ANDREW WADE: Fixing Common Guitar Tone Mistakes, Modelers vs. Amps, and Tracking for Tightness

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Golden Age Premier high quality vintage style products at an affordable price point. To find out more, go to golden age premier.com. This episode is also brought to you by Fuse Audio Labs, uncompromising emulations of classic and rare studio processors in revolutionary plugin form. For more info, go to Fuse Audio Lambs de and now your host, Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:32):

Hello everybody. This episode is brought to you by Ultimate Guitar Production, the most detailed in-depth course ever created about guitars. The course is taught by Andrew Wade, who you may know from one of his three appearances on nail the Mix or work with bands like a Day to remember the Ghost Inside Wage War or Neck Deep. And it covers everything and I mean everything. It's over a hundred videos that cover every single step of the guitar production process, setting up the guitar, choosing the right amp cabs, mics the right way to track guitars, editing, amping, mixing, and more. He puts it all together by dialing tones for indie, pop, rock, pop, punk, and metal. And there's actually way, way, way more than what I just told you, but I'm out of time. If you want to see all of it and get a sneak preview of the content, go to ultimate guitar production.com and prepare to have your mind blown. Welcome to the URM podcast. Today I've got my old friend and frequent collaborator educator, fantastic producer, and now interior designer and Studio Builder, Mr. Andrew Wade. Welcome back.

Speaker 3 (01:42):

Good to be here. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:43):

Yeah, it's interesting. If you think about it, you were on episode number four that we recorded in 2014. Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:52):

You

Speaker 2 (01:52):

Believe that?

Speaker 3 (01:53):

What episode is this now? Or a roundabout?

Speaker 2 (01:55):

It's going to be released, I believe it's number 2 21. Wow. But I think that we are really at around two 30 because there were a series of episodes that didn't get counted in there, but yeah, so technically 2 21. It's crazy.

Speaker 3 (02:13):

That is insane. I had no idea you guys were so busy, but congratulations.

Speaker 2 (02:17):

Well, thank you and congratulations to you for just being awesome. And since then, I know you've been on a bunch and stuff, but since then you've just got the studio done, continued your career, had a kid, done a lot of stuff,

Speaker 3 (02:35):

Created

Speaker 2 (02:36):

Lots of things.

Speaker 3 (02:37):

It's been a journey.

Speaker 2 (02:38):

Yeah, I know how that goes. Well, not the kid part, but the rest. But I guess reason you're here is the title of this podcast is to talk about this course we just made together called Ultimate Guitar Production. And I don't know if I told you why we wanted to do this with you, but as you now know, and I guess for people who have taken these courses, it's a pretty massive undertaking to do one of these. You've planned them for a year. It's a whole lot of shooting a month or two and then revisions and then everything else that goes with it. It's a massive undertaking, and so don't want to just do it with anyone. You need to make sure that it's going to be for the right reasons with the right person, or you're going to be wasting a lot of time, A lot of time you don't get back, but I remember the Creative Live guitar class you did in 2013 and it was really, really good. If anyone's curious about it, just go look up Andrew Wade's Creative Live guitar class. And it actually helped me out a lot. I mean, there was a lot of stuff that I already knew, but there was also quite a bit of stuff that just helped me think about guitar differently. That's cool. And I felt like there needed to be an updated version for 2019,

Speaker 3 (04:11):

And it's crazy because that class helped out a lot of people that I didn't expect, like Keith Marrow and Jeff Loomis, and I was reached out to by so many people that I couldn't believe got something out of it, especially because now looking back, being so much more educated about guitar tone and tracking and just being more of a seasoned professional, it's just crazy that it had so much of an impact. Actually, one of the guys at Dark Glass said that my class inspired him to make the plugin version of his bass pedal or bass. It was bass or guitar.

Speaker 2 (04:55):

I believe it. I think we're still in the infancy of the online education thing, so we don't totally know, especially the stuff we did. I did a bunch of creative lives back then too, especially back then. We had no idea that it would reach so many people, but it's amazing how many people you end up reaching, but that class being great still, just I felt like you could go so much deeper just because you could go so much deeper with guitars, but also your wealth of knowledge has definitely increased in the past six years and it would just, we go hard on these courses. It just made perfect sense. And getting great guitar tone is something that producers and guitarists lose sleep and years of their life over year in, year out, it never, that tone quest is not going to end anytime soon in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (05:54):

Yeah, dude. People don't even realize the quest they're on or the quest they should be on, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (06:02):

What do you mean?

