use one or two EQ cuts or whatever to maybe talk cuts and mids as needed or to filter out any subs or et cetera, he would've gotten a much better sounding mix, I feel like, than what he turned in. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (22:54):

Totally. What do you think of the vocals?

Speaker 3 (22:58):

Well, there's so much tunnel bathroom type thing going on them that it's hard for me to be like, oh, the EQ is off. They have too many, I can't get past that. So we need to

Speaker 2 (23:09):

Just take the tunnel preset off,

Speaker 3 (23:11):

Go from there. Yeah, just reapproach it, no bathroom de bathroom them, delete all effects sends. Maybe use a large long reverb with a two second decay and maybe five to 10% wetness and just start there and see where it takes you. So I feel like he's actually overdid things, and if he would've just kind of basically started off, raise the faders, got a really good balance with what's natural, maybe use some good drum samples on on the kick and snare, the mix would be sounding a lot better than it is.

Speaker 2 (23:42):

What watch the November, 2015 nail the mix with cognizance because it's a similar sort of arrangement, two guitars, bass drums, pretty natural, and Joel did a very simple but badass mix on it. That might be a good approach to take for this. I mean, obviously you can't copy it because it's not the same song, but just as far as the simplicity goes and the proper decision making goes, that might be a good resource for you to reference when approaching this song.

Speaker 3 (24:13):

This reminds me of a story Al once I sent a mix to a really good mixer buddy of mine, and he was like, dude, you overdid it. At first I was offended and I was upset, and then I listened to what he actually said and I'm like, dude, you way overmix this. It sounds like shit. And you've got in your own way and you absolutely sabotaged the mix. He's like the tracking tones going in sound like they were really good. What wasn't good is what you went in and you tried to make everything bigger, larger than life and better. And instead of making it larger in life, you did the opposite. You made it smaller, weaker, thinner, muddier. It didn't gel, it's over slammed. And I thought about what he meant and I sat down and I took everything off the mix. I restarted and I mixed more with balance, basic eq, just a little bit of compression and limiting, and I got the mix sounding way better.

(25:02):

So the thing is this song was recorded immaculately and the band can obviously play, so there's no lack of talent on the engineering or the performance side or the writing side or the arrangement side. Everything is solid. So at that point, you don't need to do a lot as a mixer. The mix should kind of just fall into place. So you have to be very careful on a mix like this because the natural tendency is to want to use a bunch of plugins to want to eq the crap out of everything and go crazy. But the reality of the situation is everything sounds so good as it is, you probably just need to massage it a little bit and that's going to get you 80 or 90% of the way there.

Speaker 2 (25:36):

Well said dude, bro. Alright, let's move on to the next one. This one is by Tyler. I'm sorry dude, I'm sure I mispronounce your last name. You can forgive me. I hope

Speaker 4 (26:36):

The ghost, this girl flu from that face is not so clear how I fell towards us. There is a,

Speaker 2 (29:58):

Okay, so that was the mix by Tyler dig GLB, and I'm going to tell you what I wrote down and then you tell me that I was right on. I'm ready. Okay. I said bass is sticking out too much and too weird. No low end, not enough punch in the kicks or snare. Again, the guitars just sound too loud.

Speaker 3 (30:18):

I agree. I feel like first off, we have the whole guitar tunnel thing going on, but the guitars are too boxy, so there's no

Speaker 2 (30:24):

No. Yeah, maybe they bought the same plugin or something. Maybe.

Speaker 3 (30:26):

Definitely.

Speaker 2 (30:27):

Maybe Guitar Tunnel was on sale for Black Friday or something.

