DAVE OTERO: Why The Player is Your Best Gear, Natural Blast Beats, and How a Robbery Improved His Mixes

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Joey Sturgiss tones, creating unique audio tools for musicians and producers everywhere. Unleash your creativity with Joey sturgiss tones. Visit joey sturgis tones.com for more info. And now your hosts, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:00:24):

Hello. Welcome to the Joey Sturgis Forum podcast. Hey there. How's it going? It's going pretty good. I'm Joey Sturgis and that was Eyal Levi and Joel Wanasek is somewhere in here. Where are you at? I'm

Speaker 3 (00:00:35):

Hiding.

Speaker 2 (00:00:35):

Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 (00:00:36):

I don't want to talk today. I'm kidding.

Speaker 2 (00:00:38):

Well, going to shut the hell up

Speaker 3 (00:00:41):

Then.

Speaker 2 (00:00:41):

Why are you talking? Because, so have you guys ever seen this action movie that's about to come out? It's filmed from the point of view of the character in the movie and it's continuously shot.

Speaker 4 (00:00:57):

Oh, is it based on the video that came out about a year or two ago where the one guy shot it with a GoPro and

Speaker 2 (00:01:08):

Yes,

Speaker 4 (00:01:08):

He was running around from rooftop to rooftop and hanging off of cars and all that.

Speaker 2 (00:01:14):

I think that was the work in concept or whatever, just they wanted to see if that was going to be something that people liked and it went viral. And then that was the catalyst for, alright, we can make a movie like this. And I saw the trailer for it. Man, I wish I could figure out the name of the movie. It's awesome.

Speaker 4 (00:01:34):

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. The trailer is him and another soldier guy in a building that they're clearing or they're fighting like 20 different guys and you're jumping from floor to floor, right?

Speaker 2 (00:01:49):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:01:49):

Yeah, I've seen it. It looks phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (00:01:51):

Now when you think about movie production, a lot of things get accomplished with the cameras. They can change the camera angles and change the mood and stuff, but it's interesting to me because they don't have that option. The camera is just on. It is from the dude's perspective, so you're always seeing what he sees. So in order to make the movie continually interesting, they have to throw him through a variety of situations and there's always action going on. So I feel like it's going to be pretty action packed.

Speaker 3 (00:02:24):

It is an action movie.

Speaker 2 (00:02:25):

Yeah, it's called Hardcore, by the way. Just found it. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:02:29):

I like movies like that, that take a very simple concept and basically play it out to the nth degree on a low budget like the Raid, for instance,

Speaker 2 (00:02:38):

It

Speaker 4 (00:02:39):

Was filmed in Indonesia for under a million dollars and it's just nonstop amazing brutality for 90 minutes.

Speaker 3 (00:02:48):

Sweet. I'll have to check that out.

Speaker 4 (00:02:49):

Yeah, the raid is fantastic.

Speaker 3 (00:02:51):

I judge a movie on the amount of explosions.

Speaker 4 (00:02:54):

I don't think there's any explosions, but it doesn't matter. Point is it was shot for really, really little, but the creativity of the director makes it feel like a high budget on cocaine Hollywood action movie.

Speaker 3 (00:03:09):

Sweet. You guys be movie type stuff?

Speaker 4 (00:03:12):

Not much.

Speaker 2 (00:03:13):

No, no.

Speaker 3 (00:03:15):

Like Evil Dead and shit like that.

Speaker 2 (00:03:18):

I guess if I can approach it from a comedic point.

Speaker 3 (00:03:20):

Well yeah, that's half the fun though.

Speaker 2 (00:03:22):

If they're trying to be serious, but it's actually funny then. Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 4 (00:03:27):

Yeah, I guess I can get into that stuff sometimes, but I don't like horror movies very much. I don't like campy movies or zombie movies too much.

Speaker 2 (00:03:37):

Yeah, me neither.

Speaker 4 (00:03:38):

I mean, yeah, what I'm talking about now is just when you get the idea that creativity wins the day, really with this director that you're bringing up or the guy who shot the Raid or even Blair Witch project that we were talking about a couple of weeks ago. That's just showing how skill and creativity can supersede any budget or any real technical limitation.

Speaker 2 (00:04:00):

I think

Speaker 4 (00:04:00):

That's cool.

Speaker 2 (00:04:01):

It applies to audio as well. I mean it's what we talk about all the time. You have a guy with a million dollar Neve board or something and he's just not creative. His stuff sounds stupid versus a kid in a bedroom who has all the ideas and all the time in the world to do 'em.

Speaker 4 (00:04:17):

Well in Studio world, I don't know how much this happens anymore, but when I was a lot younger, I remember my studio was competing against really, really big studios where local bands would go in and pay like $2,000 for the weekend and do an entire album because somebody big recorded there and it always came out sounding like total shit. And they would go there because huge amazing sounding records were done there and they couldn't understand why if they were in the same room as Aerosmith or somebody huge like that or that they sounded like shit. And it's like, dude, it's not the gear, it's the care put into your record. You're doing it on off hours with an intern who doesn't give a shit. What do you think is going to happen?

Speaker 3 (00:05:11):

Well, is it just me? Does it seem like every studio has recorded Aerosmith at some point?

Speaker 4 (00:05:16):

Well, they have made like 72 albums.

Speaker 3 (00:05:19):

Oh my God. Well yeah, if you think about it.

Speaker 4 (00:05:21):

No, no, I'm kidding. I think they're on their second album. I

Speaker 3 (00:05:24):

Know four or five studios right off the top of my head. I can recall their pages where Aerosmith is in their client list and I'm just like, man, everybody's fucking done Aerosmith

Speaker 2 (00:05:33):

Well, or has

Speaker 4 (00:05:34):

Aerosmith fucking done everyone?

Speaker 3 (00:05:37):

Probably the latter.

Speaker 4 (00:05:38):

Well just think about being in a band since what, 1970 or something and really only having a few years off and they broke up for a very little while, but they've been active pretty much the entire time. Alright,

Speaker 3 (00:05:52):

Here's what we're going to do. We're going to start a grind core band and we're going to play for the next 50 years and we're going to go record every year in a different state at a different studio.

Speaker 2 (00:06:02):

Hey, I know where we can start. Where Dave Otero our guest today. That's a great idea. He's really good at recording grind bands. And I think he's in

Speaker 4 (00:06:11):

Colorado, is that right? He is in Colorado. And I think that might be aiming a little high for Grind Core though. I think his mixes and stuff sound a little too good for that, but why not start off with a bang, right? Yeah, he's in Colorado. I met him when I was on tour with my band and we were traveling around with Cephalic Carnage back in 2007. I believe we stopped by his place back then. He was in a warehouse that he shared with them, and I believe that he has since moved out of there to his own facility. But that's all stuff we can ask him about.

Speaker 2 (00:06:50):

Yeah, for sure. And I just want to mention the fact that he's worked with one of the bands that kind of influenced the start of my whole career really was Cephalic Carnage. I know that sounds hilarious, but

Speaker 4 (00:07:04):

They were so good.

Speaker 2 (00:07:05):

Yeah, they were really good man. And I was so fascinated and that's what really got me interested. I was playing drums, trying to learn how to do that kind of stuff on drums, which led me to wanting to record drums and make my drums sound like that. So

Speaker 3 (00:07:18):

What year did that band come out?

Speaker 2 (00:07:19):

CE Folic Carnage I think has been around since the two thousands. For early two thousands. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:07:24):

Dude, I feel old because I missed the whole two thousands. Like death, core metal, whatever the fuck. I'm like OG Death Metal to me. Death Metal's like 1991 Cannibal Corpse or Napalm Death or Morbid Angel dude.

Speaker 4 (00:07:41):

Well, CEFA Carnage or from the second wave of legitimate death metal bands. I first heard about them around the same time that I heard about Neph, for instance. And

Speaker 3 (00:07:52):

Yeah, I kind of ignored that whole thing. I don't know. I was too, I don't know, that was a different time for me. I was looking into Prague Metal and weird shit like that. Oh God. When I was 13, man in the nineties it was all just death metal, fucking in tune day, Palm Death, shit like

Speaker 2 (00:08:08):

That. Well, you missed out on a good era because agree, some of those songs are fucking cool, man. Especially the productions.

