Will Putney: Understanding Genre Culture, The Producer Hustle, Avoiding Burnout

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

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

Speaker 2 (00:00:08):

Welcome to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we're now on our fifth year, but it's true, and it's only because of you, the listeners, and if you'd like to see us stick around for another five years, there are a few simple things that you can do that would really, really help us out and I would be endlessly appreciative. Number one, share our episodes with your friends. If you get something out of these episodes, I'm sure they will too, so please share us with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me and our guests too. My Instagram is at al Levy urm audio, and let me just let you know that we love seeing ourselves tagged in these posts. Who knows, we might even respond. And number three, leave us reviews and five stars please anywhere you can.

(00:01:05):

We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, I want to thank you all for the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never, ever charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way possible. All I ask in return is a share post and a tag. Now, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. My guest today is someone that needs no introduction. I am positive that you all know exactly who he is, but on the off chance that you've been living under a rock, which hey might be two of you, my guest today is a man named Will Putney, who is really, I would say top of the heap as far as modern heavy music production goes. The man is a beast. We had him on Nail the Mix in December with Knock Loose and it was just one of the best episodes we've ever done.

(00:02:07):

Straight up. He's worked with everyone from th artist, murder to Body Count, to every time I died, north Lane, Norma Jean. I mean, the list goes on and on and on and on. You can look it up. I could bore you with 35 sick records, even though he's probably made hundreds, but he's not just a pummeling producer and mixer. I would also say that he's a bit of an innovator when it comes to modern metal production. He's one of the dudes who took it from beyond just sounding big and polished to real big and Polish. Like his records always sound like a band, but sometimes when you hear real sounding records, they have this raw nastiness, which I don't have any problem with actually. I think some people do that super, super well and our innovators in their own right, like say Kurt Ballou but Will has a way of combining that raw feel with that big, big Polish sound, which I know a lot of people lust after and really, really want to know how to do you, and he's also got some plugins out that are pretty damn innovative. Really interesting. Dude. I'll shut up. I present you Will Putney. Will Putney. Welcome to the URM Podcast. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 3 (00:03:39):

Thank you for having me. How's it going

Speaker 2 (00:03:41):

As well as possible? Honestly, this isn't too different than my normal life except for no travel. I'm not trying to minimize anybody's pain or suffering, but I really needed to stop traveling for a minute. Sure, yeah, it was getting extreme, so it's working out nicely. What about you

Speaker 3 (00:04:01):

Other than some minor band disasters? With my guys, it's been okay. I'm fortunate enough to be in a mixing stage of a record, so I was lucky to be able to isolate and get some work done. Other people I know were less fortunate and had to cancel some sessions and things like that. I know my band, which I don't tour with, but fit for an autopsy, had to cancel a tour a day into the tour, so that was definitely a mess, trying to get everything back and get dudes home and getting stuck with some bills, but we climbed out of that, which is cool, and I'm actually in the middle of setting up a record for my other Project N, which just dropped last week, so the downtime was kind of productive. I got to use it to get all the details done on that and otherwise just mixing, it's starting to feel kind of normal, although it's just weird not knowing what's coming, but I'm doing okay. Could be worse, could be worse.

Speaker 2 (00:05:03):

It could be a lot worse. I mean, I have this theory and I could be wrong, that it's going to be an explosion when it's over basically in that people are going to need services and products right away and people who provide those are going to get overwhelmed they never have been before.

Speaker 3 (00:05:25):

Sure. I'm excited when everybody gets to go back out and I'm looking forward to bars and restaurants and things being packed and hopefully a lot of the small businesses get a surge of income and customers so everyone can recover from this. It's just a crazy time. Yeah, like I said, I'm definitely lucky that I can work for myself, but I know a lot of people who are just in damage control and have to wait stuff like this out. Yeah, hopefully you're right. Hopefully there is an explosion of a big economic boom again, once we get back to normal and everybody can recover from it as fast as possible.

Speaker 2 (00:06:03):

I'm an optimist. I hope I'm right too though. Then again, it could just be the beginning of children of men, so there's always that possibility too.

Speaker 3 (00:06:13):

You may have more stock in humanity than I do, but that's cool. I still hope everything works out

Speaker 2 (00:06:19):

Well. My stock in humanity is I trust their self-interest basically.

Speaker 3 (00:06:25):

Yeah, I think eventually everyone will have to work towards a common goal of recovery, so I'm holding out still that there's hope that it will hit a bottom where everyone will go, all right, we have to fix this, and I guess it's starting to happen. I think people are starting to listen and stay indoors and help control the spread of this, and at first it was like partying on beaches in Florida and now it's like, okay, we're taking it seriously, so maybe, hopefully it wasn't too late and a lot of people weren't put more at risk, but I don't know, I guess we'll just see what happens.

Speaker 2 (00:06:59):

Well, I think part of what made a difference why I think attitudes are shifting is when those kids were, remember when that went viral with those kids making fun of the whole thing and just partying and nothing's going to stop me from my spring break. That went everywhere, and those people got so shamed. One of them actually issued a very heartfelt apology, and I think that this is the first time that I'm actually pretty cool with the whole cancel culture thing. This is to me a very, very warranted time to shame people talking about life and death. So I think that a lot of people are just out of self-interest, are going to want to avoid being on the receiving end of that.

Speaker 3 (00:07:46):

Yeah, I agree. And I mean we like to make a light at a dark times sometimes, and there's a lot of jokes in my group chats right now that I would never say publicly, but in the end it's like you have to take things seriously sometimes, and when there's a global crisis like this and it's this intense, just pay attention and try to do your part to make sure it doesn't get worse. That's really all you can do.

Speaker 2 (00:08:12):

I mean, I feel like you developed your career in a time of crisis for the music industry, so in some ways I think that you're built for this. You started to get known around 2000 10, 11, 12, and that was when everybody was saying that the music industry was going to go extinct within 10 years and there'd be no labels left and the ground is falling out from under us, and we just had the 2008 economic crash. Do you think about that at all in relation to now?

Speaker 3 (00:08:50):

Yeah, I mean we were smart enough to see the angles maybe early enough when we were making records and we realized, okay, big studios are going away. Big budgets are going away. You're no longer going to be able to bill for your studio and Bill as a producer. You're no longer going to be able to live off of royalty checks because album sales are just in the toilet and all of that's gone, and we adapted the studio to be able to work affordably to be able to take on the right records when budgets were really shrinking and stuff. I was putting up bands at my house. I was having them crash wherever we could asking friends. Even machine had a few records where some bands were staying at the studio, the suicide silence record that we did, those guys were living at my guitar player's house at the time just to make everything work, and we rolled through the punches of that stuff earlier and it didn't really occur to me at the time because I didn't making records 10 years earlier, so I didn't realize how much of a collapse it really was until I talk to more older producers and more veteran guys who were around in the nineties and stuff.

(00:10:06):

And looking back on it, it's crazy. We always joke that man, if we were record producers in the nineties, everybody in this room would be a millionaire. We'd be on yachts, laughing, barely working. How crazy easy it was to do this job back then and now how all of these modern challenges with the digital age rolling through and that economic crash that happened, how all of that made this job more difficult to be successful financially. But in the end, if you're good at your job and you make records that people care about and you design productions that people think are interesting, you're going to have a career in this field. People will still call you. Music's not going to disappear. It's just going to adapt to modern times how it's delivered to people. But everyone still likes music. Everybody still wants to hear their favorite band in a cool way, and if you can deliver goods like that, you're still going to be around one way or the other. And I figured that out a while ago, and when I dove into this whole career full time, it's when I realized if I can do this right, I will be able to do this one way or another for a long time.

Speaker 2 (00:11:17):

Yeah, I completely agree with you on that. I think that how people say that things are more oversaturated than ever, and it's not just in recording. They say that about photography, about being in a band that's kind of just something that people use as a reason for why their careers aren't moving faster. But in my opinion and from observation, both from all the people that I've worked with back when I was recording, as well as all the people that we've had on now, the mix and then also through watching students advance from being just beginners to having real gigs like Geo for instance, what I'm realizing is that yes, there's a lot more people doing this badly. There's more than ever. Obviously back in the day, having a recording studio was financially close to impossible. So yeah, maybe you didn't have as many people trying to record, but people trying to do it well who have that fire in them to get as good as possible and who actually have the people skills to not weird everybody out, that group of people is actually tiny.

(00:12:40):

It's always been tiny and always will be tiny. So I don't think that the competition aspect has changed one bit really. I think it was always hard and it will always be hard, but even if it's a hundred thousand people that are trying to record, there's still only a tiny, tiny amount of those who are actually trying to do it well, and then on top of that, I completely agree with you. If you do things that people enjoy, albums that people enjoy, mixes that people enjoy, if you're enriching their life through your musical contribution, there'll be a way to make it happen. Music is age old. It's not going to go somewhere because a format changed.

Speaker 3 (00:13:24):

Sure. I mean, it was difficult to be a successful artist or record producer 40 years ago in a different way, and it's just as difficult today in its own right. In the sixties there were huge album budgets and everyone, every producer in band was like a smash, but the cream rise to the top. These bands had to be incredible to get deals, and these producers had to be incredible to get these budgets. There weren't as many for all the bands that were in the world. There were only a handful. You didn't have all the options in the oversaturation like you had today, so it was so hard to even be in the public eye at that point, and now today it's easy to make a record. It's easy to pull up a laptop and be a record producer or be an artist and write music, but now you compete with a billion things that are out there, so it's just as hard to rise to the top, and it's just as hard to get noticed in the sea of things now, just on a different style of scale, it's easier to get it off the ground, but now your competition is 10,000 times greater.