Speaker 3 (06:03):

I recently posted a picture on my Instagram with a ton of different amps, a bunch of that we used in the course, and there was also a little kemper in the picture and I was like, which, what weapon would you choose? Something like that on the amps? So many people said, Kemper, and it blew me away. Interesting. Yeah, I was like, you guys don't realize what you're missing. And what's awesome about this class is there was even stuff that I wasn't even sure about until we did all these really in depth tests and I could not get the Kemper to sound actually sound like when you plug into a real amplifier. It never sounded like it. And we really highlight that in this class, and I think so many people don't realize what they're missing.

Speaker 2 (06:49):

It is interesting. There's this amping example you do, which blew my mind, showing the difference between plugging straight in to an amp versus amping through the same amp, and then how to bridge that gap. There's always a difference. I was aware that difference, but a lot of people who saw that video were not aware that they were missing that much information from their guitar signal when amping. So they didn't even know that they had compromised signals. So it's not even that they knew their tones weren't good, it's that they didn't even know that there's something gone, something crucial gone that they needed in order to get a good tone. So that was kind of mind blowing, not let alone how to fix the problem, but just the fact that it is a problem people didn't realize.

Speaker 3 (07:44):

Exactly. And it's all those little things along the way that add up to a horrible outcome that you don't, listening to a tone, you're listening to yours and you don't even know why it's different. You know what I mean? You feel like you're doing everything right, but it's just all these little things you're messing up along the way that adds up to a struggle for no reason, especially if you just know what to adjust.

Speaker 2 (08:10):

There's that cliche that a great album or a great mix or whatever, something great is like a combination or the cumulative result of a thousand little decisions. And it's absolutely true. A great result or a bad result though. I mean, with a bad result, you can make one or two really bad decisions like a horrible player or a out of tune guitar. But really, if you think you're doing everything right, but it still sounds like garbage, there's probably 15 minor steps the wrong decision

Speaker 3 (08:45):

On, or even dude. And I feel like this class, it is not just for people who cannot get a good result, for people who are wondering why they aren't getting, you're like, I feel like mine's pretty good, but there's just this little ten five percent difference that I hear and I just can't figure it out. And that to me is where the value comes in of this course where it's like you need to impress that if you have a bigger client coming in. It's not just for the small guys. The small guys can take what they've been doing to the completely next level, but even the guys who have been doing it for a while, it's like you can still take it to the next level. Let's talk about the cables for example. There's so much debate about cables and I think it's because there's so many different variables that nobody talks about active versus passive pickups. No one has ever mentioned that to me where the passive pickup can't transmit a signal like five feet, but the active pickup could do it almost a hundred feet, you know what I mean? So of course there's going to be people arguing, they're using different guitars, you know what I mean? Not to mention the quality of the cable, and we get into that too. It's stuff that I thought was snake oil, you know what I mean? And there's a night and day, but there's a world of difference between these things.

Speaker 2 (10:05):

I think I hit you up and told you that the course was fucking with me emotionally because there were so many things that I had told people were snake oil that you tested that turned out not to be snake oil or that turned out not to be snake oil, but in a way that nobody had ever mentioned or that I didn't expect. So just for a point of reference for people listening, there's a ton of in-depth shootouts in this, not only shootouts, but assignments on how to conduct your own shootouts because

Speaker 3 (10:42):

Very important, you're

Speaker 2 (10:42):

Not supposed to take, yeah, you're not supposed to take this info and copy it. You're supposed to take this info, analyze it, and then do your own tests, analyze that, use your results. But anyways, it covers everything from picks, guitar type, pickup type cables of different lengths, pickups, amps, tubes, cabs, mics. A lot of stuff gets tested against, I mean all the way to signal boosters.

Speaker 3 (11:11):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (11:12):

Reamp boxes, di boxes, preamps. It is pretty comprehensive.

Speaker 3 (11:17):

And what I love is we took kind of like a MythBusters approach sometimes where sometimes it was mainly me and Nick figuring out everything that needed to fully be in the course, and I would turn to Nick and be like, I just did this test of elevating a cab and I cannot hear a difference. But then we decided let's leave it in the class because that in itself is informational.