Speaker 4 (00:08:15):

Honestly, man, I think that that's the golden period for the genre. I think the early stuff is cool because it's classic, but I feel like the genre came into its own between 99 and 2006 maybe. And since then it's just kind of been spinning its wheels trying to find the next place to go and it hasn't figured it out yet.

Speaker 2 (00:08:37):

And Relapse was, I mean, relapse was coming up. Oh, I

Speaker 3 (00:08:41):

Remember. Relapse.

Speaker 2 (00:08:41):

Yeah, let's bring 'em on.

Speaker 3 (00:08:43):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:08:43):

Hey Dave, how you doing? I'm doing all right

Speaker 3 (00:08:45):

Man. How are

Speaker 2 (00:08:45):

You guys?

Speaker 3 (00:08:46):

Fantastic.

Speaker 2 (00:08:47):

Doing pretty good. Welcome to the show. Thanks man. Just want to say to anyone who's listening who doesn't know Dave, I kind of met Dave on Ultimate Metal Forum, I think it was. Do you remember what year at all?

Speaker 5 (00:09:02):

1896. That

Speaker 4 (00:09:04):

Was a good year. Sounds good. Dave joined in 2005, and the reason I know this was because I looked it up this morning, go

Speaker 5 (00:09:12):

Background

Speaker 2 (00:09:12):

Check

Speaker 5 (00:09:13):

Gas

Speaker 4 (00:09:15):

Ns,

Speaker 5 (00:09:16):

Do my fbi, I file there. Let's not talk about that on air. It's definitely been a long time. I mean, it's good old Annie seat forums. There's so much that's come out those, it's kind of ridiculous, but

Speaker 3 (00:09:30):

It's

Speaker 5 (00:09:30):

Awesome.

Speaker 4 (00:09:31):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:09:31):

It's kind of I feel like where a lot of us got our start in some way, shape or form.

Speaker 5 (00:09:35):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:09:36):

Absolutely. That was the mecca back then, especially when Andy was active in it because he did ditch out I think in 2006 or 2007, but there was a long time where he was just on there helping.

Speaker 5 (00:09:50):

Yep. Yeah, I mean he wasn't like the rest of us. I mean that was my homepage for a long time. I just checked it every day. I mean it was religious kind of thing. But yeah, it was cool. I mean I was already recording and had been commercially essentially for a while, but there wasn't much information around there, especially for heavier stuff back in the day. And I mean, it's where I first learned about pushing an amp with a tube screamer, which is such a basic thing for any kind of articulate heavy music these days. It's almost ridiculous to think that I was charging money before I knew some of these things.

Speaker 4 (00:10:27):

So with that in mind, when did you get started?

Speaker 5 (00:10:32):

Let's see, we can count backwards. I mean, I probably started recording bands for hard cash when I was 17 or 18 and I'm old as hell now. I'm 34, so

Speaker 3 (00:10:46):

A long time ago.

Speaker 4 (00:10:48):

We're not that old.

Speaker 5 (00:10:49):

Yeah, no, we're doing right.

Speaker 4 (00:10:51):

So have you ever had another job?

Speaker 5 (00:10:53):

I was a busboy once when I was in high school. That was it. I mean, I did a couple of small time jobs like busboy and some odd end stuff when I was in school. And pretty much right out of school I kind of had this lined up and ready to go and that was it.

Speaker 2 (00:11:13):

Well, let's just say that. That's awesome. How did you get that going?

Speaker 5 (00:11:16):

I started by recording my own bands earlier, even on a four track and stuff like that, just for fun. Had a four track. So my brother was a musician. He is older than I am, he's six years old than I am. And when I was nine, he conned me into using all of my allowance money to help him buy a four track. And I was young and impressional, so I did it. And then he moved on and I mean he still plays music a little bit now, but not professionally or even more than once every few months. So I kind of just inherited this four track and I was like, oh, this is cool. I was playing in punk bands and stuff like that and didn't have any mic sands. I had to tape mics to the ceiling and hang them down over my drum set to record practices and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (00:12:00):

Dude, this is exactly how I got started.

Speaker 5 (00:12:02):

Really?

Speaker 2 (00:12:03):

Yes,

Speaker 5 (00:12:04):

Literally one day it was like, oh, this is pretty fun. Hey, maybe I should do this as a job. And I was 16 or something and I had no idea other kids were not probably really thinking about that kind of stuff at the time, but I didn't really have any gear. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to start taking this more seriously. So saving up cash from my busboy job, buying amounts of gear a little bit here, a little bit there. And then when I actually turned Sirius was I had a little bit of money set aside for college and started looking at options for this kind of stuff. And I looked at Full Sail. I actually went down and did a full sail tour a long time ago. And before that I was kind of like, well, you know what? Before I drop all this cash on school, I'm going to take a little bit of this money and throw it in some gear and kind of just start doing it on my own and see how it goes. So I took a couple thousand dollars and I bought two eight A machines. This was before it was really feasible to do it directly to a DAW. So started tracking a DATs. I had this old crappy 16 channel FOS tech board. I bought a pawn shop for 300 bucks. By the time I started doing that, recording my own stuff, I would track to a DATs and then dump through light pipe all the way into, what was it? I can't even remember what version. Digital

Speaker 2 (00:13:24):

Performer or something?

Speaker 5 (00:13:25):

No, I mean it was cubase.

(00:13:28):

It was before Nuendo was even a thing because a lot of guys switched innuendo when it came out and then switched back to Cubase once they kind of shifted those. But it was a long time ago, I would dump all in through this MOTU piece that I had and mix in the box. And by the time I started doing that and got things sounding at least okay for the time I did the full sail thing, I was like, man, I don't really know if I need to do this. I had a couple other friends that had gone that route and they're like, man, I paid so much money for this dumb piece of paper and never once has anyone asked me for it or has it been useful at all. So I kind of just said screw it, and just started working with bands and then I just had a job from that day forward I guess.

Speaker 2 (00:14:09):

That's awesome. That's very similar to my story and I think a lot of people get started this way, but one thing I wanted to sort of focus on was the fact that you said you didn't really have a whole lot of other jobs besides this, and that's been the same for me. I had one other job, I was a paper boy and I worked in a computer shop and that was it. I didn't ever had to go to McDonald's or whatever the fuck. So

Speaker 3 (00:14:34):

You guys just had your metal cred destroyed, man, I at least worked as a grave digger fur the summer.

Speaker 4 (00:14:38):

Did you really? Wow.

Speaker 3 (00:14:39):

Yeah, it was awesome. I reset head stones and shit.

Speaker 4 (00:14:41):

That's pretty metal, the things you learn. Damn,

Speaker 3 (00:14:45):

I just wanted to throw that out there. Like the least metal guy here on the jet.

Speaker 4 (00:14:48):

Yeah, I've ever been a grave digger. Yeah, your creepy points

Speaker 2 (00:14:53):

Just went

Speaker 4 (00:14:53):

Up a little.

Speaker 2 (00:14:54):

I have a question for you. So how long did it take before you actually started to make money at this? And keeping in mind that different time periods for sure, and the music industry is always changing, but how did it go for you?

Speaker 5 (00:15:08):

It was pretty quick, I guess. I mean, I started, and this is how it's easy to get going in a field like this where it's tough to make money, especially at the beginning. I started when I was so young, I didn't have a lot of commitments. I literally was recording albums in my mom's basement for two or three years, I think. Joe, you did the same thing From what I remember too, and even after I moved out, I still had a studio in my mom's basement. I was recording Cefa carnage in my mom's basement when I was 18 or 19. And so it's really easy. I didn't have a lot of bills. I had an apartment that I split with one dude, so it was a couple hundred bucks and it is just easy. I didn't really need to make that much money. I charged a pretty modest rate and it was like, especially for heavy music, there were no other studios in town that even knew what to do with that kind of stuff. And they were all like the old model, like big bucks, expensive hours engineer that's never heard your music before, you'd book the studio rather than booking the engineer slash producer. None of these guys actually were that. They were just day jobbing it. And

(00:16:10):

That's a totally wrong way to go for heavy music. I mean really it's the wrong way to go for any kind of music. You need to work with someone that's interested in your music particularly not just call a studio like your booking a plumber or something like that. And that's not what people were doing forever. They would just call one of the studios in town and go in and record all their crap live and it would sound horrible. And I was more interested in trying to get as close to other releases in the genre that I could. I could at the time, which probably wasn't too close, but that's

Speaker 4 (00:16:39):

Actually a really common thread among lots of our guests on the show who came up through the early two thousands that they were the only game in town for this style of music.

