AARON PAULEY: Self-Producing Of Mice & Men, Breaking Old Rules, and Mixing the Song Not the Audio

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 are now on our seventh year. Don't ask me how that all just flew by, but it did. Man, time moves fast and it's only because of you, the listeners, if you'd like us to stick around another seven years and there's a few simple things you can do that would really, really help us out, I would endlessly appreciate if you would, number one, share our episodes with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me at al Levi URM audio and at URM Academy and of course our guest. And number three, leave us reviews and five star reviews wherever you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, thank you for all the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way.

(00:01:10):

All we ask in return is a share a post and tag us. Oh, and one last thing. Do you have a question you would like me to answer on an episode? I don't mean for a guest. I mean for me, it can be about anything. Email it to [email protected]. That's EYAL at m dot A-C-D-E-M-Y. There's no.com on that. It's exactly the way I spelled it and use the subject line Answer me Eyal. Alright, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM Podcast. My guest, Aaron Pauley is the vocalist and producer and mixer for of Mice and Men. First of all, he's a great guest, just a super interesting guy, super engaging and has a lot of great things to say for the producers out there, but also I kind of think that he's the archetype for what future musicians will be, or at least what we can expect out of bands in that I think in the next few years, if not already, every single band is going to have someone that is capable of recording now how good they are.

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That's a different story, and I'm not saying that they're not going to need to go to outside mixers or producers or whatnot, but there will be more and more bands that can be a completely self-contained unit where whoever that person in the band is, who's the producer, actually gets really damn good. And this is one of those situations and so I thought it would be interesting because it's not typically the perspective we have here on things we don't typically get to hear from this side. Anyhow, enough of this. Let's get to the podcast. Here goes. Alright, Aaron Pauley, welcome to the URM podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:02:57):

Thanks for having me. How are you doing today?

Speaker 2 (00:02:59):

Very, very good. How are you?

Speaker 3 (00:03:01):

I'm doing well.

Speaker 2 (00:03:02):

Good. Let's talk about your process for recording things that you're then going to record again. How do you make sure that when you're doing pre-pro that you don't basically blow your load on it before the album?

Speaker 3 (00:03:19):

For me specifically, I like to limit the amount of time I'll spend on something. I've learned that after I work on something, usually for vocals, it's less time, if it's just something music or recording related for me, it's usually four or five hours after that point. If I don't take some sort of break, the work starts to be sort of reductive and I end up messing with things that I will end up listening back to tomorrow and hating. As far as overproducing in pre-production, I think for us the main focus and for myself personally, the main focus is always just the song, is the song in its most basic core components there. I think it's really easy also to get demo when you go into the studio and you start realizing that you can't perfectly replicate some of the magic that you get from the demo and that's totally okay, but I think as far as not trying to make a finished product in the pre-production will keep you from trying to then use that as the comparison when you are making the finished product.

Speaker 2 (00:04:22):

So make a map, not the territory basically.

Speaker 3 (00:04:25):

Yeah. It depends also on the way you're recording it. For us, a lot of the pre-production elements that are more MIDI related that aren't necessarily drums, bass, guitars, vocals, a lot of that stuff is printed from our pre-production or our demo sessions and then brought into whatever DA or run through a console or something when we're actually making a record if we're working in a studio. These last couple of releases that have Mice and men has been entirely in the box and entirely done ourselves. So the process of doing pre-production and post-production all ends up kind of blurring into one another.

Speaker 2 (00:05:03):

That's why I was curious. I feel like it's easier to have a separation between pre-pro production and post-production when you do the pre-pro in one spot, the band spot or your own homes and send it around and then you get together at another spot, which is the producer spot, maybe even go to a third spot for a mix or something.

Speaker 3 (00:05:25):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:05:26):

So it is way easier to put things in their category and compartmentalize the work, but when you're doing it all basically in the same place, I feel like it'll get blurred. I'm sure. So just like you said with some of the MIDI stuff, what is the point of redoing some of that stuff? It's already awesome, it's already awesome, but there's always that question of that vocal or something or that guitar that I really, really love. Do I love it because I have demo itis or do I love it because it really actually is awesome and we should keep it and it does matter that we can't recreate it.

Speaker 3 (00:06:07):

Yeah. One of the funniest things I think that I can recall was when we were working on the album Defy with Howard Benson, we were thinking about a way that we were going to recreate a loop and the loop had a guitar in it that it was very sort of a one take through a pog making some sort of crazy noise, but we really, really liked it and we thought, how are we going to top this when we go to recreate it? And I remember Howard was just like, oh, just bounce it out. We're

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Bounce it out from the demo, and he's like, yeah, that part just bounce the whole thing out. He's like, well, do you want it all separated? I was like, do you want it in a wave or an MP three? He's like, I don't care. MP three is fine. It's like, okay, so a three 20 kilobyte per second mp three of this loop part that we made is good enough to go on our album because it sounds good to our ears and because it's doing what it needs to do for the song and there's no need to overcomplicate it beyond that. There is no, for principle's sake, we need to redo it. It's like, no, if you don't think you're going to top it, then there kind of is no point. And at the end of the day, if you don't disclose to the audience that Oh yeah, this was in fact just an MP three that we bounced out because we didn't recreate it in the million dollar Studio, they're none the wiser and it doesn't cheapen it, I don't think. It

Speaker 2 (00:07:24):

Doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (00:07:25):

No,

Speaker 2 (00:07:26):

It's funny, I just talked to Howard Benson two weeks ago.

Speaker 3 (00:07:29):

Love Howard, great guy.

Speaker 2 (00:07:31):

He is one intense intelligent character, so I haven't released his episode yet, but we talked about this actually, and he said that his philosophy is doesn't fucking matter when it was created or who it was created by. If it's awesome, it's awesome, just use it. Who cares? Seriously, who cares?

Speaker 3 (00:07:52):

Yeah. I think a lot of it maybe for us on the creative side, there used to be this weird stigma about, oh, you're working in the box or you're doing things digitally, and it's like, well, if I don't tell you, what do you think? And it's like, well, I can't tell, so what did you do? It's like, well, what does it matter then?

Speaker 2 (00:08:12):

Is it going to change how you feel about it?

Speaker 3 (00:08:14):

Yeah, it's very interesting and it's something I feel like that's unique to music that isn't necessarily the same with fine art or with movies or television or entertainment. Nobody, nobody's ever, like you used what kind of camera instead of what? Maybe it's because I'm not in those circles, but I don't think it cheapens it at all to be able to produce something from home in the box. And now more than ever, technology's kind of caught up with, at least for me, with my ears, there are times where I'm listening to, I'll listen back to stems from the Defy sessions that we did with Howard Benson, and then I'm listening to vocals that I recorded with the Howard Benson plugin that he sent me, and it's like, oh, cool. As far as what it needs to do to get the emotion across music is emotional communication you're communicating in order to get the idea across, is it relatively the same? And it's like, yeah, it's there's a reason why more people are making music with amp simulators and drum plugins with these amazing samples and it's like I have the Abbey Road control room that's tuned to these buyer dynamic headphones in a waves plugin and it's like, yeah, it's not exactly the same thing, but as far as a creative tool that doesn't cost a lot of money and that you can run on a 2012 MacBook Pro, the creative possibilities are endless and you can come out with a commercially viable product.

Speaker 2 (00:09:48):

I think what does cheapen things is to try to recreate magic fall short and then go with the less magical option just because you think it's the way it's supposed to be done. It can't be the MP three because there's some rule somewhere. So you take the shittier option musically, that's cheapening it, I think.

Speaker 3 (00:10:13):

Yeah. Well, because somebody on a blog said that there's bits missing or something from it, what are we going to do without the bits?

Speaker 2 (00:10:20):

The song will suck without the bits.

Speaker 3 (00:10:21):

Yeah, it's been truncated, now there's dithering on this. What are we going to do?

Speaker 2 (00:10:27):

Yeah, it's just

Speaker 3 (00:10:28):

All the noise, throw

Speaker 2 (00:10:29):

It all away.

Speaker 3 (00:10:30):

And the funny thing is people who enjoy music don't, at least for the most part, I think they don't enjoy it for that. I don't know that most people listen to music, maybe people who listen to jazz or classical to sort of nerd out on that, but I don't think most people listen to music to be impressed, either impressed by what you're doing or by how you're doing it. People listen to music, it makes 'em feel good. So now more than ever, people are making music entirely in laptops and things. I think that's a huge reason why electronic music and hip hop and pop music is as big as it is because you don't need all of those things to be able to make songs and to get feelings and thoughts and stuff out. So it's super interesting to see how digital audio workstations and things like Zoom and Dropbox have really changed the way that we make records.