(00:14:30):

You have so many more artists doing things in similar genres, in similar worlds and music that it's its own degree of difficulty now to separate yourself and to be unique and stand out in that big C. So it's always going to be challenging. It's hard to be the best at anything saying you're one of the coolest metal bands in the world, or you're one of the best record producers in the world. That's crazy. It's so hard to get to a spot like that, and a lot of people who are in it maybe don't realize what that path is and what the challenges, how those challenges appear and how hard it is to get ahead of other things or get noticed now, but the people who are truly dedicated to it, who truly care about it and are passionate about trying to make the best music and art, they usually break through it. There hasn't really been a time where I thought, wow, everybody sucks right now. This whole year was bad for me. Every year I find something where I'm blown away. Still some new band always comes out and it makes me go, wow, this is awesome. Or I hear a record and I'm like, the production on this is crazy. I still always hear this stuff. I'm still always impressed and I always find these things, so I'm not really worried about it. I do think the best stuff makes its way out there.

Speaker 2 (00:15:50):

Yeah, absolutely, man. I remember in the nineties the idea of getting signed was winning the lottery or something. It was basically impossible, and that alone is so, so different. I mean, it's still difficult, but the scale of difficulty for that to even happen was orders of magnitude different.

Speaker 3 (00:16:14):

Sure. There was just

Speaker 2 (00:16:15):

Way, way different.

Speaker 3 (00:16:16):

Just to be discovered was its own challenge. To be able to have a label wrap in a and r even know that your band exists back then was extremely difficult. Now you could send an email. Now it's like you can look at Spotify and just see a playlist and see how many people like the band and know, okay, there's a fan base. Maybe we'll check this out. It's eliminated the struggle of exposure in the modern times. It was an impossible feat before technology to even have people know you exist. I remember going to shows in the nineties and people were mailing demos to Distros in other states as a way to get people to like, Hey, you should check this band out. Literally putting a cassette tape in the mail because that's the only way they could get somebody in New Jersey to listen to some band from North Carolina because financially it was impossible. You couldn't book a band that no one's ever heard and expect people to just go to the show. So there was all this grassroots awareness raising just to get people to know that bands exist, and that's just now I can find some band from Russia today that just pops up on my Spotify and it's like, I would've never heard that band as a kid. I would've never even known they existed.

Speaker 2 (00:17:37):

Yeah, impossibility. I remember also hearing about super successful bands like Dave Matthews Band or Cutie and the Blowfish, those stratospheric level success stories are disturbed or whatever, and those bands would tour for five to 10 years unsigned selling CDs out of their trunk and moving 200,000 or more physical units themselves before they ever got known, which is insane to me. Now, I know several people as I know you do too, who made YouTube videos and not that that's not work. It takes a lot of work to make videos that are interesting, that are high quality, that keep people engaged. That's its own grind, but I know people who did that and they did that for 5, 6, 7 years and now they're in sign bands that pack houses, but the grind is always there no matter what time period, 10, 20 years from now, there'll be a different grind. It won't look anything like this, but it will still be just as hard I think.

Speaker 3 (00:18:47):

Sure. It's always going to present its challenges to get your name out there. There's no real shortcut to it.

Speaker 2 (00:18:53):

When you decided that you were going to do this for real, how did you go about getting your name out?

Speaker 3 (00:19:00):

I think I just tried to do anything that I thought would connect with people, whether or not I was super passionate about the band or loved the particular music or thought it was going to be difficult or whatever the budget was, I was just like, I know a few people in New Jersey. I should go after some of these bands. Whatever they can afford to do, I just think I should try to do these records because I know people will at least hear them and if I do a good job on it, it'll lead to other things. It was like I prioritize exposure over pretty much anything else as long as there was something decent as an art form. So nowadays I would definitely be more pickier about the style of projects I choose or the type of band, but when I first got started, I let a lot of that go and I was like, all right, I don't have to love this, but if this band is at least good enough where I think I can make a record that people will like, I'm interested in it.

(00:19:57):

I did that for years. There's definitely stuff I recorded where I don't listen to or I wouldn't love to put on at any given time, but I knew it was important just to do things, take the opportunities I can get and just do things that would help get my name out and that people would think sounded cool. So if it checked those boxes, I was just in on it and I was working side jobs and I was working under machine and bartending and doing what I could to scrap together money to pay my bills. I knew this approach really wasn't going to sustain me financially either, so I had to kind of hustle on the side just to be able to exist and do it and just kind of hope that it would improve over time.

Speaker 2 (00:20:40):

So you're playing the long game.

Speaker 3 (00:20:42):

It was more of an investment in myself and I kind of realized that they're really like, I'm not just going to walk into perfect record making scenarios with my favorite bands with all the money in the world and everything. It's just not going to happen. Even I worked under a very established producer who at the time was the IT guy in the world I wanted to be in, and he was getting offers to do all these records and passing on stuff that I was like, oh, I would kill to do this, but I couldn't even get my hands on it. No one was interested in me. I had no credits. I really had no experience and I was underqualified at the time to even do a lot of this stuff. So even with a guy like that, he couldn't really put me up for anything either.

(00:21:25):

I wasn't getting the looks from, it took years before something would come in for him that he could even approach somebody about maybe trying to get me to do and everybody said no, nobody was interested in the smaller guy and I kind of had to just do it on my own. It didn't really come from hand me downs or anything like that. I mean, I got the experience to be able to make my own records sound cool, but I didn't really get any of the projects out of it. It was only by making good records and doing cool engineering and cool productions where I think I started to get the interest from actual labels and things.

Speaker 2 (00:22:04):

This is an interesting topic to me. This is something I hear from students a lot when talking about their goals and mind you, I talk to people who are at all levels, but I'm talking right now specifically about people very early on in their career. One thing that I'll hear pretty frequently is how do I work with the bands I want to work with and the thing that I wish that they would understand, and I hope that they take everything you just said in this context that to get to the point where you're actually able to turn down projects and choose the kinds of bands you want to work with, that's actually the goal. That right there is what takes a really long time to develop at the beginning. Why would the bands that you want come to you? There's no reason for it. Even if you work under somebody like Machine at the time, and for people who are younger, at that time, machine was like the top dog in heavy music, so even having a gig like that, you still have to prove your own value and people have to see that value in your work.

(00:23:20):

It has to be a real, real thing, and so early on I really urged people to kind of go about it the way you're going about it, do whatever you can to get experience under your belt and do whatever you can to get exposure and have you seen this meme going around? It's been around for a few years, but it's some musicians will post it making fun of people who offer them exposure and it's like exposure doesn't pay my light bills or some shit like that.

Speaker 3 (00:23:53):

Sure, yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:23:54):

And I think that that's such a bad attitude because okay, I get it. There's scammers out there who will, they'll try to take advantage of you. Yes, that exists. It's a real thing, but real exposure, the kind that can actually help get your name out there is oftentimes worth more than the little bit of money you might have made in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (00:24:21):

Sure. I mean there's a difference between getting taken advantage of or just having to decide if you need to do a record for a low budget. A lot of that stuff early on for me it was like this is all we have. They're not trying to rip me off or trying to pay me an exposure. It was just smaller projects had smaller budgets and the amount of work, the work it takes to make a record the right way. I was working for less than minimum wage, but it was the only way to actually do this record, and it wasn't because it was a greedy band or a greedy label. It was like, whoa, this isn't a big pan. This is all they have. I understand that. So it's tough to strike that balance and you just have to figure out ways to adapt and be able to take on the right projects while knowing that at some point you might need to find another way to sustain yourself until you can get your worth up enough where this becomes your full-time living.

Speaker 2 (00:25:22):

How long did that take for you? You say years, but do you have any somewhat specific amount of time that it was from when you were an underlaying at machines to where you would say that you started to become in demand?

Speaker 3 (00:25:37):

It was probably, I'd say maybe three or four years. I probably worked on a machine very green for about a year while trying to record bands. I started recording bands. I mean, that was the best part about that situation is I really didn't get paid anything to be an intern with machine, but he did let me use the studio when there was downtime. So I think three weeks into my internship I was recording my first band. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was just watching him reading what I could and just figuring it out as I went type scenarios, which was extremely challenging but good just like I just got thrown into the fire and within a year of that, I had developed enough of some engineering chops where machine could actually hire me to engineer on records, so I started to work on records with him for about a year, maybe a year or two while I was doing my same side thing.

(00:26:36):

I would just do his engineering gig for the day when the band went home. I would work on my own projects, just kind of sleeping at the studio, stuff like bringing work home. After about I'd say two years to two and a half years into my career, I slowly started to build a little home rig so I can mix more at home, and I was just more productive having that balance, being able to take some work home and just work till I pass out of my bed. My mix rig was literally at the foot of my bed, so I would sit on my bed with headphones and mix and then just lay back and fall asleep. That's how challenging that was in that time, but I'd say about a year of that. Then the budget started to creep up enough where I was fortunate to have that option where I could actually choose to record my own band because for a monthly paycheck it probably worked out to be a little better than what I was getting paid by machine to just do engineering stuff.

(00:27:39):

So he wound up bringing in another assistant and then I started to just do some of my own projects, and then that separation slowly started to happen whereby maybe three or four years in I had kind of separated and was just making my own records and then he was making his own records. He had a new assistant and then I just kind of was off and running, so maybe three or four years, I'd say before it was like, cool, this is good. I can basically live off this. I was broke, but I was able to pay all my bills and get everything. I was able to sustain myself doing records and then it kind of just grew from there.

Speaker 2 (00:28:20):

With how green you were, how did you get him to give you a shot? I know some of our friends say that they actually prefer interns to be pretty damn green so that they don't come in with bad habits and preconceived notions. Was it that?

Speaker 3 (00:28:38):

Absolutely.