Speaker 5 (00:16:53):

Pretty much. I mean, it's definitely not that way now. I still get messages and emails from asking me advice coming up as trying to be a metal guy, metal producer, mixer, whatever. And I give them what advice I can, but it's such a different thing than I'm a fucking dinosaur compared to a lot of these guys. So things are just very different now. I tell 'em first and foremost, just buy some gear and start doing it man, and see how you do.

Speaker 4 (00:17:21):

Nice. Well, I guess that's the one thing that hasn't changed that you can't get anywhere without making that initial investment in yourself gear wise and time wise.

Speaker 5 (00:17:31):

It's just like any art form. If it's something that you really care about and really want to do, then you'll show the drive yourself. Every once in a while I see guys kind of waiting for it to happen or waiting to go to school to learn this stuff. And especially now, I mean it's even a hundred times more accessible now than it was when I was started. What are you waiting for? Just start doing it. I mean, you can get a recording set up for dirt cheap. Everyone has a computer that's capable of recording and stuff. Used to have to have a really super powerhouse computer to even do anything. But now five-year-old laptop can record and mix audio.

Speaker 3 (00:18:07):

Two weeks ago, or sorry a month ago, I just bought a Barringer foreign interface with Mike's XLR, the whole nine yards here. So I could do a little video setup and it was like 150 bucks or something like that. It was nothing. I remember my first M audio, Delta 10 10 or my first four track, which was like 1300 bucks to do four channels of bullshit on a mini

Speaker 5 (00:18:31):

Disc. It's super accessible now that

Speaker 3 (00:18:33):

Crashed

Speaker 4 (00:18:33):

Every minute in 30 seconds. Oh god. I got a Delta 10 10 as well. I don't think I recorded a successful minute of audio with that thing.

Speaker 3 (00:18:42):

Dude, that was the shit back in the day, like 2000 that didn't Cool Edit Pro.

Speaker 4 (00:18:45):

Yeah, man, it crashed my rig so many times. That was actually why I switched over was because that Delta 10 10 kept blue screening me.

Speaker 3 (00:18:56):

That's crazy. I never had it crash in five years that I used it.

Speaker 4 (00:19:00):

Oh dude, I, when I say I didn't get a minute recorded with it, I mean I did not get a minute recorded with it. So yeah, I got a new computer. So let's talk about some actual music stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:19:14):

I had one question before we moved on if that's okay. Hey Dave. So I imagine a lot of people listening to this or probably close to or in a similar situation as you back then, which was recording in your basement at your parents' house or whatever. So I'm curious, how long did it take before you were out of there and how did you actually handle the initial investment involved in making it happen?

Speaker 5 (00:19:42):

I went the route where when I was doing it in the basement, I didn't really spend any money on construction or sound control or any kind of treatment or anything like that. So when I moved out, it was more about trying to put on a more professional front, trying not to drive so far for me. And I was only 30 or 40 minutes, but I was tired of it. So I just found essentially some office space in a warehouse and kind of just moved in. I think I had a roll of carpet padding in the corner in the drum room. I mean nothing. This is only a minor step up in Professionalness,

(00:20:20):

So I just took small steps. It wasn't really a big investment, it was just a lease. And I think I did it month to month and it wasn't a big deal and it wasn't until, it's actually been a long time now, but I moved around a few different places. I was in one spot for a while actually did I painted and tried to make it cool and tried to do a little bit of treatment at one point, actually got robbed at that spot, which really sucked. Got a call from the cops on a Saturday night and place had been broken into a lot of stuff, probably about 10 grand worth of things, plus a computer with probably six weeks of unfinished projects on it. And I did not have a backup up. So that's a lot of rerecording that to do for free. And on top of replacing gear, I mean my monitors were stolen, both monitor my audio monitors and my flat screens that I just bought was so stoked on.

Speaker 4 (00:21:12):

Did those guys ever get caught?

Speaker 5 (00:21:14):

No, nothing happened. I did a police report, man, but they gave no fucks. I mean it was a small fry to them.

Speaker 4 (00:21:20):

I

Speaker 5 (00:21:20):

Tried and called and follow up and literally wouldn't even get a call back. I mean, it was just like I knew pretty close that okay, this stuff was just gone. I'm never going to see it again. I just need to move forward. And honestly, it was actually good in a lot of ways, forced me to use a bunch of different gear and I had been kind of stuck in my little circle of gear, specifically my monitors. And I was on a Mackey HRA 20 fours and as soon as I moved away from 'em, I realized how much I hate those monitors with a passion. Those are the ones

Speaker 2 (00:21:50):

That are really mid scooped, right?

Speaker 5 (00:21:52):

Yeah. I mean I didn't really know that at the time. I bought into the marketing that shows us incredibly flat frequency response and I was like, wow, science cool,

Speaker 1 (00:22:02):

Yeah,

Speaker 5 (00:22:03):

Whatever. And I was young and inexperienced and didn't realize that marketing is just that marketing, but I literally moved to a pair of speakers that I built myself. I had actually ordered 'em right before the studio got broken into the a hundred dollars kit of unpowered speakers and I ran 'em off just a regular stereo head with EQ set flat and actually worked on those for two or three years and they sounded great. They sounded 10 times better than my mackeys and I had mixes translating better immediately and that plus a few of the things jumped up my product like a pretty decent amount. I was real stoked on it. So it happened for a reason. I don't know if I really believe in that crap, but it worked out in this instance, things got a lot better, so

Speaker 4 (00:22:45):

Well, you turned it into a good thing, by the way, did you hear what happened to Morris Sound a few years ago?

Speaker 5 (00:22:51):

That was the water thing, is that what you're talking about? The cleaning lady here?

Speaker 3 (00:22:55):

No, no, they got robbed and cleaned out.

Speaker 5 (00:22:58):

Oh, okay. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:22:59):

They got robbed.

Speaker 5 (00:23:00):

There's another studio that a cleaning lady hit a water valve and flooded the place over the weekend or something. I was thinking that was more, that might've been somewhere else, but

Speaker 4 (00:23:10):

I heard of people's studios getting flooded in the hurricane in New York a couple years.

Speaker 5 (00:23:16):

I

Speaker 4 (00:23:16):

Remember that too. But yeah, and Morris Sound, they cleaned out Studio B and got away with six figures worth of gear, but the guy got caught in a warehouse. He had it all in a warehouse in South Carolina, I believe.

Speaker 5 (00:23:30):

Sweet. That's pretty awesome. I mean,

Speaker 4 (00:23:33):

Pump

Speaker 5 (00:23:33):

To Mike take a hundred grand a little more seriously than I'm easily 10.

Speaker 4 (00:23:39):

Well, I don't think that was their only score either. I think it was a pretty pro deal. But anyways,

Speaker 2 (00:23:45):

Let's talk about some sound. How do you get your sound? I want to start with drums because this is the reason why I got into all this crap. So I was listening to Cephalic Carnage back in the day and I was a drummer and I was in a grind core band or whatever you want to call it. We looked up to them and we looked up to your productions and we we're just dissecting them all the time. It's like every weekend all we would do is stay up until three or 4:00 AM listening to Cephalic Carnage and be like, man, that fucking snare drum and this and that. So yeah. How did you do that? What is your approach to getting drums to sound so natural but make them work so well?

Speaker 5 (00:24:25):

I mean back then I didn't really have an approach, man. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just kind of flying by seat of my pants. Everyone. I'm working on a project right now called Cobalt on Profile Lower, and Chris the owner profile Lower actually flew out last weekend for a couple of days near the end of the mix to hang out and he was talking about that and he was like, man, lucid and IL is still my favorite. And I think a lot of people think that. I mean, think 19 when I was recording that and I literally had no idea what I was doing. I mean I was just like, and for drums, I think all of you guys would probably agree a whole lot of drums comes down to the player and John Meryman just knows how to hit drums well and make 'em sing.

