Adam Bentley: Building a Music Career, Mixing Your Own Band, and The Great DAW Debate

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

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

(00:01:01):

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. 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 today is Adam Bentley, who is a guitar player, songwriter, producer, engineer, and content creator who divides his time between his production career playing guitar in the band Arch Echo and his YouTube channel. Here it goes. Adam Bentley, welcome to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02:00):

Happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:02:01):

Happy to have you.

Speaker 2 (00:02:02):

How's it going?

Speaker 1 (00:02:03):

Going all right. Kind of recovering from COVID and an injury I sustained from it, but otherwise, pretty damn good. How are you doing?

Speaker 2 (00:02:11):

Oh man. Sorry to hear that.

Speaker 1 (00:02:13):

It happens.

Speaker 2 (00:02:14):

Yeah, I'm doing all right. Just got a late start to the workday emails and stuff, but yeah, can't complain. So far everything's good.

Speaker 1 (00:02:22):

What does your workday consist of, because I know that you do a few different things at a pretty high level. I'm just wondering what does your workday look like? How do you give things their appropriate amount of time between engineering? You got the band, obviously, you got to keep your playing at a high level. All those things could be full-time jobs in and of themselves, content creation, that could be a full-time job. How do you divide that out?

Speaker 2 (00:02:54):

A lot of it's improvisation, like what to prioritize on a given day. The actual mixing audio related stuff is very structured. I get to emails, inquiries, things like that right at the beginning, get the cup of coffee and just go, and that's kind of just six to eight hours of that, and then it's kind of just whatever is pressing at the moment. If the band is in the middle of writing or we need to have meetings, that's kind of what happens after that or practicing if I need to practice, if we're about to go on the road or if I just need a little general maintenance session for the fingers on guitar, I'll do that after work. So yeah, it's generally just not a pre-planned calendar type of thing. In regards to that excess,

Speaker 1 (00:03:41):

Was it ever?

Speaker 2 (00:03:43):

No. In fact, I used to be even less organized. The mixing stuff was kind of all over the place. I didn't get things really structured until I just got super burnt out due to lack of organization and stuff. I was like, oh, I got to make a big change here. But this new method so far has been working.

Speaker 1 (00:04:01):

I think that a lot of people think that schedule and repetition and routine will burn you out, but I have found that the opposite is what leads to burnout is disorganization. Then you start to feel like you're overwhelmed and things that need to get done don't get done when they should get done, and then they start to pile up, and those constant feelings of redlining lead to burnout.

Speaker 2 (00:04:30):

Yeah, it's funny that people think the routine can be a burnout, which I guess it can repetition, can feel like, oh, I need to make some sort of change. But once I got into some sort of rhythm, it felt so much better on my mind. It felt like I was burning less mental calories, whatever you want call it. That's how I kind of looked at it.

Speaker 1 (00:04:48):

Yeah, that's kind of how I see it too, because your brain ram is not being taken up by I guess what you have to do, and when you fall into a rhythm and you already know what you have to do and when, so then the challenge becomes just doing it and then also scheduling it into that pre-planned time, but you already know what happens at that time, and so you just do it and you can expend your mental ram getting the job done.

Speaker 2 (00:05:19):

Yeah, there's something really freeing about knowing what needs to be done that day, which is super simple, but like I said before, it used to be very chaotic, not structured, no calendar, no notes, or, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (00:05:32):

It's simple, but I think for a lot of creative types, it's not easy. It might be simple, but it's not easy because I think creative types aren't necessarily naturally like that. I think it's both nature and nurture. I think there's a part of it where creative people aren't naturally like that, and then there's this other part of it where there's a lot of ideas out there, you see in movies, you hear in interviews, and just this idea that in order to be a great artist or great creative person, so I mean that for musician or painter or whatever the fuck that you have to be kind of free flowing with the way that you live your life and that's bullshit.

Speaker 2 (00:06:24):

Yeah, it's very romanticized. That idea sounds great, but not real whatsoever.

Speaker 1 (00:06:30):

I think that the only time it could be real is if you're set for life financially and you don't need your projects to come out at a certain time period. Say a hyper successful Hollywood actor who, like a Daniel Day Lewis or something who only takes roles once every, many, many years and then just disappears the rest of the time and apparently forgets about acting, and then he'll decide to do a role and prepare for it for a year and do it and then disappear again. You can't do that kind of stuff unless you're rich enough to do whatever you want, when you want, basically.

Speaker 2 (00:07:19):

Yeah, yeah, totally agree with that. There's that definite grind. It's interesting that he does that because I feel like if I had a bunch of money or ultimate success, whatever you want to call it, I'd still feel like this itch to do something every day, or maybe he does that. He outlets that in other ways, but I'd still want to work every day.

Speaker 1 (00:07:38):

He does. Apparently he became a, I forgot what the word is, but he makes shoes or something. He has a very non-glamorous other life, which apparently he's super into. It's not what you would expect. I don't think that he's just living on yachts, drinking and banging hookers for two years straight, and then he's like, I'm just going to do, there will be blood and then disappears again. I think he's doing stuff. I just think that the freedom to go back and forth is something that it's like a luxury that you can only have once you're financially independent, but if you're not, you have to find a way to make it all work for you without burning yourself out so that you can keep going because you don't really get to decide when you can do it and when you can't do it, you have to do it all the time, and so it's really, really important to keep your sanity, which goes against, again, like I said, it goes against the traditional idea of what being an artist is. That's because the traditional idea of what being an artist is portrayed as these hyper successful rich artists that can do that.

Speaker 2 (00:08:54):

Yeah, I get what you're saying. Thankfully, it's like the line of work that we're both in is something, I mean, I did something that was more normal that would ultimately be a nine to five job. Well, I dropped out of college for that, but I guess I say that all to say I ended up doing music as an afterthought and now I'm just so motivated because it's something I didn't dream of doing at first and I'm like, oh, I get to do this. What do you mean that you dropped

Speaker 1 (00:09:21):

Out of college?

Speaker 2 (00:09:23):

I went to a University of Florida to do civil engineering was the major

Speaker 1 (00:09:27):

I

Speaker 2 (00:09:27):

Studied

Speaker 1 (00:09:28):

And

Speaker 2 (00:09:28):

About three years in, I think about three years, I just got so burnt out and it's funny, I love math. I've always have, but something about I was failing math classes by the end of that. It was just something was not clicking and I felt like I would lean into music on the side just to kind of feel better and outlet that way and kind of ditch the classes. So I was like, maybe I should just do the music school thing, give that a try.

Speaker 1 (00:09:54):

You weren't failing because you don't have the ability or the brain for it. It seems like you were failing because you weren't in it mentally.

Speaker 2 (00:10:03):

Yeah, exactly. Something demoralizing about it. I think a big turning point was when you get to those higher level classes, I was just seeing people really love it and be really good at it, and even a roommate I had, he went on to do a similar thing and the whole time he was just so into it and I was seeing that, and I do not match that energy at all, so it just made me confused at first and then obviously do a little soul searching you could say and be like, okay, music's clearly something I should go for. I like it as much as he likes math.

Speaker 1 (00:10:37):

It's interesting that you found that at Berkeley and graduated. It's just interesting to me because I felt the way that you felt about civil engineering. When I went to Berkeley, I dropped out of Berkeley. I felt a very similar thing that energy is not for me because my goal was I want an extreme metal band signed to a big label. My goal was Roadrunner from day one. It's not really geared towards that. It's geared towards being a professional musician, but not an artist, but professional musician, and I think there's a big difference. I think that being a professional musician is a very, very difficult, highly skilled endeavor, but it's not the one that Berkeley caters towards because that's a very unrealistic goal for almost everybody. If that's what they focused on, they'd have a massive failure rate with their students and you can't really teach that stuff. I think that's what I was hoping for and that's not what I was getting, so I ended up dropping out, but I feel like if I had wanted to do the professional musician route, professional engineer route, it would've been perfect, and I completely understand why you left the civil engineering. It makes perfect sense.