Speaker 2 (00:11:18):

I love it. I know that there's a contingent out there that really wishes that things would go back to the way they were, but we know how that works. Things never go back to the way they were. So whether we like it or not, this is how it is, and if anything, there's going to be more and more of this. This is the direction it's fighting, this moving towards people, being able to do everything themselves and not relying on anything outsourced or just a few things. That is the future. That's where everything's going and trying to resist that would be resisting a tsunami on a surfboard. You cannot fight evolution. It's much like when the record industry tried to fight downloading that didn't work, you can't fight it,

Speaker 3 (00:12:08):

And I mean ultimately, why would you want to fight against having an availability of a different set of more accessible tools? That's the only way I see it. I don't necessarily see it as like, oh, this is directly replacing this. It might be that because of the accessibility of digital plugins and modeling and daws and things like that. It might be that it logically ends up replacing a lot of studios and things, but I don't think you have to look at it that way because there are always going to be commercial recording studios. I firmly believe that. I think that it will become a more specified tool that you will need if you are trying to do something

Speaker 2 (00:12:49):

That requires it.

Speaker 3 (00:12:50):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't know. It seems like a big waste of energy to be a covered wagon maker screaming at the Model T, you know what I mean? As it rolls down the street. If anything, figure out your niche market and market to that while you can, but I mean, yeah, I don't know. It's kind of old man yells at cloud a little bit.

Speaker 2 (00:13:09):

Yeah, definitely. What I'm thinking is what's it going to look like when the generation who grew up with home recording being normal are the 40 year olds then are we going to have regular recording studios still 20 years from now maybe.

Speaker 3 (00:13:28):

It's hard to say. It's kind of like we have digital cameras now. I mean I have one on my cell phone, but there are still places where you can get film developed.

Speaker 4 (00:13:38):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:13:38):

I don't know that that becomes the norm or that becomes the utility per se, you know what I mean? It's sort of like the tool gets replaced by another one. We used to drill holes by hand and then all of a sudden the power drill comes in and it's like there's still some projects where you might be working on something where you're not going to want a power drill for and you're going to want the manual drill, but ultimately the power drill might end up replacing it. To me, it's just kind of interesting to follow because I can remember I started home recording about 2003, 2004 and it was kind of around the time that fire wire started coming around and all of that, and it was super interesting how it went from a fostex MR eight, the little two channel red box recorder to all of a sudden having eight inputs and it's in my computer and whoa, I'm not plugging in a task cam via USB and bouncing out stereo files into some daw and then you just watch how it exponentially snowballs into everything to where now you can make songs completely in the box with logic apple's, just logic, just with logic, with nothing else.

(00:14:57):

You don't need literally anything else. It's got a billion samples drum machines since, and it's pretty wild. It's a lot different than just the tactile days.

Speaker 2 (00:15:06):

Why did you start recording back then?

Speaker 3 (00:15:09):

It was because we had gone to a local studio.

Speaker 2 (00:15:14):

Yes,

Speaker 3 (00:15:14):

And the guy had ripped us off basically. He said, I'll charge you like 200 bucks to do your demo, and we're like sick, and it ended up taking four days. He ended up sending us home being like, no, work on this and come back. And then at the end of it he's like, by the way, you owe me 800 more dollars. And we're like 15-year-old kids, so we're like, fuck this guy. I'm just going to get software. I'm going to figure out how to do this. To me, a lot of how I learned to record was almost working backwards. I would listen to a record and I would try and record a shitty drum set with three microphones or something and think, okay, how can I make this sound close to this? None of it was correct. I listened back to some old demos and am horrified, but it is kind of funny how it's like I can listen back to an old stereo bounce drum track that would just Glenn John's kick snare one overhead or something, and I can hear that I was trying to make the snare drum sound like the snare drum off the first or second circus survive record, and I can hear that.

(00:16:17):

I eqd it to almost sound like it, and it's like, okay, and now you think from there my brain went, okay, well if I could take those three microphones and make them eight microphones, well I could make the kick sound how I wanted and the snare sound how I wanted and then figure out how to make the overhead. So it's like a lot of it was I started with just a four channel recorder and then all of a sudden you get eight channels, you're like eight channels like Prometheus getting fire. You're just like, I can do anything

Speaker 2 (00:16:47):

Based on what you just said. So you improved by making the most of what you had incrementally. So two channels and then you have eight and then evolution happens and there's a few more tools make the best of that, so on and so forth. But do you think that in some ways, despite all the advantages of how it is now where you can have all of the options all of the time, do you think that that potentially will hold somebody's development back because they have too many options and it might hurt their focus a little bit?

Speaker 3 (00:17:25):

It might. On the planning side, I feel like when you were working with a limited number of tracks and even I can remember I think my first edition of cubase that I got with a personas interface, I think it maxed out at 24 channels or something like that. I think when you're working with a limited medium, it teaches you planning, it teaches you production planning, like okay, the first thing I'm going to want to do is I want to bounce down. When you're working on a SX MR eight, you're recording two channels at a time and then you got to bounce 'em to either five or six or seven or eight, and then you can record two more and you can bounce those and you can just keep track stacking. I think if for me personally, I value that I learned it that way. I don't think it's maybe necessary nowadays because it would almost be, I feel like you would be teaching yourself something that you might not have to use in the future because now everything is, instead of track stacking now you're creating summing stacks in folders and things like that. You're organizing your project within your project, at least I do. I like to organize things in folders so that ultimately I'm working with three or four bus faders for everything and it's like, oh, I can mute everything I want or nothing I want that kind of stuff. But it's actually a really interesting question. I do think though that there is something to be said about learning audio recording on a four track that can just make you appreciate what eight tracks can do.

Speaker 2 (00:18:57):

I think that just as a discipline, limiting your options is a really good thing, and I can tell you that we've had quite a few mixers on Nail A Mix who have deleted most of their plugins and have only kept a very select number. And that's not to say they don't ever experiment with new ones.

Speaker 4 (00:19:18):

They

Speaker 2 (00:19:18):

Do try new ones, but they'll routinely call the herd basically so they don't get wrapped up in bullshit basically and distract themselves. They don't need eight plugins that do the exact same thing. Potential to waste some time right there. Now, two different types of EQ that do two completely different things fine, but I do know quite a few people who routinely go through basically their tool set and get rid of the stuff that's extraneous. I think that that is a really, really wise move.

Speaker 3 (00:19:51):

That's cool. I think that's something I'm going to do. It's funny, I was on a tear where for about six months I got myself a Universal Audio Apollo duo twin and I was just buying plugins and I maybe spent eight or 900 bucks on plugins, all stuff that I really like and use. And then I got to a point where it was like I would try trials out and stuff and it's like, oh, I kind of like what I bought, and then I realized it's like you don't really need to buy anymore. If you like what this does for a snar drum or you like what this does for a vocal, it's really, really easy also to confuse yourself. I feel like you could be flipping between which sounds better, A and B, and they sound basically exactly the same. I mean you could look at it on a spectrograph maybe and argue that they're different, but for all intents and purposes, they're exactly the same and you're just like, well, which one's better? Because it's got to be the best one in it, and it's like, man, you can waste so much time doing that, and not just time, but it's like

Speaker 2 (00:20:50):

Brain ram.

Speaker 3 (00:20:52):

You can lose that creative spark easily. You're kind of playing with really soft clay and if you start kind of mashing it around, you got to be sort of gentle with your songs and your production. At least I feel that way. I will tend to sometimes just get in there and just start manhandling something I've made and just throwing EQs and compressors and doing this, and I'll listen to it a few days later and be like, what was I on? Because this is not good.

Speaker 2 (00:21:21):

Yeah, that rabbit hole sucks. It's so interesting how the universal story that people tell when it comes to doing that is that going back to the original is the move 99% of the time.

Speaker 3 (00:21:36):

Oh, yeah. If anything hyper meddling with your project will just give you a confidence boost with your original when you go back to it.

Speaker 2 (00:21:47):

Well, there's something to be said for that.

Speaker 3 (00:21:49):

It's sort of breaking yourself all the way down to the point where you're like, I don't even think I know how to mix. It's just a sham. I've just got lucky from here till now. And then you go back and you're like, oh, actually it was pretty good. You got to tear yourself all the way down sometimes to go back to the original and just not entirely hate it, but that's the creative process. I think that means that you care if you care enough to say, well, I'm me. It's sort of like if you're building a house and you're like, should I use these nails or should I use these nails? It's like, well, they're all going to be sheet rocked eventually, and people aren't going to be talking about what nails you used and you can waste a ton of time picking the best nails, but it's like, I don't know,

Speaker 2 (00:22:29):

Using nails.

Speaker 3 (00:22:31):

I don't have tons of energy for things like that. I'm a pretty low energy guy.