(00:25:06):

I mean it's huge difference. I mean even down to stick selection and where you hold your sticks and the amount of weight you can put into a drum and he had experience back then as far as this is how I like to tune my drums, I don't even think I was drum dialing back then. I may have been or tuning drums. So a lot of that probably had to do with him. I had my kind of placements and my mics that I probably still use, but a lot of it was a drummer and his help with tuning up sounds in those early days and just trying to go for something really clear. That's what my goal, especially with Selic in the beginning is there are other stuff I actually kind of like the vibe on the album exploiting dysfunction before the one that I did, but it is just kind of a mess.

(00:25:48):

It's cool and that when the music kicks in, it's just so crunchy and distorted that it sounds heavy as hell, but I mean you have no idea what the hell they're doing. And part of that's because they probably, they rushed the tracking and it wasn't real tight and the production just kind of goes, I mean it sounds sweet, but it's not that you can't even know what they're doing. And right around one time when I started working with 'em, they were getting more technical and the focus is on kind of the opposite of that. So I mean when I listen to it, I hear it as a little bit sterile, but especially for the time that clarity was something that people weren't really accustomed to. And that's still kind of my game these days. I focus a lot on vibe and stuff like that. That's another area that I think is kind missing, especially in modern mixes these days. The vibe's not always there. It gets a little cookie cutter at times. So I really try and push a vibe, but I'm all about having it, everything nice and clear. I think you should be able to hear everything that's going on and nice and big and large sounding. So I don't really know, man. I mean I kind of just flying by see my pants.

Speaker 4 (00:26:51):

Well what about now?

Speaker 5 (00:26:52):

Now I take a little more studied approach to it I suppose, but a lot of it still relies on the drummer. I mean as far as the heavy fast stuff that people know me for now, probably it's kind of moved over to the cattle stuff I've done. And again, it's like Dave McGraw's another beast of a drummer. I mean his stuff, we do some edits on those albums, but I could probably go without the edits and it wouldn't really sound that much different.

Speaker 4 (00:27:19):

I just want to chime in on that, man. I think with the super extreme stuff, a lot of people who have never recorded a phenomenal drummer don't understand how much of an impact that

Speaker 5 (00:27:31):

Makes. Oh, it's huge on

Speaker 4 (00:27:32):

The overall mix. Yeah, you can't negate that. I mean on other genres you can get away with a lot more fakery

(00:27:42):

Because it's easier to fix. But these really, really great extreme metal drummers, I mean that's what they sound like. Maybe you add a kick sample and a little reinforcement here and there, but I mean what you see is what you get pretty much, and they have to approach their instrument the way an athlete approaches their sport or their discipline and you don't really find that too much in the other sub genres, not like you do in the extreme stuff. So I think that it's one of those things just like with vocalists, nobody really gets how amazing it is to work with a vocalist who's amazing until you have one walk in your studio.

Speaker 5 (00:28:23):

It's almost like that for every musician, an experienced guy, someone that's reached a level of success, more than likely probably already has elements of their own sound. And it comes from how they hit the drums, it comes from how they hold their pick. It comes from how they approach different sections. I mean, I see that too, the more successful musicians, even if they're not the most technically proficient or can't sweep macrophages or something like that, they have a sound that sounds like no one else and it just comes from them, like their body. And it took me a long time to understand that. I mean really even to maybe the last five years I downplayed that, I was like, nah, it's about the amp, it's about how you dial in the amp. It's about where I put this 57 and I was like, yeah, that shit's important too. But the truly great stuff, the things that make a mark on music that surprise people, most of that really comes from the musician and how you as a producer kind of push him to bring that stuff out.

Speaker 2 (00:29:26):

Some bands just start playing music and it sounds like it sounds, and I always use the example of Foo Fighters, they choose the guitars and the amps and the beats and the chords and the melodies and when you put all that stuff together, that's what they sound like. And there's not a lot of trickery going on there or manufacturing I guess you could say.

Speaker 4 (00:29:49):

We'll take those same chords and beats and melodies and put them in the hands of a cover band who might actually be technically better and it still won't sound as good or the same at all, right?

Speaker 5 (00:30:03):

Music's a sum of all the parts and with different people you're missing a big chunk of that, especially with certain kinds of music rock really being one of 'em. I think Rock should show more of that personality and more of that individual kind of contribution from the players that gives it that special thing that can push a band to the front.

Speaker 4 (00:30:23):

So what are some of your tricks then for being able to keep that intact? The artistic vision intact, but also keep the songs capable of being clear because for instance, sometimes a really artistic arrangement that's multilayered, that's also got blast beats and double bass and brutal vocals and multilayered guitars and leads and distorted bass that can get pretty daunting to keep clear.

Speaker 5 (00:30:52):

So

Speaker 4 (00:30:52):

Do you have any tricks for negotiating both ends of the spectrum?

Speaker 5 (00:31:00):

I dunno if I'd call 'em tricks. I really just trying to approach

Speaker 4 (00:31:04):

Or just methodology.

Speaker 5 (00:31:06):

That's probably more along the lines of my thing of just trying to look at each project independently of the last thing and the next thing I'm going to work on, the width of styles that I end up doing here is really wide. I mean everything from local stuff that's almost bordering on indie rock to the extreme cattle side of things, cephalic side of things to the completely different extreme side of some really intense black metal stuff that I work on often. And another band that I do called Primitive Man on Relapse, it's super dirty dirge doom that's just supposed to sound horrific and encompassing.

Speaker 3 (00:31:46):

Hey, here's a quick question based off that, Dave, when you're doing black metal, do they come in and corpse paint and regulation black metal spikes or what?

Speaker 5 (00:31:55):

No, not typically, but I have,

Speaker 3 (00:31:58):

That disappoints

Speaker 5 (00:31:58):

Me. I have had guys like candles and burn sulfur in the live room while they're tracking vocals. Alright,

Speaker 3 (00:32:06):

Now we're talking because I feel like if you're in a black metal band, you have to come in full attire, battleax armor and all that shit, or else it just isn't going to be a true record and you're a kind of proposer. So I just wanted to clarify that.

Speaker 5 (00:32:20):

I mean black metal in particular is actually really heavy drenched in the emotion and the thought behind a lot of this music. And on first glance, a lot of people don't really get that aspect of it because something you kind of develop as you get deeper into it. But I've been a pretty heavy black model fan for a long time and it's more than most forms of metal, super emotionally driven and state of mind while you're tracking that stuff is actually pretty important, especially for things like vocals, which everyone knows are kind of more emotional and personal to begin with. But that kind of stuff is actually really important. Putting people in their mindset to give the performance that the fans want to hear that needs to be there to make the album good. So

Speaker 4 (00:33:01):

I told you guys my black metal story where I had to take the dude through a walk through the graveyard and then lay down plastic tarps so that he could cut himself and not stain my carpet while we were tracking vocals. I mean, it sounds funny and silly, but that's what the dude needed in order to get into the state of mind. I mean, that's a

Speaker 3 (00:33:25):

Black metal thing. I think that shit really seriously in that genre. And I'm pissed because I've always wanted to do a black metal band because there's a lot of OG black metal that I really enjoy and have over the years and I was always hoping I would get one through my door and I never did just, I always wanted to do a grind core band and I never got to do one. I got a lot of death core bands, but never a grind core and I always wanted pig squealing, sub drop, fucking just

Speaker 4 (00:33:49):

Ridiculous, prove your worth, go burn down a church or something. You got to do something that, whether it's work with another band that they consider credible or commit some crime or something. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:34:07):

I've done too many pop mixes in my life and edm, so I guess I'd be considered a poser worthy of being burned at the altar of the Frost Mountain. I don't know, I'm out of adjectives.

Speaker 4 (00:34:19):

The black metal scene are very, very big on their credibility. To be accepted by it is kind of a weird thing.

Speaker 3 (00:34:27):

Well if you're in a black metal band and you're listening to this, fucking call me and I'll record the shit out of you.

Speaker 4 (00:34:32):

So did you get into this to record metal or did you just happen to get good at it as one of the various styles?

