STEVE LAGUDI: Mixing Live Metal, Punchy Drums, and Taming High-Gain Guitars

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Ivanez Guitars and Basses. Ivans strives to make high quality cutting edge musical instruments that any musician can afford and enjoy. Visit ivans.com for more info. And now your host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and

Speaker 2 (00:00:20):

Eyal Levi. Welcome to the Unstoppable Reporting Machine Podcast. I am Eyal Levi flying solo. Joel and Joey are not with us because they're training Dolphins. Tonight with me is a special guest, Mr. Steve Lagudi, who is a pretty prolific live sound engineer slash producer. Right now he's with Machine Head, not currently on tour with Machine Head. But you're a machine head's dude, right?

Speaker 3 (00:00:52):

Oh yeah. That's one way to put,

Speaker 2 (00:00:55):

One way to put it. And those of you who are subscribers to nail the mix, if you were with us in August of 2016 when Joel mixed machine head, Steve came on to discuss the recording of the machine head track because he recorded a whole bunch of it while on the road. But before we get to talking about Machine Head, I want to talk about you some and I want to talk about just live sound because I've been a studio engineer for 15 years now, and I've only had a few opportunities to do live sound and I fucking hated every minute of it. Hated it. And I'll tell you why. I hated it. I hated it because there's no time. I mean, obviously if you're working for a machine head, you can sound check and sometimes, right? And

Speaker 3 (00:01:51):

Not as much as you think,

Speaker 2 (00:01:53):

Okay, well then that goes back to what I was just saying, which is there's no fucking time. And so in the studio where if I want something better, I just stay later. If I make time, I sleep less. You don't really have that option. And that makes me insane. And then dealing with acoustics of a venue and the volumes, it's like why do you do this to yourself?

Speaker 3 (00:02:21):

Yeah, it's a challenge. I mean, I kind of started out as a studio guy. I mean that was kind of the whole thing. It was like, alright, sit there to work on a snare or a kick drum for seven days. Everybody went down that rabbit hole. And growing up in New York, and I had a studio there with one of the most earliest versions of pro tools recording bands like a mirror. I mean they were in the same rehearsal building is us. And I basically bought two rooms, knocked the wall down, made a control room out of it, and bought a Mackey thirty two eight, a bunch of microphones and a G three that I could maybe run two plugins on how to audio suite everything in. And that's really kind of what it was. It was getting knocks on the door, Hey, we'll give you 500 bucks for five songs.

(00:03:12):

Sure, I'll fuck your shit up before I do mine, so why not? But the thing was, I was doing a little more of that and then these guys were like, Hey dude, we're playing Bob's bar down the street. You want to come and mix us? Everybody was really like Jones and out on the cliquey kick drums when you went and saw small bands or the whole local band scene, front of house engineers in these venues, they didn't necessarily know the sounds for metal and things like that. So you're just cranking fucking the high shelf filter out of the three band EQ that you do get on the console. That just, that's everything how it really kind of happened for me. But yeah, everything you touched on, not having time and being just kind of thrown into the mix, all pun intended there, but it was exciting. It's exciting.

Speaker 2 (00:04:04):

So that's actually the part you like about it?

Speaker 3 (00:04:06):

I do. There's not a lot of guys that do both live end studio. So for me it's like the road can get a little rough and doing a three hour show every night and starting at eight in the morning till two o'clock in the morning, four or five days a week, and just not having time for anything. I love it, but you get burnt of it. So to be able to kind of go back in indoors and sit in that same chair every day, sleep in the same bed, whether it's your own or a hotel room, whatever, and eat a shit load of takeout, I mean, to change things up a bit. So I kind of do a hybrid of the two with my career. It's like a lot of things that I learned in the studio I try to bring live and then vice versa.

(00:04:47):

So for me, I embrace it. And that's really kind of how I cut my teeth, man was touring with God forbid and stuff. We were always the second or the third in the lineup, so I'd never had a chance to sound check. And usually the opening band maybe had three minutes before doors. So I'd be walking up to the desk and just doing my thing. And that was it. Setting up mics, doing the changeover, coming out front with two minutes to fucking set time and you just go. And it was exciting. And that's kind of how people started to hear my work was like, what the fuck? This dude's never getting a soundcheck and he's shitting on the headlining band who has their own console. This isn't right. What's going on here? So that's kind of how it all happened for me, but I love it, dude.

Speaker 2 (00:05:41):

What do you attribute that to? What did you do to get better at Live Sound? And I'm being serious, if someone says, how do you get better at mixing? I know I can give you a detailed, a detailed step-by-step of how to get better at mixing no matter how good you are. Unless it's someone like Randy Staub. I don't know what to tell someone like Randy Staub, but with Live Sound, I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Speaker 3 (00:06:15):

Well, there's a few ways to do it. I could lump it into what we as studio guys tell people, especially subscribers and stuff like that. It's like you got to know the roadmap, where you want to go, what do you want it to sound like? And when I started doing it in a buddy of mine who really kind of pushed me into it, I mean, this is my whole career story, could be a whole fucking podcast on its own. So I was just basically sitting in this shit hole by my house, a little 16 track mix wizard. And as I was sitting there, it was just like, all right, well if I'm here, even though I'm not liking the music that's being played was, well, I'm going to make it sound good for me. And I didn't have any formal training, so it was just turning knobs literally until it just kind of sounded good.

(00:07:05):

But I knew in my head where I wanted it to go. Now the road to getting there took time, just experience trying different things, not being afraid to fuck up. I mean, that's the cool thing about live. It's like if you make a mistake, it's not in the world forever, but well, maybe nowadays with YouTube and stuff, but you know what I mean. You got to kind of try to push the boundaries and shit and just try different things. And for me, I think I stand out from a lot of the other front of house guys as everybody kind of uses the same microphones and they're doing the same thing. Maybe not a lot of eq, but I mean, if you looked at my EQs and stuff, dude, I'm carving the shit out of things, man. I just didn't learn the right way. So it just trial and error until I kind of found what worked for me. And ultimately that just happens to be what everybody thinks. Sounds good.

Speaker 2 (00:07:59):

So let's talk about your carving the shit out of things. So tell me more about that because I'm used to carving the shit out of things on a graphic EQ like waves plugins. But when you are doing that live, maybe talk through some instruments and what are the areas that, what are you looking for that you end up carving?

Speaker 3 (00:08:23):

Sure. Well, before I really start treating anything channel wise or whatever, I tune the pa. I mean, obviously I've been playing the same five songs. That's my playlist that I use to tune a pa. And I do a lot of scooping. One 60 is almost completely taken out, two 50 around the low mids. I leave like 200 in there and stuff like that. But also then in the top end, 1.25 and 3.15 and 6.3, those kind of abrasive frequencies, I'm taking out two or three dbs in the upper mids and stuff like that. So that's kind of where I start. So to give more perspective for the studio guys out there, that would basically be treating your master bus with whatever processing you have ahead of time, whether it's your compression and stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:09:19):

So that's called top-down mixing.

Speaker 3 (00:09:23):

Yeah, exactly. But I'm just kind of doing it with the EQ because I just know the way I EQ channels and the way I drive desks hard, that kind of just cleans it up for me. Clarity to me in a mix is everything. And I'm able to get it, whether I'm doing napalm death in a shitty venue with the speakers on sticks all the way up to a hundred thousand people on a multimillion dollar PA system. It's the same approach every time. So that's kind of where I start. But then as far as channels, obviously the kick drums got to get scooped out in the low mids and stuff, but I also do that with the Toms, really, really with the Toms, I'm a big guy of reductive eq. And the reason why I do that is you take the low meds and the high meds and you're scooping on my mid, I'm scooping out 16 DB at each band.

(00:10:18):

Well, I'm allowed now to bring up the input gain and really bring the signal up. And you're then, at that point, you're just left with what you want. So you have the lows, and then you just crank the shit out of five or 6, 7, 8 k depending upon the size of the Tom. So four Toms, I'm treating them just kick drums. I mean, again, scooping the low mids out bass guitar, it's the same thing, man, I'm scooping somewhere from one 40 to two 50. It all kind of depends on what it is, but boosting that 1.25, then back on the bass. And then you're saying to yourself, well, wait a minute. If you're carving it out of the pa, why are you cranking the shit out of it on the channel? Because it's like, I just want to say, Hey, top end of the bass guitar, you're living there, this is for you.

