JOEL WANASEK: The Neuroscience of Mixing, Why Converters Matter, How to Get Clients

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Joey Sturgis's 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

Speaker 2 (00:23):

Levi. Hey everybody, this is Joel Wanasek. Welcome back to another edition of Dear Joel. I'm going to answer your questions that you guys submit. If you guys want to submit them, it is al at URM Academy and send your questions and please be as detailed as possible so I can come in and give you guys the best answers possible. Also, it is paramount that you put Dear Joel in the subject line if you want your submission to be taken seriously. So we're back here with round two. It's just going to be me flying solo today and let's dig right into your questions. So Josh asks, Hey Joel, how many times did you ever feel like giving up when you started mixing? I practice mixing as much as I can and I try to learn to hear bad frequencies. I really feel like in some ways I'm making progress, but I do agree with AL'S theory of fuck it and I'm going to release some tracks this year.

(01:15):

Sometimes I seriously feel like I don't have the ears to make the powerful energetic mixes that I hear in my head. I'm not going to give up and I know that skill takes time to learn, but I'm curious if you've ever felt like some hopelessness or anything like that when it comes to audio engineering and how'd you overcome that feeling? Thanks in advance and I appreciate all of your wisdom that you share in your Well, Josh, welcome to mixing. Mixing is a frustrating lifelong learning process, and I'll say that I feel like every single mixer has had a point where they're like, I just don't have it, or I'm not any good at this or this is really a struggle. The thing you need to understand about mixing, it has a very slow and long learning curve, and I'm going to equate this to guitar playing.

(01:59):

It's like learning a really crazy guitar technique, for example, like speed picking. You sit there practicing days and days and days and you don't feel like you're getting any faster and then suddenly you're like, boom, you have a massive breakthrough and then you're playing much quicker and much cleaner and then you keep practicing more and more and more and then hey, that happens again. Mixing is kind of the same thing. There's a very long learning curve and it happens in steps. It's not really like a smooth transition because of the way the brain works and neural pathways and neuroplasticity and all that fancy scientific stuff goes down. If you study how the brain works, basically you'll understand that the brain has these things called neurons, which are these little nodes and they make connections. So your brain has to sit there on the brainstem, make a bunch of connections between the neurons for any new activity or idea or process that you're training and it's going to make a bunch of connections and work on it and work on it, and you're going to do a lot of trial and error and neurons that have bad ideas or whatever are going to go dormant and fall off while ones that have good ideas that you're reinforcing and things like that are going to actually come in and they're going to reinforce themselves and grow stronger.

(03:06):

And then eventually your brain kind of has a moment where you have an aha and then you kind of jump up the ladder. So you're going to be sitting there and you're going to be mixing and mixing and mixing. It may not feel like you're getting any better, you're going to be struggling for a long time, but then one day you're going to sit there and you're going to be like, you know what, man, I can just hear better today. All of a sudden I'm sitting here and I'm just like, man, I'm hearing all these different frequencies that I've never heard before. I'm really sensitive now to say 2K, I've never been so sensitive to 2K, but now I hear it all over the place and now I know how much is too much or not enough. So it's really important to be patient with this stuff because it may not feel like you guys are actually getting better at mixing, but the reality is you are and you're going to look back every three months or so and you're going to be like, man, everything I did prior to last week kind of sucks and you're going to feel like that and that's going to go on for years and no matter how good you get at this stuff, you're always going to have those moments where your hearing grows as you grow, as you do more work.

(04:01):

So you really have to build those neural connections. It's really important and it takes time. But I also want to state the importance of good practice When you're practicing, it's important to have good habits and really work on your fundamentals because you guys have noticed if you've been following nail the mix for a long time and you've seen all these awesome guys like Kane Chico and Nali and et cetera, we've had many great mixers on now we'll continue to have all kinds of great ones on in the future. You'll have noticed that a lot of these guys don't use super crazy chains that are anything really fancy. They keep it simple. What they are is masters of fundamentals because the big time mixing game is really about speed and being able to pump out a lot of songs. If you can sit and work on a song for six months, it better sound amazing, but being able to get a mix that's competitive with the best of the best and do it in a few hours and do it consistently now, that's what separates the big time guys from everybody else.

(04:57):

So it's really about being able to mix very quickly and being able to mix at a very high level. It's kind of like the artist in the park. There was a very famous thing I read once in a book where they, they're talking about a joke where somebody comes up to the artist and they're like, okay, we'll draw a picture. The artist sits down in five minutes and makes this beautiful masterpiece and the person's like, oh wow, this is incredible how much? And the artist goes, well, a hundred bucks. And they look at the artist and they're like, that's so expensive. You only spent five minutes on it and the artist stops looks some dead square in the eye. It said five minutes in 25 years. So that just illustrates the point of what I'm saying that these skills and these neural connections to master something, what does Malcolm Gladwell say?

(05:38):

It's 10,000 hours, maybe audio is 20,000. I don't know, maybe we're never truly masters at this stuff, but that's what makes it fun is it's creative and it's definitely always a journey and there's a lot of work that goes into this stuff. So Josh, you're always learning when you're doing this, you're always growing, so just keep mixing. It's important in my opinion, to not just mix one song. I feel like if you sit there and you're mixing one song all month, let's talk about nail the mix. And I have said this on the podcast before, but I'm going to reiterate it because I really want to pound this stuff into your head. If you guys sit there and you spend all month mixing the song for whatever month you're working on for nail the mix, you're doing it wrong. You shouldn't be doing that. You should maybe do a day, maybe a revisions over two or three days and then you should submit it because you're going to learn faster if you're mixing 30 songs that are different in a month than you are if you're just lurking on one song to hone your skills.