Speaker 2 (00:12:04):

Yeah, it's interesting that it's the Berkeley part that you felt the same. I did think about am I going to be a player? Am I going to be an engineer? But throughout that whole time period, even during the civil engineering and all that, I was heavily into the production engineering side of things. I would listen to records in that way analytically all the time, so I was thinking I should go that route from the get go. I didn't try to go, I want to be studying guitar and become this big performer one day or anything. So yeah, I just stuck to that and did the engineering thing, and I feel like I got more out of the school doing it that way because people around me doing just the musical instrument, major performance major, I forget exactly what they call it, like professional music. I think there's some vague thing like professional music.

Speaker 1 (00:12:54):

Yeah. Okay, so professional music, that's the one I tried. It's like the choose your own adventure major. You get a little bit of business, a little bit of performance, some of this, some of that. But I feel like the people who did MP and E at Berkeley, for those who don't know music production and engineering, that's one of the only super legit courses of study they have there, in my opinion, at least in the past, that and business, those were the fields that, I mean, MP and EI think is the only major you have to actually test to get into. First of all, I don't know that's changed, but you don't just get to study that. You have to pass some tests and they take that one very, very seriously. So already by doing that, you're going to be around the most serious people at the school.

(00:13:47):

I think the performance majors, yeah, there's going to be some players that are just godly who, for people who don't know Berkeley as a rating system like one through seven, and it's in different categories like sight reading, improvisation, technique, et cetera. So if you get sevens, you are a fucking ridiculous human being and there are some people who get sevens and do the performance major and then go on to fucking crush it as players, and even if they're not famous, they'll be the people who are in every single successful wedding band and then they'll be doing really high paying session work, and then they'll always be in something that makes them a lot of money and they're always working. That's the goal of the performance major. It's not being in a death mental band on a major label or something.

Speaker 2 (00:14:52):

Sure, sure. Yeah. There was this, maybe it's changing now, but this acceptance of new genres that I'm sure that'd be considered a new genre when you went to them from an educational perspective, they'll be like, what is this?

Speaker 1 (00:15:03):

There was nothing for it. Well, what was interesting is that John Petru already had gone there. Steve VI had already gone there. There were already bad asses in our world who had gone there and done amazing things, but I don't think that metal frog metal, any type of metal, it didn't have the respect from real musicians that it has. Now. West Hawk was saying something really interesting the other day on a q and a that it wasn't really until about 10 years ago, and I'm curious your opinion on this. He says that it wasn't until 10 years ago that heavy music adopted the level of sophistication that you would find in jazz, for instance, as far as harmonic structure goes and the way that the music is built, and that's not to say that it sounds like jazz or that people weren't great before that, but as a whole, that your baseline now is way more sophisticated harmonically than it used to be, and so it makes sense that schools would start to cater to that because it can fit into their curriculum. If you studied jazz at Berkeley, it's not a huge leap to then work that into progressive metal.

Speaker 2 (00:16:36):

Yeah, I think definitely on a baseline level it's been a 10 years thing. Exceptions like Shuga will do weird things even in the ninth or pec. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, more and more bands are definitely making this more of a normalized thing where you can be very adventurous to the point where you could actually go to a jazz harmony class at Berkeley and be like, oh, I can utilize this. Instead of being rolling your eyes and being like, oh, this is pointless. I just want to do 32nd notes with my right hand type of riff writing. It's a lot more nuanced, which is awesome, and even when I went there, there was Prague Band ensembles, people getting, even if it's not a formal here's how to do Prague, it's like people are getting together and performing at recitals and really spreading it across the school. This exists. People are very aware of it, so I did like that it was at least kind of integrated on that level.

Speaker 1 (00:17:38):

It's a very cool thing in my opinion, that metal is being taken more seriously. One of the reasons I started URM was because I felt like nobody took the production side of it seriously. They just didn't. I still think they don't at schools, I think on the playing side they're starting to, but on the production side there was a massive hole and there still is a massive hole when it comes to that, and there's this whole huge genre, in my opinion, the most difficult genre to engineer and mix, not to take anything away from anybody else. I think the highest level pop mixes are unbelievable, but there's something about mixing metal that it's just more difficult than anything else because it's not arranged well, even if when it's arranged well, it's not supposed to work, you carve a bunch of noise into something that sounds amazing as opposed to something that's arranged by the best arrangers in the world that's designed to sound great and where everything has a spot basically. That's not how metal works, and so I feel like this genre that produced these amazing engineers has just got totally overlooked. Was that your experience at school out of curiosity?

Speaker 2 (00:19:06):

I was kind of getting into the metal thing, YouTube videos and stuff even before school from the period I dropped out of that other school or University of Florida before getting into this one, I was figuring out how metal works, but then when you get to the school, it was more like traditional, it's what you think it would be. It's like pop and r and b and stuff was always in the catalog. If you take a mixing class, you pull up a multi-track of a pop session or something like that Steely Dan esque type of session, and you got to work with that, and so I kind of just leaned into it. I didn't like fuss about it. I was like, maybe this will help. And then I would just kind of do the metal thing in the box in my dorm when I was done with that. Just use the time so I could try to get something out of every genre I could. But you're right, there's not much. There's the occasional song in there. I don't know if you did mixing classes or anything in the time that you were there, but they have pre-made pro tool sessions and you'd have to select from that instead of, I want to mix this and you bring it to them. So it's songs from students.

Speaker 1 (00:20:17):

Well, okay. When I went there, that did not exist, but look, it was a while ago, but I did take a online mixing class from them in 2011 when I had to learn Pro Tools because I used digital performer and then for a long time, and then I got this gig at a studio in Florida and I had to learn pro tools, and I just figured I'm not going to waste their time asking them to get the producers I was working with. I need to learn this on my own time. So I signed up for a Berkeley class and they gave me some country stems, well, country tracks and some really stale pop tracks and exactly a lot of elevator music and just the worst music you've ever heard. But yeah, you could pick which one you wanted to do. I think.

Speaker 2 (00:21:15):

Yeah, it was the same with me too. There never anything sick. No, no. It's usually just like, let's see what I can squeeze out of this kind of a thing. Let's learn to use the consoles. That's where we come in.

Speaker 1 (00:21:27):

So here's one thing that I noticed is that when it comes to engineering in real life, especially when you're more specialized, there's a hundred percent of the things you could do with a D. If you take a Pro tool certification class, you're going to learn a hundred percent of what you can do with those menus, but in real life, you're going to be using 5% of the daw, but really, really well say be detective or something to actually do this stuff. You need to be an Olympic athlete at Beat Detective, there's 95% of pro tools or whatever DA that you will never use, that will never come up in terms of what you're focusing on. If you're taking a 12 week class to learn Pro tools for instance. To me, it's always been weird. Those 12 weeks would be spent on everything equally as opposed to prioritizing the stuff that makes the biggest difference, like anything to do with editing, for instance,

Speaker 2 (00:22:36):

For sure. There's like a class at MP and E where we'd have to memorize all the shortcuts and there'd be like a shortcut quiz or what's the key command for this, and it'd get into territory where it was like, I've never done that and I never will in my career. It just got, which is I guess they're trying to just cover all the bases, but the Pro Tools knowledge I got was definitely from doing all the volunteer work and recording people. When you're not in classes, when you learn what you just said, what are you going to actually be doing a lot of? So that really helps streamline the process way more than some sort of shortcut class covering everything, whatever do

Speaker 1 (00:23:17):

Well, the thing is that when it comes to shortcuts and macros and all that stuff, it is important to know your key commands and have them be able to just fire them off without thinking, but it's more important to have the ones that you use all the time like that to really, really focus super hard on the stuff you do use and just having that be muscle memory, second nature, instinct, so you're fast and awesome with it rather than key commands for every single thing. It's like we're humans. There's this thing we have to deal with called Time. It's finite. It can only focus on so many things,

Speaker 2 (00:24:02):

And then I mean the DI use for mixing ever since I graduated Studio One, you can make your own key commands anyway.