(00:11:07):

And everything else is just kind of pulled out of the way with the overall mix. Sound guitars, for the most part are pretty flat rolled off to a hundred dip a two here or there at around two 12. Most people think two 12 is the good shuggy frequency, but you just take that out a little bit. And then, well, for machine head six K, about six db a six K with kind of a narrow kind of filter on that, that just, I don't know, dude, that just melts fucking faces. But I fuck with that during the show. I'll bring it up and down a little bit between three and 60 B, if Rob or Phil or busted out into a solo, there's certain notes that the six K might just stab you in the year, but I know where those are. So I'm definitely massaging the mix with eq, not just the dynamics and shit. But yeah, I mean carving, but the whole trick to it is just being able to really kind bring your gains up. A lot of people are like, dude, how do you get your fucking drums? So big, clear, powerful, but not clip the pa. And that's the trick, really, 24 mics alone just on the drum kit, one of them fucking is a dynamic and the rest are condensers. And people are like, you're out of your fucking tree.

(00:12:31):

Are you crazy? Like 12 microphones just on civils. But if you take the whole, well, lemme take a step back. When we play, Sheena will play anywhere and everywhere, which is great. So we'll go into these shitty clubs and I don't really give an input list now because I have my own stuff or whatever. So you get these local sound guys or whatever, and they're like, dude, I never use overheads in here. I'm like, well, congratulations. I'm not using overheads and using under Headss. Yeah, well you don't need it in this room. And I go, this is then when I become a dick. So I'm sure this is probably one of your questions, why live sound guys are assholes, but again, another total podcast, but no, I'll be a dick to somebody. I'll be just like, dude, I appreciate that, but you don't know what it is that I'm trying to achieve and what the result is. Well,

Speaker 2 (00:13:25):

In my experience, it's the local guys that are the dicks, not the touring guys.

Speaker 3 (00:13:29):

Well, it depends. I mean, if you get a good local guy and it's great, it makes your life easy. And I've dumb my system down to have very little requirements for my local guy. They probably make more in a day than I do, and they have to wrap up five sublines and run out a pair of fiber lines to front of house. Literally that's their whole day. Everything else I take care of. But now I have these guys that'd be like, dude, you don't want use overheads in here. I'm like, well, first off, number one I'm using under headss. And the reason why I'm doing that is for a couple of reasons. What's the loudest thing? And I question people, I make them look like an idiot. Think about this. And I'll be like, well, what's the loudest thing on the fucking drum kit? The snare drum, right? Okay, great. So if I have a microphone completely 180 degrees with the front to back rejection there, the snare drum's not going to be in my fucking overheads. Dave McClain and a lot of some metal drummers hit really fucking hard. And most people don't realize that a pair of overheads are room mics. Now, I don't know what venues these people are going to, but stages sounds like shit. So why the fuck do I want to amplify that?

Speaker 2 (00:14:44):

And that's a key difference there between studio and live recording, because in studio recording, our overhead sound creates a lot of the drum sound. So we want good sounding drums in the overheads, whereas you're trying to get rid of them

Speaker 3 (00:15:01):

Sometimes. Don't get me wrong, it's not every band that I'm going to do the overhead technique if it's like a rock kind of jazz kind of thing, you know what I mean? Yeah. Then you can kind of go for it. But nine times out of 10, dude, most people are using overheads to capture the symbols. So because the snare drum is so loud and what you got to do to really kind of get the symbols to shine and cut through with what's going on up there, you're getting all the stuff that you really don't want to hear what you're trying to get. So it never worked for me, but also localization. So when you sit there and you sit out in front of house and Dave goes through the symbols and stuff like that, you hear it, I'm a psychopath. I even fucking mic up the splash symbols.

(00:15:48):

Okay? But you can hear it. But now the reason why I keep them so close is I don't have to gain them up that much. And like I said, with the front to back rejection, having the opposite direction, the snare drum, my overheads are like pristinely clean. You don't hear all the noise. The noise floor is very, very low. Even when I go back to listen to the multi-tracks, I still scratch my head and I go, I can't get over how clean these overheads sound. It sounds like they're in an isolated studio. So that's kind what I like to do. And then when these house guys, they hear the mix and they're just like, holy shit, I'm blown away that there's 12 microphones on all your symbols and it sounds that good. And I'm like, yep. See, I have a reason for doing things now. Go fuck off in traffic or something. But no, seriously, because then they're like, oh my God, that's brilliant. And I'm like, well, I'm not really reinventing the wheel here. It's just taking basic mic techniques and understanding audio and acoustics and stuff like that. You know what I mean? So I do things just out of necessity. That's really what it is.

Speaker 2 (00:16:58):

I think that that makes perfect sense. And what's interesting is I've tried under Headss in the studio and I haven't been too stoked on them, but I can see a hundred percent why you would use them in that situation that you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (00:17:16):

I love it actually in the studio too, and people are like, well, what do you use? Well live, my whole stage is audios technica except for one microphone. That's the 90 ones inside the kick truck. And trust me, I'm giving them shit to make me design a 91, but I use the ATM four 50. It's a very cheap microphone, but it sounds killer. And that is the most popular microphone on my stage. So every single symbol, the ride and my snare bottom, that's my secret to my snare drum sound. Everybody was like, dude, how do you get that snare drum sound? It's like an 80 20. It's like 80% bottom, 20% top. I swear to God in a lot of gating to really kind of get that cracked.

Speaker 2 (00:18:05):

I believe it. On the last nail, the mix we did with Taylor Larson, he talked about bottom snare a lot, and he said A lot of guys hate on it, but he loves having a ridiculous amount of bottom snare because that's what identifies it as a snare drum.

Speaker 3 (00:18:24):

And I'm using the ATM 23 on the top, which is similar to the 25. You know what I'm talking about? There's a lot of studio guys that use that on Toms, and I love the 23, but I have the mic coming in off. So if you have the snare drum in front of you, the microphone's pointing basically towards the nutsack of Dave, so it's not pointed at the center. I know you full sail kids and like, oh, this is how you put a microphone on a snare drum. Well, whatever, move shit around and see what you like. So with having the mic there, it's like I get a lot of the body out of it. So you're not going to get a lot of that fucking top end crack out of a snare drift. You can crank it all day long, and all you're going to do is just add more high hat in there.

(00:19:11):

It's going to sound like shit. So for the most part, the snare top is completely flat. I don't even add that bump at 200. Most people do. It's crazy. I mean, just with that mic there on the side, I get so much of the body that I can pretty much leave it flat, maybe pull like five 40 somewhere in that mid range, just I mean like a DB or two. Even if I just took the EQ out, you probably wouldn't hear it, but it's the bottom dude. I roll off to one 60 or so, and then I take a fucking shelf filter from three K or just up like six, eight, sometimes 10, 12 tv depending upon who the drummer is and a fast gate on it. So you hear that fucking crack dude. And people are just like, it melts faces, hey, but snare bottom dude, don't be shy on it. People never use it, and I never get that. It gets lost.

Speaker 2 (00:20:08):

I know you, one of my favorite audio Technica mics, by the way, is an A 3000, a E 3000. Totally.

Speaker 3 (00:20:15):

Man. Those are my floor tile mics.

Speaker 2 (00:20:18):

I love it as a snare bottom. And actually it's usable for so many things. I've used it to mic under, not under headss, but under close mic symbols, like splashes and stuff, splashes and Chinas. I've used it successfully as a bottom snare mic. I've even used it successfully as a top snare mic, but maybe two feet off pointed down at the snare. It's a very, very versatile, cool little microphone.

Speaker 3 (00:20:47):

Yeah, I mean, and not like to turn into an at thing, but the 5,100, believe it or not, the 3000 and the 5,100, which is the pencil convention that kind of looks like the 81, it's the same diaphragm in there. So I actually use those on my high hats and it's killer. The 3000 I used to use on the snare top when I was doing, God forbid, I think it was more just Corey's snare drum. It was just a little boxy for me. But yeah, I mean, you're right, that mic is completely versatile. I mean, it works great actually on even electric guitar evidence. I love it on Toms, but the floor, Toms for me, dude, I'm not kidding you. The floor Tom Mike, that 3000 is probably a Pinky's width off of the floor. Tom. People are like, you're out of your mind. Well, why do you keep it that close?

(00:21:36):

And I'm like, okay, here we go again. Audio 1 0 1, so I can keep the bleed down. But because like I said, I'm scooping so much out of the low mids and stuff, I'm able to bring the gain up and people are like, well, you don't really get a lot of stick attack bullshit. Are you kidding me? A couple of DB of six K, man, plenty of stick attack, but this is where you could use proximity effect for your favor if you want. I love old school deep toms. I mean, I love using subwoofers and I love melting fucking people's faces. When Dave goes down in those Toms and he gets to those two floor toms, it's like you're feeling it. It's like a kick drum to me. So that's why I'm using the proximity effect to my benefit. So that's the thing most people think, alright, they read the book, proximity Effect is a bad thing. It's like no phases can be a good thing if you use it, right? It's just how you do it.