Speaker 2 (11:44):

That's one of those things that I was taught to do.

Speaker 3 (11:47):

Yeah, I mean I couldn't make it a difference to me. I don't think this is actually in the class. I don't remember. There's a lot of things that we, this for a time we just didn't include in the class, but I did an analysis on it with EQ matching to find out the exact difference, and there was some tiny bump at one DB in a super low frequency, and that was it. It was like

Speaker 2 (12:14):

A low frequency you would filter out of guitars anyways.

Speaker 3 (12:19):

No, well, there was a little bit of a say so one DB maybe, it may not even have been a full db, but it was some very small. If you've ever eqd match something, there's usually a huge difference between, I don't know anything that you EQ match something else, especially when you fully move a whole cab and microphone and everything. Just a tiny half db, one DB bump around, I don't know, maybe a hundred hertz maybe, but that's a negligible result. You know what I mean? That to me, the effort, it's not one of those things. The pick, we go through the pick section and depending on your riff, you'll choose a pick and I show you all the different riffs that are good for what pick that kind of a thing. But this is just like, it's like maybe you want to do it, but it's not one of those things where anyone's jumping up and down, Eureka, this is the change that I'm looking for. I can hear very small differences and I could not even really detect it. I had to pull out the EQ matching to even scientifically diagnose a result. You know what I mean? I felt

(13:34):

Crazy because I am like, I can't believe there's so little of a difference.

Speaker 2 (13:39):

What's funny though is that that happened and then the opposite happened in lots of cases. There were things like that, like the cab lifted that I used to think would make a big difference and I would always lift cabs versus other things that I thought made no difference. That made a ton of difference. I'm going to take a second just to tell people where you can get this if you want it, just go to ultimate guitar production.com. And just so you know, there's over a hundred videos of in-depth tests, tutorials, walkthroughs on everything from setting up your guitars, setting up your guitar rig, setting up your recording rig, microphone selection, microphone placement, di the ins and out of the ins and outs of amping tracking everything from posture to proper doubles to tuning, like how to actually track a guitarist, right? Editing, but not just how to edit, why to edit, where to edit, and then lots of advanced editing moves like spectral repair.

(14:51):

In addition, there's super advanced editing stuff as well, such as this part called editing rehab, spectral cleanup, making false doubles, reediting retuning, editing off the grid. It goes on and on. There's section on irs, I know everybody wants to know about how to make irs. That's a pretty hot topic, goes into detail about that both cab creation and EQ creation. Then dialing tones in multiple genres, not just metal. I know a lot of you guys are going to ask if it's metal only, but it's definitely not metal only, and it's not just rhythm. It goes from rhythms, cleans leads. It's a very, very comprehensive picture. And then it ends with a section on crafting your own sound. And again, not about copying Andrews though. He does give a bunch of awesome tricks. The idea is to show you what kinds of things are possible if you think outside of the box, just a little bit on guitar, so ultimate guitar production.com. Let's keep talking about this. I want to talk about guitar setup for a moment.

Speaker 3 (16:07):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (16:08):

To me, it's a very obvious thing because I've been hiring a guitar tech for years. I mean, that's been something that I've done for ages. Just get a guitar setup at the beginning of a record or every four or five weeks just routinely. But I've noticed that a lot of people either don't understand how important it is or the frequency of it. A lot of people think it's important, but then we'll do it every one to two years. And a lot of people don't understand what is involved, how to actually do it, so they try to do it based off of bad information, end up screwing up their guitars, or they hire a friend who doesn't know what he's doing and they don't know how to fix it. And let's face it, if you're coming up as a producer or you're a big producer already, you're in a situation where you need those guitars to be in tune and you need them to be playable and you need them to be getting full signal out of the pickups. And yeah, there are some bands that can afford to have a full-time guitar tech. That's cool, but that's a minority of bands. So unless you're comfortable with hiring someone to come in every single time you have a guitar problem, you probably should learn how to at least do the basics yourself.

(17:38):

Maybe not fixing guitars, rereading them or anything, but you should know how to intimate and set up a guitar just on a basic level.