(06:31):

So you may not be able to get a certain style or you may struggle with something and all that fun stuff at first, but it's going to get easier. You just got to keep doing it and you got to keep working on it. And that's a big problem is a lot of people, especially when they're starting out, they'll listen to their mixes and they'll listen to something that they're would be like an idealistic mix and they'll be like, oh man, my mix sucks. It's not good enough. Well, it's okay if it sucks guys. I'll tell you, every mixer who's ever mixed in the history of the world has started off as a shitty terrible mixer who put out really shitty mixes. You got to mix a good thousand songs, 5,000, 10,000 songs, who knows how many but thousands of songs before you actually start getting good at this stuff and with any sort of actual reliable consistency and speed.

(07:16):

So what I'm saying in a very long, very tangential way is that don't be discouraged, man. You just got to keep going. You got to keep practicing and you got to keep hammering at it. Yeah, it's frustrating. I remember sitting there five, six years ago like, man, why doesn't my mix sound as good as David Benes? Why isn't mine as good as Chris Lord algae? And getting really frustrated and not knowing why mine wasn't as good. I'm like, well, my drums kind of sound just as punchy and just as big by themselves or my guitar sound like they're about just as good or my mix sounds just as loud, but when I put on nickelback, it just sounds so much better than mine. But my snare drum sounds like his or my kick drum sounds like his. I don't understand why his mix is better than mine.

(07:56):

Again, that comes with practice. I mean it's just like EQing guys, your here is going to be sensitive to different frequencies at different point when you're working and you're growing, it takes a very long time to acclimate and to learn to hear different regions are going to be sensitive. When I started out, I could not hear midrange at all. I completely didn't understand the concept of cutting mids or carving midrange. It was just like boost highs with shelves or boost lows. I want more base or more trouble. And I started there and then I finally started being able to do a little bit of mid cutting and then I started becoming sensitive to certain areas. I had a range where everything had too much 500 in it, then everything had too much 700 in it, then there was too much 4K and everything or then too much, one 20 and then too much 80, and then you become more and more sensitive to all these different areas in your mixing.

(08:44):

So hearing frequencies, hearing compression, all of these things, they take a lot of time. What's important, like I said many times now you got to mix a lot of different songs. Try to not absolutely beat the crap out of yourself. Remember that This is fun guys, and you got into making audio because it's exciting, it's passionate. I remember the first time I stepped into a studio and there was all this gear and all these lights and I was like, this is sick. I didn't know anything about audio, but I knew I wanted that to be part of my life. It just felt right when I walked in the studio and it really fascinated me and we've all had that experience. That's why we're here. That's why you're listening to this show. There's something about mixing and making music and recording it that got you excited about it and got you passionate and got you invested in it.

(09:26):

So you got to be cognizant of that. Always realize that that passion's in you no matter how stressed out or frustrated you are or how much stress we put on ourselves, a lot of it is self-imposed sitting there in our head, beating ourself up. But in reality, if your client thinks the song sounds good and it's competitive, then why beat yourself up? So yeah, guys, I'll tell you, even on the highest levels, you're going to have days where you're going to put out shitty mixes or you put out a mix or the band comes in and they tell you that, oh, this is crap. You should have blah, blah, blah. I want the guitars up. And you put the mix out and all the kids in the forms are like, dude, this mix sucks. You totally bombed this. The guitars are way out of balance, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you're sitting there, well, the band made me dudes, but fine, whatever.

(10:12):

So I'm just saying it's going to happen. You are going to put out stuff. Some people are going to like it, some people are going to hate it. What's more important is just to keep putting stuff out. You cannot make progress if you do not put stuff out. If you sit there and you dwell and you overanalyze stuff, what's going to happen is that you're never going to achieve anything. I once had an intern in who came in and he said, he was like, oh, this track I'm working on, he's put all this months into this track. And he was like, dude, this is going to blow me up and get me all this work. And I'm thinking, I'm like, no, it's not. And he was like, oh no, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, it didn't. And the reason while it didn't is because yeah, maybe he did a song and it was produced really well and it sounded good when it was done, but the end of the day it's not one band and one song that a lot of people are going to hear.

(10:58):

You need to do 50 bands with 50 different songs or a hundred or 300 songs, and then when you have a lot of people hearing the stuff that you've worked on, then they're going to want to come and work with you. You need to find a way to get lots of music out where people can listen to it and lots of different styles showcasing some of your skills. The only way you can do that is if you work on a lot of different things. I just want to say again, it's important to just do it. You are getting better at this. You're going to have major leaps and major jumps. It takes time. Just be patient and always remember your passion because the minute you forget your passion, the minute you get frustrated, that's when it's time to step away for a little bit and then come back.

(11:38):

So go take a walk, man. Don't beat yourself up because every mixer I've ever known in my entire life, we all doubt ourselves and we all question our methods and we're all like, oh, is that cool? Or is that not cool? Are we doing any good? And it's just natural. It's a natural human inclination to doubt ourselves. So it's okay guys. It's all I'm saying. It's okay. Keep working on it. You're going to get it. Alright, the next question here is from San Terry. Dear Joel, what are the most useful ideas you've had over the years? Purpose. I'm trying to expand my bank of things to try anytime I face a problem. For example, low pass automation on Toms 3.8 K, cut on guitars, et cetera. Okay, this is an interesting question Santer, because I don't feel like there's any specific technique or group of techniques that have really been aha or holy shit moments where the light has gone on and I'm like, oh my God, I can see everything so much better now and I understand mixing so much more.