Speaker 2 (00:22:37):

Proximity effect is a thing and you can use it well or not.

Speaker 3 (00:22:42):

Absolutely, totally. But maybe because I didn't learn audio technically and all this other stuff, but when I kind of started getting going into all this shit and I started really learning it because I'm like, wait a minute, I'm on to something here. I started to see things. I was able to bridge the gap between things that I was doing and then learning the technical, it was like, oh, okay, that's what the phase button is doing. It doesn't just make it sound better. You know what I mean? So you got to just be aware of it to be able to use this stuff. And I keep saying this again, I'm not reinventing the wheel here. It's like this is just stuff that I've been doing for almost 20 years now, and it's like I have my sound and that's a thing.

Speaker 2 (00:23:31):

So let's talk about guitar some, because I feel like dialing guitars live heavy guitars heavy rhythm is so tough because you add too much gain, it's immediately noise, it gets noisy, you want more clarity, it starts to get harsh as fuck. You want more body out of it. It becomes a total wooy mess. And in the studio it's hard too. You have to be very, very precise with your guitar eq. Let's talk about some of those challenges, man.

Speaker 3 (00:24:02):

And it's just before I jump into that, what's really funny, it's like I fear the studio sometimes because it's like, fuck man, you can't get it right? And you just spend forever doing it. And all my friends that do some of the biggest records in the world, and they're like, are you kidding me? They're like, you have it harder than we do. I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, you're in a different acoustical environment every day. It's a different, we're in a controlled environment, so don't be afraid of it. But yeah, you're right. Getting guitars is tough. I mean, I am not going to lie about that. I mean for obviously heavy aggressive music, that's what it's all about. But as cliche as this sound, it really does start with the source. It does start with the guitar, and I'll explain that with Machine Head, right? Rob Flynn has d, he's like my third all time favorite guitar player to mix. I mean, his right hand is amazing. The

Speaker 2 (00:25:04):

Only two, the guitar players from that era are so good at picking

Speaker 3 (00:25:09):

Yeah, actually where it comes from. And I mean, I don't know. Yeah, fuck it. I'll just put it out there. But my second favorite is Gary Holt from Exodus and stuff, and Gary coming up in the Bay Area and stuff like that with Kirkham and the Metallica guys where that Bay area thrash shit is and which is funny that I'm from New York, but I do all the Bay Area metal bands. Go figure it. I hate New York, by the way, but, but James Hetfield to me. I mean, Metallica is the one that did all this. So doing eight years working for Metallica and learning things and hovering big mic and when I didn't know shit about audio, but James Hetfield, man, that's what it was.

Speaker 2 (00:25:52):

I didn't know you worked for Metallica.

Speaker 3 (00:25:53):

I did that for eight years, man. That's how I got my start.

Speaker 2 (00:25:57):

I had no idea.

Speaker 3 (00:25:58):

Yeah, dude. I mean, if you want, I could go off on this for a second,

Speaker 2 (00:26:03):

Go off on it for a second. We'll talk about guitar tone in a second because it's kind of a big deal.

Speaker 3 (00:26:08):

Yeah, I guess you got to kind of know where you come from. It ties into you got to know where you want to go to do what you want to do. Yeah, real quick came from a very rich jewishy type of community, very, I did not have money, and I was kind of one of the only metalheads in the school and 11 years old discovering Metallica. And then it became my life. And then so much to the point, I kept going to shows and stuff and waiting afterwards to meet the band. And then as the years kind of went by, they knew my name. And then one day it was just like, Hey, you want a job?

(00:26:46):

So I was basically doing stuff for the fan club, traveling around. It was the coolest thing in the world, dude, this is my favorite band and they know my name and I even own one of Jason Ted's Olympic bases and shit. So yeah, it was like my life dude and shit happens for a reason. So within the few early years, it was like, all right, this is when the internet thing was kind of coming up and there was the metallica.com and the Met on tour and all that stuff. So doing stuff for the fan club, the meet and greet shit. And then one day Lars wanted me to video the show from front of house with a set list and a stopwatch, so that way he knew how much the intro and then the outro of the song. So if he wanted to make a change to the set list, he kind of knew how much time he had.

(00:27:36):

So it was the second show of this tour, it was the summer Sanitarian tour in 2000, and we were in Foxborough, Massachusetts. And I'm standing there with this camera on a tripod at front of house, and I'm looking down at Big Mick, who's their sound guy since 83, waiting for him to start the show. So I could hit record. And I'm looking down and I'm like, wow, that looks really fucking cool. And I can send you the, I actually took a photo of this, so I have it timestamped the moment in my life when I said, this is what I want to do.

Speaker 2 (00:28:07):

Do you have the photo?

Speaker 3 (00:28:08):

I do. I can send that.

Speaker 2 (00:28:10):

Can we put that in the show notes?

Speaker 3 (00:28:12):

Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm looking down at all of this gear and he's on this big Midas analog XL four. I'm like, wow, that's really fucking cool. And then when the show starts and then to hear that sound, it was like, holy, that's what I want to do right there. So I just slowly started getting closer. Hey, what's that dude? What's that dude? And stuff like that. But we as mixed engineers, whether it be studio or lot, we're control freaks. We are. That's what we do. We have this amazing pallet of shit in front of us to be able to manipulate and do anything that it is we want to do. So that was for me, dude, and so fast forward. So yeah, that's what I did for Metallica. Kind of got as far as I could and then won out on my own and started, basically I did everything backwards, started at the top of the mountain and went to the bottom of the barrel and worked my way back up. I was

Speaker 2 (00:29:07):

About to say, that's not much room to move besides down from Metallica.

Speaker 3 (00:29:14):

But it's funny, kind of like I was saying with this whole Bay Area thing, it's like, all right, I started there and then it's like, all right, toured with Death Angel. I recorded Testaments live, DVD. Most people don't know that.

Speaker 2 (00:29:27):

I didn't know that. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:29:28):

I did all the multi-tracking, all that shit. Let's see. So yeah, it was death, angel Testament, exodus. I remember Gary Holt. Hey dude, we're going to South America. You got one of the greatest live guitar sounds I've ever heard. I'm just shitting in my pants. You know what I mean? It's like, again, this goes back to the Metallica thing. It's like Kirk Hammett and Gary Holt, our best friends growing up teaching guitar to each other, and Kirk leaves to go fucking join Metallica and he puts Gary in there to take over that whole thing. And Gary being like, Kirk's like guitar tech, and I use that term loosely in the early days. So it's like, oh my God, these are idols. The guy's an amazing guitar players, probably one of the most underrated guitar players because before he got in the Slayer, I really don't think most people gave a shit or knew really who Gary Holt is. And

Speaker 2 (00:30:24):

I knew he was badass the whole time.

Speaker 3 (00:30:26):

Yeah, you and I do. But for me to be able to fucking have a guy that has a hell of a rhythm hand and who could shred it was incredible. I was even in south in Australia when he did his first tour with Fucking Slayer, and I said something to Kerry King backstage. I was like, Hey, I've obviously seen you a million times. We toured on the Mayhem together, but I'm like, dude, what the fuck? Slayer with Gary Holt, a whole new fucking level. He's like, right, who else were you going to get? Fucking Tom Rai's looking at Gary running around the stage because of anybody who's seen the old Slayer, it's like he got Jeff and fucking Carrie and Tom. They're like stage plants. No disrespect, but they didn't go anywhere. Gary's fucking doing back flips off the fucking drum ride. I mean, he's all over the place.

(00:31:15):

So it definitely injected like a new energy. But anyways, back to this. Yeah, guitar sounds, yeah, it definitely starts with the player, the instrument. Like Rob Flynn plays a baritone guitar and that gets that fucking dude. He's got this one guitar that just has this thing and it's killer. Then 65 oh fives and 51 fifties. That's really it. Most people think we have them hot rotted and they're not. Dude, we just put some soft tech tubes in there and basically a standard bias of 34, whatever the little letters are afterwards. But that's really it, man. And a bunch of pedals. They obviously love the chorus and the phaser and all that stuff. And we have a custom Bob Bradshaw controller and all that other stuff to set it all off, but an overdrive pedal. That's it, dude, that's the machine head sound real amps with real effects and fucking amazing players. Now everything goes through a Mesa four by 12 sometimes on the bigger stages. I like to keep the cabin off the stage. My guys are completely on in ears, so they don't really need the guitar to be heard on the stage. Well, because typically it's really close to the drum kit and I run the cabinet hot. Dude, I'm not kidding you. On our rhythms, the fucking amps on three and that's fucking ripping.