Speaker 1 (00:24:08):

There you go.

Speaker 2 (00:24:09):

So I'm just like, okay, this is what I want it to be. So that kind of defeated all of that.

Speaker 1 (00:24:13):

Well, everything I'm saying applies to any DAW except for maybe Audacity or something. Oh,

Speaker 2 (00:24:17):

I don't even know what that looks like anymore.

Speaker 1 (00:24:20):

I don't either. Foreign Land, it's funny, or Garage Band, but I actually use Garage Band for podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:24:26):

Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 (00:24:27):

Because it never crashes.

Speaker 2 (00:24:28):

That's interesting. I guess hopefully this one doesn't crash. Right now I'm using Studio One.

Speaker 1 (00:24:32):

I've never used Studio One. I actually have only heard good things about Studio One, but Pro Tools, which I'm not an anti pro tools person at all. I think Pro Tools is great, but a lot of the stuff that, as you know, a lot of the stuff that people say about it is true. It does crash. It did take Avid forever to implement some pretty obvious things that everybody else implemented. So for recording podcasts that could go two hours, three hours, four hours, super unreliable. Garage Band hasn't crashed once in years.

Speaker 2 (00:25:08):

That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (00:25:09):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:25:09):

That just goes to show you, yeah, when you said that, it made me think of, I assisted this orchestra session at Berkeley and you know how big and high stakes that is. So many people are there a hundred people and it would crash all of the time, and the engineer was so I've never seen an engineer so pissed, but it would just be that little prompt where it's like CPU, even though it was a Pro Tools hd, it'd be like overload or was something I was like, how can this possibly be an industry standard if I can't handle this task? You are wasting everyone's time.

Speaker 1 (00:25:44):

It's weird, man. I understand the criticism of that software. I really do, but it is when it's working, it is pretty fucking great, but I get it, and the unreliability is so not cool, man, in an orchestral recording situation, holy shit, I can only imagine the stress that created.

Speaker 2 (00:26:08):

Yeah, I don't want to cause some sort of dog war with your listeners either, but it's just something I've noticed happen and it's usually during high stakes situations and that's just such a bummer.

Speaker 1 (00:26:19):

What I'll say to pacify, the DAW war is that every DA has its drawbacks, so there's things that they all do better than another one, and there's things that they all do worse than another one. So it's really just pick which stress you want. So pro tools, you got to deal with the fact that it's going to trip up on you sometimes, but if you are recording something that doesn't have to be going for long periods of time and doing a lot of punching in and whatnot, it's fine. I mean, it will give you problems sometimes, but everything will give you problems sometimes, so I really do think you're right. Let's not cause a Daws war. I think it's important to say use whatever D you're most comfortable with. They're all the fucking same at the end of the day. Either your stuff sounds good or it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (00:27:16):

Yes, exactly. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:27:18):

Nobody cares.

Speaker 2 (00:27:19):

I agree. I'll end my Pro Tools rant, but yeah, studio One, it's been something I've been using ever since before I went to Berkeley. Granted, I didn't know much about it at the time, but it's something you get used to the feel of and changing it now just, I don't know. When you're in such a mixing routine or production routine and the learning curve of a D, it might not be that much of a learning curve, but it's enough to interrupt the schedule

Speaker 1 (00:27:46):

And that matters.

Speaker 2 (00:27:47):

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1 (00:27:48):

Like we were saying earlier, getting this stuff to where it's second nature is crucial, and if you're basically throwing your DAW out the window and taking on a new one, you're going to interrupt that flow. However, I do think it's good to be skilled in different daws. Do you know John Douglas by any chance?

Speaker 2 (00:28:07):

Yeah, I'm familiar with him and his work, yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:28:10):

Okay. He's amazing, and for instance, he's been doing the audio engineering for us on Riff Hard shoots. I feel like I'm going to have to find a new person to do that. I feel like he's going to get really busy really soon. I see His career trajectory is just, I feel like it's almost at that point where it's going to explode, but he's like one of the only people I'll trust because a riff hard video shoot is pretty complicated with the audio as far as the amount of takes, making sure that it lines up that it's correct with all the video takes and file management, and he is just fast as fuck, but he's been using Ableton for that.

Speaker 2 (00:28:56):

Oh, whoa. Okay.

Speaker 1 (00:28:58):

Yeah, he learned Ableton. I mean, he's already a Pro Tools master. I've worked in Logic with him on things many years ago too. I don't know if he knows Cubase or not, but now he's an Ableton Master two. Wow. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:29:13):

That's awesome. I mean, don't squander an opportunity because you don't know the DA that person's working with. I totally agree.

Speaker 1 (00:29:20):

It just comes down to what makes sense for you though. I think that if what you're doing makes sense to stick in one, then stick in one. All that really matters I think, is that you're not limiting yourself in the context of what you actually do in real life. So if your real life requires you to take on a different dog, then I'm sure you would do that.

Speaker 2 (00:29:48):

Yeah. Actually, just the other day where we were recording my band's new single, I like to record the drummer engineer, all of that, so it's a Pro Tools, well, usually as a Pro Tools situation, and I'm not going to be like, no, they don't use Studio One here. Let's find something else. You just got to do it. I mean, pro Tools is, thankfully I learned it at school and it's hard to forget it when you do it for four years straight. It's drilled into your brain, so I am glad that I have Pro Tools Knowledge, so I can just walk into Nashville Studio and it's pretty seamless just because I prefer mixing in Studio One doesn't mean I'm a Studio one elitist or anything.

Speaker 1 (00:30:26):

Well, that's just practical. If you're going to be walking into studios that other people own, if you just do the play the odds there's going to be pro tools in there. Exactly. So you could either be that guy that makes them install in Utah, which don't be so this whole industry standard idea, I think a lot of people have a lot of animosity towards, but I just think that no matter how someone feels about that, it's kind of like being mad at an industry that's way bigger than any individual. There's nothing that your feelings can do to change the reality, and if the reality is that most places use a certain something and you're going to be using those types of places or working in those types of places, it's good to be able to work in those places. That's it. It's just practical.

Speaker 2 (00:31:25):

Totally agree. Yeah, your sentiment is correct. Learn as much as you have the time to learn as much as you can. You never know. There's even a studio I went to during the quarantine last year. It was Logic, which I haven't seen. I unfortunately am not that good at Logic, so it made me feel like, oh, I got to learn some logic stuff now. Thankfully, I had an assistant that could do all the logic stuff and really seamlessly just like any other pro tools app or something would, it made me think about, yeah, maybe I should learn more daws just in case,

Speaker 1 (00:31:57):

Just in case. But then there's also that whole factor of time, right? What's important.

Speaker 2 (00:32:03):

Yeah, like 99% of my time dealing with audio in general is the DA I use, so there's also that side to it. It just depends on what people's general job is in the audio field. If they're engineering and jumping around studios, it's different than someone like me that can just work from home on my laptop.