(12:40):

For me, it was really understanding principles and those were the aha moments that I had where I sat down and I was just like, oh my. Now I understand. That makes so much sense. So I'll give you a good example of that. So once upon a time as the story goes on, I was sitting there reading an interview with JJP who's Jack Joseph, very famous mixer, and I was reading this and trying to find information. What does JJP do because his mixes are great, and JJP was just like, yeah, a great mix is the key to a great mix is really nailing the mid range. And I sat there at face value when I read that, I'm like, well, that's stupid and obvious. Anybody who mixes knows that you have to get the mid range right. Oh my, was I wrong? This was such a major epiphany for me that I had many years later when I actually learned how to really EQ and got really good at this stuff and started kicking out really high level mixes that were competitive and started getting a lot of good work one day.

(13:39):

It just dawned on me, I thought of that quote and I was just like, that is one of the most brilliant things in audio that I have ever heard in my life. But the thing is a lot of people look at general advice and things like that at face value. They understand them, but do they really understand them? Now think about what I just said for a second. So looking at something and understanding it, yeah, okay, I get what the words are, but do you understand what it means? Do you understand what it actually embodies? Are you living it? Is it part of your ingrained subconscious and your habits and your behavior at that point? You understand it simply reading words on a piece of paper and being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That's not understanding. Understanding is when you have that moment where you're like, oh, wow, where has this been my whole life?

(14:26):

So let me explain what he actually meant by that. So he says, the trick to getting an amazing mix, it's all about nailing or getting your mid range. So I sat there for many years and I was just like, yeah, well obviously, but I didn't really understand what that meant and what it meant to me was really sitting down and learning how to get, there's a certain curve in every genre that there is essentially, we'll call it like a tolerance, like a percentage when it comes to getting your mid range, there's what you would call the professional a-list mid range, which some songs may have a little bit mid or might be a little bit more scooped, et cetera, but there's a window and learning to not only memorize, but hear that curve in the songs that you're getting and be able to reproduce that sort of clarity in the mid range every time you mix where the mix is jelled and glued together, but clear and separated at the same time and getting that trade off.

(15:16):

That's what it's all about. It's about really being able to know every single frequency range intimately, knowing how to lock all of your instruments together very tightly like a puzzle and to put things at will in the frequency spectrum where you need to, for example, if you guys have seen nailed the mix, you might notice I mix a lot in solo. That's because I'm automatically just by listening to a mix from experience, I can hear where everything I want to put it, what frequencies are stacking for the most part. I don't need to do a lot of incon stuff. I can just move things around at will. So it's about being able to take frequencies and play with them like puzzle pieces that are interchangeable and put them together and just this goes here, that goes there and this goes here. Now I'm going to try switching this and this and then move this.

(15:59):

Once you can learn how to do that, then you really understand what it's like to get the mid-range right, and it has to fall into that curve. So there's a certain curve that radio has. There's a certain curve that a-list mixes have. Once you learn how to hear that curve and replicate it, that's really understanding that's what he meant. It's like a real epiphany moment. And a lot of people look at a statement like that and they're like, oh, that's so basic. That's so stupid. That's so head on. It'd be like saying, oh great mixes have great fader balance. Oh, well that's stupid, man. I already know that, bro. Well, I mean guys, you should see how many mixes I judge every month at nail the mix. And I'll tell you that most of you guys aren't getting your balances even close to what would be listenable.

(16:42):

You can tell if somebody's a guitar player or a singer. So people may say, oh, that's a really simple stupid concept. But reality is then you listen to their mixes and like, well, dude, that's what you're struggling with the most. So it takes a lot of self-observation, and what I really wanted to say is a lot of people look at things head on, they look at a challenge or a problem and they're like, Hey, fader balance is important for great mixes. Okay, well yeah, fader balance is important for great mixes. They don't sit down and actually think about what it means. Like I said, the difference between knowing and really understanding and embodying. So a person who really understands balance knows how to balance and get great balances and really sounding mixes every time they mix. A person that does not know how to balance will turn in a mix where the kick drum is 10 db too loud.

(17:30):

The guitars are almost inaudible. The bass is super loud, but there's no bottom end in it and you can't hear the vocals. You know what I mean? And those mixes happen all the time. So you guys got to be really honest with yourself. I think about fundamentals, and this was another thing San Terry that really came to me that I understood many years later when I started mixing, I remember I watched this DVD, excuse me, I watched this DVD by a guy named Charles Dye who was a pop mixer, worked on Ricky Martin and stuff, and he had this mixing course mix it like a record. It was great. It was like the only thing out back then in the early two thousands, and he had all these plugins on every channel and he's like, I got the DIY tape and the tube plugin, and then that goes into this, into that, and he had eight plugins on every single channel.

(18:18):

So when I started mixing, I was like, okay, I need more plugins. I need to emulate analog e saturation, I need to get more complicated, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what happened as a result of that is I was needlessly overcomplicating my mixes because I had that certain ego part of me in my head that says, more equals better, more complexity equals good. The fundamentals that's for newbies, those are for people that are just starting. What's important is learning the most advanced side chain automated parallel compression, crazy technique tom gating thing or whatever. That's what people get excited about on forums and we're always preaching this, but this is like I feel like the old wise man sitting on a mountain saying, come on guys, shaking his cane. You're messing up. Don't do this. And everybody's like, ah, nah, dude, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

(19:03):

I'm telling you guys, fundamentals are everything. I did not realize this until later in my career and the day that I sat down and started doing less of fancy mixing and more of just really focusing on getting my EQ and my balance and my limiting or compression, that was when my mixes started getting a lot more expensive sounding and I started getting hired a lot more and a lot more people started saying, dude, your mixes are getting really good. You want to mix our next album? We really liked that last one you did. So that's kind of a major breakthrough that I had that was, like I said, it's not just one's particular trick, it's a comprehensive understanding of fundamentals and absolute mastery of them. Going back to what I was talking about earlier on the first question, when you practice something, it's important to really practice the fundamentals a lot because if you don't practice the fundamentals, your brain learns wrong things and it becomes a habit.