Speaker 5 (00:34:41):

I mean, I got into it to record my own band, which was punk bands back high school, early high school and kind of more morphed into metal. And I mean, I played in a band a long time that was pretty much straight in flames worship before that shit was really too big here in the States and that's what it was. I was just recording my own bands. And then other people would hear, I mean we put out a demo that sounded 10 times better than anyone else's demo and they were like, whoa, where'd you guys do that? It's like, ah, I did it. Will you record us? Oh yeah, I guess I will. Sure. Yeah. And then it was just like

Speaker 2 (00:35:19):

Exactly what happened

Speaker 5 (00:35:20):

To me too. Yeah, it was just like, oh, okay, I guess I have a job now and that's it. I didn't do the college thing. I kind of just fell into this. I've never had another job. It feels a little weird almost, but I clearly don't want to trade it for anything. I get kind of spoiled sometimes and I have to realize I record metal albums every day and get paid for it and don't have to. I think I would've so much trouble doing anything else at this point in my life. I'm just used to calling the shots and doing what I want to do. I really hope that this doesn't ever fail on me because I'll probably fucked.

Speaker 4 (00:35:55):

Well, okay, so say I'm in a band and I book time with you to record my album. What's the first step? What can we first expect from you? What do you do first or how do you approach pre-pro? Or is it just show up and go? What's the Dave Otero step one?

Speaker 5 (00:36:16):

A little bit of both. I'll have band send me demos and stuff like that, but actually, unless it's a specific project where that's part of the plan and then I'll go down and check out a practice or two or have specific meetings about that kind of stuff. But that's a rare occasion for me. Typically it's like get your work done, send me some stuff. Half of that's really just to keep them on the ball and make sure they're working on things. I mean labels do the same thing. A lot of labels are like, oh, we're not going to schedule time or pay deposit out to here demos. And that's pretty much to make sure the band's actually progressing and working on stuff. And I like to kind of do the same thing. It gets them thinking about the recording side of stuff and preparing for that more than they might've otherwise.

(00:36:59):

But honestly, unless it's a deal where I am doing extensive, I try to not listen to 'em too much. I still want to have that first gut reaction when they're actually in here and we're laying down scratch tracks and making tempo tracks and if I hear something, I want to be able to experiment with it right away. Hey, let's try this. Hey, let's drop this part out. What if we do this part twice as long? I want to be able to immediately make the change with everyone here, yay or nay and then move on rather than hearing it two or three times. Getting used to parts and losing those first initial reactions that I have. I've learned to trust those over the years. So really, and that's about it for I'm going to work with anyone, I need to hear some music, so they need to send me something.

(00:37:40):

I mean if they have anything recorded, it can be these days a YouTube video from a show or something like that. And then talk to the guys and see really what they're looking for because you can hear especially some unproduced music say off a YouTube video and take it in a lot of different ways. And me kind of having, working with so much different styles of music, I dunno if these guys heard this album over here that's really tied and slick and produced well and edited and very layered, everything's exactly as it should be. Technically that's what they want. Or they heard this other thing on the other side of the spectrum that's really raw. I put the guitar player in the room in front of his amps. So the chords are feedbacking in between things and a lot of one takes stuff and if there's a little fuck up, we will embrace it half the time because it adds some grit, adds some human to the album. So I need to talk to the band or at least one or two of the main guys and see what they're going for. And then essentially schedule out some dates and then kind of plan it out. Always got to have a chalk with a drummer before the session about heads and about his kit and then everything else just kind of happens as you go along.

Speaker 4 (00:38:46):

Let's talk about the drummer's kit for a second because one thing I do is when a band is going to come in, I asked the drummer to send me basically photos of his kit from bird's eye view, front view and two side views so that I can see where his symbol heights are, what the distances are. Is the shit all beat up? Does it look nice? Does it make sense or are we walking into a nightmare or what do I need to tell him to raise his symbols now? Or what kind of talk do you have with the drummer?

Speaker 5 (00:39:23):

Mostly about his kit, the heads that he typically uses. I should ask for photos. It's a good idea. I might start doing that, but often tell me what it is. And if you're talking to a drummer, you can get the idea right away if he's into his gear or if he's like, oh, I don't know, I think it's like a Tama, is that Tama? Then you're like, ah, crap, okay, you might be using the house kit. But talking about the heads that they use, the sounds that they like snare tuning in particular. A lot of guys want this big fat snare drum and then they come in, their head is cranked up as tight as it could possibly go, they want that bounce. And I was like, well, you're about to learn a lesson and the real world's here, so get that kind of stuff because I'll have 'em go by heads beforehand and then I'll tell 'em what my first choices would be and they give 'em a couple options, that sort of stuff. But most of the time I go with the same stuff. Probably that you guys do Clear emperors on Tom's, do you

Speaker 4 (00:40:24):

Get a lot of pushback on that?

Speaker 5 (00:40:26):

No, almost not. I mean really I may be used to and probably not even, not much ever. I mean now I never do because by the time people are coming to me and they're paying what I want 'em to pay or what I ask 'em to pay, that they understand that they should probably listen and take my advice and it's going to come up better in the end.

Speaker 4 (00:40:45):

Alright, so how long do you take getting drum tones? Does it just depend on the project or do you kind of have a median amount of time? It takes,

Speaker 5 (00:40:55):

I typically take maybe four or five hours really for drum setup, but that day one could also include scratch guitars and tempo mapping and things like that. That might even bleed into day two a little bit. But I typically tell bands to prepare for no recording at least on day one and maybe even day two depending on how big the project is. I found that even if you have an hour or two left in your day after you do drum set up, by that point, the drummer even from just sitting around and the tension and the nerves, he's just so exhausted that he or she's not going to perform well. So it's better even if you cut out a little bit early on day one, just to wait until day two, everything's set up, headphone mix is dialed in, tones are there, you just get up in the morning, check tuning and start hacking away at the tracks.

Speaker 4 (00:41:43):

Yeah, you know what? I feel the exact same way. There's been a lot of setup days or tone days where there's technically two or three hours left where we could get started, but my ears are kind of shot. The drummer's kind of shot from hitting single hits all day long and it is better to just cut out early, go to sleep, wake up and kill it.

Speaker 5 (00:42:08):

Yeah, I mean, I've just had experiences where the guy's already kind of exhausted. He goes in there, he just wants to accomplish something and he's playing like shit and we don't get anything that we're keeping anyway. And then he goes home that night and he's fucking pissed off and that could go one of two ways. He'd come back the next day with a vengeance and kill the tracks, or he can have just been broken and then you got to work him back up from that like, oh fuck, I suck more than I thought I did. So it's better just to not get their hopes up about recording and then just start killing it in the morning. Everyone's fresh, you got some coffee in you and you don't have to worry about setup or headphone mixes or anything.

Speaker 4 (00:42:47):

So yeah. So let's talk about guitar a little bit. You were talking earlier about how the best of everything always comes from artists that are highly developed in their own identity, but are there any basics that you impose on say, metal guitar players when they come to your place?

Speaker 5 (00:43:09):

The standard stuff play clear. I'm going to watch your intonation. Not only obviously we got to check intonation. I usually, I check that stuff on all the guitars we're going to use. I used to have guys go have your instruments set up and maybe I still will, but it's almost always still off and I got to tweak it a little bit in here anyway, so that gets checked every time. And then I pay close attention to the details of their technique that they might not always hear. To practice like, Hey, you're fretting too hard. Hey, when you hit this cord and you're stretching forret or you're pinky, you're pulling that note, sharp, that kind of stuff. Make sure they're playing clear. And I'll sometimes throw a little toilet paper or foam or paper towel or something behind their bridge if it's making noise or above the nut on their neck.

(00:43:56):

A lot of times I'll go in there on specific parts if we're trying to make something really clear, I'll go in there and do active string meeting with my thumb while they're actually taking takes to keep things from ringing out a lot of that stuff. And then I'm like, okay, what pick do you normally use? Okay, well try this one. Is that comfortable? It sounds better maybe for this other part that you're like shredding this cord really fast. So use a thinner pick so it doesn't sound so choppy. Small things like that you got to keep in mind to have tracks that are not too noisy and that are in tune. And I've never really felt that I was too much of a studio Nazi as far as getting good takes, but that's what everyone likes to tell me. So maybe I am a bit of a do it again, Nazi.