Speaker 1 (00:32:22):

Having learned production at a place like Berkeley where you're using consoles, was it a huge, I guess, shift to become super proficient with the, I guess what I would call the modern way of doing things

Speaker 2 (00:32:39):

In the box, way

Speaker 1 (00:32:40):

In the box, a laptop that's like, okay, so I don't think that big studios will ever completely go out. There will always be a need for sick ass studios with consoles, but this modern way of doing things where you could have a laptop and a hotel room with headphones that's not going anywhere, it's just going to grow,

Speaker 2 (00:33:01):

And it's such a game changer for me because I mean, there's the obvious things like recalling and stuff like that. Even if I had a couple of pieces of outboard gear, which I thought about in my own home studio, I just kind of ditched the idea immediately because just another way to make the process different, possibly more complicated, possibly not, but I'm like, this all feels correct to me now. Why I mess with it, but answer your question with switching to a console, I was already trying to do both simultaneously. I didn't really go out and do stuff with my free time socially. I'd do the class stuff. You do all the console assignments where you book your time, but then as soon as I'd be home, I would just write or practice mixing something just in the box in my dorm or my apartment. So I was kind of trying to get both, see if I could see the benefit from both sides and then which hybrid seemed cool. I got into that. I'd even bring my sessions into a Berkeley studio and try to do both, but then as soon as school ended, I was in the boxes the best way to go. It just seemed pretty clear, especially

Speaker 1 (00:34:15):

Now with the quality of the tools available to you.

Speaker 2 (00:34:18):

Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I mean, I don't have this amazing analog erman ear per se, but it's hard for me to hear a difference if you have a slate, everything bundle. The analog coloring is more than enough for me to be happy than buying a bunch of outboard gear patching into that.

Speaker 1 (00:34:37):

What really matters is what you do with what you've got.

Speaker 2 (00:34:41):

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think most mixers have that path where it's a slow accumulation of different plugins or finding out what colors you like, what things you like to do. I started out with just stock plugins. You kind of push that to its limit and then you start to experiment with things that color it. You learn what that color means. I guess when I say color, I mean just the general harmonic character or whatever you want to call it, that analog emulation is adding to it, and it just felt like a constant experiment for over just years.

Speaker 1 (00:35:10):

That's the thing. Key point you just made over years. What I've noticed with a lot of nail the mix students is they want it all fast and none of this is fast.

Speaker 2 (00:35:25):

No. People ask general questions sometimes, how do you reach a certain level of mixing or what you do, and I'll say nine, 10 years, most of which you hate yourself. That's dramatic. You're very frustrated.

Speaker 1 (00:35:40):

You might still hate yourself anyways.

Speaker 2 (00:35:43):

Yeah, not be happy with what you are doing, but still somehow pushing through it anyway and just over this constant consistent period, you just can't give up,

Speaker 1 (00:35:54):

Man. I think that that not being happy with where you're at trait is why people get better. I think that as much as it sucks to feel that way, it's crucial. It's absolutely crucial. I don't know a single person that's good at anything that is happy with where they're at. I just don't,

Speaker 2 (00:36:17):

Yeah, I noticed that, so it makes me feel a little better about that mindset. Definitely. Yeah. I think it just goes hand in hand with this need to improve. You can look at it negatively like, oh, I'm constantly frustrated. I constantly hate everything I do, but I kind of look at the silver lining. It's the same trait that is also pushing me to constantly try to do something top myself, whether it's with guitar playing songwriting or mixing, it has to improve or else I feel guilty. I feel like most people have that's either guilt, not being productive or just this feeling of being stagnant is just this weird feeling like plateauing.

Speaker 1 (00:36:56):

It sucks. I don't do well with that feeling, which is one of the reasons that I keep moving, keep doing new things is because the alternative is torture. I don't have a choice in the matter, and I think that that is a hardwired trait. I'm sure it would be the same for you, and I know it's the same for just about everybody who I know in the field is there's no choice in that matter. Stagnating leads to bad mental health outcomes. However,

(00:37:30):

There are people who are not wired that way. I'm jealous of them. I think that there are a lot of people who are wired to be cool with cruising, basically cruising through life. I'm not saying having bad or unfulfilling lives or anything, I just mean they're wired for something else and they don't necessarily make the best mixers or the best musicians, but that's okay. It doesn't matter. As long as they're okay mentally, that's what matters, but I think it's important to know that about yourself. If you know that stagnating is going to fuck with you, then you can't let that happen,

Speaker 2 (00:38:17):

So

Speaker 1 (00:38:17):

You have no choice but to get awesome, basically. That's

Speaker 2 (00:38:20):

A good point because there's certain jobs where you're not supposed to, I mean by the book kind of a thing, I'm sure accounting, being a doctor of some sort, there's not like, oh, I must change what I'm doing all the time, whereas I haven't thought about it that much, but I guess the artist mindset is what I would call that you got to change. You got to have variation, churn out the same exact thing by the books. Quoting myself would be like, I don't know, probably annoying like a turnoff to some people after a while. Okay, this guy's a one trick pony type of a thing.

Speaker 1 (00:38:54):

I know people who work in a factory, for instance, on an assembly line, and they're perfectly okay with it. They make X amount of money per year. They have X benefits, X amount of hours. The work is what it is, never changes, and then they have a good family life and cool hobbies that they think are cool and that's good in their mind. That's the definition of success. I think that if that's who you are, fuck yeah, that's great, but if that's not who you are, you also need to take measures to not let your life become that way or it's going to be one constant miserable experience. I think.

Speaker 2 (00:39:44):

Yeah, that's why self-reflecting is really important. As you grow and get older, you're like, what kind of person am I? Am I someone that would be great in that context or someone that I guess that's like us. I think even going into music is important to evaluate yourself that way and make sure that you're kind of okay with the constantly being frustrated and want to push forward type of a personality. Yeah, not everybody has that personality for sure,

Speaker 1 (00:40:14):

And there are roles in music where you don't have to have that personality trait. For instance, a professional guitar tech, yes, you're going to need to learn about new things that come out every so often, like evert tune, you're going to need to learn how to adjust to more strings, things like that, that gradually take place over time. But once you get really great at it, say that you're a touring guitar tech, COVID aside, there's not much variation to the gig. Touring can get crazy, but still if you're at a high enough level to where you're a serious guitar tech for serious bands, it's a very routine kind of job in that you arrive at a certain hour yet to have X amount of guitars set up a certain way. They have to be ready by this time. You have to be ready to service those guitars on the fly during these hours yet to be on the bus at this time, and that's it.

(00:41:18):

And not that that's it. I don't mean that in a dismissive sort of way, but what I'm saying is you don't need to have that trait, that artistic trait. You can love music, love guitar, not have that trait and still have a career in the music industry that if you do well in it, it actually pays pretty well. Like high level guitar techs do better than a lot of musicians do, so there's absolutely no shame in that, and not only that, musicians need them. It's a very skilled job that is in demand that can pay you very well and that can expose you to music and have you working in music for your entire career, but that does not require you to have this trait we're talking about. So for people listening who want to do music who may not have that thing in them, it's fine. There's plenty of careers in music that don't require that, that still pay well, are highly respected and take a ton of commitment.