(19:59):

So if you automatically go for some crazy chain, but you don't get your EQ right, well, maybe you should spend more time practicing EQing and hearing EQ and then worry about the fancy crazy technique. So guys, practice your fundamentals. That was for me, just really understanding audio at a whole nother level. That was a transformative moment in my career. Another big one for me was ignoring everything I read on a lot of the forums that would be like conventional audio wisdom, so don't EQ more than three db. If you have to EQ it, then you have the source wrong. That's a lot of horse shit for mixing. I feel like something, and I think you guys are definitely getting this, but again, I'll reiterate this point, I started out mixing and I was like, okay, don't EQ more than three db. Don't use more than a two to one ratio on compression and no more than one to two or three DB max and I followed all these rules that all these old guys in the forums gave out back in the day and you read in the recording books and the result of it is my mixes sucked.

(21:02):

And the day that I just sat down and just said, you know what? Fuck it. As Al would say, I'm just going to do whatever sounds good. And I sat there and I started cranking on the EQ and did extreme compression and I just turned knobs and I stopped looking at meters and I stopped looking at numbers and math. That was another major breakthrough for me in audio because that was when my mixes went from sounding absolutely like shit to, Hey, people are now starting to pay me and I'm starting to get local bands in my studio. I'm making better sounding mixes. So don't be afraid of extreme things. Don't be afraid of what your meters say. They should take meters off of all gear in my opinion, because all they do is mislead people and give people wrong information. For example, that's why we made DFQ by drum forge because when you mix and you're looking at a graph and you can see that it's an 18 DB boost, people freak out.

(21:48):

People normally never do that kind of stuff. A lot of people think it's wrong and they have this preconception, but in DFQ, it's just a percentage. You don't know if it's an 18 DB boost because in every single mode, the maximum or minimum range changes on the EQ and you have no idea what it is. So you might be boosting only three DB all the way at the range or you might be boosting 20. It just depends on what the EQ is doing and how appropriate it is for the sound. So that's why I like mixing on tools like that because it really takes a lot of that preconception because even though I know better and I've been mixing for a long time, when I look at the compression meter and I know that I'm hitting 20 DB of compression, my brain is telling me that's wrong, but my ears are like, dude, this is badass.

(22:27):

So it's the same thing with eq. So I just want to say that there's always that stigma that's going to be in your head and you have to be able to turn that off and overcome it. So there you go, San Terry. Those are some of the most useful ideas I've ever had. I wish I could give you something specific like dude frequency, gating, Toms or whatever. None of that stuff changed my life. What's changed my life was really just fundamentals and understanding a lot of the wisdom. So don't look at things head on. This is something David Beeth taught me that again, years later I finally understood, don't look at things head on. Always look at things around the sides because when you look at things around the sides, that is when you discover all kinds of crazy things. I'll give you a good example of that.

(23:10):

If you guys have seen the machine head nailed the mix, it's in your account. If you're nail the mix subscriber, you can go. If you weren't signed up for that, you can go get the back months, you can purchase 'em. I think it's under past months or something like that. Just look it up. But if you go watch machine head, there's a point in that mix where I'm EQing the bass and we're listening to the guitars and the drums and not the bass because it's not about the bass and what the bass sounds like I'm explaining, I'm looking around the size telling you, look, I'm trying to tighten the mix and I'm doing that by moving a very narrow notch in the base and we're listening to everything else. Instead of EQing the base, we're basically EQing the mix using the base as the tool.

(23:45):

And that was a great example that I went on at length about and showed you guys in very good detail on that machine head mix. So you guys should definitely check that out. If you have not seen that, that's like a 12 and a half hour mix session. It's pretty long, pretty brutal. There's a lot of information there. So San Terry, that's where I'm at on that. So next question, Carl. My question is about converter quality. Could you go into more detail about what makes and breaks a converter for you? What do you listen for to determine if you like converters before buying them? I feel that the difference should be in the attack portion of the signal, though I'm really not sure. What impact do you think converter quality has on the recorded signal considering that the instruments are well set up in tune, mics are good and everything else in order.

(24:28):

Would you say that it's like the last one or 5% or more also there? Is there a noticeable difference while mixing? Can't talk today? All right, converters do make a difference. There are lots of people on the line, self-proclaimed experts, none of them by the way, who are any good or worth a shit at mixing. Let me just get that out of the way. I mean, I don't mean to be a dick and attack somebody's credibility, but if you're going to make a claim that converters don't matter and you can't hear the difference between converters, well, I've heard a lot of these people that claim these things work and all of them can't mix to save their ass and none of them have worked in any records that anybody gives a shit about. So I feel like in my opinion, that sort of, oh, well you're fooling yourself with bias is a bullshit fucking argument that idiots portray because they're just, I don't know.

(25:18):

Well scientifically Bob, no, fuck that. It's absolute horse shit and I'm very opinionated and very passionate about this, but guys, I've switched converters here in the studio. My burls blew up literally. I have three different sets of converters. Four I've been in and out of and using here I have an audience sitting here, I have the burl, I have the Beringer and some other nonsense and I've been switching them out and I will tell you that even on the D side or the dangerous, yeah, even on the DAC side, the DAC digital to analog side, there's a huge difference in resolution in quality. It sounds when I go to monitoring off the barrel to the Beringer, it literally sounds like putting a low pass filter on the speakers and basically taking all the separation and clarity I hear in the mix and just putting a hazy, it's like putting a blanket over the speakers and the same thing on the ad side when I record into the audience versus the burl, there's so much more depth in 3D ness that is as I have an A word 3D, this, I don't know, we'll just make it up.