(00:32:41):

But that's what I want, not too much because if you go too much, then it's a mess and all that other stuff. But I really kind of fucking pushing those twos, man, give me the fucking air movement. If we got 120 watt fucking head, why all use 12 watts? You know what I mean? I, that's debatable because sometimes I like 50 watt heads over a hundred watt heads sometimes.

Speaker 2 (00:33:05):

Same here.

Speaker 3 (00:33:07):

But that's the thing. It's like you got to understand I'm putting it through a big fat pa. You're trying to put it through two fucking little earbuds. You know what I mean? So it's taming the beast a little bit different. It has its place. And don't get me wrong, the hunter wat you get the extra power ramps in there. I love it. To me, that's the whole thing. It's a real guitar sound machine head is the kind of band that obviously it's about it's guitar sound. It basically put the 51 50 on the map aside from Eddie Van Halen. You know what I mean? And that's actually kind of how I found out about Machine Head when I had my band, because I was trying to model everything after Metallica, my singer was like, dude, we need 51 50. I'm like, fuck that. We need triplex and triax and shit.

(00:33:53):

And they're like, no, no, no. It's like, dude, 51 50. I'm like, dude, we're not going to play Jump and I'm your ice cream man. He's like, dude, you don't get it. He hands me the fucking a machine cassette. If most of you people don't know what those are, those are the eight tracks of our time. And it was like, are you kidding me? And hearing this Davidian, and I'm just like, holy shit, what is this? I've never had heard anything like that before. And now to fast forward all these years ahead, it's like, yeah, I'm basically running that band. I have complete control over the sound, like my crew.

(00:34:34):

I guess I could tell the Monte Connor story in a minute. But yeah, I have Rob's trust. He knows that I know what to do. And to me, that is the biggest honor ever. You take an iconic fucking band, like machine head who, I mean, let's face it. I mean it's like they have a sound and that they created a thing and it's like now to be the guy running it pretty cool. It's pretty fucking badass, man. It's, it's one of those things, it's like holy shit, and it's an honor. But yeah, so as far as biking, guitars, everything that you were saying, the gain and all that stuff, obviously that does play a big role into it, particularly these younger bands out there. It's like we tell 'em when you're recording less gain, it actually sounds heavier, but on the live side of things, less gain is going to make it less feedback.

(00:35:32):

Or you're going to need 27 fucking gates in front of your amp to make it, not feedback, but it's going to kill all your shit. But hey, I can give a little secret out. Most people are like, how do you keep the amps quiet? Because I run the clean separately. So we have obviously the noise gate on the way in and all that other stuff, meaning into the front. And then there's the effects loop. And I'm sure if one of my guitar techs will listen, I might have this slightly wrong, it's been a while since I've been in the rigs, but we have a noise gate actually on the effects loop as well. So when the amp switches to the, when we switch over to the clean, the main amp is still technically on, but we're just cutting the signal so that way there's no sound whatsoever.

(00:36:17):

And that's a cool studio trick too, man. You can use multiple gates on the way in and in the effects loop return and stuff, it's a good way if a player is playing and they got a noisy guitar or you're basically recording in your mom's fucking living room and you have all these lights in the house that's causing it to buzz and stuff like that, you could put gates in there, which will make the mix engineer's life a lot easier when he is cleaning up, heading and tailing all the shit. So don't be afraid to use multiple fucking noise gates, man, it works. So that's the trick. But for guitar mics a 2,500, that's what I use on my guitar cabinet live. People are like, well, it's kick drum mic. Yeah, you could use it for a kick drum, but there's no such thing as a kick drum microphone. It's a fucking dynamic and a condenser in one fucking housing. And why not use it on the guitar? I could put out one mic stand. The two capsules are completely, perfectly in phase. People put dynamics and condensers on guitars all day long and they separate it and you're dealing with phase and whatever and all that other bullshit. So it's like stick one fucking mic on there. Call it a day.

Speaker 2 (00:37:35):

Less variables to deal with, especially in a fluid situation like live

Speaker 3 (00:37:41):

And for the guitar sound for me, it's like it's another 80 20. The dynamic is pretty much the prominent mic in that whole thing. The condenser just, it's one of those things you kind of mute, it just takes away a little bit. It is like something's missing there. It doesn't really, it's like a deviate two if it drops in and out. But really what I do with that is that one will get panned hard or left, and then the dynamic, depending upon how wide the PA or the arena is or whatever, I'll tweak with that. But for the most part it's 10 and two. And then with a lot of the back and forth solo stuff don't, for the machine head, I don't bring them up the middle because I just don't have that many fucking hands because they're constantly trading off. To be able to do that many moves in a moment is almost next to impossible. Could I automate it? But then that just makes it robotic and that's boring. I want to actually mix. So whatever. It works for me.

Speaker 2 (00:38:42):

Well, what about bass?

Speaker 3 (00:38:44):

Bass live? This is funny. It's the straight DI from the bass guitar, and then we have a Kemper, the Kemper though, and I'll put this out there. I hate being one of those guys who are like, oh, you hide things and there's secrets and all that other stuff. I'll put it out there. But our Kemper, I remember when the record was getting ready to come out and we're getting ready for tour, and Rob walks into the jam room when I'm prepping for tour and hands me this fucking toaster looking thing, and

(00:39:23):

I'm like, what the fuck is this? He's like, oh yeah, we're going to use this for the base sound. I'm like, what is it? He's like, it's a Kemper. I'm like, what's that? And he's like, well, we use it on the record. Colin used it to add it to the bass sound. And I'm like, oh, okay. Huh. I'm just not wrapping my head around this thing. So we try it and rehearsal and it was like nails on chalkboard, dude. It was, Colin used it to blend with the DI's, but to kind of give it the distortion. And we did one show, would it do? I fucking hated it. I'm like, this thing sucks. This is terrible. No, I'm not kidding. It didn't have any low end to it whatsoever. And Rob's like, try taking the DI from the back of the thing. And I'm like, I did.

(00:40:12):

And that sounds even worse, dude, what the fuck? It was horrible. And so I get ahold of good old Andy sleep, and obviously he had the file, and because he does, you got to clear this up with him even, I don't know for a hundred percent how he did it, but you know how he does all the tune track shit and then that one of those easy mix packs or something like that where it basically has like, oh, this is what you use for this and this and that, but you can't change anything. So I think he used whatever the software they used to design that. So again, don't hold.

Speaker 2 (00:40:54):

No, no, actually, you're absolutely right.

Speaker 3 (00:40:57):

Yeah. So what he ended up doing was he profiled the base sound but routed in a DI to blend with it or something like that, whatever. Snoop just sent me the file back and it was just like, all right, let's see what this will fucking do. And yeah, it was like there it was. And because most people don't realize it's like low end on a record is a lot different than low end live. So you're not trying to get asked tons of low end on a record, especially in the bass guitar. Where do you roll off your base? How much are you taking out on the low end there?

Speaker 2 (00:41:37):

Quite a bit actually. Sometimes all the way up to 80.

Speaker 3 (00:41:41):

Yeah. But even then the other fundamental, it's like a hundred, one 20, whatever that, I'm not kidding you. The original Kemper base sound that we had, it sounded like it was rolled off to like 400 or 500. Jesus,

(00:41:54):

That's what I'm saying. It was like nails on a chalkboard. And basically the sound that we were trying to go for was the classic SVT with the za, just like the PSA one. And that's what we were using when I first started touring with these guys. It was an SVT and a fucking sand amp to just kind of drive it a little bit on the front end. Well, when the American made SVTs were shitty like they are now, the cool trick was to you just basically take the sand amp, take the output from that and put it into the effects return of the amplifier, bypassing the preamp altogether and just using the power ramp section. And there you go. I mean, I used to do that with a lot of bands when we'd go to Europe and we'd have to use shitty back line. It was yo grab the Sansan, be the pedal, the base driver di thing, which is amazing.

(00:42:48):

Or you spend a few extra bucks and you get that programmable one that has a couple more bells and whistles on it, and you shove that and the power ramp of any fucking amplifier, you got your sound pretty much anywhere you go. And then if you take the direct even better. So that's basically what the sound of the Kemper is. So I blend that with the di and it's just an overdriven sound that just sounds great, but not overbearing. It's right. And I am a bass player or was I should say, and I like low end. I like hearing bass in the mix. He's there for a reason. Let's hear him. Most people kind of don't do that, but getting the bass to sit right between the kick drums and even especially the low end of the guitar with machine head, we're tuned down. So fucking low dude. And it was hard to at first really place those instruments between the kick drum, the low end of the bass guitar, and then the low end of the regular guitars. But I made it work and then put in six fucking Toms and all the other shit and barking vocals and all that. It's fun, man. So you just got to give everything it's home.