Speaker 2 (00:22:35):

So what are your priorities, I guess, energy expenditure wise when you are creating a record? Because having the responsibility of both being the artist and the producer, that's a lot. So how do you make sure you're not burning out and how do you make sure that the communication stays good between everybody and how do you make sure that you're focusing on the right stuff when you're the artist? It's very easy to get hyper-focused on that stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:23:10):

Oh, yeah. I won't even say with full confidence that I do that all the time. I definitely get stuck in those conundrums between as a producer, this is what I think, and then as a songwriter, this is what I think What's really weird is sometimes those are different, and I'm the same person and I don't know how to pick. I have my band mates who are incredible musicians who I just trust. I have a small handful of friends and family that I will send ideas off to get honest feedback like, Hey, does this sound bad? There's times where it's like, I've done a mix and I'm like, I think this is cool, and I'll send it out and somebody will be like, Hey, the symbols are kind of bugging me. And it's because to their ear, to their headphones, their symbols, the symbols are bugging them and it's like, oh, interesting. And maybe that's kind of more on the myopic mixing side. I think on the production side, I think it's all about the spark and the spark happens when, at least for me personally, when two people are doing two different things or two instruments are doing two different things or it's two tracks, but where two ideas coalesce and the sum of those two ideas is just greater than both of them put together. And you just get that little bit of like, whoa,

Speaker 4 (00:24:30):

Kind

Speaker 3 (00:24:30):

Of like if one guitar player is jamming on a riff and the other one does some sort of lead over it and it just does something to you where you go, whoa, and you become excited about it and you're like, whatever that is, whatever that just did to my ears or to my brain or to my soul, wherever you think music speaks to, I want more of that. And so that sort of becomes the whole mo of just like I spend a lot of time, I wouldn't even say a lot of time, I spend very little time messing with the way that things sound. As much as I try and mess with what is being emphasized more the way I look at mixing, it's not like, oh, I need to make the drums sound good and then I need to make the guitars sound good, and then I need to make the bass and vocal sound good.

(00:25:16):

Then it's all got to sound good together. For me, mixing is more about I have the control of emphasizing what the listener is going to hear, and that could be a snare drum here or that could be a vocal line that's maybe only two or three words that I'm going to bump and move to the left ear. You're more so messing with emphasis, you're messing with what people are going to pick up on a conscious and subconscious level. And so for me, it's just all about when I listen to it, does it communicate to me what I think I want it to communicate to the fans, do the drums hit me the way I want? And a lot of it is, a lot of it probably is reductive to my own personal tastes. I listen to a lot of music in these Sony headphones that I have, these Sony Bluetooth headphones, and I like mixing in 'em, even though they're probably not the best and people might get mad at me for it, but I love listening to music on them. And so listening to my music on them, I've never really thought about mixing,

Speaker 2 (00:26:16):

Well, you know, what music should sound like on them.

Speaker 3 (00:26:20):

And to me it's never felt like, I'm sure some mixers, it feels like they're making a sculpture and they're starting with the clay and doing that. For me, it almost feels like I'm starting with a shape that already kind of looks like something, and I'm just going to very gently try and make it look like that. A lot of what I do is just taking the tracks that my guitar players send me the di, and then finding a guitar tone that is similar to what they would play live. And then to me, once it's like, okay, that's cool, I won't spend hours tweaking it because if I do, it's not going to improve the overall final product.

Speaker 2 (00:26:57):

Just trust your taste

Speaker 3 (00:26:59):

And just kind of go from there. Because I think at least for me personally, if I spend too much time in the little myopic bits and pieces, I don't ever get to that point where I feel like I'm emphasizing certain audio elements for the listener to hear. I'm not emphasizing things in the song anymore. I'm emphasizing things in the audio, and I don't want to be mixing audio. I want to be mixing a song, which is kind of a really weird way of looking at it. I guess it is just mixing audio,

Speaker 2 (00:27:31):

But you're not listening to random audio, you're listening to a song. So I feel like one of the biggest problems that student mixers have is that they forget that they're mixing a song and are only thinking about audio. So it makes perfect sense to me to hear you say that. I do think that actually how the music hits is something that too many aspiring mixers don't think about, and I feel like great mixers, really good mixers, they will tend to all agree on that actually, no matter how technical they are, it doesn't matter how advanced they are, how unbelievably great they are, or how expert they are. I know some dudes with encyclopedic brains that know every single little detail about every single little thing you could ever imagine about recording, but they're still just mixing songs.

Speaker 3 (00:28:31):

It was David Beeth that really instilled that in me. We made two records with David, two records in an ep, and watching him mix was like watching somebody sit down at a piano, he's mixing on a giant SSL, and he's moving things rhythmically and he's moving things to the song, and there's certain lines or certain harmonies where when this harmony, if you bump this harmony up, all of a sudden that lyric sticks in your head four or five seconds longer than it would if you didn't. And I never thought about things that way, but watching him mix real time, it would be watching somebody performing and he would do it sometimes eight bars at a time, 16 bars, 32 bars at a time, but it was very much a performance, and it was all about emphasizing parts of the song at that point. It was nothing about the way that the vocal sounds. It was nothing about, oh, is there enough 10 k on it, or is it at that point it was literally like, what do I want your brain to latch onto? And I'm going to make that slightly louder. And that's such an interesting way of looking at it because you can really sort of shape the way that somebody interprets a song, basically, you're changing the track of the rollercoaster that they're going on.

Speaker 2 (00:29:54):

Yeah, absolutely. And to jump on something that you said earlier that people are kind of going with your taste, right? You're going by what you think sounds good. You listen to a bunch of music in those headphones, you're going for what you feel should be emphasized. Well, I mean, isn't that really what anybody hires a mixer or producer for at the end of the day? I mean, it's not because of their technical expertise, it's because of their taste.

Speaker 3 (00:30:26):

I think for most people it is that way. I think maybe if you're younger and starting out with there is the idea of would I rather be in the giant who's going to know more, the guy with the giant studio or the guy in his living room? You know what I mean? And it's like, well, I don't know. I was definitely, I can remember being a young kid and thinking of that, oh, well, and granted it was 10 years ago and there was really no way that home recording sounded is good. Yeah, it is super. It's more interesting now that somebody would have that opinion or feeling because home recordings can just sound so good, because honestly, what people are using at home is what people are using in major production facilities. Now, one thing that was really interesting to me was when Howard made his vocal plugin, he sent it to me and he is like, Hey, I want you to try this out. And I was like, this rules, and not only does this rule, but I've worked with Howard and I recorded vocals with him, and it sounded like Howard's vocal chain. And he goes, yeah, now don't got to set all that shit up anymore. It's like, cool. He uses that in his studio, which is why he would design something like that because

Speaker 2 (00:31:40):

Yeah, that's not just marketing.

Speaker 3 (00:31:42):

No, it's a whole lot less steps. And I think that to me, it's an obvious business mover or whatever, but it's almost kind of altruistic in a way because there are people like me that used to just troll home recording forums trying to figure out how anybody could make a snare drum sound like the paramor snare drum or how Howard could make the first My Chem records sound that way, or any of the records that Howard's done. It's almost altruistic in a way to be able to share that, here's my vocal chain and it's just in a box and you could just use it on your laptop. It's like, that's pretty cool. And granted, not everybody can take a Swiss Army knife and carve something insane out of it. There's

Speaker 2 (00:32:26):

The tool,

Speaker 3 (00:32:26):

But it's way easier to carve something with a Swiss Army knife than not having one.

Speaker 2 (00:32:30):

Well, I think what's great about it, and I know some people disagree, but what's great about technology, where it's at plugins where they're at, stuff like URM and nail the mix, I think it's that collectively all this makes the process of getting something to sound good, at least good, maybe sounding fucking amazing is still a feat of magic, but getting things sounding pretty good is available to most people who want to put in some effort, whereas before it was practically impossible. So theoretically, it should allow them to focus on the creative aspects more.