Speaker 3 (30:30):

It definitely was, and I'm so upset that I didn't make it because I would be able to be rich and then I could quit podcasting and just make Guitar Tunnel too, but okay, so there's no mid range. So the vocals are super boxy, but they're fighting to get through the drums have absolutely no impact to them. Hold on one second. Yeah, that's all I have. So I think starting structurally drums are super weak. If you listen to Logan Mater's mix, the drums are super punchy and super awesome, so we definitely need to get some punch in the drums. So either use samples or get the natural drums. I dunno, everybody's on a naturalist drum kick now over on the forum and they're turning in mixes that are sounding super weak. I saw Ali do it. Ali's obviously a fantastic mixer with tons of experience, so I can see why people are like, okay, well if Ali can get his natural snare and his kick to sound super brutal, I can too. The problem is I'm not seeing really awesome mixes coming out with natural drums. So guys, the standard for this kind of song and genre is you just have to sample it. It is what it is. If you want to be competitive with somebody like Logan, keep that in mind when you're mixing this stuff. Like, okay, if I was mixing off against Logan and Logan turned in the mix, that's the reference. How am I going to beat it? No one's thinking like that.

Speaker 2 (31:46):

Let me look up a track real quick for these guys to check out a current Logan Mix.

Speaker 3 (31:52):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (31:52):

Because it sounds incredible. It's by his band. Okay, so just so you guys know what you would be facing off against if you went up against Logan in 2016, 2017, look up the band Once Human and listen to the song I of Chaos, and that's his band, his mix. It sounds huge. The reason I'm saying that is because as great as the now, the mix track is the GA track, it still is kind of old for him. He's got an even more badass over the years. If you're going up against something from 2008 and not coming close, you got to wonder if you're approaching it the right way. So yeah, the power is just not there. And I'm sorry guys, you should probably try to use samples. Like Joel said, I totally understand why you would consider going natural on this. It is a great drummer, but even on the original mix, it's not like it's a hundred percent natural. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (32:55):

Absolutely. I mean you can hear it when you listen to his mix. There's just that consistency in that punch.

Speaker 2 (32:59):

Yeah, you can't get that without samples. And I know that with Nali you see that on periphery, but Periphery doesn't have the same amount of, it's not as busy.

Speaker 3 (33:08):

Yeah, true. Not only that, Nali still uses a room sample, and I didn't watch the first part where he was doing the kick, but I believe he mentioned he uses a kick sample.

Speaker 2 (33:17):

I don't even remember, but I'm pretty sure he does. I could be wrong.

Speaker 3 (33:21):

The point is, you need some consistency in this kind of music if you want to be competitive with anybody on the A-list. And yes, you can make it sound very naturalist with your samples, but at the same time you really need that consistency in that punch, whether it be a blend for example. That's what I thought Kane did really cool is the fact that he not only sampled that Papa Roach kit, but he actually blended in all of the natural rest of the kit along with it and kind of use it as augmentation. But the sample was like the driving power of the mix and the actual performance kind of gave it a little bit of the dynamic. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (33:53):

I feel like there's too much pride about this natural versus not thing. It's like who the fuck cares? Just get it sounding

Speaker 3 (34:00):

Powerful. Here's the deal, follow the money if you want to be successful in this business, follow the money seriously, because when I was an elitist prick kid and I was coming up and I was learning how to do this and I was like, I don't want to use samples, I don't want to do this, blah, I'm better than that. And I got my ass kicked over and over and over and over and over again, and then one day I realized, hey, if CLA is using samples, why should I hold myself to a different standard if he's pulling eight GA mix or whatever he was at the time? So I'm sitting there thinking to myself like, well dude, if he gets paid that much, why don't I just do it? So I started using samples and then I was like, oh yeah, okay. Then I started getting hired more and started getting paid more and people were like, dude, your mixes got way less sucky.

(34:42):

And then I'm like, well, Andy Steep uses samples. I love his mixes or Colin Richardson. So I got over it and I'll tell you the difference is I still had a lot of fun doing it, making music, whatever I got over that elitist thing. But the more important part is I started doing it for a living every single day instead of dreaming and fantasizing about doing it for a living while I worked some shitty job that I hated and you defeat yourself half the time. I feel like that's a major problem that a lot of people have is they psych themselves out like, okay, I'm going to do this really natural because I want to do it. Or drummers, oh God, this is the worst. When they come in the studio, you get some drummer kid who's got no budget, wants to record a song for 250 bucks, and he's like, I want to use my natural drums. And you're like, you can't even play to a metronome. You can't even hit consistently. You're telling me you want to use natural drums. Get the hell out of my studio. You come back with a $20,000 budget, we'll go down to Nashville and we'll record real drums with you, not as the drummer. Those are my terms. In the meantime, if you don't like it, go down the street and record over there. I don't want to put out a shitty product. You cannot play drums.