Speaker 3 (17:47):

Yes. I can't tell you how many times I've had guitarists bring in a guitar and I'm like, Hey, let me set up your guitar really quick. And they're like, I just had it paid to be done by someone at Guitar Center or Sam Ash or something, and I'm like, they really did not do this right at all. This is like, I'm going over it. I'm like, this is just not even set up correctly. It's really important to know what you need to adjust and what is messed up because you could pay someone and did they do it right? You need to know, you know what I mean? You need to know how to fix it. If someone insists that they do it themselves, you never know what situation you'll be in. So what a value it is to know that

Speaker 2 (18:29):

It's actually a rare group of people who know how to do it, and they tend to be always busy because big bands will discover them and just take them. They're out on tour. Maxwell Stevens, who did the we. So we actually have two setup sections in the course. We have the one Andrew did, which is really awesome, and just the way I see it is if that one is good, if all you want to do is be able to set it up and get right to work, that's the one I would watch because I don't care about setting up guitars at all. But if you want to do it more, because you're a builder type of person who really likes guitars, we did the one with a data remembers guitar tech and just it's a lot longer. They're both great, and I definitely would watch them both, but people like that who are really great at setting up guitars, as in that's their job. There's not too many of 'em, and they get snatched up by big bands and are never home. All the ones I've known that are awesome are somewhat unreachable for studio purposes, and I echo your experience of taking stuff to Guitar Center and it coming back set up and it's totally wrong. It's just intonated badly. Neck is warped. It's just they cause more problems than they solve.

Speaker 3 (19:57):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (19:58):

You really should learn how to do it yourself and also don't trust musicians who come in and tell you they know how to do it. I've had instruments destroyed by musicians.

Speaker 3 (20:09):

Oh God, yes.

Speaker 2 (20:11):

Has that ever happened to you?

Speaker 3 (20:12):

Yeah, you can destroy

Speaker 2 (20:13):

$3,000 Warwick Bass. Oh yeah. That destroyed by a musician who by all accounts, he knew what he was doing. He was a very intellectual guy, studied musician, capital M musician. So you would've thought that he knew how to do it, and he ended up somehow fucking the truss rod up so bad that the neck started to crack a little.

Speaker 3 (20:41):

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 (20:43):

Can you believe that? So that was the final straw.

Speaker 3 (20:47):

Usually people are stripping things

Speaker 2 (20:50):

To

Speaker 3 (20:50):

Mess things up. Also, this one thing we didn't really go over in the course, but a lot of bands when they bring guitars in, it's their show guitar and it's rusted to shit and you just cannot intonate it or I don't know. It's important to at least have your own guitar that you can set up yourself and make sure that it plays well. I kind of just don't even rely on anyone to bring in guitars anymore just because it is always their show guitar, their best guitar they take out with them. Unless it's a big band, they'll have guitars at home, but that's not most people.

Speaker 2 (21:27):

Yeah, it's the same with drums too. Really?

Speaker 3 (21:30):

Oh yeah. Sometimes I like the sweated drums though, because the lugs stay in place, a brand new drum set. Sometimes the lugs are so perfect and slick and have no rust on them. They just slip right out of place. Well, that's the different,

Speaker 2 (21:48):

Yeah. Well, I'm not suggesting getting a brand new one, but just one that hasn't been warped and destroyed by climate in a trailer. All the terrible things.

Speaker 3 (21:59):

Right? Yeah, yeah, no, I get you.

Speaker 2 (22:02):

But the thing about guitar setup and how it relates to production is pretty intrinsic. Without a good setup, you're building on a terrible, muddy foundation, basically building a house on a muddy foundation because if you can't have guitars that are in tune, or if the player can't play because it's uncomfortable or can't play at their best, you're not getting full signal. Everything else that you do downstream from that is going to be compromised.

Speaker 3 (22:35):

A lead guitarist especially will not play as well on a guitar that's not set up right. It's just difficult to play with a guitar that has too high of action or if the neck is warped in the wrong direction or really warped at all. So it's really important that you cover all your bases and know that I'm providing everything I can for this artist, and there's no excuses. They will absolutely be able to do their best. That brings value to you as a producer and an engineer.

Speaker 2 (23:13):

Absolutely. So we already talked about shooting out things like cables and picks and all that, but let's talk about recording gear because I think that another thing that people spend a long time arguing over is microphones, preamps, which reamp box should they get? Which DI box should they get?