(00:28:39):

Yeah. I mean I fully agree with that. I take people who know nothing and I think that's if they're musically gifted and have the right kind of taste and I like them and they have a sense of humor, I would take that over a guy who worked at some other studio for 10 years, almost any day because they'll learn exactly what I want them to learn, do it like this. I don't have to undo somebody else's process, not that my way is the only way, but at the studio I kind of want my way to be the only way for certain things.

Speaker 2 (00:29:14):

Your way is the only way for you,

Speaker 3 (00:29:17):

And I've tried to do this with other more established engineers. We've tried to hire people before when we are looking for interns and assistants, and I always find that the guys that are more set in their own ways never work out for one way or another and it's like, I don't know if it's just because we butt heads on methods or I never actually get the thing that I was hoping I would get out of 'em, and then everyone who's been like Randy and Steve and Gio and Matt, that's the crew that's here right now, including me too, we all started knowing basically nothing. These are all very musical people. Couple Berkeley grads, a great drummer, two, two drummers, two great guitar players, and we knew nothing about recording, but we were just interested in it, had good taste in music and everybody can think for themselves and is a quick learner.

(00:30:09):

So it's the perfect scenario every time for me. So I really do agree with that one. I've had all my success with building our team and our staff with that mentality too. But yeah, I mean it's hard to just get started. I do agree that going to a place and working under a producer or an engineer who's work you back is the way it really teaches you the right things to learn. You really see everything applied the right way. You don't just learn what stuff is or what it does. You learn why it's cool and how it's applied in a real time scenario and it does beat any version of schooling or online stuff. I've seen it is the way to really dig in and crash corset, but it's challenging to find those types of opportunities. When we put the word out that we need an intern or assistant, it's literally like I go through hundreds of messages to find a person or two, so it is highly competitive, but if you're doing your own independent work and it's already off to a good start, the right producers will take notice. Eventually. I've heard some home stuff where I'm like, I know that this guy knows nothing about recording, but I can tell that he's going to be good because this is already balanced in a way or there's a vibe to it. There's already something there where it's like he's going to be good. He just doesn't know how to be good yet.

Speaker 2 (00:31:31):

Yeah, there's an inherent musicality that you can spot.

Speaker 3 (00:31:35):

Yeah, I mean, I remember when Zach came in Serini, who is now a mega producer,

Speaker 2 (00:31:41):

God, he's so good.

Speaker 3 (00:31:42):

He was just doing his own stuff and immediately his stuff sounded good immediately and me and Machine were both, he doesn't even know what he's doing and it's good already. He was just figuring it out with his computer and you just knew right away when he gets the chops down, he's going to be a killer. We were like, no question. This kid's going to be awesome. He did our bullshit for a year or two. Then he went to la, he did Feldman's bullshit for a year or two or whatever, and now he's one of the best producers in this world, and it was like you just saw it right away. When he knows what he's doing, he's going to be unstoppable.

Speaker 2 (00:32:19):

Talent is a real thing. I've heard some people who say that it's not, they try to come up with scientific reasons for why it's not, but man, I grew up in a musical environment around talent. I've worked with so many people and some just have it. They just have this special something and maybe there's a scientific reason for it that their brain is just formed in a way that gives them more of a natural aptitude for musicality or athletics, whatever it might be. But talent is a very, very real thing, and if that's there combined with the people skills, those are the ingredients needed, then you just need a mentor to foster that. I think, and I agree with what you said about the online stuff and recording schools, and I want to address that because obviously I have the online school. I always tell people that if they think that they're going to do URM only and get somewhere that they're diluting themselves, the thing that we provide is that the real recording schools don't cover metal or rock in a serious way. There's nowhere else to really, really get that stuff. This genre music is not taken seriously, and so this is the first time that it's ever been taken seriously and that the people who actually make it are giving the classes and that's awesome. However, that is not enough. That should be a supplement to everything that you're doing in real life, a hundred percent. If you're not doing it in real life, you're not doing it. You're not going to get better.

Speaker 3 (00:34:04):

The other side to this is there's a cultural aspect to it of really knowing the art that you're involved in, and I think there's a really big disconnect there too, because I don't think I am an insanely talented musician. I think there are guys that are much more musical than me out there who when they sit in front of a guitar, if they're going to write a riff or come up with an idea, I think I can get out

Speaker 2 (00:34:32):

Adjacent

Speaker 3 (00:34:33):

Ov. I just think I could get out classed by a lot of guys on a musical level. I don't have formal musical training. I'm not saying that that's the end all, but I know that I can be outclassed as a musician by a lot of people. But I do think where one of my strengths comes in as I was so immersed in this world, I knew everything. I knew every band, every hardcore band, every metal band that was on the radar. I just understood the whole culture, what works, why bands are cool, what's special about bands, what makes things unique, and I really dug into that stuff and I spent a lot of time seeing things react and trying to understand why, and I think that skillset that I applied to records is really a valuable thing and it's really something that kind of separates the men from the boys where it's like I'm approaching stuff with an encyclopedia of knowledge about why things connect in certain ways, and it's the whole other side to this. There is the musical side and the technical side, but then there's understanding the whole art form and understanding why something sucks or why something's cool

(00:35:41):

Or why that's not going to stick, why a lyric isn't going to stick, why this riff isn't going to come off as being as cool as you think it is because of various reasons, and it's like being able to master some of that stuff and be able to produce things that actually will translate and will react the right way is an unteachable thing. It just comes from you sort of educating yourself and understanding the culture as a whole, and it's not taught, it's just you do that or you don't. It's the work and time and there has to be some sort of mental capacity to take all that in and understand why things are working and what makes a band cool and what makes a production cool that I think isn't just never discussed and people never, there's really no way to show somebody that. It's just an understanding you have to have.

Speaker 2 (00:36:33):

I think that that is one of the truest things I've ever heard about doing this. I think it goes beyond production, man. I'll give you two examples. For instance, I've been in this world for 20 years now. I think I know it inside and out, and that is what has allowed URM to become what it is is those years and years and years of knowing who plays what role in which way and what's considered good, what's considered bad. It makes such a huge difference. That's also the reason that, have you ever heard of this when local bands would go to those one size fits all type studios to try to do a heavy record and then they get with an engineer who's technically competent, but everything comes out sounding like shit. They have no idea what it's supposed to be like. They don't have those tastes developed and it's the same thing.

Speaker 3 (00:37:29):

Sure. I mean that's true on a local one size fits all studio. It's also true for the biggest producers in the world.

Speaker 2 (00:37:35):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:37:36):

You've seen metal bands go to the huge name. Some guys exist in another world. I wouldn't say it never works, but I mean you get some weird results sometimes and you're like, well, why? He's incredible. He's got Grammys, he's got all these, the guy's one of a world renowned record producer, but he just doesn't understand the art form. He doesn't know what's going to translate the right way, and then you get a record that falls flat and it's just that case happens a lot and you could see those mismatches sometimes and you just know that's not going to work. Sometimes the certain type of band has to connect with a certain type of producer and it's difficult. It's difficult to find people who understand your band, what it is you're going for, what makes it unique and what makes it special and what the thing is you're supposed to be honing in on to stand out. And I think there are a lot of, it takes a while before you even realize you need somebody like that when it comes time to record.

Speaker 2 (00:38:32):

Yeah, you're right. I wouldn't say it never works. I definitely have heard a few successful collaborations. As a matter of fact, machine was not a metal guy when he was doing that Lamb of God stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:38:44):

No, I think Machine got Lamb of God by basically telling them that he just thinks metal is stupid and they liked that idea, but it brought out, brought outside the box ideas to a metal band that could have very easily been some normal sounding slayer style record, but there were all these injections of this other stuff. He was like a UK electronic music guy who was doing major label indie slash electronic music at the time and had no business doing a record like Lama God, but he brought in fresh ideas to a band and he made a production that connected in a certain way because he did the same thing. He understood what was cool about this band, what was going to react with people, and he brought the strengths of that out with the production. Yeah, I mean it's very difficult to pair up with people who get it like that, especially when you're a younger band and you don't have all the options in the world and you can't get out of your town. There are challenges in that finding that right person is not an easy thing.

Speaker 2 (00:39:47):

No, this actually by the way, is why I always try to tell people that one of the most important things they can cultivate is their tastes, because your tastes are ultimately what dictate all your decisions, technical, artistic, it all comes from whatever you do comes from your tastes. So if you don't have cultivated tastes, you're not going to have that understanding of what it is. That's cool. Like riffs, man. It could be one different note or one slight displacement rhythmically that makes all the difference in the world. And if you don't have your tastes cultivated, how will

Speaker 3 (00:40:30):

Sure. There are whole just genres that I'll avoid and types of bands that I won't do because I know our tastes won't align and I know I'm just going to disagree with some of these decisions. When you say that, I'm going to say I think that that is corny. My brain can't wrap my head around that layer being cool. So we are just going to butt heads and I'm not going to make this record. I definitely have been in that scenario where I've realized like, oh, I'm not aligned with these people and it's tough. It's not fun. It makes the job really feel like work and it's not rewarding at the end of the day to make that kind of music and coming up. I had to sort of swallow some of that and realize it's better than nothing. You got to go through it.

(00:41:16):

This is the opportunity that's in front of you. There's no plan B, you got to take this. And then I've learned, I try to get away from that stuff and only work with the stuff that I really understand because I think I bring more value to those records and I make better records for those artists. And that's what I think if anything has kept me in the public eye as a record producer or kept people interested in my productions is I've been choosing the bands where I feel like I can actually do something special with this band and passing on the stuff where I'm like, maybe popular, the budget may be good, that's cool, but we're not going to be a good team together. Me and you are not going to see eye to eye. We're not going to make the right kind of record.