(35:49):

It's happened to me many times in my career.

Speaker 2 (35:51):

You cracked me up. I like Kane's approach, which was after the drummer leaves. Just do your thing to it. When they come in the next day and it sounds like a million dollars, let them feel like it's them. Who cares. Point is that end of the day, what matters is the quality you put out and you got to ditch the pride about the samples. Who cares? Just make it sound good.

Speaker 3 (36:15):

Yeah, there'll be no bigger blow to your pride than when you lose the mix off and don't get the band that you want to get and don't get paid. That's the real blow to your pride.

Speaker 2 (36:23):

Yes, thank you. We got to talk. In terms of priorities here, what do you prefer? Do you prefer to have an all natural mix that nobody listens to or hears because it wasn't picked or one that has samples in it that people hear?

Speaker 3 (36:38):

Well, I want an all natural mix, but I want to work at McDonald's. But in my head, I dream of being a professional mixer that does metal and competes in an all sample dominated world. But in the meantime, I'm going to keep lying to myself working at McDonald's saying that my job is awesome and rejecting drum samples.

Speaker 2 (36:53):

Man, I went through that period when I was in my band doth and I feel like the self-titled record we did, which had no samples on it and it was mastered quiet. It was like a nice little victory, but at the same time, we kind of fucked ourselves over with that. It probably would've been a much bigger record if we had gotten modern production, and I'm glad I went through that phase and I'm glad I got over it before I did too much damage to my own self. But I do feel like that's part of why that record kind of tanked a little bit and why no one heard it because it was too quiet and not punchy enough and it still sounds great. It's a great mix, but that's the price of being an elitist after that record, I was over

Speaker 3 (37:34):

It. Yeah, it's expensive.

Speaker 2 (37:35):

Yeah. Yes it is.

Speaker 3 (37:37):

It's not direct cost. Most people don't understand this. It's the opportunity cost, which is the cost of the opposite or whatever else could have happened while you were doing that. So while you were being an elitist, somebody else was taking your bands, making your money and having your career and enjoying it, which you could have had. So I mean, keep being an elitist. It's a really good prescription. I wasted eight years of my life being one. I guess that's why I'm such an opinion about it, because I was a guitar playing shred elitist that wanted to play the kind of music he wanted to and on his terms and the type of band he wanted to play in. And we did all that and then we wondered why we didn't get signed and we didn't make it despite my band being pretty good, we didn't fundamentally have the necessary components.

(38:19):

We didn't have the right image and the right type of vocalist, and our music was dated and we just didn't care. We're like, oh, well, we're really good at our instruments and we shred on drums and guitars, so we're awesome. Everybody should like us. And everybody was just like, yeah, you guys kind of suck. We're like, nah, no, no, we're really good. We're like, nah, you guys suck. Then I quote sold out and started a rock band and we made it overnight because we had the correct formula and I had more fun playing in a rock band than I did being an elitist piece of shit for eight years in a thrash metal melodic band. And I'll tell you guys that as somebody who practiced guitar a million, and I feel like I've said this before, but on the podcast, but somebody spent a million hours practicing guitar. I had more fun playing those simple blues rock pentatonic solos up there for people that actually wanted to listen and rock out than I did doing the craziest sequence sweep our PEO doom thing to three cross arm dickheads in a bar of people that don't give a shit. That's the truth.

Speaker 2 (39:17):

I know it is.

Speaker 3 (39:18):

That was a hard pill to swallow.

Speaker 2 (39:20):

If you're an elitist, it's hard to change it. So maybe the best thing you can hope for is to redirect it and redirect it towards the overall quality and impact of your mix rather than dumb stuff like small time stuff like natural versus fake. How about awesome versus not? Awesome.