Speaker 2 (00:42:26):

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Just going back to the self-reflecting of evaluating all the things that you, or what's your personality? Do you love music? How does this fit? How can I possibly make this fit? And I'm sure it's a trial and error process, finding the job that works. You can be like, I love music and then just enter some field. I'm sure there's people that do that and just try it out. I could say that in a way with the studio engineering thing, I kind of in my mind was like, I'm going to be that guy that works at a Nashville studio and records everybody like that type of thing. And now I mix in my house and I have a band. I had no desire to be in a band or I didn't think I'd actually be in one. It didn't seem like a reality,

Speaker 1 (00:43:15):

Like a band at all, or a band that people like

Speaker 2 (00:43:18):

At all. I thought I would do some internet release stuff to solo on the side, just a kind of outlet, some creative juices, but to actually be a band and perform, I thought that stage life, I was done after my random gigs here and there when I was younger, but just evaluating myself and realizing if it's with people I really like a lot, my band, they're like brothers to me. It made me realize I actually love performing under the right conditions, so you just got to analyze things instead of dismissing it entirely. I dunno if I'm getting way off track, but my point was just reevaluating yourself and what you like and what you don't like. You

Speaker 1 (00:44:02):

Didn't get off track. You actually predicted where I was going to go next. I was curious about how you figured that out because I remember when we talked about doing this podcast, you specifically wanted to do URM and not riff hard because you see yourself as an engineer first, which I thought was curious because of the type of band you're in isn't the type of band that it's not like a casual kind of music.

Speaker 2 (00:44:33):

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 (00:44:34):

So I thought I was curious that you didn't define yourself as that seemed to me you saw that more as something that happened and that's really, really cool, but that engineering is how you actually see yourself.

Speaker 2 (00:44:49):

Yeah. I look at myself more as a mixer that's in a band than a guitarist that's a mixer on the side.

Speaker 1 (00:44:56):

Okay, makes sense.

Speaker 2 (00:44:57):

That's just always how I saw it, or at least how I wanted it to manifest, and that's what I studied at school and moved to Nashville to do, and so the band kind of formulated slightly after all that stuff started happening. So yeah, it's ended up being this cool back and forth, which keeps things fresh. I guess you can go on a tour makes you mixing and you mix until you're burnt out, like, okay, time for a tour. Perfect. And I didn't think that would be my life, but yeah, I love it, but here it is. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:45:34):

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 OPEC Shuga, bring me the Horizon. Gaira asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others over 60 at this point. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song on the album and takes your questions live on air.

(00:46:26):

And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jens Borin, Dan Lancaster to I 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 Enhance, which includes everything I already told you about and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain, staging, mastering low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content and man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed.

(00:47:20):

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. People ask me all the time, and I'm sure they ask you this too, how do I get known as a mixer? How do I build a career as a mixer? And I've always thought that in the modern day, one of the best things you can do, and especially now in light of how COVID has changed things, is to have your own project and make it sound great and put that out there, whether it's covers or whatever, but you need some sort of a calling card. And if you don't have a calling card yet as a mixer, well what can you do? Well, you can do your own stuff. That's a very, very powerful way to do it. I'm curious, has that helped you?

Speaker 2 (00:48:32):

Yeah, I definitely had to make my own opportunities and I suggest everybody do that. I mean what you're saying I look at as potential opportunities for things putting yourself out there. Maybe a company will see you, a potential client will see you, you're just constantly doing something of quality. So I mean, I kind of had this mindset where even in school I wasn't going to be that guy that waits till school is done and then like, oh shit, now what do I do? So I was literally being like, does anybody need something mixed? I'll mix it for free. Just give me your stuff. So I'd mix everyone's student project or as much as I could with time allowed and then so I could accumulate some actual, you could say real world skill. I mean there was no actual money involved or stakes in terms of time besides when the project's due, but I would just do as much as I could and then getting out of school, I would use that as a little mini portfolio I guess, and put it on SoundCloud and just random places.

(00:49:35):

And then that helped get a couple clients, I mean for really cheap. I started charging a tiny bit of money out of school and then get good drums came out and I was like, I want to buy this, learn how to use it from top to bottom and make a tutorial on how to mix it. So I did that and that actually did pretty well for me. A lot of inquiries came in in 2016. I think that's when that happened saying, Hey, your drum mix thing was informative. You want to try mixing my band single. So I was just kind of like, what can I do to push myself out there? Can I use the momentum of a company existing that is becoming popular to create content and maybe that will kind of help the company demonstrate my skills potentially. I was just constantly trying to think of ideas like that until there was some steady mixing momentum.

Speaker 1 (00:50:27):

That's a good way to do it. Content's got to be awesome, which obviously it was a couple things that you said that I want to focus in on before we talk about the content. First of all, you did a bunch of work for free and I really think that people at the beginning need to get over themselves and be cool with that. I know that there's some very famous rich mixers who will say to never do that in interviews, never work for free. I would never work for free. And it's like, bro, you've been rich for 20 years or 30 years. You don't remember the last time you had to prove yourself for anything. Of course you wouldn't do anything for free. Shut the hell up. You're putting bad ideas in the minds of people who have no value work-wise at the beginning. Your work equals zero as far as value goes. In fact, you should be paying other people for the opportunity to mix their stuff so that you can build up your portfolio and get experience. So the fact that you're even doing it for free is a good deal for you in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (00:51:42):

Yeah. When you have no resume, why would someone trust you? I feel like in any line of work,

Speaker 1 (00:51:49):

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:51:49):

That was the mindset for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:51:51):

It's a very good mindset. That's right. No one would trust you. Why would they pay you if they don't trust you? One of the biggest things you need to know how to earn as an engineer is people's trust. As a producer, mixer, whatever the audio professional is, you have to earn trust and without that, you're basically dead on the water, and if you don't have portfolio and references and you have zero as far as trust equity goes,

Speaker 2 (00:52:22):

Yeah, you have to

Speaker 1 (00:52:23):

Prove it somehow.

Speaker 2 (00:52:25):

A resume is king. It dominates any advertisement you would ever think to make in saying, trust me, I can mix. It's always like, you worked on that. I want it to be, or not even. I want it to be like that. They'll say, you worked on that. I like that. Let me or send you my song. It seems like you know what you're doing. And it's never been anything different than that.

Speaker 1 (00:52:46):

I need to basically put a disclaimer here because I know that there's people who are going to hear this and be like, I see Facebook ads for URM and riff hard all the time. What do you mean advertising doesn't work and advertising doesn't work for producers and mixers. It works great for companies. We're a company who's selling products. It's not the same thing as a producer or a mixer. Nobody is going to go to you over an ad or well, someone might, but it's not going to be the clients you want. It's going to be very low quality clients. The clients you actually, and sorry to call them clients. I know some people hate that word. So artists, the artists you actually want to work with are not going to go to you based off of an advertisement. They're going to go to you based on your prior work and what people have to say about working with you. That's it.

Speaker 2 (00:53:46):

Yeah, a hundred percent word of mouth, either word of mouth or seeing something you've done. Again, that's why the portfolio, I could be a broken record about that. What have you worked on? What have you worked on? Or if people talked to me about wanting to do this for a living, it's like, and you haven't worked on anything. Yeah, okay, go find something. You guys have a portfolio builder, right? It's like, go do that. Yep, that'd be the first piece of advice.

Speaker 1 (00:54:13):

There's a lot of tracks on there, not just that the tracks are actually mostly really good quality. It's like people who have done now the mix. Every once in a while we'll do a local band or something to fill in the gap. It's like those types of projects, like somebody who really knows what they're doing when they've worked on a local band or something and the band, the band's cool with it. That is what the portfolio builder tracks are like 90%. There's a couple student submissions in there, but for the most part it's really high quality stuff. And the thing is with a lot of the free track libraries that you can find out there that have a hundred or 200 tracks, they're usually fucking garbage. So these are actually really well engineered, so creating a good mix with them is not, you're not going to drink yourself under the table trying to do it, but yeah, I agree. That's what it's for. If you don't have customers, clients, you need to show the quality of your work somehow. How else are you going to do it?