(00:42:00):

I don't think I'm the best suited for it. So being able to get to there is the ultimate For me, it was that final level thing where I was like, yes, this is it now. And it's like getting through all of that and that whole learning process of discovering where your tastes are best suited for bands and stuff. It's just that experience thing where there's no way of teaching that stuff. You just have to be in that room and do these records and go through that stuff. And back to working under someone whose taste you like, whose productions you really vibe with and aspire to be like that's where that value just comes back in because you get all of that from that.

Speaker 2 (00:42:44):

Absolutely, and what's interesting to me about it is that the successful use of your tastes and sensibilities doesn't have a one-to-one correlation with what you listen to for fun necessarily. That's the part that's really, really interesting to me. Again, the machine example, he didn't listen to metal, but there's something about his sensibilities that just worked for Lamb of God, and so I think people need to be prepared and this is where having lots of different experiences and being open to whatever at the beginning will help because what your particular taste set or whatever really works best with it really might not be what you thought. It might not be what you listened to. I mean it might be, but also might not be. You don't know until you're into it several years I think.

Speaker 3 (00:43:37):

Yeah, I don't produce my favorite style of music, don't. This used to be my favorite style of music, but my tastes have changed over the years and I listen to much less metal and hardcore than I did when I first started making records and I basically produce none of the music that I really like and I just don't get the calls for it, but I understand what I'm doing and I understand what I'm supposed to do as a record producer in these scenarios with this genre really well. I have a good grip on it, so I'm not complaining in any sense, but it's not my preferred listening. If you look at my most listened to records, they're very far removed from my most popular records that I've been producing in the past five years, and that's just something I've come to terms with. I'm scary.

(00:44:27):

I do heavy stuff. Some of these indie bands that I love are not going to call me, even though I am obsessed with their records and fully get it and would love to do it. It's just not in the cards for me right now. Maybe one day I'll have to sort of go back to the drawing board and work my way back up in different genres to kind of prove my value as a record producer again, and maybe one day I will do that, but right now I'm getting great opportunities. I enjoy what I'm doing and I'm just happy to do it and I really like the results and it's been very rewarding for me even though it's literally not aligned with my favorite style of music at all anymore. So over time everyone's taste will change and you'll find new forms of music that you're into and stuff and you won't be able to express those with all the records you make, but at least if you have a really good grasp on what you're doing and why it's important to make certain things work and understanding the culture of the genre that you're working in, it just has all that value for you.

(00:45:32):

And if it's not aligned with your favorite art form, it's still fun. It's still fun for me at least.

Speaker 2 (00:45:39):

Yeah, I don't really listen to too much metal anymore. I actually listen to soundtracks a lot, but I am so not in that world. I wouldn't even know where to start. If I wanted to start really incorporating that, I would have to kind of start from the ground up.

Speaker 3 (00:45:54):

Sure. I mean, I'm still in the world. I know all the bands. I know what everybody's doing. If something is starting to make some kind of impact, I check it out. I want to see why. I want to see what's cool about it.

Speaker 2 (00:46:06):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:46:07):

I follow the trends and I follow what's happening so that I'm educated when I go to make records with bands from these genres, I know what's going to work right now because that's my job. That's why I'm being hired. I can't ignore that stuff. I have to stay. It's just like post-college classes to stay in any profession, you still have to keep your education up. So I'm doing that on the regular and then I find stuff that I think is awesome. So it always fires me back up when I hear a band and I'm like, oh yeah, this is great. And then I'm jamming a metal record hard for a month and I get excited about the genre again, admittedly, it happens fewer and far between these days than it used to, but it still happens and it still keeps me invigorated and excited to keep making records in this world, but I definitely, I still have to do my homework. It's still why people want to make records with me. I need that understanding of the genre. So it's not something just because it's not my favorite form of music anymore, it still can't be ignored still my job.

Speaker 2 (00:47:11):

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, that's a huge part of my job too, is understanding what matters now because man, I'm always looking for what, what producer are kind of the bleeding edge? Who's doing the things that are setting the trends, who's elevating things or even just who do people really like a lot that I might not like, but for some reason a lot of people seem to connect with this. It's super important to understand all of that stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:47:46):

Yeah, exactly. I mean you would do it the same way I would look at bands. You would be looking at producers. We did a knock loose project together. I'm sure in your daily day to day you are not jamming a knock loose record or

Speaker 2 (00:47:58):

No, but I get it

Speaker 3 (00:47:59):

Finding that band, but you understand it. You found that, oh, I could see why this is reacting. I could see why people are talking about this right now. You had a grasp on it enough to know, yeah, we should do this. This is something we should do together. This is important for a group of people.

Speaker 2 (00:48:16):

Yeah, that's a perfect example. It's not that I dislike them or anything, it's just not, I listen to muse and soundtracks and stuff. Not loose isn't what I jam, but it's plainly obvious why people love them. There's no denying it whatsoever. And yeah, it is important. I think everybody's tastes matter, and especially when there's something that is capturing the attention of an entire scene, it matters whether or not it's your cup of tea. And that's actually something that comes up quite a bit with now the mix students. We have a certain percentage who will complain if they don't like the band or something. And I really think that's dumb because as a producer, as we're talking about, to get to the point where you're only working with bands that you really, really like, that's a luxury. That's a lofty goal. You should be open to learning from anything at the beginning in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (00:49:19):

Oh, sure. I mean, I reference a lot of records before. I literally hate the band, but I think the production is cool, so I have to get past that. There's the occasional radio rock record. I mean, I forgot what I heard recently. It might've been, I don't need to air a specific band, but there was a certain radio rock band that is just so bad to me. I just think their music is selling a bottle of ketchup. It has no purpose to exist other than for the lowest common denominator person. It stinks. Anyway, the production is incredible, and I found myself, I'm listening to this record as a reference for hours, hours of this just terrible, terrible music to me.

(00:50:02):

I can't even fathom how long that had to just enter my brain and I'm digesting it. I'm listening, look at the space between this horrible guitar riff and this horrible vocal, and I loved the production and I learned from it. I found I heard a trick or two, and I'm like, it fixed some low end for me in a mix, and I'm like, I applied what I learned from that to a record and my record is better because of this terrible band. And so it's like you got to get past that. I mean, you're not going to like everything, but if something is reacting the right way or it's that good, there's still something to learn from it.

Speaker 2 (00:50:44):

Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of interesting to me, man. One thing that I'm really enjoying about talking to you right now is hearing that you've still got enthusiasm for music. I am sure you've noticed musicians and producers who've been in it for a long time can sometimes start to get really, really bitter about new music and very cynical about it and kind of close themselves off. And to me that's death. And one thing that I think is, I've noticed this with some of the most successful people that we've had on, we had TLA on right after you, and one thing that I found very inspiring and refreshing about him is that the dude still loves music. He's like a child discovering a new toy or something when it comes to new music. That wonder hasn't gone away at all. And I see the opposite so much, and I think that that's death. I really do.

Speaker 3 (00:51:47):

Yeah, I mean, I'll be the first to admit, there are definitely times, there have been times where I've started to get burnt out feeling and I'm like,

Speaker 2 (00:51:56):

Natural,

Speaker 3 (00:51:57):

This is becoming a job. I'm sort of not enjoying this daily workflow I've got going on here. It's just punishing. And we've had some stretches where we just had so much work that it started to feel like work and I had to do a quick reset and be like a few years ago I had hit a breaking point of this is just too much stuff. I'm doing too many things. I have too many projects and everything. I was in that mentality of like, I got to strike while the iron's hot and I have to just, if I think a band is worth doing, I got to figure out a way to do it no matter what. And I was like so overloaded. I'm glad I went through it because I do think I would've regretted bailing on some of those projects, but I realized I'm not the best producer if I feel like if it's feeling like work, if I feel like I'm kind of getting burnt out or I'm over this music or over this band.

(00:52:57):

So I did take a step back and say, alright, I'm going to do this year where I'm going to just do what I want and I don't care if I make less money than I did the year before. I can live. I can pay my bills, everything's fine, and I'm just going to do cool stuff. And I had a lot of fun that year and it was new band stuff I hadn't done before. And a lot of it, I think my productions got better. I think I tried a lot of new stuff. I felt more inspired, and it was just cool for a minute to be like, I'm just going to do what I want. I started a new band, I wrote a bunch of music for the first time in a while. I was just living it, just really enjoying a lot of the stuff I did, and now I just feel fired up again. And I think if you start getting to that point where it's feeling like a job, you do need some kind of reset on that. It was very helpful for me. I could see some of the older producers who were just phoning it in now and I don't blame 'em. I mean how 40 years of making records, you might just get over it. You might just be tired of hearing that same story from a band and dealing with a bad guitar player in the studio and this and that.

(00:54:09):

Eventually it could wear you out. And I hope I could just stay inspired long enough where I can kind of have a great career before that stuff starts to kick in, cash out when my ears go and just get out of here.

Speaker 2 (00:54:25):

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

(00:55:17):

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

(00:56:11):

Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to URM Academy to find out more. I've got some thoughts on the topic of burnout. I do think, and I'm speaking from personal experience here, that there's a difference between burning out and realizing that something's not for you or that you're just done with it because I've done that twice. There came a point in my life where I no longer wanted to do a band, then pursue being an awesome guitar player. I did 20 years of that and I got it out of my system.

(00:57:07):

I knew after a certain point when I would pick up the guitar, I'd be like, there's nothing left to say that's that. And I started to feel that way about production too. I started to imagine, okay, what if I put another five years to this and really keep on getting better and this goes places, is this what I want to be doing? And the answer was no. So that's different though than it is what you want to be doing, but it's starting to be a complete and total grind and it's wearing you down and you need to be able to understand the difference between the two. The grind thing is very, very real. I remember one year in Florida where I had bands staying at my house for 11 and a half months straight with no days off, and it was just heavy band after heavy band, after heavy band, after heavy band, after heavy band after heavy band. And I mean that shit was intense and you had to figure out ways to reinvigorate yourself and to not let yourself get worn down because it will happen. Sure, it will definitely happen.