Speaker 3 (00:33:12):

And there's something about with nail the mix, having a piece of work, a song and having the tracks being given the tools and given the maybe not necessarily instruction of like, oh, do it exactly this way, this is how I do it because this is how I hear it. And you can either totally reject it or you can learn something. But at the end of the day, it's all just about spreading knowledge. It's just about what can you pick up? What's a technique. For me, one specifically was watching Ali Getgood doing a live mix of one of their songs. That

Speaker 2 (00:33:51):

Was a good one. He

Speaker 3 (00:33:52):

Talked about using distortion on the snare drum instead of clipping or instead of anything that you would typically use to round off a snare drum and still make it impactful. And it was in some video and he pulls up a stock logic plugin, just a distortion plugin, and it's like, oh, you can use distortion. And what happens is then in the context of the mix, when you throw your master bus on and you have your master bus level compression, all of a sudden your drums come to life and that snare drum sounds like a cannon, and it's like, oh, I never thought of putting a distortion on a snare drum, and now I do it all the time because I like the way that it sounds. And it's like, I don't know that that's technically right, but I also don't think that it technically matters because what you're making is not going to be, it's only deconstructed to the level that you allow it to be deconstructed. If we would've just made these records and then never talked about how we did it, there would be no way of deconstructing it. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (00:34:49):

Well, that's why I think that these ideas of what's technically right and wrong, I think a lot of 'em come from a different era. They're less from nowadays and they're more remnants of the forum days. And in the forum days, we haven't started to nail the mix yet. There was very, very little information about how to do this. So people who were not on the session were speculating about how this shit was made and coming up with whatever the hell they were coming up with. And maybe on the sneak forum, he would pop in and give some cryptic advice about, I like to tune the base down a few cents, throw some distortion on it. You're good.

Speaker 3 (00:35:34):

Oh yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:35:35):

Shit like that. It's like cool that you put nice to know. Okay, so tuning the base and putting distortion on it, you do that, but that's it. That's the info you've got. And then on top of that, there's a bunch of people who weren't on the session throwing in a bunch of ideas of what they think is right and wrong, whereas what actually happened on the session is anybody's guess. So I think nowadays that people are seeing that there's a million ways to do it and it doesn't really matter as long as the end result is awesome, there's less of those audio myths floating around, or it's more in super beginner level, I think. But there's less of it than there was a few years ago. And I really do think that that MP three example you brought up at the beginning, that reminds me of stuff from the old days, just these weird rules on forums.

Speaker 3 (00:36:29):

I remember being on those forums, and it's funny too because long before I ever worked with David Beth, I remember he used to be in the Gear sluts forum kind of frequently talking. Somebody would chime in like, oh, I bet he did this and did this, and he'd be like, Nope, it's this. And it's like, and I remember talking to him about that and he's just like, yeah, A lot of it is it wouldn't matter what you could tell people because it's like certain things like a base tone or a snare or something. It has a lot to do with the fact that there's a gigantic SSL board that when you turn the high end all the way up, it does something completely different on the hardware than it does if you do that in the plugin. Just the way that certain circuitry would interact with one another or I don't know. I think ultimately though, you end up arguing and you have three or four different methods from three or four different people that said, Hey, I think this is what they did. And to your ears, they sound pretty much the same, so pick one and run with it. Cool. You could do that to make the snare like that. Cool. Is that what he did? It doesn't really matter.

Speaker 2 (00:37:38):

Maybe

Speaker 3 (00:37:39):

It sounds right, but I think that's also a, I don't know. I think you almost have to be recording and producing and almost like a utilitarian fashion to get that mindset anyway, to say, well, whatever gets me the result I'm fine with because I don't care if it's technically the right thing or if I don't care if I'm using this compressor wrong. To me, it sounds good. It's getting the result that I want. Moving on.

Speaker 2 (00:38:06):

I think that one of the plugins that's used the most on Nail the Mix is CLA effects or CLA vocals. And Without Fail, every time someone pulls it up, they apologize or they're kind of embarrassing because there's this stigma about that plugin that it's cheating or something. And I think that that's also from the Forum days, but

Speaker 3 (00:38:29):

Is using a lighter cheating instead of rubbing two sticks together. I mean, you could argue that.

Speaker 2 (00:38:34):

Yeah, that's what I think these people would argue. But yeah, so man, people use that plugin like crazy awesome. It's funny. It's one of those things where for some reason people have it in their head that it's just not technically right, but they use it anyways technically. Awesome.

Speaker 3 (00:38:51):

I don't know, did Jimmy Hendrix play the guitar technically, right? Is that why we remember Jimmy?

Speaker 2 (00:38:56):

I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (00:38:57):

I don't know. Because

Speaker 2 (00:38:57):

He was awesome.

Speaker 3 (00:38:59):

What he made connected with you, it resonated with you. I think there's a lot of hubbub about all of the technical side. It's fun to nerd out about What's not fun is to argue about it kind of. If the end result is that you want fire because you want heat, then don't argue with me about how I'm getting to the fire. You know what I mean? But I remember seeing a lot of that, and a lot of it was pointless too, because like you said, nobody really had the facts to argue. It was just like, well, I think this, well, I think this, and I remember, remember buying my first set of studio monitors, they're like, and I still have on my desk, I don't really ever use 'em that much. They're just like M Audio BX five A. And I remember being stoked on 'em, and I plugged them in and I was listening to music and I was like, these are awesome. And then I go on forums where somebody's like, those are dog shit. You should have bought these that are $600 a piece. You're not, what are you doing? And it's like, it's very strange.

Speaker 2 (00:39:55):

I remember that with the event monitors I bought at the beginning. I was so stoked. And then I saw the trash talking and I was like, what did I do with my life? Where's this all going?

Speaker 3 (00:40:04):

And then in reality, you could still just enjoy what you got. They can still be useful. Whether or not it's, I don't know. To me, if the whole point is getting to the grocery store and back arguing whether or not you're taking a Lamborghini or a Honda is kind of pointless. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (00:40:21):

Well, another thing that I think causes problems is speaking of technical bullshit, is when people will start talking about things that you can't hear. So they'll be arguing back and forth about something like summing or about different converters. Well, yeah, sure, that stuff makes a little bit of a difference for sure. Everything makes a little bit of a difference, but when you have people at Andy Wallace's level or Colin Richardson's level or Masters going for that final half a percent because they are that good that they're competing like Olympic athletes, that stuff does start to matter. And when they start saying that they notice a difference, the difference that they notice is something that only people at that level are going to notice. Other people are not going to notice, and it doesn't even matter. And I think that when the uninitiated read about that stuff, they start to think that it matters a lot more than it actually does because they're reading something without hearing a difference. They're just taking in this information and saying, okay, I need to get summing. I need to get a summing mixer because that's what real mixers do. I am nothing without a summing mixer.

Speaker 3 (00:41:39):

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:41:40):

It's really dumb.

Speaker 3 (00:41:41):

It is, and it's super self-limiting. If you are your gear, well then you are your gear, and then people with better gear should make all the best mixes, and that's how we rank everything now is who's got the best room. And the great mixers and producers that I've been blessed to work with all have one thing in common, and it's when I ask them about the technical side of that, they're just like, that's not, that's not what excites them about any of it. It's just like, oh, well, this is kind of what we're doing. Oh, well, how did you get that? I don't know. I like the way it sounds. It's like nothing ever had to be more complicated than that than it was good for the song. It was good for the part. I do think it's not, I'm not saying, oh, well just make whatever you want and it's going to be great. You can definitely make technical mistakes that are wrong on your records. Oh,

Speaker 2 (00:42:32):

Yeah, of course.

Speaker 3 (00:42:33):

You can have phase problems. You can have symbols that, one of the things I had to go back through one of my mixes recently was I just kept having symbols that just kept ringing at all these very specific high post nine K frequencies, and I was having to go through with waves Q 10 and just find the little ring and just drag it down, and it's little things like that. What's funny is they make a plugin for that. I know that they make a plugin for that. It will literally listen to your symbols and I can't remember what it's called, soothe Soth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, soothe. They make a plugin for that, so you don't have to go in and Q 10 all the little, and it's so funny because it's things that was bothering me that I was going back and making revisions and sending them to my band mates, and they're like, I can't tell the difference. It's like, okay, well, don't worry about it then. But I think that again, a producer's job is, I guess it's separate. A lot of times now producers are mixers and even mastering,

Speaker 2 (00:43:43):

Yeah, lines are very blurred now.

Speaker 3 (00:43:45):

Lines are very blurred. I think that for us, for me doing kind of the production and mixing side, it's always more about the song. I can always hear David, every time I get stuck doing something like tweaking something really stupid and spending too much time, I can hear David Bend's voice in the background going, yeah, that'll sell a few more records. And he's right. At the end of the day, it's like, that's not really going to matter. And I think it's fun to sort of talk about the specifics of how we do things or how different producers do things, but at the end of the day, it's all about the songs. Because fans, for the most part, outside of rock music, they don't really talk about recordings that much. I don't remember the last time I heard people debating a pop record fans. I mean like just general music consumers.

Speaker 2 (00:44:34):

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. Go Jira, 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.

(00:45:25):

And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jens Borin, Dan Lancaster to Matson, 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 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 Enhanced, 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. 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 question though about heavier music is do you think that a majority of the fans are music creators, which makes it different than say pop?

Speaker 3 (00:46:52):

I would say maybe a majority of the communicative fans.

Speaker 2 (00:46:56):

It's a good way to put it.