Speaker 2 (00:44:10):

So I have some questions from the audience here, if you don't mind. I'd like to go through some of these too.

Speaker 3 (00:44:17):

Of course. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:44:19):

They actually asked it quite a few.

Speaker 3 (00:44:22):

Okay,

Speaker 2 (00:44:22):

So here's one from Eric, which is do you use any backup recording system? And if so, what kind?

Speaker 3 (00:44:30):

Backup recording as in multi-track? The live show? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:44:34):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:44:35):

Not a backup. Does he mean for live recording? For actual release? Yeah. Well, however, for the test of the one I didn't, but dude, that was a butthole clenching moment. Yeah, I always do. I'm very fortunate enough with my console, I can multi-track record everything. So my games are a little bit different there. Can they be used in the studio? Absolutely. As a backup. So to me that would be the backup. But I have a three-way splitter on my stage rack and stuff, so I'm able to have my signals go in front of the house, the second one go into monitors, and then a third one, which is transformer isolated for big festivals and stuff that have broadcast trucks. But yeah, I mean I can just plug in one of my, I have a Pro tools HD rig and stuff. I can go in that way and go into separate preamps and really get gain control that way. But nowadays with this digital console stuff, I mean you could digitally split signals and have multiple recording sources really, really easy using Maddy. I mean, I used to record everything with the MADI interface and stuff like that. The avid Maddie was great. But yeah, if you're always, you've got to have two recording sources. I mean a third if you could do it. I mean there's no such thing as not having too much man. Yeah. Great.

Speaker 2 (00:46:02):

Awesome. And then he says, while recording live performance, do you go straight from the main console to the recording system or do you use some splits with separate gain in case you need to change anything while mid show on front of house?

Speaker 3 (00:46:16):

Right. Yes. Well, I kind of just answered that. Yeah, so with the analog split that I have, it allows me to have independent, but these are some great questions that he's actually asking on some consoles like the Midas and the AVID consoles, like the profiles and stuff, and SE 40 eights, I'm not a hundred percent on some of the other digital ones. I'm sure you probably can, but because digital is, you can change the pickoff points where you're going to capture your audio from. So basically the signal flow would be like the microphone into the stage box for it, and then it's the head amp game or the digital gains and stuff like that. And sometimes you get it's before or after the high pass filter, but then the pickoff point would be right there. So basically if you did virtual soundcheck, it comes back in as if the band's on stage before any of your other processing.

(00:47:14):

So yeah, you could pick off from there. So that way you're not committed to any of the eq. You kind of have to be careful sometimes if your system is not that good, it can introduce a lot of noise back on the front of house console. So that's another way. But with the digital snakes nowadays, everything being on an a ES 50 network or Dante or Maddie, I mean even the little X 32 Collinsville, that's like two grand. You got multiple ways to get out audio from that system there. So 20 years ago it was a bitch, but nowadays, I mean you could get some solid recording shit for very little money. And I'm not even kidding you. Sometimes the stuff that I'm recording sounds better than shit that you hear in multimillion dollar studios, but that's the fool, not the tool there. So

Speaker 2 (00:48:05):

Well man, technology does make life so much better these days, but it's still all about your ears and your skills. He just asked if, do you use any additional inputs outside of your normal input list, like additional DI's or any other channels when you record?

Speaker 3 (00:48:26):

I do, and I do this actually with my standard setup for Machine Head, not so much with the other bands if I'm not recording, yeah, I have a clean DI for all the guitars, all the bass I have room, I have staged like room mics, but that's actually used for the in years. But that works great for live recordings. I used to throw up an at 40, 50 ST at front of house, but I was just kind of tired of fuckers throwing shit into it. Plus it's an expensive mic, I don't know. But yeah, always capture the di. When I did the testament thing, I was like a psychopath because let's face it, most people nowadays, since you have a million channels to record, but I didn't know who was going to mix the thing. So what I did was I took the Clean DI because they were using effects in front of the head and in the effects loop with those guys.

(00:49:30):

And what I did was I captured basically the all post those effects because it wasn't really my choice because they had a front of house guy. Because you got to remember, we're a live DVD, they're on tour, so you kind of have to use what the front of house guy wants to use. And it wasn't my best Mike choices and if it wasn't right, the best thing for me to do was hand the mix guy two DI's. So instead of trying to get these guys in their guitar rigs into the fucking studio, I had the DI with all the effects that were going into the front of the head as well as all the effects that were going into the effects return. So if he needed to do the amping, here you go. You have everything that you need, just chuck an amp in front in there and boom, you have it. So yeah, I mean it never hurts. So everybody will tell you, having it is a good thing. You can never not the DI is key. Always have it

Speaker 2 (00:50:37):

Actually. Here's a question from Luis Jaime Flores, which is on that topic. When recording DI's live, what's the first thing you should check to make sure you're getting a good recording?

Speaker 3 (00:50:49):

As far as level?

Speaker 2 (00:50:50):

Yeah. Well, I guess he's asking because lots of times we tell people that you need to make sure you're capturing good di, at least in the studio, and we tell people what to listen for, but how are you checking it live to make sure that it's not fucked? I guess

Speaker 3 (00:51:06):

Honestly, I don't really check it to be honest, other than when I do the line check with the crew, I just get it to Unity on my desk. My meters are DBF, sorry, DBVU. They're not digital. So it basically goes into Pro Tools at Unity. So with a minus 18 DB calibration and stuff like that, you're basically kind of just seeing it all the way up into the green Little peaks here, about a quarter to a third of the way up in the orange and stuff like that. So it's easy for me because it's like I just turn it to zero and it's like it's done. It's like right in and stuff like that. But every now and then I check it. Do I critically listen to it? No, not really. I don't have to because I'm just recording it every day. But I would suggest that you do it using a good active di.

(00:52:05):

I use the J 40 eights. I have those all over the stage. I'm a big fan of the radio stuff. The JD sevens amazing. We even use the JD six for the playback stuff. And since I mentioned playback, I'm going to put this out there. Machine head does not have backing bullshit, no guitars or anything like that. It's just for intros, like the ear candy bullshit and that's it. So DI box is the way to go. You got to be careful though, and you got to know about the ground lifts and stuff like that because that can definitely introduce noise in these complex guitar rigs and stuff. So be aware that you might need to flip the ground on that.

Speaker 2 (00:52:52):

All right, great. Here's one from Scott Ric, which is what's the best way to isolate a lead vocal on a smaller stage to reduce bleed during a live recording? I do mainly live recordings for the venue I work at. So this is an issue all the time with my recordings.

Speaker 3 (00:53:08):

Oh yeah, well, if we had the answer to that, we would be golden. But there's a couple of things that you could do for that. If it's on a stand and with machine head, Rob's basically glued to that thing all night long and sometimes depending upon the depth of the stage, like Dave's fucking drums are right up Rob's ass and riding that shit is something I have to do a lot. I will also use the low pass filters. I'm fortunate enough to have those, but microphone for vocals, I'm using the at 61 hundreds. I can't remember if it's a super or a HyperCard. So basically it kills the bleed big time. It's very directional, that microphone. So it's like if you're right there on the grill and then you move an inch or two to the right, it's like it's gone. So I would definitely obviously get the mic that could reject a lot of that stuff. There's a lot of manufacturers out there that do that. But yeah, sometimes it's just kind of the way it is, man. Maybe put some treatment, if it's a really small stage, if it's your venue and stuff, deaden it up, don't totally kill it, that might just affect your actual mixing and stuff. But there's a lot of different ways to do it. But those are the two tricks that I have right now. Microphone and just working on some of the treatment, man.

Speaker 2 (00:54:36):

All right, here's one. Well, we have a bunch from Alex pto who is Okay,

Speaker 3 (00:54:40):

Bring it on. I love it.

Speaker 2 (00:54:43):

I don't know if you've encountered him. He does live sound. He tours as well, and he came up working under Dan Eff doing Records, and he's a fucking badass and a good friend. He's also been on the podcast. Cool.

Speaker 1 (00:54:56):

So

Speaker 2 (00:54:57):

We'll just go down his list. So are you a fan of feeding your subs on a separate matrix?