Speaker 2 (00:55:20):

Yeah, and you're right, working with a song that's arranged well or is exciting is also a big component of a mixed feeling good too. So working with something of quality, like you're saying you guys have, is very punchy and grabby for sure. To someone that's like, Hey, lemme check out your mix, as opposed to some generic pop as you mentioned earlier,

Speaker 1 (00:55:39):

Or a horrible local band that no matter what you do is not going to sound good.

Speaker 2 (00:55:45):

Out of tune guitars, something unsalvageable like that.

Speaker 1 (00:55:49):

The other thing you said that I want to key in on is that you started when you were finally charging, you were charging very little, and that's another thing that people get discouraged from doing. Whenever I see those, I want to start making money at this, what should I charge? I was thinking like $25 a mix or something like that. Something really cheap. And there'll be a bunch of comments which are like, bro, you're destabilizing the market or know your own worth. All those kinds of comments and it's like, stop feeding this person. Delusional thoughts and ideas. If they are at the point where $25 a mix is what the most they can get, don't tell them to charge three or 500 or a thousand dollars a mix. They're not going to get that. And also the people who would pay $25 a mix are not the same people who are going to go to Will Putney or something. They're just not, or to Christian Donaldson or anybody of note anybody. Awesome. They're not going to be the $25 clients. The $25 clients are going to go to the person who is worth $25 a mix, and that's fine.

Speaker 2 (00:57:12):

I think everybody's on a different path or trajectory in their path, and they're at a place where they're at $25, and I never really understood the arguments to that. Everyone has their own situation and their own point in their career and just let them do what they want. And it's also like a get what you pay for thing. They're not going to affect the whole mixing market. If someone wants someone that charges a thousand, they know they're going to get X quality and they'll charge that.

Speaker 1 (00:57:42):

Or 2000

Speaker 2 (00:57:43):

Or 2000, yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:57:44):

Or three or whatever.

Speaker 2 (00:57:47):

Something bigger than 25. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:57:50):

Yeah. Let's say a good local budget for mixing could be like two or 300 a song or something that's reasonable, maybe more, maybe less, but that's a good reasonable range for a serious local band to go to a good in town engineer,

Speaker 3 (00:58:09):

Something

Speaker 1 (00:58:10):

Like that. Even to get to that point, that's a big ask. If you have zero to your name.

Speaker 2 (00:58:16):

Yeah. It took me a while to get even there because yeah, there'd be people that start having actual album release strategies. They're really thinking about what this is going to do out there when you start getting into that territory of clients, so that means you got to change the way, what you bring to the table too, not just have some general skills, but how do you deal with people and meet deadlines, really communicate well? These things start to change pretty quickly. I noticed that at least when I did the free student thing and you start working with higher budget things, that's a big shift where you have to start training yourself in real time to do that extra stuff. How did you adjust to it? Kind of just threw myself in the deep end, just being willing to get better at communicating and understanding, respecting people's time. Not that I didn't respect people's time before, but it was just more chill, obviously, when it's something of $25 or something. So yeah, just being hyper aware of that stuff and it's something you have to get better at, but it felt less of this strenuous thing once you just get in the rhythm of doing it, and now it's just something, treat it as everyday life, just the way I speak with people and speak about what they want out of it, just out of the project, what do they want out of me, that type of stuff. I like to talk details more instead of like, here's the song, have fun type of a thing.

Speaker 1 (00:59:53):

Is this something that comes up at the beginning before you start working?

Speaker 2 (00:59:56):

Yeah, I like to get as much info as I can out of someone and maybe they'll say something like, oh, just go for it man. We trust you. And then in my mind, I know questions will just come up later as I have the mix. They're like, okay, I'll do whatever I want, and then they'll say, okay, can this change and this change? And that can be fine too. I think it's just rolling with it and just trying to dissect every word they say in a way or understand to the best of your ability what you think they want or what they're explicitly telling you that they want sonically, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):

Yeah. I mean part of the job is being an interpreter basically.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):

Yeah, and a psychologist kind of too.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):

Look borderline mind reader, but that depends on the client or artist, sorry. Well,

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):

Yeah, because not all. Well, I'm cool with saying client. I mean, who the fuck cares? The fact is that a lot of musicians know how to make things sound the way they know how to play and they know what vision they have for something, but they don't necessarily know exactly how to communicate it in technical terms, so you have to find a way to interpret what they're saying artistically in a technical way that you can translate into something that comes out of the speakers.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):

Yeah, absolutely. Getting to know these because the sound has weird adjectives, right? Like honky and squishy, and I'll hear all heard the weird words if they've done this, but then there's also the people that will say, can you lower something at DB or two db? But then I'll kind of know, I think they meant like three and I'll get that right. Usually like, oh, okay, this is perfect. They try to jump into the technical jargon and it's not precise or correct. They'll say a frequency, and I'm like, okay, I hear what they're talking about when they're saying address this general area, but that's not the frequency at all, but obviously you don't come back to 'em and say, Hey, you were wrong or something. It is. Just try to get into their head a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):

I've known some engineers that actually don't get as much work as they used to, who would take every opportunity to school the client when they would get something like that wrong, which I always thought was a really stupid thing to do. Why are you trying to make them feel like shit? Just they're hearing something they don't like. They're trying to communicate it. They might not have the same level of technical knowledge as you, but that doesn't mean their idea isn't valid. You just need to understand what they mean, not the actual definition of what they're saying. If you were to look the words up into dictionary, what do they mean by what they're saying? That's what matters.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):

Yeah, and sometimes that would internally frustrate me at first if it was weird trying to translate, but at the end of the day I just told myself, it's not their job to know and it's my job to mix this. Why would it there? If they knew that much about mixing, they might as well just give it a go themselves to give me exact things, perfectly phrased technical moves, like 1.2 K, 3.5 DB with a cue of we'll do exactly what I want. I'd be like, here you go. Not even in a hostile way. I'd be like, you know what you're doing. So yeah, it kind of comes with the territory that it'll be a little bit of translating into your own language.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):

I just thought about how funny that is. The idea of the mixed notes coming in that exact, it's like what is the point at that point? Right. You're absolutely right. If they are able to communicate it that well, then they probably know what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):

Yeah. I don't know if I've seen that exact, but it gets close sometimes and that thought will pop in my head, oh, you must've mixed something. Or to have some understanding, especially when I go and look at it, what he's talking about. I'm like, oh wow, that's actually something I would do. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):

Well, I do think though that sometimes even if someone knows how to mix, they might be going to you because they don't want to mix their own thing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):

True.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):

As mixing your own band has its pros and its cons, and I think that for some people, even if they could mix their own band, they would rather not for if the relationship in your band is the type where you can mix it and it doesn't make your life hell, that's great, but there's a lot of band relationships where or where the person who could mix it would not be able to get past the neurosis of mixing their own stuff or they just want somebody else's abilities on it. So there's a lot of reasons for why if they could mix it, they still wouldn't I think.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):

No, that's definitely a good point, and I think in my opinions obviously aren't absolute or anything. I do come from a place where I do mix my own band, so maybe that affects the judgment slightly, but you're right that it can be very difficult to mix your own band and I wouldn't even recommend it necessarily. I think it just kind of worked out that way for I guess a few reasons. Well, I was, and obviously trying to get the mixing career going, it was kind of going by then at least a little bit, and also just there was a little element of pride in there. I'll admit, come on guys, I can do this. We had the discussion about it. There's always that inevitable discussion, okay, where are we going to send this? I almost overmix it. I went so hard into every little second of every track just to kind of prove to the band and myself too that I could do it pretty dense arrangements and stuff like that. It kept being remixed, but ultimately it worked out. It made me, when it was all mastered and done, it instilled some confidence and I think that's what kind of solidified that. I just do it from now on. It's like every other release I've mixed as well, and as far as I know, it plans to continue that way

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):

Now that they trust you to do it and you trust yourself to do it, that's different I think.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):

Yeah, and us knowing each other's personalities and they're aware that I am constantly obsessing over getting better we talked about earlier and that they know that, so they always know I want it to be something cool, possibly different or push it in some way. Can it be more clear? Can I hear every little layer better? Can it have a punchier low end? It's just all these things that I want to try to get better. So I think their general awareness of that as well is what makes them feel okay with sending all the stuff to me. But yeah, it definitely depends on the band. How do you want to go about that?