Speaker 3 (00:46:57):

Yeah. If I think about, if I close my eyes and think about playing in of Mice and Men show at a festival in the Midwest or something, I don't think that most of the people in that crowd are people that go home and then make music, but I think about the people who would want to engage online or who'd want to be more connected to that side of how it's made. I think ultimately though, that bridge is first started, the first plank in that bridge is the emotional connection to the song or to the music or to the artist. I think it's only kind of when you get more into the educational side that you start sort of peering into the production side of things without necessarily being inspired by the art. You know what I mean? I think a lot of people, especially a lot of people that get into home recording, they do so because they really fall in love with music.

(00:47:48):

And then there's this inquisitive part of our brains as human beings that are like, oh, I wonder how they do that. And you can Google it and you realize, oh, it's computer programs. It's computer programs you can buy for a couple hundred bucks. And it's like, oh, maybe I could do that. And I think that's maybe some of the bitterness too, in thinking about it now with people from the previous generation that had to learn recording from being an intern at a studio under some hard ass who's screaming at 'em while they're trying to cut tape and tape it together and not ruin this guy's session. Maybe there is some of that there. Well, you just didn't, you don't learn everything when you're not in the fire like that. But sometimes it doesn't, if history's taught us anything, is that technology moves us away from labor some tasks and makes them easier, but I don't think it cheapens the final product at all. That's just my personal opinion.

Speaker 2 (00:48:48):

I completely agree with you. I think that the people who had to spit shine toilets and get abused by tyrannical producers, which is how things have been, or were for a long time, definitely they paid their dues several lifetimes worth of dues, and so it's got to be a slap in the face that some kid can learn all this shit in their bedroom and just fuck around with it and get better, and then get signed and have the stuff they made in their bedroom come out and there you go. They skipped that entire process. That's just the same way that I think that I know some band guys who have a lot of bitterness towards artists who got big on YouTube first, and then so they got big on YouTube, then they started touring and they skipped the van phase, which good for them. But I know a lot of artists that look at that and are like, well, they're not real musicians. They're not true artists. They weren't a local band

Speaker 3 (00:50:03):

To you, but everybody else that enjoys it, they are.

Speaker 2 (00:50:06):

Yeah, exactly. But I think it's a similar thing. Yeah, weren't a local band for five years. They didn't go in the van for 10 more years after that before getting to a bus. They just put shit on YouTube and then three years later got in a bus. And I know it pisses some people off.

Speaker 3 (00:50:27):

Sure. And there's an argument to be said if you are. It's funny, there's actually, I think a term for that. It's born in a bus. If you're fortunate enough in your musical career to be born in a bus, there are certainly things that you won't learn on the road, but of course, hopefully you won't have to learn how to live off a $5 a day per diem. Hopefully you're getting more and you can eat. I don't know. And I think that there is, yeah, there's definitely some of that. I know for a fact that somebody's watching this whose job was to label the Patch bays and take all the cables out. I don't even deal with patch bays, I drop plugins. There's no Patch Bay anymore. It's just there. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 (00:51:12):

It's a beautiful thing too.

Speaker 3 (00:51:13):

And so I get it. I totally get it. But I think in terms, if anything, I would hope that people could turn that bitterness into excitement about the fact that you don't have to relabel a patch bay. You don't have to do any of that. You can, and it's great, and it's all tools there for your disposal. But as far as having an idea in your head or in your heart, getting that out, writing something and creating that and getting that to people, it's like our first EP of this trilogy of eps that we're releasing. I mixed and mastered it on my 2012 MacBook Pro. It's so awesome. It's so ancient and it's slow, and it's like I have to be very careful about how many plugins I use. I have to be careful about how much latency I allow myself because it's not a modern machine by any stretch of the imagination.

(00:52:07):

But the first single that we put out from that was number one at Octane for months, and we would laugh about it because it's just like, isn't this funny? We made the song on Zoom, we broadcast our Zoom session to Twitch. We recorded all these tracks that had so much latency as he's trying to track. It's coming in and recording 120 milliseconds late. So it's like, okay, we're going to have to grab that and move that back so it's with the drums and just grab it and move it. Cool. Sounds good. You could spend three hours fighting with latency. It sounds good. While you're tracking it, drag it and move it. And it's like that ragtag process of sending things in Dropbox. And the drums are, the drums are Steven Slate drums that Tino actually recorded on a V kit and sent me MIDI for.

(00:53:00):

So it's him playing it and it's like, oh, cool. This is the future and it sounds good. And then we set up the way that it sounds, and then once it sounds good, then you can worry about if all of the elements of the song are there and work out how you want that to impact people. But nowadays, you're not spending so much time fighting the sound, because like you said, there are out of the box plugins like CLA, just boom. Sounds good. Now I don't have to spend an hour messing with the sound, and I can spend an hour thinking of the part.

Speaker 2 (00:53:32):

So just out of curiosity, why are you on a 2012 Mac Pro?

Speaker 3 (00:53:36):

So I'm not anymore. Now. I upgraded after that. I upgraded after that ep.

Speaker 2 (00:53:42):

Okay. I was just curious.

Speaker 3 (00:53:44):

It was the tools that I had. I just dropped a brand new SSD in it. It's got two gigs of RAM and it functioned. It was kind of a function over form type thing. I now have the new M1 Mac mini, which it has its own set of weird sort of graphical interface things because it's using its own M1 processor instead of like,

Speaker 2 (00:54:06):

Oh, that's the big problem with it. I have one of those too,

Speaker 3 (00:54:08):

Instead of something that's Intel based. So I haven't found any plugins that don't work audio wise. What I have found is that some plugins graphic, like the GUI doesn't show up. I'll open up a plugin and I'm like, oh, I can hear it, but it's just a black box. A lot of that's been patched, so I don't have any plugins now that don't work, and this machine is psychotic because I can't bog it down. I can have all the tracks I want open, flip through Chrome tabs, just have every, and it's funny because I appreciate this so much more having made the record on the MacBook because it's like, oh, I accidentally hit freeze on the base tracks, so I'm going to need to take a 15 minute walk while this freezes. I can't stop it from going through the process. It's going to take 15 minutes to freeze the track, and then I can keep working.

(00:54:57):

If anything, it puts into perspective like where technology is at now, and I hadn't upgraded in the last 10 years because I hadn't really found a reason to because as long as it was working, it was working. Once we got to the point where I'm in the 40 ish tracks range for the timeless ep. I hit up a management and I was like, Hey, I'm probably going to put a new computer on this. I can keep working, but I'm fighting the tech now. The tech is what's slowing me down, not the ideas. And now it's just like modern computer. It's as fast as you need it to be. I can't imagine any reason why I would need this thing to be faster, but it's really freeing. It's also, it's a ton, so you can definitely confuse yourself.

Speaker 2 (00:55:42):

Let's talk a little bit about making the most of a computer that's struggling because that's a lot of listeners actually Oh

Speaker 3 (00:55:49):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:55:50):

Have that issue. I know they'll open up now the mix sessions. This is how I know, and there'll be like 140 tracks and their computer just isn't down. Not DTF basically can't handle it. I mean, I know how I would go about it and I know the stuff that we say is like sub mixes, freeze plugins, but how did you handle it?

Speaker 3 (00:56:14):

And this is fun. This is kind of a fun, creative exercise. I would do a lot of final decision making on the spot about the way that certain instruments would sound with regards to amp plugins or drum plugins. It was okay, I like that bass tone and this isn't even something that I would recommend for somebody who's working on something that's like a commercial product, but for the sake of at home, it's a good exercise. I would find the guitar tone from the plugin. I like using STL tones guitars. I think they just sound fantastic. They're very raw and analog, so it's definitely not just slap it on and turn it on. It's definitely working with the real amp. You got to take some of the stuff out. But once I find something I like, I'm like, cool, print it. Because I know if I give myself the option of returning to that guitar plugin and just moving the microphone on the fake cab, I'll do that. But if I don't have that option anymore, I won't think twice about whether or not the guitar sounds good to me.

(00:57:14):

So I limit the amount of stuff that I can tweak. And then from there you realize, oh, you really don't. If your source material is well recorded, you don't need to hyper tweak with everything. In fact, there's some stuff where it's like I'll get a sample that one of the guys has made or something like, oh, here, put this sort of behind a programming part or something, and it's like, I won't even necessarily put any plugins on it. It sounds good. I'll put it up to volume. And it's like nothing in me says I need to mess with this in order for it to be good. Some things can just sit, but for me it's always a useful exercise to try and limit the amount of tweak ability I give myself.