Speaker 3 (00:55:02):

No, I hate it, but I have to sometimes. The reason why I don't like it, and for the last couple of years I've been asking more venues why they've been doing this, and it's actually because of the fucking ZOA boys, the fucking DJs of the world.

Speaker 2 (00:55:18):

The

Speaker 3 (00:55:18):

Voice. Yeah, sorry. You know what I mean? It's just some bullshit. It's just like these guys, they go into these venues and they crank the shit out of the fucking subs, and usually they're monitors that they have on stage. It's like a fucking PAs. They don't really hear, they don't care. They don't get headroom and game. They don't do that. So they blow subs. So a lot of these venues, they have the subs on an A. So if the dude's being a dick and he doesn't want to fucking turn down, these guys could just single fader. But for me, it's like you're altering the response of the subwoofers by fucking with that. So the way I feed the subs on an ox, I feed it right off my left and right. I don't see the fucking point of adding a step like, okay, here's the kick drum.

(00:56:05):

Oh wait, I got to turn up ox eight to add all the low end. Then it's like you're building your mix. It's like, oh, wait a minute. Now the subs are clipping, so where's it clipping from? Is it from the bass guitar or the kick drum? Fuck that. You know what I mean? If there's too much low end in your mix, fix it at the fucking channel. I don't need a separate fader. Fuck that shit. You know what mean left and right, maybe center and that's about it. But venues are, I got to do subs front fills stereo delays. I mean, shit. I even have to put the fucking, you go to the nice little rock club and you're taking a dump at the venue and you still hear the song while you're in there. Yeah, I have to feed those speakers sometimes too, man. So I'm not kidding you, dude. I have an iPad. I will play my virtual music back and I will walk around. I even go into the bathroom and EQ those fucking shitty mono speakers in the ceiling. I want my shit to sound killer, man. That's it. Going above and beyond. So I'm in the bathroom stall, fucking wring out the pa, so

Speaker 2 (00:57:07):

Alright. So parallel compression friend or foe

Speaker 3 (00:57:13):

Friend, but I don't really fuck with it. Recently, I've been just kind of mixing with the groups now instead of just sending everything to the left and right. I do it because there's this new, not a plugin, but there's a new effect in the Midas. That's awesome. And it's like a transient designer. And yeah, I like it a little bit to just add a little bit more attack to some things. But no, not really. I have compression on everything. I mean literally everything, but you don't hear it the proper way to do compression. It's just to smooth things out. Because most people don't realize when you heavily compress stuff, it just brings the noise up. So for a vocal, if the dude's barking his fucking head off or whatever, and you're constantly like 12 to 20 fucking DB of reduction, and then when he stops singing, that's 20 db that the noise comes up.

(00:58:03):

So don't compress the fuck out of everything. So you just see a little bit of compression here or there. It's just the smooth shit out. Particularly like the symbols and stuff like that. Not a lot of compression as far as reduction, but compression on everything. But yeah, parallel compression could be cool. So it's tough nowadays with the digital stuff because if you're using an Alport piece, you might have the time alignments. We don't necessarily have the delay comp like we do in Pro Tools, but it's getting better out there and there's still a little bit to it, but go for it. I can live with it or without it. It doesn't matter. I'm not a big guy on it.

Speaker 2 (00:58:43):

Alright. When tuning in an empty room, how much are you planning for the room to change When filled with bodies? Hopefully

Speaker 3 (00:58:50):

A lot. That's experience, man. Seriously, it really, really is. Back to what I was saying with my graphic eq, when I play those five songs, I kind of know what's going to go on and then I am fortunate enough to have the virtual soundcheck, but I don't use the virtual soundcheck to tune the room. I actually just do it. If I don't have a system processor at front of house for the pa. If I'm in a venue, I'll play that and I'll walk around, I'll go back to the amp room and I'll bring the master fader up and check to make sure that the amps aren't clipping. Look, I mean, I know I've been a house guy and I've seen the whole touring thing. So when a lot of these touring engineers kind of go in, especially when you have a loud band, you're kind of nervous that somebody's going to fuck some shit up.

(00:59:43):

So I respect the venue. I'm not trying to go in and blow up PA systems, that's not me. I'm not that guy. Can I mix loud from time to time? But if you actually put it on a meter, it's not that loud. It's more of a perceived loudness. So yeah, as far as the room being empty, it's more of a feel thing. Temperature is a very, very big thing with that. I mean, I love hot shows and particularly a lot of bands, they don't like the air conditioning on machine head. Rob's up there ripping his fucking head off for three hours playing and singing some hard ass shit. You can't have the room too cold or that's going to fuck the vocal chords up. So heat and moisture and all that stuff is your humidity is your friend. But yeah, I take it into consideration and I adjust a couple of things here and there.

(01:00:36):

It's mostly in the top end that you see the changes happening, but you just kind of roll with it. Once I kind of get through the first song or two, I kind of have it dialed in. And then every now and then you'll notice that the air conditioner comes on and you're like, why does this sound bland all of a sudden? And you're like, oh wait a cold. Oh yeah, they changed the temperature and mixing outside. That's a huge thing from during the day to the nighttime. It's acoustics, man. That's a huge fucking thing, man. So yeah, it's a battle.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):

Alright, how about, what are your favorite songs to tune to?

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):

Alright, I will tell you I've been using the same one. The first song is Scream, aim, fire from Bullet from my Valentine Colin Richardson Mix. He's the guy that I look up to.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):

He's the guy. I mean, yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):

It is really, really weird because we have very similar mixing styles and when I started working for Machine Head, even though I had not heard all of the songs that we were playing live, I was just kind of doing my delay things and like, oh, this is what I would do. And then I would go back and listen to the songs from the records and we were doing similar shit, which was great. So I used that Screaming Fire is the overall balance. It's a good track. Like I said, I dipped my 1 60, 1 20 fives, 2 53 shit around there. And then I adjust a little bit of the 3.151 K around that area. The second track is another song from that record, which is Awaken the Demon, like calling. I don't know if it's in the mix or the mastering, I think it's the mixing. And I told Colin when we've hung out, like, Hey, this is what I used to tune in the pa, and he's like, really lovely guy, amazing. Carl Brown, you're a lucky. Fuck

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):

Carl Brown. You should come on the podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):

No, he's too busy, man. He's out there doing it,

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):

Doing every single person on our podcast is busy.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):

I know he's got a kid and all that shit. So

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):

About 60 to 70% of the people on our podcast have kids.

Speaker 3 (01:02:47):

All right. All right. I'm not trying to defend you, Carl. I love, we had some fun plenty of times and in Nottingham between Carl, Snoop and Colin, good times, man. A lot of fun stories. But yeah, so Awaken the Demon with the low end on that. There's that 50 60 Hertz thing just for that intro where there's that double base. To me, I just use that to just really push the subs to that edge. And if I see a little flicker or two in the red, then I know when I go into my set with my show that I've got a couple of Dia headroom that I'm not going to have any problems. So especially if I have those subs on an ox that I'm able to use that second song, sorry, third song, sad but True.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):

Hell yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):

Alright, 120 Hertz and 200 is what I use that for. If you listen to where it's like the bass guitar really sticks out at 1 20, 1 10 in that. And surprisingly that's a frequency that resonates in a lot of venues. So I fuck with that song basically just for that. I also mess a little bit with the 200 and that's it. And just mind you, with the edges of Scream, aim, fire, these songs are just happening for, I don't know, 20 seconds. That's it. I just get what I need and just move on. I don't see the point of trying to sit there and tune a fucking PA for four fucking hours. I don't do 12 hour long fucking sound checks because it's all going to change. It's all going to be completely different. When you put 2000 or 5,000 people in that room, there's no fucking point to it.

(01:04:41):

Line checks and sound checks for me are basically adjusting gates and compressions and kind of preparing for the difference of soundcheck versus the actual show because nobody at soundcheck after they just wake up is playing like show intensity. So you got to kind of leave that area to kind take back over. But yeah, so that's it. I'm not killing myself with the PA fourth song, ironically Davidian, and it's been way before I've been working for Machine Head, particularly for the top end. I work on the four and the 5K because there's a fuck ton of that on that song. So if it's melting your face off, then I know I need to dip that out. And then the last, which will probably surprise a lot of people is a drum stem from Wham of God from the Wrath album. And I think it's dead Seeds, whatever Track eight is, I think it is.