Speaker 3 (00:58:13):

I've been through the grind where I've, 2019, I had five days off, five days off all year

(00:58:19):

For a wedding and some other thing, and I think I got sick once and that was it. But I was fine. I felt good. I was very goal oriented and I ripped through so many records last year we did with basically no days off where a band would end the next day a band would start and I would just be mixing on top of the next band and just nonstop, me and Steve were just marathon ripping through the ear. We did knock loose into Norma Jean into stray into body count, into counterparts to the ghost inside to the Great American Ghost, into Foyer Strong and I basically did those records with, and other projects too, other outside mixes and mastering gigs with no days off. And if that was a few years ago where my head was, I would've been way over it. But it was great.

(00:59:15):

The whole year was awesome. I had a blast making all the records. I don't regret any second of it and it was a really good successful year for me and a lot of the bands had some of their bigger releases and it was great. It was just a win all around, but I was in the right headspace to do that kind of grind and if I wasn't, it would've been a nightmare. So it's like you just have to know your limits and you have to know when it's time to reevaluate what you're doing and what you're really passionate about. I had fit for an autopsy going and we were kind of part-time touring and starting to pick up speed when I started, shortly after I started working as an engineer or an intern with machine, that band sort of got off the ground and almost immediately I was like, oh yeah, I'm not going to be touring anymore.

(01:00:05):

This is not for me anymore. We did one or two tours and I was like, yeah, I had decided that I would rather be a record producer. I want to be in everybody's band. I don't want to just do one thing. So that was almost immediate for me. I was lucky to have that sort of come to Jesus moment where I was like, yeah, this is definitely more of the path in this musical career that I want to take. I definitely had to take a second and think about what I really want to do with my career, what I really want to do as an artist, and if I didn't do that, if I didn't really give it some thought and really do the deep dig on it, I might've suffered greatly. I might've been dragging through some tours for two or three years, missed the boat on this opportunity and I might not even be a record producer anymore. So it's important to just figure it out what you really want to do and kind of get your head clear on it. I definitely think it makes you, wherever you wind up, I think whatever path you take, I think you'll wind up in a better spot mentally doing what you decide is right for you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):

Yeah, a hundred percent. I think there's this weird stigma about this sort of thing when people say it's all about mindset, it sounds like cheesy self-help or thinking about your goals, that kind of stuff. It's got this infomercial kind of self-help book sort of vibe and so a lot of people shy away from it, but it's so important to be able to be in the right head space because if not, you're not going to do your best work and you're not doing your best work. That word of mouth that propels you is going to start to change and people are going to start to feel like you are a drag to be around. The overall quality will start to diminish and like you said, you might miss the boat on the true thing that you have to do. And there's also the issue that I think many people are pressured by external sources, so if they've put a lot of time into something and it becomes a part of their identity, like say being a musician in a band, a lot of people that is a part of who they are, they see themselves that way and then what have they realize really quickly and like you did, this is not really for me, something else.

(01:02:32):

But then there there's this whole mental aspect of how other people will see you, how you see yourself, and this identity crisis, and I think that that stops a lot of people from being honest with themselves about what the next step really is. It's really, really important I think to forget what other people think, forget about those identity issues and really, really just be truthful about what it is you want for the future.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):

Yeah, I mean I've definitely worked with guys who have struggled with that, who just knew they didn't want to do a band anymore. Deep down, you could tell they're over it. This isn't going to be the thing that they're not going to be doing this in five years. For a while we had the joke we would call 'em Burger King bands like, well, they're only touring because it's better than being home working at Burger King. If they didn't, there's fear of making that kind of move too, especially with a lot of bands who get started early on, let's say they don't have a college degree, unemployment is a disaster. The job market sucks and it's scary to be like, I don't want to do the band anymore. I know this isn't right for me, but what else can I do? And not even having that clear angle is definitely a stressful thing and I think it keeps a lot of bands.

(01:03:56):

If a band is doing relatively well, it definitely keeps a lot of bands from actually breaking up because there is no plan B. Sometimes there is no, oh, I'll just go home and I have this thing to fall back on. Some people aren't fortunate enough like that they've given their lives to this project. It's everything that makes them up and if that goes away, they have no platform anymore. They have no way to support themselves financially. It can be super scary too at the same time. So it's finding that balance and that goal to work towards and trying to get out of a situation you don't want to be in. It's not always super easy to just be like, yeah, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm just going to do that. I think it takes a lot of planning and I'm fortunate that I've always been able to work towards a goal and it seems like I've been able to obtain the things I've wanted to obtain by grinding my way towards it, but I don't think it's easy to just pull yourself out of your life's work and identity all the time for everybody.

(01:04:52):

So it would have these challenges.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):

Oh, it's definitely challenging. For instance, when I knew that I needed to move past the band was two years before I did and when I started URM and stuff, I had been plotting that for two or three years. I was in Florida for one year or a year and a half and I realized not for me I need out. No, just no. But I couldn't just drop it. That's dumb too. I've seen people do that and then what that whole then what question is a very real question you have to answer. So when I made my transition, it was years in the making. Like I'd done creative live classes for several years, had built myself up in this way and I was getting a lot of shit for it, but I did it anyways and established myself in a way that making that switch would work. So it wasn't just, this isn't for me, I'm out. That would be really, really dumb. I don't suggest people do that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):

Right. Yeah, I mean it's tough, man. It's definitely a challenging time to do anything in the music world, especially if you're trying to build something from scratch. You just have to make sure you're in for the long haul. I think a lot of people who we've worked with who haven't really, they're careers haven't really gotten off the ground or whether it's a band or an intern or an assistant, it's just obvious that they're one foot in the door, one foot out. But if you know it's really for you and you have, you're honest with yourself, with your abilities and you think you have the confidence to actually make something work, you can figure it out and you can grind it out. It just isn't easy.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):

Nothing worth it ever is though.

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):

Yeah, I guess so

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):

Speaking of, did you have a fallback plan? I mean this is interesting what you said about the fallback plan because on the one hand I feel like plan B is a really dumb idea when you're going for something in music, if you work on a plan B, how are you going to get good enough to compete with the people who are talented, driven and are making it their entire life? It's going to be really hard to get good enough.

Speaker 3 (01:07:07):

I didn't have a plan B when I got the opportunity to work with machine. I was in college at the time. I was going for something completely different, totally unrelated to music.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):

It was a smart person degree.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):

I was in school for biomedical engineering and about, I was somewhere in the last year because I started stretching classes out and I kind of extended my stay at the school. So I was getting a four year degree in five years basically because I had been working with a machine so much, I just couldn't, I was barely taking classes at that point and I just dropped out of school. I was like, I probably have a few classes left for that degree and it would be done and I just quit, actually dropped out.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):

I respect that by the way.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):

Well, I got this ultimatum. I actually got the, it was I think Armor for Sleep first record, I first major label record I had ever engineered or anything like that and machine brought it to me. He's like, I want you to engineer on this, but if you do this, I can pay you, but you got to be here every day. This is the job. Do you want this job now it's happening, or do I have to go get somebody else? And I was like, it was the fork in the road decision time for me, so I just went for it. Yeah, I never really had a fallback plan. I was just like, I'm not an idiot if all this crashes, I'll figure it out. I could bartend, didn't know I didn't have a plan B, I didn't even really give a thought. I was just going for it and I just figured we'll just see where it goes and then I'll just make, and then if it fails, I'll just reassess where my life was at, but at least I went for it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):

The whole fallback plan thing does not make sense to me. I think you got to go all in. So speaking of interns, I think it's really, really cool that geo hewitt's a part of your team. Obviously I love seeing XURM students succeed, but I'm not asking this as a how to get a job with Will Putney type question more of a, when somebody hits you up, what is it that makes them stand out to you? Why geo and not somebody else? What is it that gets past the gate with you and then not only gets past the gate but then keeps them there and then not only keeps them there but gets them hired?

Speaker 3 (01:09:37):

I guess it's tough. It's always situation dependent. There's been times where we had the luxury of like, oh, we don't really, we'll just grab somebody when the right guy shows up and we were able to be pickier here and there. And I always try to get, if somebody sends me a message or a resume or anything like that, I always get a look at 'em, go online, try to see what they're doing, see what kind of, if they make any records, what anything sounds like. So I think the people that we've always been the most interested in have been the kids who clearly have musical ability, who are doing stuff on their own, like I said before, and don't know what they're doing, but it already, things are already starting to sound good and then an understanding of being involved in the actual music scene.

(01:10:30):

However, just the knowledge of knowing the sub genres and knowing the things that we do is super important because having somebody come in who's very talented, who doesn't get the music we make creates problems, we just aren't going to click. They're not going to understand why I'm doing certain things. They're never going to be able to really become that producer or engineer here that we'd want them to be because they just aren't going to grasp why things are cool or why stuff sounds a certain way. So it's like I kind of keep an eye on kids and I've gotten hit up a lot by people who I do think are talented, but I could just tell yeah, but I could see the stuff they're listening to and I could see the types of records that they make and it's just not something that I think is going to work here and that eliminates a lot of people.

(01:11:18):

We have a specific taste and a style and there's certain things we try to avoid and honestly, that kind of chops the head off a lot of applications right off the bat. I could just see, yeah, they're not really dug into the stuff we are and then I'll meet people who are like geo's a good example. He got into Berkeley, but he got out of Berkeley pretty quick because he didn't care about being a good guitar player. He was more interested in music and he was very involved with the Massachusetts scene and he knew a bunch of the hardcore bands and he was trying to be in bands and tour and just play shows and he was writing music and he had his own little studio set up and he was like, I will come to New Jersey and live there. I know nothing I have, here's what I have.