Speaker 3 (23:37):

Yeah, that's a big one. People ask me all the time,

Speaker 2 (23:41):

Or should I use a DI box or plug straight into the interface or the preamp? Those kinds of questions are never ending.

Speaker 3 (23:48):

Yes, I think that's the most common question I get is what DI box should I use? Why should I use it, when should I use it? And I think my result from this class is because I don't have a ton of boxes that I go through myself personally. I just have some nicer radial ones. The Avalon one that we shoot out in the course, I don't remember the model. It's like 500, 600 bucks, something like that. You can actually change the tone of the DI with it. A lot of DI boxes are pretty clean. They don't really change the tone that much, but I think that is where the debate comes from. So actually, lemme rewind before I get into that. The Avalon DI box, the advantage of using that is to just change the way your guitar sounds using. It must be like the impedance changing or there's something special going on.

(24:45):

It's not just like an EQ setting or something. There's something a little bit magical about that, and to me, if you're going to reach for a DI box and invest any money in it, that would be a good one to use because you can change the sound or it can be really neutral, whatever you want. So the DI boxes that I go through didn't make that big of a difference until I realized what really matters about boxes. So the signal from your guitar and they matter the most when again, we're talking about passive versus active pickups. So the signal that comes out of your guitar, the best signal that you can get would be with a patch cable basically out of your guitar, which is pretty ridiculous to have a patch cable go to a direct box. Then because it changes the signal to where it can transfer further on through an XLR cable, you could have 20 feet of XLR and it's no problem coming out of the DI box.

(25:45):

So if you had the signal from your guitar through a patch cable into a DI box that I don't know is taped to your guitar or your guitar strap, I don't know, that seems ridiculous. Maybe you could do it and then XLR or balanced output out into your preamp, that is a nice clean signal and that's the best signal that you will ever get. However, it's kind of ridiculous to try to attach a direct box to anybody. You know what I mean? On a chair, people are passing things around, you're just going to rip the cord out, it's going to rip the direct box. It's just not going to work out. So what I found awesome in this course was actually unexpected, which was when we were talking about signal extenders and I ended up on the little labs, STD, which can make your guitar sound like it's coming straight out of the guitar through patch cable, right into a direct box and then into your preamp.

(26:45):

It has that quality, but it has a regular cable that goes from your guitar to this little box, and it can be a hundred feet long if you want, but a power direct box won't be able to do that. So if you have any length of cable out of your guitar, mainly passive pickup, if you have a 10 foot cable out of your passive pickup guitar, you've lost quality, you've lost a significant amount of quality no matter if you go into that Avalon DI box. So the only way to prevent any loss of signal is to use, and honestly, I only know one product that does it, and it's the little labs, STDI

Speaker 2 (27:22):

Love that name.

Speaker 3 (27:24):

I am not sponsored by them. I hate saying STD, I think it shouldn't have been named that, but it's changed

Speaker 2 (27:29):

Things for me. Such an unfortunate name.

Speaker 3 (27:31):

It really is, especially because of there's no other product like it. I bought another signal extender and it was made by radial. It's the radial SGI. And that does a good job of sending a signal, like if you did want to send a signal from your control room into your tracking room or a nice booth, or you have the combo really far away and you want to send that instrument level signal really far, you plug into this thing. It's basically like a power direct box, active direct box into a reamp box, and then it comes out a balance or an unbalanced signal on the end that you can plug into your amplifier, and it is such a clean signal. You can send it, but I think it's the same thing, like a hundred feet or so. And the problem with that is the signal from the guitar to the first box, you can lose quality, but the STD doesn't do that. It comes with some special magical cable. I don't know. They emphasize it all over the hardware and in the manual and stuff, but one of the biggest takeaways from this course was that little box making your signal perfect every time. No DI box is going to do that.

Speaker 2 (28:47):

It's really crazy, man.

Speaker 3 (28:49):

Yeah. So when people ask me if I use direct boxes, I've always been like, no, I don't. And I felt weird and bad and I'm like, I just don't hear a difference, but I know why. It's because of the cables and it's because of the guitar, and it's also because of where you're sending the signal, how long you're sending the signal. You know what I mean? So the direct boxes didn't make a difference in my life. And that one Avalon box, that does actually change the tone. That was the only one to me. That's the only reason. I don't own one, but we had one for the course, and that to me was the only one I could even imagine using on purpose to improve or change your sound in some way. But if your cable going to that direct box is 10 feet long and you have a passive pickup, you've lost quality already. So I don't know. I've been talking about that for a while. So let's move on. What do you got, ale?