(01:05:47):

I fast forward to two minutes. It's when they do that floor Tom thing, because that's actually like with the exception of the snare. And Chris, I love you, but the snare drum was not for me, but the rest of the drum sound on that recording is killer. I think the way they recorded the drums on that was in sections, the kicks and the snares, then the Toms and then the symbols. So everything was clean and that actually sounds like my drums. So I used that to also just check the low mids and the mids for like 500 and that's it. And then I run my fucking shit back and that's it. And it works every time.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):

All right. Full triggering or blend

Speaker 3 (01:06:32):

Blend. But now, because I have 10 million fucking channels on my new Pro X console, just double inputting, I'm just splitting the input. You and I talked about this at Nam.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):

Yes, we did.

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):

Yeah. I'm just splitting the input, just EQing the shit out of the second one to really kind of get what I need. But I like triggers for monitors. If you have a band that's not on in ears, it has its place. It's too tight. Rider ish. I hate bands that rely on it. To me it's fake. And drummers just kind of bitch out. They hit like a bitch. I mean, even Danny from Napalm Death, dude, I'm all over him. I've giving him shit. Barney's on stage trying to fucking step on that fucking thing. It's amazing. But Danny was one of those drummers years ago. He is getting up there in age and shit, and he's hitting the drums and then he's kind of laxing on the feet a little bit, and a lot of these guys start doing that. So I'm not kidding if you lost my trigger out front, you really wouldn't notice it. Fair

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):

Enough.

Speaker 3 (01:07:44):

It it's like we do in the studio where we put the real kick in and we just kind of put the sample in underneath to smooth it out a little bit and keep the consistency. I used to name the Trigger channel the Hangover. So the drummer the night before was too fucked up. It's like all you got to kind of help. You know what I mean? We have to do that as engineers. It's like Rob's getting sick or whatever. We canceled two weeks of shows and it was like, all right, the vocals not going to be upfront as much as it normally is, but you got to help the guy out. So he's a human. You're humans. And I don't understand why bands want to fix everything, record together as a band in the studio. Why? Because you're going out to play as a band together. Who wants to just, well, I could play perfectly to a click. Great. Yeah, we could program the drums. I want the humanness to it. That's the fun thing about seeing a live band. So you come and see Machine Head, there's none of that fucking trickery. It's real. These are 50-year-old dudes playing three fucking hours. I see people half that fucking age. I can't do 10 minutes. Well, dude, I'm out of breath. Oh, I can't. My feet are cramping up. Are you kidding me? So, hey, sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):

That's impressive actually. And rant away. It's all good. So are you using a VG rig? I don't know what that is.

Speaker 3 (01:09:04):

Oh wait, I don't know what that means.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):

V-I-G-V-I-G.

Speaker 3 (01:09:10):

Don't know what that is.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):

All right, Alex, we have no idea what the hell you're talking about. Could be.

Speaker 3 (01:09:17):

Did he write VI six

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):

Maybe? VI six. What's a VI six rig?

Speaker 3 (01:09:21):

It's a soundcraft mixing console. Are we live? No,

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):

We're not live. Oh,

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):

Yeah, yeah. Fuck that. We will skip that question from him. And a final question from Alex is how do you deal with potential phasing when doing parallel compression on a digital board?

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):

Yeah, that's what I talked about.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):

You did talk about that,

Speaker 3 (01:09:43):

But to go into it so that the other people could kind of understand it all right? It's kind of like digital recording. It's like, okay, you put a plugin on one channel. If you don't have it on the other, it's like the unprocessed one's going to arrive before the process one, because obviously the signal has to go through the fucking DSP, whatever. So when you do that, if you do it internally with, I know the Midas and the Avid stuff has gotten better, but there's tricks like Robert Scoville Love the Good dude, great front of house guy, Tom Betty, but he does all the avid stuff. He's got a couple of videos online on how you could trick and manipulate it and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):

And hey, we should include that in the show notes as well link to that. We're going to link to those videos.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):

Okay. Yeah, they're pretty super nerdy.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):

For those of you who want to take it to a nerdy place, check the show notes. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):

You can fucking take acoustic measurement software like Smart and Route Pink Noise out as your measurement, and then pan that to the left, and then take your parallel compression and have it on the right, and you can actually see what your delay is within the acoustic measurement. And then you can add delay compensation to line it up and you could hear the comb filtering happen. So if you're a super nerd and you love doing all that shit, go check out that video. You'll be in all your fucking glory. But me as an engineer, I don't have time for that bullshit. Kind of like we said at the top of this thing, I got to walk in and fucking make it work. You know what I mean? So less is more. That was always the thing. The touring guy fucking had all of the gates in the comp.

(01:11:29):

So I used to carry my own fucking rack of gates and inserts and stuff, which ironically was the Samson S Gate four, the cheapest shit ever. I have four of those things and do they're better than D Dormers. They're clean, and I've taken them all over the world. So yeah, I didn't have all the extra shit, you know what I mean? I had just a couple of microphones that I relied on. Those were my tools, but these microphones still to this day are my fucking tools, and I know what they're supposed to sound like. And I mixed to that, particularly outdoor shows, big fucking rocking festival in front of a hundred thousand people. Front of house is 300 feet back. It's not dead center. You don't really know what the PA is like. So what I do is with those 25 hundreds for the guitar, I'm not kidding you, I roll it off to a hundred.

(01:12:19):

And like I said, other than Machine Head, I leave them flat. So I build the mix around the guitar and people are like, huh. But yeah, I know that this is the sound every time I do that, if this is what it's supposed to be, it always sounds good regardless of what mix and console I'm on. And so I would build the mix around that. So yeah, back to the insert thing. Yeah, it's tough. If you're doing it, like I said, internally, you're going to be all right. But if you start introducing the hardware, then you've got to kind of go to every single channel and add the delay. You can actually do that. You know how on the bottom of Pro Tools hd, you can see the delay comp and you can see how many milliseconds and all that stuff is. You could do that on each channel, on the inputs as well as the output. But a lot of these consoles, they just do all the time management itself. But the minute you try to leave, it gets a little fucking hairy.

Speaker 2 (01:13:18):

Fair enough. Alright, here's, here's one from Aristotle Mall, which is what was the biggest mistake you've ever had doing Live Sound, and what did you learn from that?

Speaker 3 (01:13:30):

Good question. Well, mistakes. Well, yeah. I mean, we all make mistakes. I would have to say one was just a stupid thing. When I first started using the automation consoles have mute groups, so you could mute things. So on the Midas console, there's a button that says next and all this other stuff. So as you're kind of doing it, you're hitting the next columns and stuff like that. So it was like the third thing. I was doing it for some no reason. Instead of me reaching over and hitting the next button, I reached over to Mute Group M or whatever, and that's where I'd mute everything. Whoops. So yeah. Yeah, that was one of those things like right away, the Tour Manager radio, what the fuck was that? Oh yeah, I blew it. It's like I fucked up. And yeah, mistakes like that,

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):

I mean, but shit happens. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:26):

That's the whole thing, like I said about life, man, it's like, all right, if it happened, keep going. It's not there forever, but you've got to learn. Yeah, definitely. Learn from your mistakes. I mean, shit, I could be here for hours. There's so many things you learn. It's like, all right, this mic or this technique or this effect doesn't work or, so every day is a learning. Even if you don't fuck up. As cliche as that is, there's so much to learn, dude. I mean, it's not even funny. There's guys out there that just know this shit and you're just like, how the fuck do you know all that?

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):

Because they've been doing it forever.

Speaker 3 (01:15:04):

No, but it's just like they acoustic stuff, man.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):

Oh, that stuff. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:15:08):

The tuning. My buddy Chris and the guys that basically created smart and all that stuff. But the real fucking alien, this guy, Bob McCarthy, he basically designs everything for, he created the Analyzer, and I am friends with him, and when I was reading up on his book, I've read two versions of it, and I sent him a message. I'm like, dude, you're a fucking alien. He's like, no, I'm not. I'm a transformer. I was like, huh? He's like, I'm called optimization prime. I'm like, oh my God,

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):

What a dork.

Speaker 3 (01:15:43):

But dude,

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):

He's the fucking, but he is.

Speaker 3 (01:15:46):

Yeah, he knows. It's unbelievable if you look up that dude. So if you want to understand how to set up PAs, how to do acoustic treatment and not just for live, dude, I use this shit in the studio understanding standing waves and all of that stuff, man. Cold filter. That's the whole thing. People don't realize it's live in studio. There's so many things that are intertwined. Why? Because we're using our ears. So I would suggest, if you are one of those super nerds, it's a hard book to read, but Bob McCarthy, it's, hang on, I actually got it here on my phone. I'm a super nerd, but this is, I got to hand it to Bob. He is a genius and alright, the name of his book, Jesus, I got a lot of stuff on books

Speaker 2 (01:16:42):

And we are going to link to this too.