(01:12:06):

I'm broke, but I'll figure it out. And it was like he was all in on it before we had, I could just tell before I had even talked to him that it's like he's serious about this. He had an opportunity to go to one of the best music schools in the country. He was talented enough to go to a school like that and he bailed on it to just try to figure out how to record hardcore bands in his parents' house. I'm like, this kid really wants to do this. So it was like you just saw he was already making those decisions. I didn't have to convince him to do anything or say, Hey, you should probably think about maybe doing this on the side, or it was already headed in the way where I was like, I saw that this is just what he wanted to do and I saw that he was talented enough to be able to do it. So it was a pretty easy combination of things to get him through the door here. And that's usually the case. I mean that's everybody we've kind of had through here kind of fits that criteria where they're thinking for themselves and you could see there's clear ability there, but they're just kind of lost trying to find the way to make it work for them, and that's where it's been really successful for us.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):

One of the things that I find really, really cool and interesting about your setup, I don't mean the not involved in the recording part, but a lot of what I've heard about Rick Rubin and the way that he picks people, even though people say that he doesn't record stuff, you actually do a lot of the dirty work. So that's not what I'm implying at all, but he's always been known for picking really good teams on records. That's one of his strongest suits as a producer is what team am I putting together for this album that's going to make it the best it can possibly be? And when I was at your place, it really struck me how organized it is between everybody and how well everyone understood their roles. It's a really good team and that's actually really hard to pull off.

Speaker 3 (01:14:14):

I mean it took forever to get to where we were. To be fair, it was years of working with Randy now it's awesome that Randy's his own guy. We haven't made a record together in a long time, but getting Randy to the point where he could be hands-on on records took forever and then getting Steve up that took forever and Matt and Gio and now it's like it was just investment in everybody here to be like, do it like this here, watch me do this now you do it. Okay, learn this. The walkthrough over and over and everybody's sitting in on things. Everybody who's here at some point had just sat on the couch in my room next to me for hours just watching me mix something and then occasionally would be like, why are you doing that? What's this? What's that? It's like this is just an investment of people to cultivate their abilities up so I can have a team like this.

(01:15:12):

It's not easy. It definitely is worthwhile to do, but it was a lot of work and a lot of paying underqualified people to hang out for a long time until they were qualified. It's like you have to have faith in your guys and bring 'em up like that. And we've weeded people out. We've had people in and they've worked themselves out of here because it wasn't going to work, and it's like sometimes it always doesn't work, but going through all of that to get to our team was hard, but I'm really happy with everybody that I've worked with and everyone that's here and very grateful that I have dudes on my team that are as down as they are and as good as they are at what they do. I mean, Steve is just like, Steve is the best man. Steve's awesome. He calls himself the audio janitor now he's the most professional audio janor in the world. That poor guy gets hit with some stuff sometimes where I'm like, here's this mix. It came in, I'm sorry, and I sit down and it's like, oh man, he's just invaluable. And yeah, this is just some guy who listened to metal records in New Jersey who had never recorded in his life and now he's just one of the best and it's just cool. It's cool that we've been able to grow together and have success together and stuff. So I'm just excited that we have the right guys here.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):

So you know what I think that you're doing that's really smart and going to give myself credit here, we do this too, but the idea of investing in people not in skills. So for instance, Nick, when we first took him on, that kid didn't know how to shoot or anything. I mean maybe it fucked around with a camera a little bit, but that's not why we hired him. We didn't hire him because he could do the role that he's doing now. We hired him because we knew he was the right kind of person where we wanted to go with this and had the faith that if we just invest in him that it's going to be a good thing. And we have a few other people like John Maceo like that too, that you invest in the person if they're the right kind of person and they don't have a skill, they'll learn the skill. That's the easy part as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 3 (01:17:30):

Yeah, I mean Nick is great. If you would've asked me like, Hey, where do you think we got Nick from? I would've been like, oh, you probably hired him from some pro level corporate company. He probably was into music and really good at video and you just poached him. He was passionate about music, no clue that he didn't even know how to use a camera. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):

You got to be able to spot the right kind of person and then cultivate them and possibly go through a bunch of people who aren't the right person. It's not going to be easy because the right kind of people are rare, but I am sure you would agree that your career would be very different if you didn't have a good team.

Speaker 3 (01:18:10):

Yeah, definitely. Like I said, that one year where we were really, really crazy here, might've been like 2015 or 2016, I really relied on my team to do a lot of stuff and I think without them it would've just been impossible. At the time Randy was here and Steve was here and one of our old engineers, Tom Smith, who's now he plays in the e Casey Strain now. He was here for a good period of time too and did a lot of really, really, really helpful work with us then and at that time, those guys really came through for me. It was really a lifesaver for me and a lot of my careers owed to the guys who helped me.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):

Another thing that you do that I think is really smart, which I've seen a lot of people not do, you are invested in their success with Randy. For instance, you worked him up to the point where he's now, like you said, he's now his own dude, you're not working on records together anymore. That's a great thing. You're investing in their success with the understanding that if this goes well, there's going to come a point where they're no longer working for you because that's the natural order of things. That's how it happens. Whereas I find that some people are very threatened by that idea and so they won't invest in their team quite the way they should and the amount of work they do suffers or the quality and the amount suffers as a result. Sure. I see that a

Speaker 3 (01:19:39):

Lot. I mean, Randy's a great example because Randy earned his ability to be his own record producer. That guy got his ass kicked for years here as far as his workload and going through records and stuff, and it would be crazy to think that he could do that forever. I've definitely chatted with other assistants and engineers and house guys at other studios who are under that foot for their whole life, and I'm like, man, that's just crazy. I've seen it before. Those assistants that have no way to get up in the ranks because there's some kind of asshole producer who just refuses to let them be their own guy or do their own thing and I don't know, it's just why would somebody want to work for you if there's no way to climb up or there's no way to get out from under that.

(01:20:29):

Yeah, I mean Randy got to this point where it was like, I can get another guy and we could start trying to get you records, and I was going to bat for him. Records would come in and I'd be booked and I would just be pushing Randy for it and getting him in with some of the labels and some of the bands and knowing that he would come through and deliver. It didn't take very long. He just like now labels will call him like, no problem. He'll just get hit up to make records without me having to do anything. So it's like, yeah, it's like if you know your guys are good and they get to that point and they want to be their own dude, it's like, why wouldn't you just support them at that point? You can find another engineer, you could teach somebody else. Not saying that he's replaceable, he's awesome, but it's like I know there are more people out there, there's more people that have on a team and it's just another guy who's talented who's now able to do what he wanted to do from the beginning.

Speaker 2 (01:21:24):

It's not about them being replaceable, it's about them kind of graduating in a way.

Speaker 3 (01:21:29):

Yeah, no, I think it's awesome. I definitely encourage all the guys we've had here to try to make their own records and if there's a scenario where I think it can make sense where we can kind of do stuff together. I mean, we have a record coming up in May where me and Steve are going to probably co-produce a record and we haven't really, we've only done that once, but now we're kind of getting to that point too where I think he's going to be really hands-on with a band and I'm excited to do it. I think it's just cool to do. It solves problems. It makes life easier. Letting your guys grow to that point where you can rely on them and count on them to do anything you can do is very awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:22:08):

It says a lot that you're not threatened by it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:10):

No, I mean I don't think I have to be threatened by my own team.

Speaker 2 (01:22:15):

Well, some people are, man, like that situation that you're talking about where we know people who are underneath the foot of a tyrant who will not let them advance. I actually know what that's like. I'm not naming names, but I know what that's like when people don't want you to advance. It sucks, but it's out there. It's a very real thing and I actually think that the way you're approaching it is a lot more rare in the music industry than it should be. I think that's how everybody should be with the people that they hire. You should want the best for them, even if it's for purely selfish motives. Even if you don't have an altruistic bone in your body just for selfish motives, you're going to get loyalty out of them. If you're helping foster their own greatness and helping them develop their own skills and treating them like an equal human being, maybe you're the boss, but you're still equal humans. Giving them that respect and that care, even if it's just for self-interest, is the way to go because again, you're going to get more out of them.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):

Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think, like I said, if my guys had a ceiling, I don't think our team would be as good. Yeah, I'm just glad we don't run it like that here.

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):

Yeah, so alright, I don't want to take your whole day up. I know that you probably have 18 million things to do, but we do have some questions from the audience. Obviously they're excited that you're here, so do you mind if I ask you some of them? Sure, go for it. Cool. So Ryan, Bruce is wondering,

Speaker 3 (01:23:49):

Oh God,

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):

What up, Ryan? What's up Ryan? You know what, man, when I saw that he asked the question, I was like, all right, was this going to be

Speaker 3 (01:24:00):

Shout out to

Speaker 2 (01:24:00):

Fluff? Yeah, he's a good troll sometimes.

Speaker 3 (01:24:05):

Yeah. Here we go. What do we got?

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):

He was wondering what was your favorite album you engineered or worked on while you were working with Machine?

Speaker 3 (01:24:13):

Ah, that's a good one. A real question. Okay. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):

Yeah, it was a real question.

Speaker 3 (01:24:17):

I got two answers. That First Armor for Sleep record, it was the first one was crazy for me. This was just the first record where I tracked guitars for him for and it was like, I don't know, maybe sentimental reasons or whatever. I had a lot of fun doing that. One of my favorites, I for years Strong, I think the four year Strong record we did because I love those guys. It was super fun and they're so talented as musicians. It was one of the first times where I really worked with dudes who had such a good grip on what they were doing. I don't think at that point I had worked with talented people like that. Not a slight to the other bands that were before them, but Dan and Allen from that band are just animals, man. They're crazy good at everything and it was really inspiring to be like, oh wow, there are people like this in the world. This is going to be cool. I want to do more stuff like this. That was definitely a highlight early on when I was doing stuff with Machine.