Speaker 3 (39:40):

Can I put that on my wall in

Speaker 2 (39:41):

A plaque?

Speaker 3 (39:42):

Yeah, yeah. With LED lights.

Speaker 2 (39:43):

Seriously, I mean though, if you're going to be like that about it, at least be like that about things that are priority level, volume impact, all those kinds of things. Not dumb things. Like I hear sample on the snare.

Speaker 3 (39:58):

Oh man, I hate samples. Oh, I went through this with a very famous band recently, which has been an ongoing discussion. I don't want to say names, but the drummer in that band is Supernatural hates drum samples. The first time I met him, dude, he sat me down, he looked at me the eye, I'm like, Hey, I'm Joel, nice to meet you. He's like, I hate drum samples. And I'm like, cool. I'm not the biggest fan of them, but I mean, I kind of like him and I'll try to respect that when I mix. So the first mix I turned in with the samples on 'em, it was sampled, but it was supernatural. It had all real Toms, and I tried to respect that dude. The label guy just called me and he's like, what the fuck? And I'm like, okay, sorry. Then I sent them the correct mix, which was way more badass and way heavier.

(40:44):

And then now they're talking about doing a super modern, ultra hyped, all sample replaced. I did a test mix in a really modern style and they love it. They want to try it on the actual album. So it's just really funny because the drummer must be crying themselves to bed every night, but no one gives a fuck what the drummer's opinion is because the band has a career to maintain and they have to sell records, and there's a certain production standard that they have to compete against, and there's a certain expectation by not only the labels, but the fans and et cetera. So you can be elitist about it, but at the same time it usually doesn't go over well because it's not just you and your personal taste. You have to compete with, in the professional world, it's the a and r guy, it's the radio program director. It's what everybody else in your market is doing, and the targeted format, it's the fan, you know what I mean? It's some other mixer that could possibly take your mix on a test mix. You got to go up against all those things. So don't be an elitist. I guess that's a pretty good tangent. So back to the mix. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:44):

Yeah. Well, with that, why don't we move on to our final mix?

Speaker 3 (41:48):

Yes, definitely we should. But to recap, I'll just say balance is off. Guitars are really boxy in a tunnel. Redo your drums and get some low one going on and just you'll be in a much better place.

Speaker 2 (42:00):

Start over. So this is by HK Krause,

Speaker 4 (42:43):

Mr. God, God.

Speaker 2 (46:09):

Okay. So that was Toxic Garbage Island by Gaira Mix by our subscriber HK Krause. And here, let me tell you my notes and then you can tell me I'm right just like last time. You ready?

Speaker 3 (46:25):

I'm definitely ready.

Speaker 2 (46:27):

I like that this at least has low end, even though it's a heroin unruly, at least it has low end, and I wrote that in all caps. The drums sound pretty dry. This is closest to Logan's Mix out of the other two that were submitted. But that weird distorted base is really clouding the mix. It's lacking the clarity of Logan's. Logan's is all about punch and finesse.

Speaker 3 (46:49):

Great observations, my fellow colleague. Thank you. Thanks. Alright, so there's a few things that drove me nuts overall. I mean especially in comparison to the last two mixes. This is a pretty good mix and I'm definitely listening to this and I'm like, alright, it sounds pretty good. So what can I be a picky ass about? So first things first, the whole mix. I feel like the guitars are a little ratty and a little bit harsh. The symbols especially are really harsh. There's a lot of two to three K in there that's kind of slashing my ears when I hear Logan's mix and I crank it up. I don't squint. When I turn hear this mix and I turn it up, I kind of squint and I'm like, it's a little bit on the harsh side and it needs to be cleaned up a little bit.