Speaker 4 (00:44:42):

I think that no producer realizes they're being a Nazi. They just have a standard.

Speaker 5 (00:44:46):

Yeah, that's what it is.

Speaker 4 (00:44:48):

And when, yeah, if something doesn't meet the standard, then do it again.

Speaker 3 (00:44:52):

Its not, I enjoy being a bastard. I don't know what you guys are talking

Speaker 5 (00:44:54):

About. There's some sick gratification in it, but I I'm not doing it. They know this too. I'm sure Joel, you feel the same. I'm not doing it to be a bastard. I'm doing it to make their album sound better and

Speaker 3 (00:45:08):

Oh yeah, of course

Speaker 5 (00:45:09):

They may curse my name at the time, but when it's all said and done, that's one of the reasons why they come to me and come back is I do good performance out of 'em. And my famous last words are, Hey, that's pretty good. Let's try one more time.

Speaker 3 (00:45:25):

I have the unfortunate advantage of having played guitar for a very long time and taking it very seriously when I did play it. So when guys come in my studio, they usually disappoint me greatly, so I push them harder than they've ever been pushed in their life. And it's fun. I mean, I try to do it nicely and sometimes aggressively, but you always got to spin it positively. At the end of the day, no matter how much of a shellacking they take,

Speaker 5 (00:45:48):

You got to work at each dude differently.

Speaker 3 (00:45:52):

You

Speaker 5 (00:45:52):

Got to figure out that as you go along. And a lot of it is they're just learning things that they haven't really paid attention to before and it makes them a better guitar player. And there's a floating reference as well. I mean, especially if I'm working with a band maybe hasn't reached the success level of some bands or work with a local band or a smaller band, you got to be realistic if you want 'em to do this real sweet thing and you try it a few times and it's just not happening, you got to figure out when it's time to, okay, let's try something else or move on or get that particular thing a more creative way with some editing skills if necessary. But everyone has a different standard and really it's like, I want to take you to 99.9% of your ability and that's what I'm shooting for. And that's different on everyone. So

Speaker 4 (00:46:41):

What's, when someone can't get the job done, do you get someone else to do it editing, do it yourself, or is it just different in every case?

Speaker 5 (00:46:53):

Yeah, it's different every time. It really depends on the band. Some bands are like, okay, this just needs to be right no matter what. And some musicians are like that. If I can't do this, the other guitar player can. And with bands with two different guitar players, I start learning their strengths and more often on the more produced side of things that I do, one guy's going to be doing both parts. He has to be better at this string skipping, muting, not muting kind of thing that this part is. Maybe the other guy's better at these big chords and has the slides just right for this one section. So he'll do both parts on that section.

Speaker 3 (00:47:27):

I love that. That's awesome. I mean, I've had certain projects that I've done, or I've had one guy play all the palm mute chuggy stuff and then another guy play all the chords and I do anything that involves any sort of soloing because neither of them can.

Speaker 5 (00:47:41):

Yeah, the only thing I'm a confident, I probably a drummer first and foremost, but really these days it's hard to even consider myself a musician. I think about things so differently, but I could play anything. I can sing well enough to sing a part to a singer, a harmony line that we're adding, or when he's not finding the note, I can rock the talkback mic as I call it, and I could play drums so I can jump on the kid and show a drummer what I want to do, a different kind of thing or an idea. And I could play bass, I can play guitar. So a lot of times I'll show it, but I am a lot happier when they can play it better than I can because honestly I'm not that great and I don't play a lot. So I prefer to work with musician that are better than I am on their respective instruments. But there are certain things that I almost do every pick slide on just because I don't dunno why I'm real anal about pick slides. That's got to be just right. You're not holding the pick. Well, there's an art to it. There is a super art to it and it needs to be, that's like I just needs to be perfect. So I'm with you on that. I do pick slides in the studio for pretty much every band, but

Speaker 3 (00:48:48):

Don't mess with the pick slide. It's got to be

Speaker 5 (00:48:49):

Perfect as guy. I mean, it could just usher in the apart, none other. So don't give me this limp wristed all over the neck kind of thing. What are you doing? Come on. Take some pride in your art.

Speaker 4 (00:49:02):

I've always considered those little guitar dick moves to be crucial. If you're going to do 'em, you got to nail.

Speaker 3 (00:49:07):

Oh, absolutely. I mean, here's the thing about, well, I think this applies to any instrument, but I do a lot of things through the prism of guitar, a guitar Nazi, a lot of people don't think about what the hell they're doing when they sit down. It's not intuitive. They just pick up and start playing. They don't think about how they're holding the pick or what angle or where it is in relation to the bridge and the type of tone it's generating. They're just like, dude, I just want to play this Nirvana song. I can learn it in five minutes. And that's something that no one ever sits down and thinks about how to do a pick slide correctly until you get to the studio and meet guys like us. And then we show you and yell at you. So it's sometimes a rude awakening for a lot of musicians that have been kind of just half-assing it for a long time and then all of a sudden it's like, alright, reality check now it's got to be a-list level sounding and competitive, so let's make this pick slide the best damn pick slide you've ever heard.

(00:49:55):

And they're like, what?

Speaker 5 (00:49:58):

I mean, I think a big part of our job as producers, and if I could say I maybe have any kind of natural talent, it's just the talent of knowing what something is supposed to sound like in every scenario. I know if it's good or bad. And maybe what I've had to learn more along the way is like, okay, I know this is bad. How do I make it good? Those are things that experience will teach you. But I mean really, as soon as I had done this for a few years, I think I had a bit of an knack of like, well, yeah, that sounds right, or nope, that doesn't sound right either it wasn't plate clean enough or it didn't have this certain element to it. It's just, I mean, even when it comes down to harmonies or adding little production flourishes, delay trails on certain things, just like I just hear it. That's just what it's supposed to sound like. I mean, it's just there.

Speaker 2 (00:50:46):

We call that the ear,

Speaker 5 (00:50:48):

Eye of the ear, I guess. But yeah, if it doesn't sound right, then change something or do it better or fix it.

Speaker 4 (00:50:56):

It blows my mind that some people can't hear that stuff, but I guess that really is the ear part of it.

Speaker 5 (00:51:02):

And Joel was saying, I just want to play a Nirvana song, or I just want to sit down and do a pix slide there. Hey, I did a pick slide. I was like, I mean, I guess you did a pick slide, but it sounds like should, it's not what it should sound. And a lot of guys, that just never occurs to them. They never thought about that. Oh, I guess It does kind of sound like a pussy pick slide. I was like, yeah, it does.

Speaker 3 (00:51:24):

Well, anytime you want to start a band that just does all pick slides, I'm in. You let me know and we will team up

Speaker 4 (00:51:31):

My pick slide, bro. So you're ready to do a rapid fire segment?

Speaker 3 (00:51:35):

Sure. Yeah, I

Speaker 5 (00:51:36):

Suppose.

Speaker 4 (00:51:37):

All

Speaker 3 (00:51:37):

Right, cool. Rapid fire. So here's what we're going to do, Dave. We're going to call off a particular instrument and then you tell us, for example, how you record it or mix it or you don't have to disclose anything that you don't want to if you have any little secret chains or whatever. But feel free to answer as in depth as you'd like and the more you go the cooler this usually is. So alright, here we go. I'm just going to call stuff off. Kick drum

Speaker 5 (00:52:01):

As a whole. Typically a, what is it? A D one, D six. What's the kick one? I think a D six.

Speaker 4 (00:52:08):

D six.

Speaker 5 (00:52:09):

Typically a D six. I've experimented with a lot of different ones. Re 20 D one twelves, but I like the D six the best. Usually front head off if I'm looking for a tighter sound, if it's a slower band, I'll leave front head on and kind of tune it to give me a little more resonance. Not a lot of processing on the way in. Maybe a little bit of eq. That's one thing that's probably the biggest difference between some types of bands and other types of bands. Some bands, I won't use that at all. It's going to be all sample. Some bands, I'll use that little bit and it'll be the primary or blended. In other bands, I'm getting more kick from the room mics than I are the close mics. That's definitely a style discrepancy, whether I've got a Stonery kind of doom band in or a tech death band, but I'll usually probably put a D jump trigger on it as well.