Speaker 2 (00:57:54):

And there's a lot to be said for committing, so this is actually one of the things that the analog guys hate about the digital guys is they say that in the analog days you had to make decisions. You didn't have the option, and so you got better because you were constantly having to make final decisions, but this is where they're wrong. Most of the best digital guys I know have that same ethos. One of the first to do it completely in the box, Joey Sturgis, that is one of the most used techniques in his style, was to get things sounding final, freeze 'em the end, move on so that by the time it's time to mix, it already is pretty much mixed. It sounds the way it's supposed to sound, but there's so many people I know who operate that way because if you don't have some form of that going on, you're going to get analysis paralysis just because of the amount of options you've got

Speaker 3 (00:58:57):

And you can lose the song in the audio.

Speaker 2 (00:59:01):

Yes,

Speaker 3 (00:59:01):

It seems like such a strange concept. If a song is made up of multi-track audio, how can you lose the song in the audio? I fully believe you can do that. I believe you can mix a song with death. You know what I mean? And I believe that conversely, you can have a kind of shitty song with a super great mix. And it's also kind of like, okay, there's kind of that fine line of if you give yourself too many colors in your color palette and somebody says, okay, paint a birdhouse, here's a birdhouse. I want you to paint this for me, and you have 200 colors, you're going to get really confused trying to pick is this the right yellow? Is this the right red? And it's like there is a time and a place for those. But I sort of picking those colors out beforehand and then saying, okay, I'm going to give myself these five colors to paint this birdhouse with and then you can worry about where you place them.

(00:59:50):

And that to me is more of the creativity of where are you going to place that tweak ability or those decision making, and it doesn't have to be in all of your guitar DI's or your bass di or changing the way your snare drum sounds a million times. I do that too, and it's the first one I pick is always my favorite. I always think I can beat it and then I'm always like, damn, I'm stupid. When you make decisions, what happens is you don't get better at using your tools, you get better at refining your decision making,

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):

Which is far more important,

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):

Which is infinitely more important.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):

Yeah, it's what actually matters. The ability to do that is what allows a great mixer to be able to work at a huge studio or laptop and headphones on a tour bus.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):

Doesn't even matter. That's with stock plugins or with the coolest plugins. Doesn't matter. I forget what band it was, but I know that there's some record that Will Putney did. He did it at night while he was producing some other band in Australia, and all he had was headphones in a laptop. The record charted, man, I forget what it was, but sounds amazing, of course, but if you know how to make decisions, you can do what you do anywhere with anything.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):

And I think with any limited set of tools, I think, and I can't remember who told me this, the most important thing that anybody who wants to be a music producer or a mixer or engineer can do is to just listen to a ton of music and just learn how to critically listen to things. Learn how close your eyes and think how are things panned right now? Close your eyes and think if you can hear compression or if you can hear certain effects. Is the reverb, does it sound like more of a plate or more of a hall or the snare reverb? Oh, I can hear it's gated. You can kind of critically learn how to listen to music and then producing your own almost becomes, instead of just producing your own, you're almost kind of reproducing the things that you like. In other records, a lot of what I do in the Mice records is I'm reproducing to my ear things that I like about our past records, things that I like about other records, and it's more just trying to match things that I've heard, that I know that I like.

(01:02:05):

And that becomes more, I think about, like you said, about refining decision making skills rather than the tools that you're using or whether or not you can tweak tracks to sound like that. Understanding that I like drums that are punchy. I really compressed stuff. I know some people are compression. Ugh, you shouldn't hear it. It's like, well, sometimes I like the way I hear it sometimes I like the way that it seems to suck everything out when the kick and snare happened and it feels like you're getting punched. Everything's sort of time and place. We've been saying you can get lost in the technicality of it, of like, well, you're not supposed to do that. But it's like, I don't know if history has taught me anything. It's especially in music, the people that do things out of the box your Jimi Hendrix is, or when Zeppelin was like, Hey, what if we did it in stereo, what everything used to be. You know what I mean? There's instances where you can break the mold and it's like then that becomes the norm. I don't see it going back. I don't see all of a sudden it being SSLs and tube gear everywhere. I think technology is kind of here to stay.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):

I completely agree with you. Okay, so when you hear something that you want to recreate, what's the process behind that? Are you actually trying to recreate it or is it more just an idea in your head of some inspiration and then you kind of know what you're going for and then you just go for it? Or are you listening to it and referencing? Sometimes

Speaker 3 (01:03:29):

It's kind of both. If we're working on a song, and to me I'm like, oh, this song has kind of a go Jira vibe to it, I'll go back and I'll listen to go Jira records like the infant cavage that Josh Wilber did, and I'll go back and I'll listen to it and it's like, okay, knowing what I know about EQ compression, knowing the tools, what am I hearing and how do things relate to one another? For me, it's not necessarily about, oh, I want to recreate something that feels like this record, so I'm going to try and match all these tones. For me, it's not so much about that as how does the bass relate to the kick drum and how does the bass relate to the kick drum in the snare? How do the guitars relate to the symbols? Where are the symbols?

(01:04:12):

Do the symbols sound like they're close micd and panned, or do they sound like they're kind of far room mics and some production? They don't have super wide symbols because they prefer wide guitars and symbols are kind of brought in. For me, it's sort of trying to critically listened to how things relate to one another and then sort of try and build my own project from there. I think when I try and tone match and do things like that, it always ends up a mess. I always end up with something where it's like, oh yeah, this sounds like this to my ear. And then I put it in context of the rest of everything I'm doing because it's not a Go Jira song on a Go Jira album in a Go Jira mix and you're like, ah, that doesn't really work out. But if you can train yourself to critically listen to things like panning listening to things, does the mix sound like it has a lot of mid range in the drums?

(01:05:05):

Does it sound like they're more scooped in the drums? Does the kick drum, does it sound like the clicky snap of the kick? Does that sound like it's something that's coming in three 4K or does it sound like it's coming in one or 2K? Sometimes you have a more mid rangey sort of kick drum, but just sort of learning how different pieces correspond and interact with each other. When you're listening to the whole, and I should specify when I mix, I top down mix. So I already have my master bus is already kind of set up with bus compression and then I have a multi-band compressor and limiter as faux mastering while I'm listening to my mix, like, okay, if I was to listen to this with multi-band compression and limiting, does it still sort of translate the same way? So I think doing it the top down approach and then trying to think of how things relate to one another more so than what is this tone and what is that tone and what is this tone? Because what you're listening to when you're listening to a recording is you're not listening to drum tone and guitar tone and bass tone. You're listening to all of those tones and how they interact with one another through multi-band compression, multi-band limiting and mastering and things like that. So you're never just listening to the bass or just listening to the drums. You're listening to everything.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):

The top-down approach. I don't know why it's controversial, I don't think it should be. I think that nobody should care how somebody does things, but I know so many great mixers who have decided to do it that way and it makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Why would you mix a certain way if it's all going to change later?

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):

So it makes sense to kind of put it in its context from the get-go.

Speaker 3 (01:06:48):

Yeah, I know that everything that I work on, if I'm going to master it, I know at some point it's going to go through multi-band compression. The actual bounce is because it's going to have to and then it's going to go through some sort of multi-band limiting. Those are just things that I know are going to happen. So whether or not I wait till the end to see if they totally destroy what I worked on or not, to me it's the laziness in me. I don't like working super hard at something that I can slap on there for reference and at any point go and all of a sudden it boosts it to commercial volume and it's got that sort of multi-band compression pump or whatever that thing does. But I don't know, to me there's really no point in arguing it anyway because if somebody could come up with the exact same thing, not top down, then cool, who cares? It's all going to end up a digital master, which is zeros and ones, and if your zeros and ones are pretty close to my zeros and ones, it's going to sound pretty much the same. So I don't know

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):

Who cares? Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):

And like I said, if you don't divulge how you do any of this, if Billie Eilish didn't come out and say, I recorded this in my bedroom, nobody would've assumed that. They would've assumed it was like at the best studios, God knows where on some island somewhere, maybe you can only really argue about as much as you let into the production side of it, which I don't know. It's all fun. It's all fun. Somebody could say they hate my mixes and hate the way I do things and it won't offend me. I enjoy it and to my years, it's what I like. So

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):

Just out of curiosity, after working with people like Howard Benson and David Beeth, how did you get the band to trust you and was it scary for you to have to follow those guys?

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):

I used to do production work. I did a lot of our pre-production mixing and stuff like that. I actually mixed our live album live at Brixton. That was the first thing I got to do. Audio side, actual commercial for our band. I mean, it honestly came down to I think my band mates having a lot of trust in me and there're also just not being a lot of options. The studio that we had been doing our recordings at hybrid studios in Orange County, it went up for sale towards the beginning of the pandemic. I don't know if it's even still open. It was kind of utilitarian in a way of, and it was always under the premise of we're going to self-produce and self track this and I'm going to mix it and if it sucks, then somebody else is going to mix it. And I'm totally okay with that because for me, I learned something new every time I open up my daw still, there's no amount of me sitting down.