(47:30):

I think I hear some pumping or some low end compression issues. I hear that base swinging a lot and it's either pushing the bus compressor. I'd have to listen again really carefully, but I can hear it kind of jumping in and out of the speaker a little bit on the low end. And I feel like it's either tipping the bus compressor a little bit, pushing and pulling or it's just the base is really unruly, as you said, and out of control. And my last note is that I have the vocals need to go up. I don't understand why no one likes vocals, but I think vocals need to go up and I don't think he's got the right ambience on them.

Speaker 2 (48:04):

Yeah, I totally agree. I guess that it's across the board, these guys under mix the vocals like crazy, which is too bad because Gaira have good vocals as far as metal go,

Speaker 3 (48:15):

Yeah, Logan's Mix is kind of shy on the vocals. If I had to be a critiquey piece of shit about it, I would've turned the vocals up just a little bit on that mix and maybe brought the symbols down or something. But I mean, we're talking like a pinch here and a pinch there. I feel like Logan could have definitely given the vocals just a pinch more heat, but the mix sounds great, so I'm not going to,

Speaker 2 (48:37):

It's also 2008.

Speaker 3 (48:38):

Yeah, okay. I also agree with that. I mean, it's a different era essentially, but everybody I feel like listened to the vocals and said, okay, Logans are kind of buried in the mix. I should bury mine. But I don't know, I feel like the vocals should be louder, but that's me being a pop rock guy. So sorry.

Speaker 2 (48:54):

So I feel like in the mid, that distorted base is really fucking it up in the low mids.

Speaker 3 (48:59):

Yeah, he might want to readdress that.

Speaker 2 (49:01):

Yeah, I'm hearing it so big and separated from the guitars that it's just fucking it all up. And if you listen on Logan's mix, it does have a slightly distorted bass in it, but it's def, you can hear the pick attack and everything, but it's definitely not so bad that it clouds the mix at all. And definitely listen to that. I feel like this one went way overboard on that distorted base.

Speaker 3 (49:31):

Yeah, definitely. No, I will say as the opposite of that, something I really did is I liked the fact that the drums actually had some punch to them.

Speaker 2 (49:38):

Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 (49:39):

It was a nice change of pace. Everybody else we've listened to today had really weak and soft drums, and this finally had some drums that hit. Now I feel like again, the two to three K is off. Maybe it must be the new room. I've had that mix comment. I was doing some one-on-ones today for enhance members, and I kept, I'm like, yeah, you're two to three K is off, your two to three K is off. So either everybody is screwing up their two to three K and everything's really harsh, or my new room is just totally whack in that region and I need to trap it, but it's pretty well trapped in here. I don't know. So again, I don't hear any pinching on Logan's mix, but maybe I'm just sensitive to those frequencies today. I don't know, maybe.

Speaker 2 (50:14):

I mean, you said that sometimes you get sensitive to different frequencies, so maybe that's what it is,

Speaker 3 (50:18):

Especially those, I mean, it's interesting. I read Eric Valentine's really sensitive to three K, so he cuts it out of everything. And then when I read that I was like, oh yeah, so am I. That's crazy. And I don't know, I hate three K, as you guys know, not as much as 4K, but definitely hate it. It's a passionate, bitter, angry hatred.

Speaker 2 (50:39):

I think that we should employ a two tiered rating system on these mixed grip Mondays and it should be hot or not, or yay or nay or something like that. It should be

Speaker 3 (50:52):

Like tender swipe right or left.

Speaker 2 (50:54):

Yeah, it should be start over or tweak a little, right? Yes. And so the first two I would say start over. And this one I would say tweak a little.

Speaker 3 (51:01):

Yeah, definitely. I mean this one's not far off. There's like you said, a few little tweaks and some nitpicks, but overall I hit play on this and I'm not like, oh yeah, this mix is way off. I'm like, yeah, this mix is sounding pretty good. It just needs a little bit of love here and there. I mean obviously it's not as good as Logan's, but it's good enough where you could turn that in and it wouldn't be like, oh dude, what did you send me? It sounds like a demo.

Speaker 2 (51:24):

He didn't make it worse. Yeah, he didn't. So I would say that for me, if he got that bass together, I would be way happier with this mix.