Speaker 2 (01:25:15):

Right. So Joel Monet is wondering, are there editing techniques that you consider off the table during tracking for more raw sounding music?

Speaker 3 (01:25:24):

Nothing's ever off the table. It's always based on the given source material. What are we trying to do? It needs to sound a certain way sonically for whatever I'm going for and I never limit myself. There's never a time where I'm like, okay, you can't do this. It's this kind of band. It's all just about the result. If I have to edit it harder or softer or if I can't get the take as this a solid performance and I have to break something down or punch a specific part, I don't have any sort of limits to that. I guess it's just like it's got to sound the way it's supposed to sound no matter what, so however intense we have to get, we're getting it right.

Speaker 2 (01:26:05):

The results are what matter.

Speaker 3 (01:26:06):

Yeah, that's all I care about. I'm not a purist in any sense of the word. If I have to edit something, I will. If it has to be harder, it will. If they have to play less of a part, it's fine. At the end of the day, I just want something to sound the way it's supposed to sound, so it could be so severe, it could be nothing. It just really depends on what I'm going for, but no, nothing's just

Speaker 2 (01:26:26):

Whatever it takes.

Speaker 3 (01:26:27):

Yeah, nothing's ever off the table. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:30):

Okay. Oliver Kenny, I was wondering, you just spent a long time tracking. Every Time I die his new album, was there anything special you did to remain motivated and focused into the studio nights out or anything or are you all just machines and it comes naturally? Lemme just say real quick before you answer that they're machines, but you guys work harder than just about anybody I've seen.

Speaker 3 (01:26:51):

Yeah, we just worked through that record really hard. There was just a lot to do. We had a lot of songs and I mean they're so fun. It's like it's crazy to call that work. It's a giant joke the whole time. I can't believe that we actually have a record that's as good as it is with how goofy that whole process probably was. Now we just have fun while we're doing it and then I go home and I watch Netflix and I go to bed and I don't really feel like I've been punished. I mean ET is one of the best bands in the world to record one of the best bands to record and we just had a blast. So it wasn't like a struggle to get up in the morning and go to work. It was fun. I love the band and I love working with all the guys. They're all super talented. That's a vacation for me.

Speaker 2 (01:27:38):

How when people say that it's got to be fun. I feel like sometimes when I hear that I have this part of my brain that's like, dude, it's work. It can't always be fun, and while that's true, I always find that my best work is when I'm having fun the end that I just do better work when I'm having fun. I think just about everyone's like that.

Speaker 3 (01:27:59):

Yeah, I'd say nine out of 10 records I do is just hilarious and fun the whole time. I mean, we have a pretty entertaining working environment and I think it keeps, it just keeps you from making it feel like work and I think that's why I can do what I do with the hours that I do and not feel like I'm getting dragged through it. Yeah, I don't really know. I think keeping that fun vibe is super important for us and making it not feel like work all the time. Let's just get through what we need to get done.

Speaker 2 (01:28:32):

Awesome. Matt Clark is wondering, when blending multiple amps and cabs and mics for guitars, do you use predetermined combinations? For example, the PV and Te Mesa with the 57 and a Mesa into an orange with the 4 21, or are these experimented with endowed in fresh for every project?

Speaker 3 (01:28:49):

Generally, I kind of know pairings that I, depends on the guitar sound I'm going for. I'll know the characteristics of the amp and cabs I have and what their strengths are for specific things, so I'll kind of take an educated guess first. Okay. I think this'll be cool and then I think for another amp and cab this will be cool. Give me this sort of characteristic. So I kind of just take an educated guess as a starting point. I put all the mics up and then I listen to it all, play with all the faders, see if I'm getting what I want and if I am cool. If I'm not, then I'll swap something out. So I usually think about what I think is going to work for a given sound, take a shot at a setup and hopefully get it right. But there's definitely been times where I'm like half an hour in and I'm like, no, this stinks.

(01:29:42):

We got to pull this cab out, we got to switch this head. We got to try something else. So educated guests and then try again if you blow it. That's pretty much my method. I think soon in the near future I'm going to try to dedicate more of everything set up at once kind of thing though I do think I would have fun being able to quickly go through all of my cabs or all my heads. There's just a ton of gear here and it's pretty grand of a setup, but I am, I think in the near future I'm going to have something like that where I'm able to just be like, let's hear everything all at once and see what the best thing is. Because moving towards some of the digital stuff I've been doing with guitars, with my tone hub software and with the tonality thing, I'm definitely starting to feel the benefits of being able to cycle through stuff faster and I've been using my plugin stuff a lot because, oh, I can hear a hundred cabs really quick and even though, yeah, sure, I'm not micing up a cab, I'm not getting whatever that thing is or that difference, I wind up with a better guitar tone because I have more flexibility sometimes.

(01:30:47):

I'm starting to really like that flexibility. I need to get that translated into my analog setup. Otherwise I'm going to stop using amps and cabs because I am starting to feel kind of limited by me just taking one guess at stuff. So I don't know, just something to consider. I'm looking at being able to hear everything at once a little more frequently now, so right now that's my process. I hope I get to change it soon.

Speaker 2 (01:31:12):

Have you seen pictures of Frederick Thornton Doll's Studio?

Speaker 3 (01:31:16):

Oh yeah. I'm like all over it. I've actually spoken to the guy who does his cab switching stuff. That's kind of what I'm gearing up to go towards is

Speaker 2 (01:31:25):

That is a dream guitar studio.

Speaker 3 (01:31:28):

Yeah, I'm pretty into that. In the near future, I'm going to have a, I don't know if it'll be as fully guitar warship as his, because it's pretty full on.

Speaker 2 (01:31:37):

Yeah, it is definitely full on. It's one way to put it.

Speaker 3 (01:31:39):

Yeah, I'm definitely looking at being able to cycle through my gear more efficiently because I'm now noticing the shortcomings in the analog or the way I'm set up right now and I want to change. That

Speaker 2 (01:31:52):

Makes sense. Nick Cap says, you've mentioned in the past that you base your tempo maps on a live performance of the band. Have there ever been times where you recorded a band live? If not, have you considered doing so? Why or why not?

Speaker 3 (01:32:08):

There's been a few records where I just record the band live first and then I make a tempo map, but the band was recorded live, so depending on, there's a lot of factors how tight the band actually plays off the floor. Are there push and pull tempo moments a good thing or a bad thing sometimes it's a really good thing. Naus is a good example. We did one record where all those little slow slowdowns and ramps and there were little breakdown setups and everything, they were playing them well and it was making it to guess what these tempo ramps were, it just wasn't going to be as cool. So we actually just, they played the songs first. We got the take where the tempos felt right and then those are the drums. I just kept those drums. I built a tempo map after the fact if I needed to do any kind of editing and then just so I had tempos that were so I could sync delays and do things like that, and I actually had a grid, which is a part of my workflow, but I mean the actual performance was a live performance, so sometimes I'll do that.

(01:33:14):

Sometimes I'll get a live take map, a tempo, have the band play to that, make sure that feels good and kind of go the other way. Sometimes it's just all built in a computer. It really depends on the style of the band and then how the band actually sounds. I mean there are great bands that have brand new songs that aren't really comfortable with those things yet. Sort of the little speed up, slow down, so we'll go more manually and I'll kind of build out the tempos first. So it just really depends on that rehearsal level and how good it's just sounding. I guess it's more of a taste call what I'm hearing, but different approach for different styles and different levels of band live. Tightness goes a few ways here.

Speaker 2 (01:33:59):

If there's anything I hope that people pick up from all the stuff that your inputs out is that there's no one size fits all ever with music or audio.

Speaker 3 (01:34:10):

Yeah, I always feel weird. I always get asked, what do you do for this? What do you do for that? And I'm like, I kind of just do whatever works. I don't have a thing. I have inclinations to G lean on certain stuff. There is no one size fits all. It's always different and kids are always looking for that short answer, not this question per se, but I'll just get the random message on Instagram or something and it's like, dude, I don't know. I kind of do everything and depending on the band I could go a million ways, so it's tricky to answer some of that stuff sometimes, but you just have to be comfortable taking whatever approach you need to get the results you need.

Speaker 2 (01:34:52):

Man, that's a funny topic because sometimes we get those questions and the real answer is it depends and people don't want to hear that, but that is the real answer to a lot of questions. It depends what's the situation.

Speaker 3 (01:35:09):

It's asking a mechanic like, Hey, how do you make a car go fast? And it's like, I don't know. It could be, there's so many things, there's just so many moving parts and little nuances to the style that you're recording and there's the personalities of the band and their abilities and there's just, yeah, it's always this different shifting thing where you just have to make the calls and take your approaches in a way where you're going to think you're going to get the best result.

Speaker 2 (01:35:37):

Guillermo Garcia is wondering saying, hi, will, which of your skills did you have to develop through some type of ear training or has it all come through the experience of making records and ps did you know that Guillermo is the Spanish equivalent to William and that's where our similarities end.

Speaker 3 (01:35:54):

I did know that, so that's cool. Ear training I guess would be, I mean for sure, more so on mixing I guess because I came up as playing in a band and as a guitar player and I guess I had a bit more of a a sense of tones that I thought were cool. Initially when I first started, I feel like I had a jump on that stuff where it's like, oh, I could put up a 51 50 and a Mesa cab and dial something right away where I was like, yeah, this is cool. I was happier getting instrument tones earlier than I was with my mixes. My mixes were horrible, so it probably took me a lot more time and ear training and developing, sort of being able to hear a mix and go, oh, there's too much 200 hertz in this, or like, oh yeah, there's some harsh stuff here.