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):

I mean, one day you might not feel like mixing your own band. Who knows? That's

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):

Definitely true. It'd be fun to try out at some point, but now it's become fun. I made it sound like very frustrating and strenuous. Maybe the first album was, but now it's like I'm always excited when our albums are ready and we can get to work on that aspect of it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):

Is it like everyone in the band has their own role? Your role is producer, engineer, mixer?

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):

Everybody does take on a role for sure. No one wants to be the weakest link in the band, which is why I love my band a lot. Everybody wants to be, I mean, not just on their instruments, but just what can I do to just make this whole thing work? So our bass player, for instance, is very financially savvy. He was really good at overseeing budgets and just how things should be spent, where resources are allocated. Then our keyboard player is also a phenomenal producer. I'd say I do a quarter of the production maybe even less. He does the majority of, I would say, actual production stuff and then obviously mixing incorporates some element of production like oh, dynamic stuff and effects, and so I guess we just all share the workload just in a different way and it makes the process super smooth that way.

Speaker 1 (01:08:37):

I think that that's key for any band that's going to last, especially once they're out there in the real world. I think that there can be no weak links and also everyone needs to do what they're best at. Bring that to the table. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, problems start to happen when people try to take over things that they're not the best suited for or don't allow other people to do what they're the best suited for or certain people just are checked out or whatnot. That's when a lot of the problems start. I think.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):

Yeah, I definitely had that sort of struggle of at first to figure out what, I mean there's the mixing part, but even within the band, aside from that, it's like in the songwriting, where are the strengths? Should I write a demo that has everyone's parts midi out and then I learned? No, that's such a counterproductive waste of time. If I know our keyboard player's an absolute legend on the keys, in my opinion, I'm his biggest fan, but I know he'll do something way better, so I just don't write that stuff. I just know maybe you could do something in this vein. I'll just focus my time. I like writing riffs and I think I'm decent at programming drums, so I'll write riffs in that manner. Just really focus onto what I know I can do what people will be interested in and other band members will be interested in hearing because if it's diluted with shitty keys or something or a guitar solo that I think our other guitar player could do better, it's just a waste of time. So I guess the efficiency thing is pretty important. Playing into your strengths creates an efficient workflow, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):

I completely agree. I learned this the hard way when with my band's first self-released album, I programmed all the drums and then found who then would become our drummer and tried to get him to play all this stuff that was completely unrealistic, require seven arms and four feet and stuff, and he railed me so hard. He made me feel like such an idiot. From that point on, I did two things. I learned how to actually program drums better, took some drum lessons, but also realized that when I'm working with an amazing drummer, they're considering that I think I'm decent at programming drums, but not awesome. A great drummer is going to come up with way cooler shit than me, so I should focus on what I do better than anyone else in the band. That's it. Let them come up with their stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):

That's key. I'd imagine that's how most bands that are really killing it are efficient and their songwriting process work, especially when there's a lot of people, we're a five minute group and I consider that a lot of people in terms of cooks in the kitchen potentially. Oh, it is. So everybody wants to contribute. We're that type of group. So we've taken some time to get some sort of rhythm going to find everyone's fit. So it's not like we backtrack all the time because someone, it can really halt the process. If someone wants to, like you said, get into some other role, maybe their strength isn't there.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):

One thing I'm curious about, so when I dropped out of Berkeley, I dropped out for two reasons. One was my band was starting to form in its infancy and I just had this feeling that I was going to be able to do something serious with it, and I felt like I needed to start my own studio in order to be able to record that band, but then also hopefully get good enough to record other bands that would then help my band, and then kind of this symbiotic relationship sort of thing, and that worked. It really did work. What I'm wondering is, has that worked for you too, that as the band became better known, your studio career did better as your studio career did better, opened up opportunities for the band, et cetera?

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):

I mean, after the first album was out and you get the mixed credit, people would write and say, can you work on such and such? They heard the album, so that definitely was a big catalyst. We didn't even know how this album would do, so that's exciting to me. So it's slightly different. You say you focused on this band is forming, this is going to be the thing, whereas it was more, like I said, I'm a mixer that's in a band, so I was like, alright, this is all fun. Let's see what happens. Throw it on the internet and then it just kind of the momentum or the snowball effect just happened. I mean, at least in our little world, even if it formed

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):

From a different mental place, once it was going and picking up momentum and people were liking it, did you find that it had this symbiotic sort of thing happening with your studio career?

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):

Absolutely. With the studio career clients, many of which cite the RCO release, which I guess got me into mixing a lot of Prague and instrumental stuff, which is cool because that's what our band kind of does. So it's fun to be able to work on something in that vein, especially when you kind of know how to approach it. You've learned through the nature of your own music, how you can effectively deal with that type of instrumentation and stuff, how to deal with music without a vocalist and keep it interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):

You're primarily getting bands in that world, right?

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):

Yeah, there's a ton like that. It's been only the last couple of years where vocal front man bands will actually come in and ask me for work. I would almost be a little frustrated about that, but I mean, it's just the portfolio thing. Again, if your portfolio is instrumental music, you're going to get inquiries from an artist that's instrumental and that makes perfect sense. So I'm glad people inevitably trusted me with their vocal stuff as well,

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):

And one thing I learned from the CEO of Creative Live for that, he was a very, very, very successful photographer, like top tier, and he had this philosophy that you're going to get more of the work that you put out into the world, so you have to decide what is it that you want coming back, and that's what you got to put out there, and so if you want to work with instrumental bands, then you need to put out some instrumental band music for people to associate that with you. If you want to be the breakdown king, well, you need to find a way to put the most slamming breakdowns on earth out there, and then you're going to get bands that want to do that. You're going to get more of what you put out there.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):

Yeah, I've definitely leaned into it as well, being approached by mainly instrumental acts because again, it's fun and it has its own challenges and just the familiarity of it through the band and all of that. It just makes it still interesting to me. I know some people would be like, oh, I want to change genres. I get all the same thing or something, but there's something fun about, even the bands being different is different enough for me to feel like it's fresh than being like, I want to switch over to pop punk or country or something way out. But yeah, I agree. Definitely. It's got to be what you put out there is what you're going to see or the nature of the clients reaching out.

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):

Well, it's back to what we originally talked about, which is knowing yourself that that's what you're looking to do, so it doesn't sound like you'd be against doing other things, but it sounds to me like which corner of music you want to reside in.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):

Yeah, I think Prague, you want to mix what you like to hear, for sure, what you like to listen to when you're not working, and I lean into Metal and Prague. I like when people are adventurous with their arrangements. I just like that it's something you don't know what it's going to be. When you get the artist's demo and you press play, what's going to happen here? This is going to be all over the place. This is a seven minute song. There's something exciting about that to me, that people approach it very differently.