Speaker 3 (51:36):

Definitely take off some of the top and the guitars and symbols, just maybe even mastering, just dip a little that two to three K to make it a little bit smoother on the ear or go find and nuke some frequency up there or something. I don't know. Just make it a little bit softer on the ears. Fix the base and I feel like you're, for the most part, you're there. It's pretty close. This

Speaker 2 (51:57):

Might be a top 20 mix if he gets that stuff together,

Speaker 3 (52:00):

It possibly could be. So

Speaker 2 (52:02):

Yeah, don't know because we haven't heard a bunch of the other ones yet.

Speaker 3 (52:05):

We have not, but I've judged enough mixes to know that this should probably do pretty good.

Speaker 2 (52:10):

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 (52:12):

Can we talk about the top 20 for a second here before we close out? Because let's

Speaker 2 (52:15):

Talk about it.

Speaker 3 (52:15):

We keep getting questions. I had several one-on-ones today for enhanced members where people were like, so how do I get my mix in the top 20? What's wrong with it when we're judging these things guys? So we have the mixed reference. Obviously that's going to be the standard, especially if the mix charted or is a legendary mix on some of these bigger bands, like you're going to probably want to listen to that but not let it influence your mix. But if you listen to a mix and they use crazy drum samples like that papa mix and it's super hyped, and then you come in with all natural drums, obviously you're not even going to make the top 50 with that. So it's important to know what genre you're shooting for and the target audience. So if you're going for active radio rock and a song that's supposed to crush charts and you come in with no drum samples, really loud ass guitars, really quiet vocals, no impact on your kicking scenario, how do you think that's going to compete against a Breaking Benjamin Mix or a Nickelback mix or any other band that you're competing with against an active rock burrito?

(53:14):

It's literally going to get thrown out right away. So don't even submit a mix that has natural drums. If the band is go Jira or the band is Papa Roach, you know what I mean? That's not that kind of band and it's not going to be taken seriously by the target market or the program directors on the radio or the a and r guy. It's literally going to get thrown out. So you got to turn in a mix that is going to be competitive because again, look at the reference mix is a mix you're competing against. Try to beat the reference mix. Say, yeah, okay, so Logan turned in this, I got to smoke Logan. How am I going to beat Logan? That's what you should be asking. Should be holding yourself up to that standard and turning in something that's going to somehow come in and you're going to turn that into the a and r guy and he's going to be like, Logan, your mix was really sick, dude. But to be honest, like this other guy, his mix is way hotter and the band in Iowa, we decided that we're going to go with him.

Speaker 2 (54:06):

And it happens.

Speaker 3 (54:07):

It definitely happens. It happens all the time.

Speaker 2 (54:09):

It's not the end of the world when it happens, but it does happen. Have to ask yourself after each one, why did it happen and why didn't they jive with what I sent?

Speaker 3 (54:22):

Definitely. So when we're listening to the top 20, that's what we're listening for. Does the mix sound like it hangs? Does it sound like it competes? And you can literally sit there in 10 seconds and be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yes, no, no, no, no, no. Oh my God, no, no. Oh, no, no, no. Oh wow. That sounds awesome. No, no. Oh, that's pretty good. That's not bad. It's pretty apparent night and day. You can hear the differences between these mixes. Now, some of the mixes, when you're picking the last five of the top 20 or the last 10 of the top 50, there's a lot of room for interpretation. You get three mixes that are kind of like, eh, which one do you pick and why? Well, that's a difficult situation. So I could see a lot of people are like,

Speaker 2 (55:05):

Taste.

Speaker 3 (55:06):

Yeah. A lot of people are like, oh, I don't understand. There's a couple mixes in the top 20 that I feel like my mix was better than Well,

Speaker 2 (55:11):

Well guess. Well then start your own damp pole. Seriously. Start your own damn pole. Guys.

Speaker 3 (55:17):

Getting into the top 20 is not, yeah,

Speaker 2 (55:20):

I'm going to rant because

Speaker 3 (55:22):

Rant away.