(01:09:51):

I don't ever sit down to mix being like, oh, I know what I'm doing. I know the way that some of these tools work and I discover new things and I learn new things every session and I probably forget some things every session. And it's sort of an evolving craft that way. Technology changes, the interface changes. It's not FireWire anymore, it's thunderbolt. But I think the actual reason why anybody sits down at their home to say, I want to try and make a recording, it's because of things that go way beyond just creating something that's commercially viable. My love of home recording started way before even really being in a touring band. I was producing local bands before I was in a touring band. It was just something I enjoyed doing and I think I was probably a pest to all those producers that we worked with.

(01:10:41):

I always wanted to be in the room and I always wanted to kind of ask questions and see like, oh, well what is this? How do you do this? There was never a time where any producer we'd ever worked with was like, no, if I would ask Howard Benson about how he's doing this or if I was asking David about his drum sounds or they were more than willing to talk about it and they were happy that somebody cared about just the ins and outs of things because for them they're doing it to their ear. They're doing it because I make these decisions on the snare drum because it sounds good to my ear. And it's like, oh, that's really interesting. And that was what they would all say. Every single one of them would do different things and then would tell me, well, because to my ear, this sounds the best. And then that's sort of I think what kind of imparted on me a little bit. There's definite science you should learn, and I think that there's definite technique you should learn with regard to live micing and making sure you're not recording things at a phase. And there's definitely things like that, but a lot of it was like trust your ears, learn to listen critically, and then let your ears be your most valuable tool.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):

Well, first of all, I agree with that idea, but the only problem with that idea is that people at the beginning can't trust their ears. They don't know what they're listening to.

Speaker 3 (01:12:01):

Oh, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):

So it becomes really hard when you say, when they ask how do you do something and people use your ears, it's like, well, that person's ears suck.

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):

Oh yeah. I would never respond with, use your ears as the answer to what should you do or what are you doing? But more of the why did you do this instead of that? And to my ears, this is what sounded good.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):

Well, at the end of the day though, use your ears is the actual answer to just about every one of these questions. Well, there's two answers. It depends and use your ears. It's hard to help people get better by saying it depends or use your ears.

Speaker 4 (01:12:39):

But

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):

No, but that is it at the end of the day, kind of back to the reason that a producer gets hired is their taste. It's those decisions like between A or B, well, they go with what sounds better to their ears. Those decisions are why you work with somebody. It's their taste, their inclinations.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):

And I think that's why things like nail the mix is so hugely valuable because it gives the opportunity for people to see the way that somebody who is creating something does it. And there's things to be learned. You learn techniques and then you also learn the why would you do this instead of doing this? And the answer is like, well, because to my ears doing it this way sounds better. I never really thought about it that way, but I do think that there is something to be said, and I've said it every time. Anything I do as a mixer or producer or engineer or any of that is because I'm a product of working with the people that I've worked with.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):

It's

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):

Asking questions. And if there's anything I could tell anybody watching this who hasn't been in the room with people like that and who would want to, I mean, they will all say the same thing in that it's not the technical side of things beyond making sure you're not at a phase and just the standard recording 1 0 1,

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):

The shit you should know.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):

Yeah.

(01:14:01):

Beyond that though, nobody has any sort of massive rule book of like, oh, it's got to be done this way. I've seen things, dude. I mean people were recording kick drums with speakers that were wired. You know what I'm saying? That was not in anybody's booklet of like, oh, this is the technically right way of doing something, but it makes a cool ass kick drum sound like the original sub kicks or whatever using the, was it like NS 10 cones and shit? And now you can't even find those anymore. And it's like how many of 'em got turned into fucking kick drum mics?

Speaker 2 (01:14:33):

Yeah, it's hilarious. What's funny is that sometimes this is very few, but it always sticks out. Sometimes we'll get some complaints because some people will think that we're holding out on them, like the mixers holding out, hoarding some information. There's this extra thing that they were hoping to get. But the thing is that what you really learn after being around enough great producers and mixers is that they're all kind of doing, I mean there's different methods, but they're all the same techniques, pretty much same tools, same techniques, different uses, but kind of like if you go to an Italian restaurant, there's going to be pasta and the pasta is going to be probably made from a few different types of ingredients, like a few different options, but pretty much the same thing. It is what it is and there's no great magic to it besides whatever's in somebody's brain. And that's the part that you can't teach somebody how to hear things the way you hear them,

Speaker 4 (01:15:35):

And

Speaker 2 (01:15:35):

You can't teach somebody how to have your instincts. Besides that though, once you kind of understand the technical side of it to some degree, there really isn't much more to it. I think

Speaker 3 (01:15:52):

There's

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):

No Wizard of Oz or

Speaker 3 (01:15:54):

No, and I would say probably the only thing that producers would be holding out on are pieces of archaic gear from the seventies that only they have, and it's like 20 grand for this rack that does this special kind of delay. But if I didn't have this rack and I was working at this studio, I would just use this plugin and it just set it to this, and it sounds kind of like it. And it's like some people have their sauce, everyone's got their own recipe of their sauce.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 3 (01:16:22):

The sauce is good because whoever's making it has a good tongue and has a good palette for making the sauce. The sauce isn't good because of the ingredients. It's because whoever is making it has the taste to make it well, and is hopefully, I dunno doing so maybe that's not a good analogy.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):

No, I think that's a great analogy actually. I think that's the right analogy.

Speaker 3 (01:16:42):

Yeah. Could you imagine what somebody like Freddie Mercury and Queen would do with a MacBook and logic? You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):

Hard to imagine.

Speaker 3 (01:16:52):

These tools are giving so many creative people the ability to be creative without having to be technical. And I think there is so much more value in that than whatever pearl clutching there is to be done with the analog way of doing things. I think that there's something to be said about the fact that creativity is so much more viable and accessible now. It's not, oh, you don't have to go to a commercial facility to get this really good melody. You have out, you can get it out and then you can build off of it and then you can release it as Billie Eilish and get tons of Grammys. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):

It's a beautiful thing

Speaker 3 (01:17:28):

That to me is cool. That doesn't cheapen recording. To me, that makes it better. That makes it, it's more accessible. It's like did humans gatekeep language the same way all these people learning how to read? It's like, no, it's a good thing. I don't know, but that's just the way I look at it. Maybe it's because it's also not necessarily my industry. I'm not necessarily in the covered wagon business. Maybe it's not for me to comment on, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):

I agree with your perspective though.

Speaker 3 (01:17:57):

I think about all the good that it brings to kids that would otherwise get ripped off by the local eighties hair metal guy that records bands. Now. I think about the fact that you don't have to go to that guy and record your stuff all analog.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):

That's such a great thing, such a great thing.

Speaker 3 (01:18:16):

And nothing against any of that, but there's definitely two ways of looking at it and one is just pessimistic and you're not going to fight it. It's not going away. Like you said, you're never going to put pro tools back in the box.

Speaker 2 (01:18:30):

No, absolutely. And I think that it's a wonderful thing that you don't have to go to that neighborhood studio anymore. It's great. I remember that shit, man. That's actually why I started recording in the first place was I got sick of going to that place. And that's why a lot of people I've talked to started recording pretty much most of the metal dudes I know who started recording between 98 and 2004 or something had a bad experience with a local studio and we're like, fuck this, I'm going to figure it out.

Speaker 3 (01:19:07):

And back then it was like, okay, go to college, get a two years associates, create a business plan, get a $20,000 loan, you can get all the gear and a few months on this practice space. And dude, there was so many recording studios that popped up in massive recording places. We used to have a spot in Sacramento where they did that first dance, Gavin Dancy. It was called Death Bott. And it was literally, it was just two practice spaces, like rehearsal spaces in a giant lockout. And it's like, oh wow, this is cool. And that was so different from my experience at the first place I went to where the first place I went to, we were recording to tape. I know 15-year-old kids recording to tape. Yeah, cool. Sounds bad. It doesn't sound good. I'm not saying tape doesn't sound good. I'm saying our recordings did not sound good.

(01:19:57):

They cost us like $1,200 and they did not sound good. And then going to Death Bott where this dude had just got two rooms at this lockout, ran a snake through the wall and was like, there wasn't even a window. It was like, here's a little cam, here's a little webcam, and here's this tiny little CRT monitor and you'll be in there and I'll be in here. And that was home recording, but out of lockout. And that spot was cool. I loved going to that spot and to think, okay, I asked him, I was like, how much do you figure you've paid for all your gear? And he's like, in total between the computer, the pro tools rig, the monitors, the microphones maybe like five grand or something. It's like, holy shit, I thought studios would make millions of dollars. And it's like, no. And the stuff that came out of it was good, but it was good.