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):

Yeah, I think that there's, well, there's two opposing ways to think about it. I think they're both valid. One is music industry is a very tough world, and so early on, especially people can't choose where their clients are going to come from. Picking and choosing clients is a luxury, and so I see this a lot with now the mix students where we'll feature a band they don't like and then they won't mix it that month, and I'm like, you're stupid. That's really dumb. You should mix it. Even if you don't like it, you should mix it and watch the live stream and learn everything you can because in real life what you're going to do, you're going to turn them down. When you're trying to make a full-time living, you're not making a full-time living, you're going to turn a band down in this style just because you don't like it. You think you're going to like every single band you ever work with. That's insane and delusional. But then at the same time, I think it's really important to work on the stuff that turns you on musically that you're going to do your best work on, that you're going to be inspired by and will be able to bring the most of the table on. So it's this fine line. I think

Speaker 2 (01:19:02):

It's

Speaker 1 (01:19:02):

A very fine line,

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):

And don't get me wrong, I definitely would be happy to work in any metal sub genre or rock, obviously. That's where I like to remain, just even just because just again, people in the past have been that style and that's my portfolio, so people will approach me that way, but I'm not You're progged No, like an immediate no or something.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):

You need to try to work in fields where you can bring your A game.

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):

Yeah, I guess there's a good balance. You want to slowly expand a bit. I mean, when you're starting out and you want to reach a point of full time, you got to just do it. Even if you think the quality is not there, you can try to work with it. It's like a hustle thing. There's a money component to it that motivates you and also just learning every project you do, you work on, you always learn something, and I think that applies kind of the nail the mix thing you mentioned where maybe you don't like the song, but they'll probably do something. There will be something you can learn how he did something to the drums processing wise, maybe there's a thing, just a little thing in there that you'll probably use for the rest of your mixes in the future. It is just something you never know.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):

So yeah, open mind's important.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):

I mean, I don't like everything we have on there at all. There's some stuff I straight up dislike and there's been a couple sessions where the musical choice makes me want to throw myself off a bridge, but to have to sit there in a room and listen to it for seven hours, but there's never been a single time where I didn't feel there was something super valuable that the mixer had to say usually way more than one thing, but there hasn't been a single time where there hasn't been something awesome that the mixer did.

Speaker 2 (01:20:58):

Yeah, I actually watched the holy roller nailed a mix. Oh, that's a good one. He's the man, but it goes against aesthetically, not against just lately I've been favoring very clean, articulate mixes where this mix is so powerful, but sludgy and you know what I mean? It's like saturated and nuts, but in such a cool way. So I could in theory be like, this goes against everything I stand for, therefore I will not watch it. But I was like, I really want to see what he does and see if there's something I can take away, and there's quite a few things that he did that I could easily apply to my own process. It doesn't destroy my goal of what I want to get out of a song. In fact, there's little things under the hood since there's mixing a million moves. I'll catch things here and there and be like, I'm definitely going to try that. Very clever. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):

That's a great way to look at it in my opinion, and that's a perfect example. If that's not the sound, you're even close to the sound you're going for. I think that what a lot of people would do would be like, I don't care, not interested. I think it's the right move is to see what you can glean from it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):

Yeah, it's almost like similar mentally is listening to other genres and how you can take it from that as well. Listen to Pristine pop and be like, what I'll be fascinated with the vocal treatment and stuff. What are they doing there? There must be some useful things I can try. Obviously their focus is the vocal. I mean you can say metal has a bunch of different focuses depending on the song, but I think something about a well treated like detailed vocal is important and just try to integrate some of that mentality into a metal or prog mix if you can.

Speaker 1 (01:22:53):

Well, the metal mixers that do great vocal mixes tend to do pretty well.

Speaker 2 (01:22:57):

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:22:59):

Yeah, it matters. It's important though to not think that you can learn every single thing under the sun, and that means that you just have to do everything, obviously. Again, time matters a lot, so you have to be selective, but when it comes to learning things, what's the harm really? What's the harm in getting better? I don't see the harm in it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:30):

Yeah, definitely. Just the time management thing. I could understand or see someone's perspective. If they work 60 hours a week and they're like, I have no time to learn new things or study things, but there's some way you can fit that in. Try to learn something, watch and nail the mix, learn something new. Listening to other songs you don't listen to. I'll take occasionally, I don't have an exact stamp on when, but I'll be like, today feels like a day to grab an old mix and just mix it again, or just something like that where I'm like, what can I do and experiment with in terms of plugin chains? I redo a vocal chain. Even though I have templated things as starting points, I'll be like, okay, let's take it away and just completely new things. Let's try it, see what happens. I do that quite not super often, but often enough for me to feel like I'm constantly testing myself and learning, you know what I mean? Just through my own trial and error. Absolutely. You can get too comfortable

Speaker 1 (01:24:30):

Sometimes. Yeah. I think getting too comfortable is the enemy of progress, basically.

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):

Oh yeah. But there's something so tempting about templates. Once you get them, you're like,

Speaker 1 (01:24:41):

The thing is that a good template should be an ever evolving thing anyways, right? So I think a lot of people get the template idea wrong. You make a template and it's great, but that doesn't mean that it's supposed to stay the same forever. That's a bad idea, actually. A really bad idea.

Speaker 2 (01:25:00):

Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (01:25:01):

It's something that should be continually evolving.

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):

Yeah. That's where the experimental days I mentioned come into play where it's like half of the time those chains that I said I try to fuck with and start from scratch will work, and I'll throw them in the template what evolves it. That's kind of my personal way of just evolving the template instead of just like I tried doing it where there's something I did with a particular artist and I'm like, I love how that all worked out. I'm going to make that a template, or I'll save that rhythm guitar plug and chain, but then that never works. I mean, it could be a good starting point, but when you get into precise things, there's so many variables to what a guitar chain is like guitar player, guitar, amp cab, et cetera. So try to, I learned to keep it more basic in certain ways and also just redo my starting points, I guess is what I'm saying, in as many places as I can, and then keep stuff that was specific that I might've liked can kind of dilute it as much as possible for the sake of the template. That makes sense. Yeah. A template is like an art form, man. So it's both

Speaker 1 (01:26:07):

General and specific at the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:26:09):

Yeah. I kind of talked myself into a corner there. I was like, what am I getting at? Yeah. It's kind of just knowing what, as you develop the template, what should be specific, what should be, not what was counterproductive to be specific, but maybe you know what plugins you generally use. I'll create a default state setting of a plugin, then make a plugin chain with that. So it's just this generic thing. I'll use them. Inevitably, they'll save me time, but you don't know what the settings will be walking into a session. You can never guarantee beyond basic high pass filtering is inevitable beyond those things.

Speaker 1 (01:26:45):

This is why using other people's templates is a mistake in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:26:49):

Yeah, I was thinking about that. That thought as I was just talking, it was like people sell templates and ask for templates all the time on forums and stuff. It's not just the amp sim you use. Maybe that's in the template, but all these plugins you use after it or someone used after it, and as soon as you plug in your guitar, you will be disappointed. If you're trying to use that for your own sound, it will not sound like what you think at all.

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):

Yeah. You have to build it yourself. Templates work, but they have to be yours and that to be something that you're always evolving and that you created through trial and error because nobody else thinks or hears like you. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:27:28):

100%.

Speaker 1 (01:27:29):

Well, I think it's a good place to end the podcast, man. I want to thank you very much for taking the time to hang out.

Speaker 2 (01:27:35):

Yeah, dude, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Anytime.

Speaker 1 (01:27:38):

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 m audio at M Academy and of course tag our guest 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 EYAL at M dot acm y and use the subject line Answer me Ale. Alright then. Till next time, happy mixing. 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.