(26:14):

It doesn't matter. It's just such a more 3D depth. It sits in the mix better. It just sounds so much bigger and more organic than something like an audience converter or especially more than a baringer. So I want to say yes, converters actually fucking matter. If you can hear the difference between an API and an eve preamp, you can hear the difference between a converter like a miek and an RME and an apogee and a lynx and a prism and a burl or anything else. So I don't understand why people can't hear it. I think they're fucking deaf or they just don't know how to mix and they should be doing something else for a living other than audio. I just want to say that like I said, I know I'm opinionated. I know that there's going to be some people all up in arms.

(26:54):

You guys are going to send me a bunch of hate mail. But guys, all I know is this. Listen, I'm a mixer. I have mixed thousands and thousands of songs in my life, usually on average about 500 a year. I've been mixing a lot less over the last year in 2016 because I've been focusing more on unstoppable recording machine and drum forge. But I still did mix a lot of songs last year. I'll tell you guys, when you mix every single day, 10 hours a day minimum, when you change one small thing in your setup, you notice immediately it's like sitting there mixing. You try three different limiters on a snare drum or a vocal, you can immediately be like, ah, this one doesn't sound right. This one doesn't sound right. That okay, the stressor today on this guy's vocal sounds right. Well, we can't a it scientifically, blah, blah, blah bullshit.

(27:37):

This is a fucking creative art man. You know when something's different, it's obvious. You can feel it, you can hear it. When you listen to a certain set of speakers and you change your speakers to a different set of speakers, there's a different frequency response. You can hear it when you record everything into an API. It has a certain tonal characteristic. You can hear it when you record then everything into a Neve or an ENT pre or something like that. It has a different characteristic and total characteristic. Same thing with converters. When you record into a different set of converters, it sounds different on the playback side as well as the ad side period. If you can't hear it, you're fucking death. So that being said, what to listen for. So a good thing to do with converters in my opinion, is to shoot a bunch out.

(28:19):

So if you have a good, you got to hear it in your setup and you don't want to sit there and you don't want to listen to the sales guy try to convince you, you don't want to sit here and listen to some dude on the internet tell you that you can't hear and you you're dumb and you don't understand and you don't understand science and how this chip specs out and all that shit. You know what I mean? Fuck those that you need to sit down. You need to get the converter in your studio and you need to listen to several of them side by side sitting there and doing loop back tests and this and that and blind ab listen, here's the practical way to do it. So go grab a song, record a bunch of DI's and try amping them now. And you can argue, oh, it's a flaw test.

(29:02):

I don't give a shit. Listen, you can hear the difference. It's just like using different preamps, rear amp, some guitars and some bass through some converters. Then plug in another set of converters, reamp the same guitars in the bass level, match them exactly. Check the RMS and peak metering and all that stuff. Do it by ear as well. Just get it where it sounds identical in the ab. Then record them in through another set of converters using the same pre, the same mic, the same setup, et cetera. And then when you do that, you'll hear a noticeable difference in the quality. If you cannot, you are either monitoring and garbage. Your ears are not developed or you absolutely are in the worst sounding room ever. It should be obvious to you if you have any sort of experience mixing and you're any decent at it, my wife could hear the difference and she doesn't know anything.

(29:50):

I'm like, listen to this. And she's like, oh, this one sounds way better or way more clear. So I'll tell you my story with burs, and this I feel like is a good proof of concept here, just debating whether converters match or whether they matter. So I got a bunch of converters in from my vintage king guy. I got in like an apogee. I had an RME in. I had a miek, I got a Lynx. I got a burl to hear what the hype is, and I've been using miek for many years. So I had all these converters in and I went in and I amped. I used the Dax side and I would listen to them and compare Dax and kind of set them up on a switcher. Then I would record audio in and try amping some things and I would try recording vocals through them and see how they sit in the tracks.

(30:30):

And I was really blown away by the burl. It just had this sound. I was like, man, that to me sounds incredible. There was a definite sound increase. Now obviously there's a transformer in the burl sort a little bit more colored, but just switching from the RME to the MiTek, the RME sounded a little bit darker, a little bit more rolled off or the miek had more of a different top end to it, but there was always this weird high end that the MiTek converters had that I didn't like and that were just a little bit weird to my ear. So I'll say that they all sound a little bit different. What aesthetic you like it matters, and I also equate it to preamp. So think of mixing as like a dart board. So you come in and you, you're going to take a small dart and you're going to throw it at the board with a painted tip and a really good converter or a really good preamp is going to be like putting a small dot.

(31:19):

Whereas if you took a water balloon filled with paint and you throw it at the dart board and it just splattered all over, that's what a shitty piece of gear sounds like. It sounds smeared and it sounds sloppy and it interferes. High quality gear usually fits things into space with little dots with a lot more precision. There's not as much spill, it's more concentrated in a tighter sound, and sometimes it's kind of hard to hear that if it's between a preamp or a converter in solo, if you record a vocal through each converter and then sit there in mono and a it and you're really struggling it, but you got to throw it in the mix and then you got to compare and you got to get it EQ or not eq, sorry, volume matched. That's a really good way. For example, if you want to hear that, if it's between an LA two, a hardware and plugin, they sound really, really similar.