(00:52:56):

But with these days you don't even really need triggers. Most the time you can do it just fine off a mic, but it's sometimes easier so I tune it loose too. Almost always I try and tune it loose to the point where it just has enough tension to sound like a drum. That's kind of what I like how to kick drums. That's tough for some dudes that some of the trigger guides that rely on the bounce. If I realize it's screwing up performance, then I'll make concessions there. Okay, well maybe we're not going to use this mic sound much at all and we just need to get the performance

Speaker 3 (00:53:23):

Sweet. All right. Bass guitar

Speaker 5 (00:53:25):

Typically di a lot of times we won't even set up an amp while we're tracking. That's almost kind of player preference. Some guys really want to feel the whole building rumbling, but I'm always going to get a straight DI right out of the instrument and sometimes I'll take it Sands Amp at the same time. I use Fluex a lot. The trick I learned from Joey 10 years ago or something like that, however long ago it was. In fact, I haven't updated my UAD cards in three years because as soon as I go to the next level, I lose pre fluex, so I can't do that. But most of my final tones end up as a blend of reflex and probably a sand jam driver. Sometimes the di and if it's a more artsy band or a more open band, then there's going to be some mic in there as well on their rig if they have a sweet kind of sun set up or something like that.

Speaker 3 (00:54:17):

Sick. All right. Heavy electric rhythm guitar

Speaker 5 (00:54:21):

57 on a Mesa oversized done. Love it. Okay. Yeah, I mean sometimes I'll throw another mic on there. For the longest time I shunned the whole 4 21 on a cabinet thing. I just never really got it. I thought they were harsh sounding and kind of crappy, but recently I've been trying that again. I'm like, okay. It does add some cool stuff. You play with phase a little bit. Pretty standard sneak forum special there. A mesa cab with vintage UR and a 57 is all you really need to get a good guitar tone.

Speaker 3 (00:54:56):

Black metal growls.

Speaker 5 (00:54:59):

Black metal growls. Well most black metal probably doesn't have a lot of growls in it. It's mostly

Speaker 1 (00:55:07):

Like the

Speaker 3 (00:55:08):

Danny Filth shit.

Speaker 5 (00:55:09):

The higher pit stuff

Speaker 3 (00:55:11):

Or Yeah, I should have called it growl. Sorry, I'm about to get raked over the coals for that.

Speaker 2 (00:55:16):

Yeah, we're actually going to have to edit that out. Joel, you're going to lose your

Speaker 4 (00:55:19):

Fucking cred.

Speaker 3 (00:55:20):

I don't have any fucking metal cred anyways.

Speaker 4 (00:55:22):

Yeah, someone's going to make a necklace out of your skull for that one.

Speaker 3 (00:55:25):

Alright. Brutal black metal church burning highs down the mountain with lightning and shit.

Speaker 5 (00:55:31):

Probably an S seven. That's what I use on most of my heavy stuff. And the higher shit it seems to add a little body to 'em in particular. So that, and then most of my vocals go through a UA 61 76 and I will squash the crap out of them 20 DB or more of reduction and really just can nullify any semblance of dynamics and bring the breast to the front and stuff like that. Hell yeah. And yeah, that's about it. I mean that's the only thing I really comp super hard on the way in is vocals because usually you can't really go wrong doing that. So

Speaker 3 (00:56:09):

Sweet. We got one more here, so who wants to know?

Speaker 5 (00:56:13):

How about mastering eq? A few different ones. So I almost always have the massive passive UAD emulation on my master bus and sometimes I don't even use an eq, but I picked it up a couple of years ago and I just love the way it sounds on the master bus when it's just turned on. So I'll turn it on and

Speaker 3 (00:56:32):

I'm with you on that. I got the hardware and I like just running it through it sometimes

Speaker 5 (00:56:37):

And sometimes I'll juice a little level coming out of it and sometimes I don't know why I do that sounds cooler. It could probably just be the volume tricking me, but typically I'll throw that on and then turn the output a notch up and then sometimes they use for a little low end or low mids. It's really nice adding that in a smooth fashion. Doest get too boomy. And then my main EQ these days, which I just use across the board for any kind of really queuing, is the fab filter one, fab filter Pro Q2. It's just amazing. And I like my QS to be, I actually mostly like to have one EQ for all of my major stuff. I'll throw another one on for color every now and again. I like the new slate. What do they call this kind of silvery white ones that just came out? The ones in VMR, right?

Speaker 2 (00:57:26):

Oh, revival.

Speaker 5 (00:57:27):

No, it's like the ones they just released and they came out with their subscription model thing. I played with those and those sound cool. I've been using those lately for color stuff like hey, I want to add some 400 to this. That's a tricky area to add anywhere and it seems to do a pretty good job at it, but most of my eq, even my Master EQ is going to be any real work I'm going to be doing is going to be that file filter.

Speaker 4 (00:57:51):

Alright, ready for some questions from the audience? Sure. Okay, cool. They're very excited that you're coming on. Jeff Sakic is saying Dave's guitar tones are always crushing. I would like to know more about his EQ methods on that. Also, some of the super fast drum stuff he works with is insanely tight. Any editing tips and tricks on that would be amazing.

Speaker 5 (00:58:15):

Guitar tones, we kind of covered a little bit of that. Mesa Oversize 57, I mean I've got a couple different cabs here and I don't know if I've used another cab on an album in seven or eight years. The Mesa overtimes just seems to always win for me. Every once in a while I'll get a band in that has more of a sound of themselves, more on the doomy kind of stonery stuff that's skinny popular these days. Those guys have their big crazy rigs with their fuzz pedals going into their orange jams and stuff like that. And we'll use those because it's more about capturing their sound of that point. But for the standard metal stuff, Mesa oversize and at least at 57 right around where the dust cover meets the cone.

Speaker 4 (00:58:58):

What about eqi?

Speaker 5 (00:59:01):

Eqi? Pretty standard stuff. I tend to go pretty heavy when I started using a plugin called Electric Cue back in the day that some of you guys may have may remember. And it kind of got me addicted on not using knobs for eq, just manipulating a spine and having typically unlimited points. So I'll have a guitary queue that has 30 points on it and then sometimes I'll be like, oh shit, I need to do more, but this one's such a mess that I have to open another one underneath. So I get pretty heavy handed with EQ sometimes, but they're usually all not doing much more than maybe two to three db except for the main spots where maybe I cut some two 20 or some one 20 or something like that. Oh, there's always a low pass and high pass and that's kind of dependent, but the low pass will end up somewhere between 7.5 k, sometimes all the way up to 10 or 11.

(01:00:01):

And the high pass will end up somewhere between 50 and 65, 70 maybe with a pretty sharp slope on it. And then the other thing that I do, which is kind of treading deep waters is get in there and make some surgical cuts In the upper mids, there's always areas around maybe 2.7 or 3.5 K that can get really harsh and sometimes a wide dip is good enough to kind of tame those down. And then sometimes I will narrow out that cue super hard and kind of go fishing for those resonant frequencies that are just destroying my ears and then pull 'em out a good amount, like pull a sharp cue down 10 or 15 DB maybe in a few different spots. But you do have to be careful. You can EQ the life out of your tone really quickly doing that. So that's one thing I like about electro used to do a tube valve filter does as well. You can select a couple of different nodes at a time and turn 'em on and off simultaneously. So you kind of check, I'll go to those cuts and go back and forth and make sure that it's not removing anything that's important. And then you can also adjust those as a group too. So I'll kind of get my whole group and cuts set up and then if I need to back off, I can just grab 'em all and slide up a little bit to make them not as a steep of a cut.

Speaker 4 (01:01:29):

That's what I love about that EQ as well, by the way, because you just said sometimes when you're EQ and guitars, if you're not careful, you can just totally just neuter them.