Speaker 3 (01:16:44):

Absolutely. Alright, sound system design and optimization. Get the third edition because he made that one more understanding. But yeah, it's a very difficult read, but it's like a toolbox, man. I'm not kidding. That's why I keep it on my phone because there's so much shit that I go back to reference when I encounter strange situations. But yeah, sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:17:10):

Great, thank you. So Brendan Gregory is asking, what advice would you give to someone who wants to become a touring front of house guy? I've been doing live sound for a couple of years for companies in small venues and really want to go on tour, but I'm not sure what the best route to take is.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):

Great question. I got it asked all the time. Working for the Sound company is one way. I have a lot of friends that have gotten onto some big gigs. You're definitely going to learn a lot, especially how to fly a PA tuning it. So the A two kind of thing is big there, but you never know, man, if you're in a decent sound company that gets hired by some big shit. I'm telling you, I see it happen all the time. Like the band engineer or the band monitor guy, they'll freak out or get drunk and you may have to step in and they'd be like, wow. But working in the venues is really kind of not being the dick local sound guy. Really kind of going above and beyond, not just for the national acts, but the smaller acts.

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):

Let me back you up on this. From touring, I remember a few times actually where we would get to a certain venue and their local person, or even the monitor person was just a cut above your regular house sound person. And it happened at least three times that the same person who made a great impression on my band and the tour I was on, we later would bump into on the road because some band hired that person.

Speaker 3 (01:18:42):

Absolutely. And that's it, man, I can't tell you, I run into so many local guys that are awesome that I would give my left nut to be able to take them with me. They're just good dudes. They're constantly checking in on you when you advance the show. They actually read the information and they have everything that you ask for the stage clear, just really being flexible and being a good guy. So for any of you guys out there who might be doing monitors, oh dude, I see this all the time. Monitor guys, man. And particularly with the metal, they just turn the game up, push up the fader, and it's like, that's it. It's like, could you fucking maybe try to EQ it? Can you actually maybe do something and show that you care pushing up a fader, really? Come on. I get into people's asses about that.

(01:19:33):

You know what I mean? You clean shit up. You got this $20,000 fucking mixing console with all the processing in the world on it. You could use some of it, just the filters, like clean your life, make things easy, bring the feedback out. So I would say if you want to really get on with it, go after the bands, meet the tour managers, get yourself a business card, but your work is what does it. It's not always a resume. And when I go to colleges and I talk, it's great that you have this degree, but you know what? You could go fucking wipe your ass with it because it's either you could do the gig or you can't. I hate seeing kids out of school spending half the time under the desk looking at the lights to make, use your fucking ears and here's the best tip that I could give you.

(01:20:21):

Don't fucking mix on headphones unless you're handed out 10,000 pairs of fucking headphones at the same type mix out of the fucking PA headphones should only be for trying to find a problem. You know what I mean? And that's it. Or if you're off center from the PA and you can't really hear it, but I've gotten good at just looking at the meters and all that stuff. But yeah, so offer to do front of house for bands. I'm sure there's bands in your area that are playing the same three, four, or five venues offer to kind of do it for free. So this way you get out of the venue that you're in and you kind of get experience going on tour, even though if it's on the other side of town where you walk into a venue, do it for free, start out doing it for nothing because your paycheck is going to be your experience because in the long run it can pay off. So there's a lot of ways, there's no one way, but put yourself out there. Be annoying.

(01:21:22):

I kind of got into an A-list studio by doing something pretty fucking retarded. I took a shoebox with my old pair of shoes. I took one of the shoes out and I put my resume and I brought it to the studio and I left it on the dude's desk. By the way, it's the saxophone player for Billy Joel. Yeah, great. And he owns the studio with Rick Wake every Celine Dion, Mandy Moore, Mariah Carey, Jessica Simmons and JLo and all of that stuff. So Alia Studio actually, that's what Dream Theater does all their records too. But anyways, yeah, so I dropped off a shoebox with one shoe in it and the resume, about an hour later, I get the phone call, I don't get it. What the fuck is this a joke? I'm like, yeah, I already got one foot in the door now I just got to get the other dude. Loved it. It was the most dumbest corniest fucking thing ever. But I stood out and that's how it happened.

Speaker 2 (01:22:20):

It's creative. I'll give you that.

Speaker 3 (01:22:21):

Yeah, it's stupid and corny, but think about it. We're stupid and corny. We were talking about Soff before we went live. That guy is out of his fucking tree, but he does great work. You know what I mean? So it's definitely a job for a personality.

Speaker 2 (01:22:38):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:22:38):

Let's go on. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):

Oh, it's okay. Alright, here's one from George, which is how important is panning in live sound and when and why do you typically use it or not use it?

Speaker 3 (01:22:48):

Yeah, panning is great. It's just creates depth, localization, your stereo field, hopefully if you're on a stereo pa, but it could also hurt you sometimes. You got to remember, I had kind of hinted this earlier with the guitar panning. You got to sometimes remember, it's like depending upon the PA or the room that you're using and that you're in. If someone's standing on the far right side house and say somebody's on the far left and that guy's going to play a guitar solo and you have it totally pan to the left, well now everybody on the fucking right side of the venue is not going to hear it. So you got to be careful. Panning can fluctuate from venue to venue without a doubt, but it's key, man. When you do a mono front fill like I do, I feed it directly from the left. So I sort of have where you can check a mix in mono, but yeah, panning is critical, but if you mix in mono, and that's the best way to clean up the mix. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):

Great. And final question is from LES Megos, which is, and I imagine you haven't dealt with this in ages, but how would you deal with a local band who got drunk during the show and cranked the amps by themselves? I guess dealing with bands who adjust the volume.

Speaker 3 (01:24:11):

I deal with that Napalm death like Miss used to play, but now this guy, John's in there now, love the kid to death. But every now and then they know, keep the volume down, you'll get what you need in the monitor. But I know in these shitty little clubs, there is no monitor. But yeah, sometimes you get those bands, they go to 11 and then you got to kind of mix the stage bleed. There's nothing you could do about it. There was one trick when I used to do some of the local venue stuff, and this also ties into being cool to every band. It's like, Hey guys, particularly if you've got a metal band, guys love your band. You know what I mean? I really want to make you sound good. I got this pa, let's control the volume. It's 80% mental being an engineer, 20% technical. So you got to put yourself in the artist's head in the right way. But if they're going to crank it up, man, there's nothing you can do about it. That's just the way it is.

Speaker 2 (01:25:17):

So just got to adjust.

Speaker 3 (01:25:20):

Yeah, I wish musicians out there, even with the monitors, everybody like, oh, turn this up, turn that up. Well, you do realize that the fader goes the other way. You know what I mean? Why don't you try turning down some stuff and then you don't have to crank the shit out of all the other stuff because then it's like your monitor's bleeding into his monitor or this fucking dude's guitar over here is basically being heard more on the right side of the stage than the, you know what I mean? There's turn them down. Everything doesn't have to be on 11. The best place for an amp when you turn it all the way down and then you start bringing it up and then you reach that point where the amp just kind of jumps up in volume. That to me was like, that's the best place to have it. But nowadays everything's fucking F fractals and kempers and all that other stuff. So plug your fucking headphones in now.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):

Well, Steve, dude, thank you so much for coming on and being so open with your vast wealth of knowledge. I'm sure that we could bring you back on and talk for another 90 minutes about this stuff easy.

Speaker 3 (01:26:29):

Oh, I could do this for hours. I live this man. I don't have a personal life. None of us do. Well, thank you. Thanks man, for having me, and I'll make sure that you guys get that info. But yeah, if you guys out there ever have questions, don't feel intimidated. I mean, hit me up on the socials bullshit. Steve Lagudi, I answer every single question that I ever get because for me, when I was trying to learn the internet and all other stuff, and I know how hard it is to try to find the answers, and it may be intimidating to talk to people, ask me questions, I'm here, I will respond to every question that I get. If you're going to take the 10 minutes out of your day to fucking write me, the least I could do is respond back. And Metallica taught me that. I will tell you that right now.

Speaker 2 (01:27:24):

That's cool. Cool.

Speaker 3 (01:27:25):

Always have time for other people, man. Seriously, because you never know. You could be the next big fucking engineer out there that I may want to aspire to be like. So hit me up.

Speaker 2 (01:27:36):

Hit him up. Do it now.

Speaker 3 (01:27:39):

No, not now,

Speaker 1 (01:27:40):

C I'm just kidding. The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is brought to you by Ivans Guitars and Basses. Ivans strives to make high quality cutting edge musical instruments that any musician can afford and enjoy. visit.com for more info to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit URM Academy podcast and.