(32:00):

It's almost impossible for a new, but I remember having this and doing this test to hear it in solo, but when you throw it in the mix, the hardware will immediately sound different because there's all this extra distortion and all this analog components that it's running through and the feel and the given, the reaction of the compressor is a lot different than how the LA two A plugin sounds. And immediately when you put it in the mix, the vocal had more of a halo and more space around it and it fit in better. So it's the same thing with converters. When you're record into a really good converter, you're going to have much higher quality. The thing is, I think converters are a good investment when you find one that you like. If you buy a quality converter, it affects all of your work, not only on what you're monitoring and mixing on, but every single thing that you record goes through that converter.

(32:42):

So it's very important to have a high quality ad, even just two channels of really high quality preamp and ad won't break the bank, but you can get really high quality resolution. I'll give you another example of converters. So at my studio, I had the burl, well, I still haven't told you guys the story about mixing, but I'll get there after the shootout, let me backtrack. I went to a friend's studio and he had the digi design converters. He ran through the exact same microphone, pre and microphone. I brought it to his studio, plugged it in. I brought all the tracks home I did at his studio and I'm like, dude, why does all the shit I recorded at your house sound like it has a fucking blanket over it? It literally all sounds like it's underwater compared to my stuff. We use the exact same gear except we use the digital design converters versus the burrow.

(33:23):

So he was like, what do you mean? I'm like, listen, I played him back by demo of the song that I recorded on the same equipment with the same singer, the same gear, whatever. Then the version we did at his place and his sounded noticeably worse. The only difference was the converter. So here's my story about mixing. So I shot out all these converters. I tried the burl out to see what the hype was about. I came in and I was doing a bunch of mixing for this label. I amped or I reprinted my master. I had analog summing through my burls and reprinted it just through the A, d, C, and I sent it over. I made one change, like the high head up one db, and I sent it over to the owner of the label who listens to several of my mixes a week.

(34:02):

And he was like, dude, what did you change? I'm like, what do you mean Now? I didn't tell him I changed anything. He was like, well, what did you change? Something sounds different in your work. I've never heard your mixes sounding so wide and so deep. And he's like, this sounds great, dude. What did you change? You got way better at mixing. And I, I could tell there was something better and it was subtle, but it was an extra 10%. But he was just like, dude, what did you do? And I'm like, well, I switched converters. I am just testing this new a DC. I'm renting out and I'm going to maybe buy. And he's like, dude, it sounds sick. Holy crap. So we sent it to the band. We didn't tell him. The band immediately called back. They're like, dude, what did you change on the mix?

(34:37):

I'm like, I just turned up the hi hat. I have db. They're like, no, man. The bottom end, the guitars, the vocals, the way everything sits in the mix. He's like, dude, the mix sounds better. Are you sure you didn't remix this or change stuff? I'm like, no. They're like, dude, it sounds sick. Whatever you did. And I'm sitting there, well, I got new converters and they're like, well, damn, there you go. So that was a good validation for me that of what I was hearing when I was more in the skeptic phase, like, yeah, do converters matter? That's why I shot out a bunch and listened to a bunch and had some friends over and we all came to the same conclusion.

(35:08):

We sat down and we listened to these converters, we shot 'em out, we compared 'em, we amped, we recorded things through them, we compared them and we just AED them in sessions and you can hear the difference, but you got to do the homework and which converter sounds better to you? Well, that's up to you. I know it's hard. You got to work out a deal with somebody like vintage can. You can say, Hey listen, can I get five different converter units in and send me some B stock? I'll put deposits down whatever. I'm going to keep the one. I'm going to buy the one that I like. And at that point, the salesmen will usually say, yeah, sure, absolutely, because they know that you're going to spend money. So make an educated decision on this stuff. Guys. Don't just sit and read some guy telling you that, oh, converters don't matter, blah, blah, blah.

(35:47):

Literally every a-list dude I've ever met in my life knows that converters matter. It's not even debatable to us because we all mix for a living and we get paid for the quality of the way that we hear. And so why would you listen to somebody that doesn't that, oh, read specs on a sheet and says, oh, well these spec out the same, theoretically they use the same chip, they shouldn't sound the same, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, guess what? There is a massive difference in the sound of converters depending on what's in it. Analog circuits have different sounds. Components have variance in them. There's a whole bunch of reasons. I don't care. I'm not an electrical engineer. All I care about is the practical application of this stuff. And I'm telling you right now, I can hear a difference. It's obvious. My assistant, my intern can hear the difference.

(36:26):

Even my damn wife can hear the difference between converters. But some guys who claim to be audio pros quote cannot on the internet. So I'll tell you, man, Carl, get some converters in. Listen to them. Listen to the depth, meaning the front to the back. Listen to the width, the left to the right. Listen to how the instruments sit into the sound space. Do they sound like there's clarity around them? Do they sound like they have depth? Do they sound like they're more defined or does everything sound kind of hazy and underwater or fuzzy or does everything sound warm and clear or punchier? You're going to hear these different characteristics and somewhere in there you're going to find a box that gets you all stoked. That sounds really good. So that's my take on converters. Alright, next question. Our friend at Ryan, Bruce Fluff wants to know if Al was made up of mostly 4K, would you still be friends with him?

(37:15):

Well, that's a damn good question. I hate 4K and if Al was made up of mostly 4K, I feel like I would hate Al too. But if I used the URM Desecrator plugin on Al and removed all of the 4K from Al, then him and I could still be friends. So let's just get that out there. So if I deregulate al as a human being with that plugin, then him and I can be friends again. So Ryan, yes is the answer. Only if I removed the 4K, but if I couldn't do it then him and I, we couldn't be friends anymore. Alright, Nick is asking, I've opened up more days in my schedule for recording and I need to expand my client base from the few regular clients I have other than going to shows and networking. Any other tips for expanding my client base?