Speaker 5 (01:01:41):

Yeah, and it's easy to go. You become so sensitive to some of those frequencies that you hear 'em everywhere and everywhere there's any kind of resonance you're like, oh, that's got to go. That's not musical data. That's

Speaker 3 (01:01:51):

Just now we're talking, that's

Speaker 5 (01:01:52):

Just buzz. But you could go to,

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):

We're going to make a plugin that removes 3.4 through 4K out of all of society because we fucking hate it,

Speaker 5 (01:02:03):

But sometimes you could just totally neuter your sound. And we've all had those days where you're super extra sensitive to those and you go through and you cut it out of everywhere, all your guitar tones, and you get that rattle out of your basin and you cut those out of your overheads and then you listen to it the next morning and you're like, fuck sounded better the day before I lost all the power, all the beef. It just sounds like this scooped kind of wissy thing or you listen to it and it sounds perfect. That's possible too. That

Speaker 4 (01:02:35):

Hasn't happened to me that

Speaker 5 (01:02:37):

Much. Yeah, I've never had anything sound perfect. I guess if I ever have something that sounds perfect, I'll quit and just commit suicide won life.

Speaker 3 (01:02:47):

But we appreciate that you have the same hatred that we do for that frequency range.

Speaker 5 (01:02:52):

No, yeah, especially in just sort of guitars. I mean I've pretty much no guarantee, even if I'm just EQing in a scratch track, there's going to be a high pass and a low pass, probably a cut somewhere around one or 200 and definitely a cut around three and a half, 3.5.

Speaker 4 (01:03:08):

All right. So Mikhail Reeves is asking how do you deal with the nightmare of producing a blast beat to sound good and not just good, but straight up gnarly.

Speaker 5 (01:03:19):

A lot of that has to do with the drummer drummer's got to play it rights. I hear every once in a while I'll pop in on a form that's got some amateur dudes and they've got some program jumps and there's a blast beat and it comes in and it's just so overboard perfect and the drums are so loud that I just immediately turn it off and I can't handle it. That's one thing that you can't just destroy people with at phe. It leaves no room for the rest of the mix. That's a tricky part of working with fast stuff. Drums in particular is you have to play with your velocities if you're running triggers and make it sound natural, make it sound like a good drummer, not an inhuman drummer. And you got to have the takes there to begin with. And you got to be creative with kind of bumping volumes around.

(01:04:04):

I mean, kicks got to come down. If they're playing 16th notes at two 40, they'll destroy your entire mix, especially if you've got a big boomy one. And on the faster bands, you got to go with tighter tones. I mean, it doesn't mean that you have to pass your kick at 95 or something. I'm not going to do that. But if I'm blending samples, I'm not going to pick one that has a big long resonance that's going to fold over itself and kind of turn into a mess. There used to be, back in the day when I used drum go and that kind of stuff, there used to be a setting in there. Ani essentially is the basic midi idea. But I think it was a different setting in drum go where you could pick exactly how many samples would play over one another. So if there they're a bunch of fast kick drum samples and say your sample's like two seconds long, you're not going to have 16 kick drum samples playing at any one point. As soon as it hits the third one, it's going to cut off that first one. So there'll only be two at a time. Trigger doesn't have that setting, but it seems to kind of just do a fine job at it as it is. But that's something that you used to have to worry about. If you have a bassy drum and it gets going really fast, it's going to fold over itself five, six times and you'll just end up with a huge mess. I guess that's about it.

Speaker 4 (01:05:17):

I guess taking that a step further, Beno is asking, when tracking a drummer's fast and spastic as Dave McGraw, how do you know when you have a drum track that you can work with as far as cleanly editing them goes? Is it a matter of just listening to the drums and click together constantly checking the grid to make sure, or some other method you've come up with?

Speaker 5 (01:05:37):

No, I mean it's kind of that and transparent parts on the OQ base and UB base just puts the lines over the audio, which is kind of nice. So I'll kind of keep an eye on that. And I don't care if a guy's rushing apart as long as he's consistently rushing apart,

Speaker 3 (01:05:53):

Consistently inconsistent.

Speaker 5 (01:05:55):

Yeah, that's fine. Totally fine with that. Well, I guess depends on how you think about it. I don't want it consistent tempo, fluctuations up and down. That's a nightmare to work with. But some guys just push ahead of the beat, that's fine. Most drummers kind of like to rush it a tiny bit because then they can hear the click. It's that thing where when you're right on the click, the disappears and it's kind of scary. It's like driving on an eight lane highway and as soon as you're in one of your lanes, then all of the lane markers disappear. But you have to stay exactly in the lane you're in, even though you can't see the markers. So a lot of drummers like to push it a little bit and it gives them that kind of security of hearing the click right after their beat and then knowing if they need to adjust it all.

(01:06:36):

But yeah, just using my ears and knowing what I can't edit and what I can't edit. So kick drums are easy as hell, especially I think cattle is all sample. I don't think I've ever used any natural mic. I mean I always probably record it, but it's not blended. It's just all sample. So if there's a kick fluff on a part, I could care less. I mean, he might be upset with himself, but I don't give a shit. I'll tell him, you focus on your hands. That's the important part. That's really what I can't separate are your hands.

Speaker 4 (01:07:04):

And the faster it goes, the harder it gets

Speaker 5 (01:07:06):

Really. Yeah, I mean if the kick ble it, I don't care.

Speaker 4 (01:07:11):

Or isn't it the other way around?

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):

Depends on what's going on.

Speaker 4 (01:07:15):

Yeah. Yeah. I guess situationally dependent. Alright, so Phil Paco is saying, when are you coming out with your own line of beers?

Speaker 5 (01:07:25):

I don't know. That's kind of like a special thing you get when you record here. It's like a perk. It's a studio perk to get some dero

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):

Beers. Nice. I like your style

Speaker 5 (01:07:34):

Actually. Yeah, you got to save some of those. But that's actually something I haven't had a lot of time for lately, man. The studio, which is mostly good has been just crazy busy. I mean, I don't have time to blink anymore. I've just been nonstop work and I booked out super far. So when it gets to the weekend, I just want to do nothing at all, or either that or I'm just still in here working. When I have free time, I usually sit in a closet with the lights off and just stare into nothingness.

Speaker 4 (01:08:06):

So I am guessing that you brew your own beer.

Speaker 5 (01:08:08):

I do, yeah. I brew my own beer

Speaker 4 (01:08:10):

And

Speaker 5 (01:08:11):

I was kind of real into it for a long time. It's got to the point lately where the beer nerds, especially here in Colorado, have kind of made me hate all of them with a passion, but I still love beer and I have a lot of friends that, there's a place in town called True Brewing that's actually getting some notoriety. They've kind of been in Decibel a few times because full on heavy metal brewery and they name beers after bands and bands that come through on town, drink for free kind of stuff. And the dude's way into a really cool guy. I met him before he opened and we've actually done a little music series together. That's kind of just when we have time for it to where him and I pick bands, mostly local bands and cover their recording expenses entirely. And they come in and just do one or two songs and we release it for free on band camp just to kind of help them out and point a little direction to both of our businesses.

(01:09:07):

And it's kind of a fun little thing. And we get to kind of pick bands that we want that they may not have either the cash or the desire I guess, to come work here. But they're usually all really stoked and typically turn into clients, which is a benefit to me. But it's kind of a fun thing that we get to pick and just cover a band and it's got to be quick. I can't do a tech death band because one song will take a week and I can't just give a week out for free, but come in and do, it's usually kind of like the dirtier stuff. And we did a track for band called In the Company of Serpents. It's just like a two piece guitar and bass, like Barone guitar, and he runs like four amps and with bass amps and stuff like that. And it's just kind of real dirty, grimy stuff. It's pretty cool. And I get to work with some different things and we get to feel good about ourselves releasing some free music out there.

Speaker 4 (01:10:00):

Nice. Nice. Sounds good. Well, Dave, thank you so much for coming on and shooting the shit with us.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Thanks for being so open man, and thanks for your time and definitely looking forward to what you put out next and maybe hopefully one day trying one of your beers.

Speaker 5 (01:10:17):

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. If any of you guys are ever in Colorado, then you've got a bed to sleep in and some beers to drink. Mandatory sick. Thank you. Thanks a lot, man. Take care. This

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):

Episode of the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is brought to you by Joey Sturgiss tones creating unique audio tools for musicians and producers everywhere. Unleash your creativity with Joey Sturgis tones. Visit joey sturgis tones.com for more info. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit URM academy slash po.