(01:36:46):

That's the stuff where I think the experience and the ear training comes into play. I did a while back, I sort of made a conscious thing where I was like, I'm going to listen to stuff that I think sounds good and I'm going to try to find bad stuff in it. I thought that was a cool technique and I also kind of realized that some of my favorite mixes have stuff that just sounds bad in it, but it's like the sum of all the parts. I dunno, that's a whole other tangent, but I mean it's kind of listening and learning why things are cool and not, I guess I was never really as specific of I have to understand high mid frequencies in all instruments now. It's like I've just developed a sonic palette in my head where I think stuff can sound cool when I place things in certain spots and it's a lot more experienced than it is on specific training of listening for frequencies and stuff. Obviously I've subconsciously developed it because I can hear these sort of things when I listen to a record or a mix or a solo guitar or something like that, so I think it just came along with just doing it for so long and troubleshooting yourself and fixing your own problems. You just sort of develop that. Oh, I know what that is, because I've carved that out of 1000 guitars now so I can hear it right away. But yeah, I guess no real crazy training. Just lots of trial and error for me.

Speaker 2 (01:38:16):

Yeah, I definitely think that hearing when they say use your ears, which is, it's another one of those things, it depends. Use your ears is kind of the truth all the time. It depends is the truth all the time, but it's kind of exercise or developing lifting weights or something. It's going to happen gradually over time and you just have to do it a lot until you really start to develop the skills for it. You couldn't do I think, alright, I'm going to get one of those EQ ear training courses and every day for 30 minutes I'm going to listen to one K and 800 and I mean, sure that might not hurt, but I don't think that that's how you're going to really learn to be good at EQing things. It's going to be through doing it a thousand times.

Speaker 3 (01:39:08):

Yeah, I feel like I don't even know if that would necessarily make me better at mixing. I think I would just be hyper-focused on stuff in maybe a strange way where I would start looking for problems that maybe weren't even problems and it's like then you get into that rabbit hole of soloing stuff over queuing and I don't know, it's just for me, I don't think that was the correct path to develop my ears.

Speaker 2 (01:39:34):

That thing about starting to create problems where there aren't any is very real.

Speaker 3 (01:39:39):

Sure. I mean, I've done it. I've gotten sucked into a mix. I've spent hours doing kind of pointless moves in hindsight and then I'll go, I don't know, let me go back to a backup real quick, hit play and be like, yeah, this is better. I blew it. I got sucked into some strange non-problem that I made for myself. It happens. It's like I'm sure it happens to everyone, but it's like

Speaker 2 (01:40:04):

It does

Speaker 3 (01:40:04):

Lately. I've been less on Yeah, what you're doing right now isn't the cause of your problems. There's something else. If you want to hear something a certain way, it's probably not this. There's something else going on.

Speaker 2 (01:40:15):

Yep. Kenny Grooms is asking, how was it working with Corey from Norma Jean? He seems to be very involved with production and keeping the vision of their albums killer job on all hail.

Speaker 3 (01:40:26):

Oh, thank you. Yeah, Corey's cool. I mean, I wouldn't say he wasn't super involved production wise. He had opinions. He definitely had a vision for what the record should be and do, but he was like, he's a hands-off guy. He was just more of a make sure we get the vibe right on this part, make sure this, I want this to sound like this. I was thinking this, I was referencing that. So he definitely, in his mind, he has a very clear direction for what he wants Norman Jean to do sonically, but he was pretty hands off and he definitely was cool letting me do my thing too. We had fun. He would throw a lot of ideas out and I would try to translate them into what that means as an engineer, and I think the end result of that record is really cool. It sounds like it's definitely unique and there's a lot of really interesting stuff that I'm glad I had guys around that were pushing me to do too.

Speaker 2 (01:41:24):

All right, two more questions. This is an interesting one from Alan CSO Ochoa, which is there a workflow element that you learned while working with machine that you're not using now and why?

Speaker 3 (01:41:36):

I'm sure there's a ton of stuff by now. I only really worked under him for those couple years and then, I mean, there's a billion things I'm sure we do differently at this point. I mean, we've actually probably gone in some pretty polarizing directions because I know machine's gotten a lot more in the box and I've gotten way more analog over the years where now, I mean when we started he had the mix, the big analog mix rig, and I had the laptop and now he's in the laptop and I have the big analog mixer. So yeah, we've definitely, I mean there are these global tricks and approaches that I'm sure they're aware. I've learned a lot from him, so I obviously carry a lot of that stuff, but I think a lot of the sonic production design elements of my mixes have sort of just become my own thing over the years and the way we approach getting sounds and the way we approach dialing mixes and things. We definitely keep, there's probably a lot of global themes that are somewhere, but a lot of the detail stuff would be a bit different now.

Speaker 2 (01:42:45):

I mean, you're two completely different people

Speaker 3 (01:42:47):

And occasionally I show him something that came from me and not him and he applies it, which is always fun. That's always a huge win.

Speaker 2 (01:42:54):

That must be really cool.

Speaker 3 (01:42:56):

On the mastering end, a few years back, I had sort of cracked the code on a few things and he had asked me to show him how to do something once and I was like, oh, this is a cool day.

Speaker 2 (01:43:09):

Yeah, that is a cool day.

Speaker 3 (01:43:10):

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I feel like now we exist in our own spaces, but he kicks ass. I definitely learned a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:43:19):

Last question, and a lot of people ask this, so I feel like I owe it to them to ask, come up a bunch. Tommy Evans says, will was featured on a drummer focused podcast called The Downbeat last November where he mentioned he was working on making drum samples. Any update on that?

Speaker 3 (01:43:37):

I cannot comment on that yet. One day I hope that we'll be able to release drum samples.

Speaker 2 (01:43:46):

Perfect

Speaker 3 (01:43:47):

Answer. It's not like a secret that I wanted to make sure that if I were to ever release a drum product that I did it correctly. Let's just say I literally don't know what I can say without getting in trouble.

Speaker 2 (01:44:00):

Well, let's just say it hasn't happened yet, and when it does happen, everyone will know.

Speaker 3 (01:44:04):

Yes. I currently do not have a drum library for sale, and I hope that maybe I do in the future, maybe this year.

Speaker 2 (01:44:12):

Fair enough. Well Will, let's plug stuff

Speaker 3 (01:44:16):

On Monday, fit for an autopsy, releases a new song. It's called Fear Tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:44:20):

What's the exact date of that release?

Speaker 3 (01:44:22):

Monday, April 6th, so it will be out for a few days by the time this airs, so please check that song Out End has a new record available for pre-order now. Please go check out my other band end. We are putting out a record in June, and please check out my plugin, STL Tonality We'll Will Putney Guitar Suite and I also have some tone hub signature guitar and bass packs that are available now, which are also extremely cool, very stoked on the way those came out, so SDL tones and Ivanez guitars are doing something really cool while everybody's kind of bored at home. We're doing a contest Sik riff contest. All you have to do load up either my SDL tonality plugin or my tone hub plugin, recorded a video of yourself playing a sick riff, upload it to the internet. Instagram would be great. Tag Will Putney tag Ivans tag, SDL tones. I'm going to pick the sickest riff and you win a free Ivans guitar every, it's worldwide. Be patient with shipping. It's chaos right now, but we'll pick it within the next 10 days. We'll let everybody get their submissions in. Have a nice Easter, do all that, and then we'll pick a winner. I'm going to pick the sickest riff and I'm going to send you this free Ivans guitar.

Speaker 2 (01:45:42):

That is awesome. I'm going to plug something real quick because I don't want to put out too many details about this, but we made a course in December that isn't going to come out anytime soon, but if you've watched my monuments bootcamp that I released on Creative Live, which I know a ton of you have, just think about that, but with Will Putney and with the difference being that on the monuments, I was kind of remaking a song that already existed in this one. It's some real time shit and it is deep and in intense, so just want to plant that seed for whenever it does come out.

Speaker 3 (01:46:24):

It has to be the most full on recording class that I could have possibly made.

Speaker 2 (01:46:28):

Yeah, it's intense.

Speaker 3 (01:46:30):

I can't imagine anything that we missed. I mean, it covered every single part of the process from a band walking into basically having a master, so on weeks of filming for this thing,

Speaker 2 (01:46:44):

And I have made a lot of recording classes, so I will second it goes hard for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:46:51):

Yeah, it's like an overload. If you have any interest in anything I do, any recording technique or any part of my process, it's got to be in here. I literally can't think of something we didn't include.

Speaker 2 (01:47:04):

Yeah, I can't either. I mean, it was like three weeks.

Speaker 3 (01:47:08):

Yeah, that was a lot. I don't want to do that again. That was full on.

Speaker 2 (01:47:13):

Yeah, that man also, that was after I had been on the road for six weeks straight, so intense time period, but

Speaker 3 (01:47:22):

It was cool. I'm glad we made it. It's going to be

Speaker 2 (01:47:24):

Awesome. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:47:24):

Me too. I do actually, if was it was me 10 years ago and I saw that video from one of my favorite producers, I would freak out because it is so comprehensive. I think it's going to be cool. I'm excited to get it out.

Speaker 2 (01:47:38):

That's why we do this, man. This is the shit I wish existed in 2005.

Speaker 3 (01:47:44):

Oh yeah. I'd probably be a little further along.

Speaker 2 (01:47:48):

Yeah. Hopefully it helps some people skip some bad years, but Will again, thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (01:47:54):

No problem, man. I appreciate the time and yeah, I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 2 (01:47:58):

Okay, then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post them to your Facebook, Instagram, or any social media you use. Please tag me at ai levy URM audio, and of course, please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy mixing.

Speaker 1 (01:48:19):

You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.