(37:59):

I've been working in my city playing for seven years. I know a lot of the best musicians in town. How do I approach friends that I've played with to keep me in mind for recording and mixing their projects? I cannot read today GS without making it seem like I'm desperate for work. Also, any advice on getting into doing mixes for bands and artists online who live in another country, it's probably an effective to cold contact bands. So I'm wondering if you had any tips on building relationships with a band and artists only contacting you online. Thanks Nick. Alright, let's talk about client acquisition for a minute here. And we're going to have something we're coming out with at URM. There's going to be another level after URM enhanced. So we got nailed the mix, we got enhanced and we have something else coming out that's going to be really focused on careers and things like this.

(38:46):

And man, we've got whole courses based on all this great business stuff that's going to really help you guys make a lot more money and become a lot more successful. You got to learn the studio business. So we're going to be breaking that out and unraveling that hopefully pretty soon in the coming months. So let's talk about some answers to your questions. First and foremost, if you've got a bunch of friends and all the bands and you've already done the homework because you build rapport, you've already built rapport with them, and a lot of times people will just go up and hand you a cd, be like, yo, dude, come record with me. That doesn't work. Fuck that. That's garbage. You got to build rapport with people. Get in, become friends with people and I feel like a good way to do that is maybe invite somebody over and like, Hey dude, come hang out.

(39:25):

You should see my studio sometime. And hey, if you guys want to record a track, I'm just sitting here and I got my studio set up and I really like recording and let's do a song together. You got to make the offer and invite them. Don't try to hustle them for money, do something for free for them first, but get them in your studio. Find an excuse, throw a party or something. Al had a bunch of people come over to his house and hang out and check out my studio. Hey, you guys want to hear some mixes I've been working on? What do you think? And if your mixes are dope and they slam, your buddies are going to listen to it, they're going to be like, Hey man, this sounds really good, blah, blah, blah. So if people are already your friends, I feel like it's a lot easier to sell them.

(39:58):

You just got to grow a little bit of balls and you got to be afraid to ask. I mean, you can't be afraid to ask them. You got to go up to them and you just got to be like, yo dude, come over, come have a drink and let's dick around with some music in the studio. And oh by the way, here, check this out, man. What do you think of this mix? I just did blah, blah, blah. I recorded my buddy's band and blah blah, blah. And then get their band over, whatever. Just find a way to get them in the studio. Find a way to work on a track without seeming making it seem like you're pushing them to do something. And then if they liked working with you, obviously they're going to be like, Hey Nick, we got three more songs. Can we come over and record us?

(40:30):

What would you want? And be like, ah, well I'll tell you what man. I'll give you x amount an hour, blah blah, blah. I'll cut you guys a deal because you guys are my friends and blah blah blah. And they'll be like, okay, I would start there Nick. So the next thing I think let's move on to the question about getting people online. So if you're going to be hitting up people online, you're going to be hitting them cold. You have to build rapport with people. So before you hit somebody up and offer a service, start talking to 'em, get to know them. Make an actual friendship. Don't just be like, bro, check out my studio, dude, I hate it. And this happens to me daily. Every other day I get hit up by some kid in some band and they're like, bro, check out my demo.

(41:10):

What do you think? Oh bro, I saw you have a website. You want to come in and I'll give you some SEO boosting shit, blah, blah, blah. That's not how you pitched to somebody. You get to know them. You come in and be like, Hey dude, I really like your band, man. I've been listening to you guys. You guys are really, really sick. I really like your music, blah, blah, blah. And then talk to the band. Get to know. Maybe become friends with the guitar player or something. Build an actual interest in them and get to know 'em. Eventually they're going to be like, oh, what do you do? Oh, I mix bands and stuff like that and blah blah blah. And they'll be like, cool. Be like, check out some of my work man. And then if they like it, you'll be like, Hey, I would love to do a track for you guys sometime.

(41:44):

But you want it to feel genuine. You kind of got to do it. It's not a big deal and you don't need it and you're not desperate and you don't care. There's something about it. You got to play hard to get a little bit. And when you build up that rapport with these people and you make a little bit of a friendship and a relationship and you comment on their stuff and you interact with their music and stuff like that, they're going to be a lot warmer to you and they're not going to be so standoffish like, dude, come record with me not fuck off. How about, Hey man, what's going on? I really like your band. You guys are really sick. Are you guys playing in town anytime soon? Are you going on tour? I'd love to see you guys. We should hang out and grab a drink when you guys are going to be in town.

(42:21):

Oh, you're going to be coming through in May and you're doing a mini tour, that's awesome. Let's, I'll come out and see you guys. We'll hang out and blah blah blah, blah. And hey, since you guys are in town, if you need a place to stay or whatever, come crash at my studio and hang out. There's lots of different strategies and things like that that you can use to get people in the door. Your point is you got to get rapport. Obviously you can't meet people physically that are internationally as easy unless you travel a lot, but you can still form a great relationship online with people and network with people and you just got to get 'em interested in what you do. But the only way somebody's going to be interested in what you do is if you are interested in them genuinely. Alright Adam, what's to know?

(42:59):

Have you ever gone for different tone for tight modern mixes red than the tried in two B 30 SLO rectal 51 50 stuff? I don't mean some shoehorn and sludgy orange sound, but something, a true alternative that still hits all the marks you'd expect the go-to amps to while retaining the unique character, Adam, every time I record guitars, I go in and I take all of my amp headss and I try every single one with the artist. Well first we'll pick a cab, then we'll pick a speaker, whatever speaker sounds the best on that cab. Then we will pick the microphone and then we'll pick the head. And I'll find when you go through that process with bands and they hear a bunch of different tones, you reamp a bunch of different sections with them and you play them, the band is really going to get jacked because that's a fun experience.