(01:20:42):

I think because the engineer there at the time, Phil, he was a music fan and he liked listening to music and he recorded a lot of the local bands. And so what ended up happening was he ended up getting clientele because the way he mixed things became synonymous with the local scene in the area. You're like, oh, I want my record to kind of sound like their record in their record and their record. Well, the same guy did all of them. And it's not even necessarily that what he was doing was the right thing, but it's like you do enough of it, it becomes the right thing. So I wonder

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):

He was doing the thing that people liked.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):

So I wonder how much of modern recording is that? Thinking about the way that the Beatles made albums and to now it's so much has changed that to argue about the technicality side of anything seems kind of moot. I don't know anybody that's like, we need to go back to mono. All these people recording in stereo are ruining music. Nobody's saying that, you know what I mean? But it's like how far back does it go? Maybe towards the internet digital age? Yeah, probably like you said, nineties, early two thousands. That's where the line is, because people who learned how to report before that were scrubbing toilets, getting screamed at. There was kind of no middle ground. Not to mention there was no full sail academy. I think back in for people in the eighties, it was like, no, you interned for a hard ass. And in turn, that guy taught you everything he knew about music

Speaker 2 (01:22:04):

For better or for worse.

Speaker 3 (01:22:05):

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think there's value in all of it. I wouldn't try to devalue something just because it brings more accessibility to people. That seems kind of, I dunno, it seems kind of gatekeeper to me.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):

Gatekeeper and regressive.

Speaker 3 (01:22:20):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):

Yeah. Well, Aaron, I think this is a good place to end the episode.

Speaker 3 (01:22:25):

I think we the other people enough.

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):

Yeah, it was a good yell though.

Speaker 3 (01:22:29):

I would say to anybody who absolutely does things their way that is principled in the old methods, more power to you. I have great respect for people that do things that way.

Speaker 2 (01:22:41):

Likewise.

Speaker 3 (01:22:42):

And that is why to me, it's when it kind of comes the other way. I'm just kind of like, eh, I don't know anybody that's working on tape anymore. Even the old school dudes, every SSL board that I have ever seen is hooked up to a computer

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):

At the end of the day, man, if working like that is what works for them, fucking cool.

Speaker 3 (01:23:03):

And if you're listening to this at home and you are passionate about recording, do it and put out an album on a MacBook 2012 Pro. You know what I mean? Don't feel like you don't have all the tools because the tools are very, very accessible. And there are the biggest tool and the place I feel like people can invest their most time and get the biggest pay out from is just investing in critical listening.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):

Yeah, actually learning how to do it and your tastes,

Speaker 3 (01:23:38):

Whatever headphones you prefer, whatever monitors you prefer, just listen to tons of music and listen to the relationship between things like the guitars, learn to listen to where things are panned, learn to sort of deconstruct things in your mind and almost sort of, you can work backwards that way. A lot of times if you get really good at critical listening, you can almost close your eyes and work backwards from what you're hearing in totality down to things like, oh, that snare drum has a ring at three 50 that I would just love to notch out the top dogs like the David Bendis and Howard. So scarily good at things like that. One of the coolest things that David Bend ever showed me was that he, most human beings can't really differentiate anything less than 20, 25 milliseconds. He was telling me things that were out five or 10. He would have me take a snare drum and drag it one way or another and he would be able to guess within two or three milliseconds how far I dragged it, whether it was late or early.

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):

Amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:24:42):

Yeah. Just something stupid like that. And what was funny was he told me, he goes, things like that, being able to hear that a snare is 20 milliseconds behind or ahead that's more valuable than plugins or volumes or anything like that, is learning when things hit your ear. Because you can have a snare drum that's hitting it the exact same time a kick is, and you're not going to hear it, but you nudge that snare drum out 20 milliseconds out behind the kick and you hear both because in mixing, you're not just managing the levels of things, but you're actually managing when things hit your ear. So I learned all about taking vocals. He's like, if you ever, and this is actually something you can try at home for anybody who does home recorded vocals, record yourself singing and record a track that you feel like is good, that you feel like your timing and your pitch is good. If you listen to it back and you feel like it's a little out of tune, take that vocal and drag it back 15, 20 milliseconds. So it's behind the beat. And 99% of the time it will sound perfectly in time and in tune. He said, because when people are singing, you're singing on the beat and too many things are happening at once. And I was like, I never even thought of things like that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:50):

Interesting,

Speaker 3 (01:25:51):

Interesting. And you listen to any modern pop record put on any Drake song, Drake, his vocal is like 50 milliseconds behind the beat. It is delayed, it is back there. It is just sitting way back in the pocket and you hear it crystal clear and it's just the most bizarre thing. But even little things like that learn to hear how long delays last or how long reverbs last, and you don't need to know that, oh, well that lasted one second. But you can sort of create these benchmarks in your mind of, I don't know. And maybe that's just the way I process things, but I like to sort of listen to things and then try and recreate them with my tools and not recreate them in the sense of recreate them perfectly, but recreate the relational balance between everything. You can get a very similar mix with very different tones, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:26:46):

Absolutely. That's a great thing to put out there. I haven't heard about that. Fixing the tuning. I want to hear it now.

Speaker 3 (01:26:53):

It's psychotic. There are times where I will do a vocal take and I will know, I sing it and pitch and I'm like crushed it. And I listened to it back and I'm like, damn it. And then I zoom in and it's like, ah. I rushed it. And it's usually 15 to 20 milliseconds. You can try doing things like dragging guitar leads, anything you want to sort of stick out, try dragging it back a little bit. Anytime there's ever, anytime there's ever a drum part that goes like four on the floor, boo God, boo God, where the kick and snare are hitting every time, I will drag that snare so it's not perfectly aligned with the kick and the snare will always come afterwards, otherwise you won't hear it. And that was something David taught me was timing is just as important as volume.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):

It's a great, great lesson.

Speaker 3 (01:27:36):

And you can train yourself without knowing exact, you don't have to sit there with a stopwatch and train yourself to know milliseconds, but you can eventually train yourself to hear if something's coming early or something's coming late.

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):

You can feel that You can learn to spot it for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:27:53):

It's interesting. And it's all just like, those are all just little keys that unlock doors where you can go through and be like, oh, I can drag this guitar lead back. And all of a sudden it feels so much more open and almost like it's because the other thing too that you don't realize is when you move timings on things, you're also changing the way that your bus compressors and everything operate because audio is actually happening at different times. It's not trying to grab everything all at once.

Speaker 2 (01:28:18):

One thing that I started doing, we did this on my band's last record, was I wanted things behind the beat. And so just took the kick because it wasn't a natural kick and moved it forward by 10 milliseconds, which then makes everything else 10 milliseconds behind, and suddenly everything just felt so much better.

Speaker 3 (01:28:41):

Oh yeah. All your low end opens up because your kick drum isn't squashing your base. Because even fractions, even milliseconds, that changes the way that gear operates on, if you're talking about compressors operate on millisecond thresholds, so moving things milliseconds will absolutely change the way that your whole mix is perceived and whatnot. And that's actually a lot of thing. I think that, and it's a shame that it's coming up now so late in our chat, but that's a thing the greats are really good with is timing, is knowing like, oh, well, the reason why this doesn't sound good is because these things are kind of squashed on top of one another, and this is happening a little late. So you fix the timing and all of a sudden you can hear everything because not everything's happening all at once, but without making it seem totally unnatural,

Speaker 2 (01:29:29):

Man. Well, I think that how music feels in time is in some ways arguably more important than the pitches.

Speaker 3 (01:29:38):

Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. 100%. You can have something that's perfectly pitched, but it's on top of, if I come out with a really long held out, sustained note and I hit that note at the same time that a guitar hits a note and the bass hits a note, it's like all of that just is a cacophony of frequency and you can end up, I don't know, you just end up losing some of it because ultimately it is going to go through a multi-band compressor where if you have four or five instruments that are all really smacking 500, it's going to bring all that down, so

Speaker 2 (01:30:14):

Absolutely. Well, Aaron, thank you. It's been a pleasure having you on. Really good to meet you.

Speaker 3 (01:30:21):

Thank you so much for having me. And keep that fire, man. Don't stop. That's what it's literally all about. It's just the passion of, I don't know, I think home recording, it's the shit. It's just, it's amazing. And I love that it's more accessible now than ever.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):

Me too.

Speaker 3 (01:30:36):

Yeah, dude, it's fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:30:39):

Alright, then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post some of your Facebook and Instagram or any social media you use. Please tag me at al Levi URM audio at URM Academy, and of course, tag our guests as well. I mean, they really do appreciate it. In addition, do you have any questions for me about anything? Email them to [email protected]. That's ey at ur. Do ac aca y and use the subject line, answer me a all then. Till next time, happy mixing.

Speaker 1 (01:31:18):

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.