Speaker 2 (55:22):

At the end of the day, this is our fucking pole and we love you guys, but we're the ones who decide. So you don't have to agree with it, but it is what it is we decide and sorry,

Speaker 3 (55:35):

Yeah, every person's going to have different tastes, you know what I mean? It's a question is one, does it hang with the reference mix? Is it close to being comparable or in comparison to the other mixes that submitted? Usually the reference mix absolutely smokes everybody. But if it at least sounds like, yeah, this isn't the right area of direction, this is sounding close, this might be taken seriously. You're on your way to being in the top 20. There's always going to be some ambiguous mixes and things like that, but a lot of the ones that don't even make top 50 are so obvious that when you listen to 'em, you're just like, wow, this should be completely remixed. This should be redone. This shouldn't have been turned in like this.

Speaker 2 (56:15):

Also, there's not going to be much of a difference between mix number 15 and mix number 30. That's another thing that people need to realize about the top 20. Once you get past the top five, it all starts to kind of blend together.

Speaker 3 (56:30):

It radically drops off. Usually there's two or three mixes that are really good and a couple of that are pretty good. And then there's kind of like everything else. And then there's like the redo category where the balance is way off. The guitars are three db louder than the vocals, and the bass is literally blowing out the sub at 50 hertz and you can't hear anything because it's pumping the compressor so hard.

Speaker 2 (56:51):

Yeah, we don't show you those.

Speaker 3 (56:52):

Yeah, definitely. So there's a lot of that stuff. And again, it's important because guys, listen, no matter how good you get at mixing, your first 5,000 mixes are going to suck. Maybe you get some good ones, but it takes time and years of consistency and practice. So don't look at us as saying that it's bad. You need to turn in a mix where you absolutely sounds like shit and everything is wrong and you screw up. That's how you learn. But you have to sit back and you have to be able to willing to listen and just be like, okay, well I didn't get in the top 20. Some mixes are better, I think are worse than mine in the top 20. That's the wrong attitude. I didn't get in the top 20. Why isn't my mix as good as the reference? Who cares about the top, the bottom five through 20 mixes? Why didn't it beat the person who's number one? And most importantly, why isn't it as good as the reference? And when you can answer that, you'll be in the top 20. Meaning when you figure out why your mix, how do you get your mix of sound as good as the reference or in competition with the reference where you could be considered in a mix off against that person. That's where you want to be.

(57:59):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:00):

You know what else? Also try to look at who has won these. We have some guys who have won or placed in the top 20 multiple times, and also some guys who have gotten first or second place in the secondary poll multiple times and maybe start researching their mixes and talk to them. They're on the forum, ask them what they did. They're here to help and

Speaker 3 (58:23):

Ask them to crit your mix. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:24):

We're going to be talking to Andy James tomorrow on the podcast. This will come out next week. And it's he, Andy James, the guitarist. Yes. For all you guitar fans. And Andy James won the November mix poll. A surprise surprise. I didn't even know it was him, but then I saw the name Andy James was like, I wonder if it's that badass guitar dude. So I'm going to be asking him all about what he did. And so hopefully that helps you guys. But as you've seen, he's in the forum, sows Kane sos Robin Je who's won multiple times or placed in the top 20 almost every single time. There's lots of guys in here who have done great. Ask them

Speaker 3 (59:04):

And you've got some series season pros too. For example, Irman hangs out here. I've seen Brian Hood come in. You know what I mean? There's some really awesome dudes that hang out. Billy Decker's there. Yeah, Billy Decker's there. He mixes number ones.

Speaker 2 (59:17):

Yeah. Ask, use this resource.

Speaker 3 (59:19):

Absolutely. So well, that's all I got.

Speaker 2 (59:22):

That's all I got too. Alright, we'll talk to you guys later. Thank

Speaker 3 (59:25):

You.

Speaker 1 (59:25):

Take care. The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is brought to you by Kush Audio, A premium manufacturer of top quality audio, hardware and plugins. The high end just got higher. Visit the house of kush.com for more information to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit URM Academy podcast and.