(43:44):

You can spend a day or two just doing that, going through picking tones, et cetera. And once you get a tone that they really like, they're going to be like, dude, that's my tone. I made that. And the guitar player is going to be really emotionally attached to it. You guys are going to be really excited and you might come out with something different and sometimes it ends up being the 51 50 through V thirties and a mesa, but sometimes you end up with something cool like G 12 H thirties and a black star or a Salvation Mods chupa Cobra through 75 watt Marshall speakers in a Mesa cab or something. You know what I mean? Don't be afraid to experiment. Things are tried and true because they work, but that does not mean that they are law and should be accepted like that. Our next question Saul is asking, I would like to know what the damn thing was you kept screwing up when you first started mixing.

(44:32):

We all struggle with something and I am sure that many will relate to that. It's always great to hear what the pro guys kept messing up in the beginning. Thanks for the awesome work at NTM and I look forward to this year's sessions. Alright, sa, I will tell you, when I started mixing, I screwed everything up. I feel like my EQ was my biggest weakness and I did not understand compression at all. Feel like my mixes had decent balance and I was able to get a bunch of clients in because I used drum samples and I had at least an idea of what the genre was supposed to sound like. So while my mixes were still really weak and I really struggled with EQ and compression, I was at least able to get a decent balance and record things decently enough. So even though I couldn't mix, my mixes didn't sound terrible and I was able to at least get a good 20 bucks an hour for them.

(45:25):

So that was the thing I struggled most with. And like I said earlier, went on a huge rant about this stuff. You just got to keep mixing songs, you're going to get better and better and better. So everything was a holdup. Every time you encounter something new, it's a holdup. So don't be discouraged, man. We all sucked at every single thing we've ever done when we started doing it. It just takes time. Alright, last question for the day here. Jarrad is asking. Dear Joel, I'm 19-year-old mixer from Chicago last year I quit my job in pursuit of producing full-time. It didn't work out well. I had no idea how to gain clients. It basically turned into a year of me playing in the DAW, but achieving none of my goals. Now my supply of money has run out and I'm back to my job saving up for attempt number two.

(46:04):

This time I've learned the importance of networking with people. I had my first two clients up and I'm beyond excited to get my hands dirty. My question is this, if you could go back in time to when you were 19, what advice would you give yourself? Also, any advice for me before I quit my job for the second time? Well, Jared, there's a lot of advice I would give myself if I was 19 years old because I wish I could go back in time and slap myself upside the fricking head. First off is don't be an elitist. I know this doesn't answer your question, and we talked about this a few episodes ago. Hey all, I went on a rant about this. I think maybe it might've been mixed CRI Monday or something, I don't remember. But don't be an elitist. Have an open-minded attitude towards things.

(46:44):

If you like Death Core, don't just be like, every genre sucks, man. I don't want to work on pop. I don't want to blah, blah, blah. You have to be genre agnostic as a producer and you need to learn as a producer what fricking shit people like, period. You can't just be like, oh, blah, blah, blah. I only do this. Only a few guys who are at the absolute top can just work one genre and all the big bands in it and make a career doing so in pigeonhole. You don't start off doing that. You start off doing a little bit of everything, pop writing, post-production, et cetera, and you're going to find where you have the most skills. And then when you find you have the most skills, what's going to happen is that's what you're going to want to double down on and focus on.

(47:22):

And eventually you're going to go in a certain direction with your career. So that's one piece of advice is don't be an elitist to be open-minded and find out what people like about different genres. Find out why pop is good or why dubstep is cool or this or that. You got to listen to the music and you might hate it at first, but you have to get over that bullshit, that kid stuff. And you have to grow up and be an adult and you have to listen to a lot of different music and find out what other people like about it because when it comes into your studio, you're going to want to work on it. Another thing is you need to study and understand psychology and learn how to be likable. Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. It didn't come naturally to me. I had to study a lot to do that and I still suck at it, but I'm always trying to improve and that's what's important.

(48:03):

A third major tip is you got to go out and pound the pavement, man. You got to go to shows, play in a band and stuff. You got to be able to meet a lot of bands. And being in a band is a great way to network physically. Build rapport first. Do not go in and just hard pitch yourself. And the last point I'm going to give you is don't necessarily quit your job. Maybe get a part-time job waiting tables or something that can pay your rent while you are focusing on your music. So focus on your music half the time, but have some sort of job to make sure that you have some sort of income coming in so you're not living on the damn street and you can eat and you're not stressed out. Wait table's a couple days a week or something.

(48:38):

My intern right now, he works on the weekends and he comes, works with me four days a week and he works hard and he is starting to make a little bit of money here and we're giving tasks and side jobs and things like that, but he's got enough money coming in where he can live comfortably and he can still pursue what he wants to pursue until we find the perfect fit for him in the organization and it turns into an actual job for him. So just like that, it takes a while to start a business, get some income coming in and be careful. Don't just be impulsive, be smart about it. I lost my job, but I had a lot of money saved up and I had to move back in at home and do all that stuff and it wasn't fun, but that's what I had to do.

(49:14):

So you can do it. So guys, that is all for dear Joel this time around. Thank you so much for listening to me rant and endlessly babble. Again, if you guys want to submit questions for this, Al at URM Academy is the email and the subject line should be Dear Joel, and please ask a ton of good questions that are in depth and tell me a lot about yourself and your situation so I can give you guys much better answers. Thank you guys again and take care. This is the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast and I'm Joel Asse.

Speaker 1 (49:45):

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