Speaker 2 (29:46):

I was just going to say, I was taught that a cable is a cable, and so I thought that the whole cable length thing was bullshit. I mean, obviously not at long distances like 50 feet, but people would just say to me, copper is copper, so whatever. Just get a cable. Wow, people that are really good. That's not something I heard from an idiot. I heard that from people that are really good. And so seeing what a difference it makes is mind blowing. I'm going to take a second to talk about where you can get ultimate guitar production and what's in it. Ultimate guitar production.com. And there's over a hundred videos in there of eight videos on guitar setup, nine videos on setting up your guitar rig. 25 videos on recording techniques, 16 videos on tracking, 16 videos on editing, three videos on impulse responses, nine videos on dialing tones and extra stuff, extra really cool stuff like blending amps and just production tricks.

(30:59):

11 videos worth of those. That's over a hundred videos total. You get a 50 plus page workbook with that audio examples from the shootouts to load into your do their shootouts of picks, pickups, guitar types, cables, amps, tubes, cabs, mics, mic positions, di boxes, ampers, cable extenders, preamps, and on and on Andrew's pro tool sessions. Also from the tone dialing, mixing sessions, all the IRS used in this course, as well as an acoustic guitar mini course, a guitar setup, mini course, access to the UGP Private Facebook group and a video of Andrew's 2018 URM Summit Guitar Masterclass. So ultimate guitar production.com to find out more. Hey, everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast and 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 information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love.

(32:09):

You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you remember, you already know how amazing it is. At the beginning of the month, nail the mix members, get the raw multitracks to a new song by artists like Lama God eth Shuga, bring me the Horizon Gaira asking Alexandria Mac Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others. 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 of the album and takes your questions live on the air. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics and Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for usage, your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material.

(33:00):

And for those who really, 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 loan, and so forth. It's over 50 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed. Enhanced members also get access to one-on-one office hours sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes on a live video stream, fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. If any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills and your audio career, head over to URM academy slash enhanced to find out more.

(33:52):

Let's talk about tracking. There's some stuff that I learned in here that blew my mind. I realized why my guitars never sounded as tight as I wanted, and that always blew my mind that they wouldn't sound as tight as I wanted because I've worked with great guitar players, I know how to play guitar as well, and I was good at tracking and good at editing. I was not bad at these things, and the people I was working with were not bad at these things either. So why weren't the guitars tight enough? What the hell's going on? And then I realized I was tuning between takes. There you go. Wow, tuning between takes. Yeah, that stupid little thing caused me so many problems if I had just known what a difference it makes to track the whole part without changing anything, and then

Speaker 3 (34:51):

Retuning,

Speaker 2 (34:52):

If I had known that it's just one, you still do the same amount of work just in a different order, the results would've been so different.

Speaker 3 (35:01):

That's interesting to hear. For me, the biggest one, and I mean I've done this for a while, but knowing what part of the guitar to align to the grid, if you want something really tight,

Speaker 2 (35:18):

That part is also mind blowing because the thing about it is, and you can go to ultimate guitar production.com, and there's a free video that we put up from it on that one of the quantizing videos is up there for you to watch. But what's cool about that is that it really reinforces the idea that you have to listen. And I mean, you have to look also because operating equipment and software, but if all you did was look, you would get it wrong because it's exactly the opposite of what it looks like. And when it's right, it also looks exactly the opposite of right. So when it's right, it looks wrong, and when it's wrong, it looks right. It's crazy.

Speaker 3 (36:04):

And that was something that at the summit went over. Very interestingly, everybody, it was like the crowd gasped when I showed them this technique. This is where you would edit. And everybody's like, yes, yeah, yeah, we know what about it? And I'm like, what if I told you that you're completely wrong and you actually should be editing this over here? And everybody's like, silent. And then I actually showed 'em this little trick that's in the course and everybody's like, oh my God, we've been doing it wrong all this time. We had no idea. But yeah, like Al was saying, if you try to just edit everything with the transient or what you think is the transient or what I call in the transient of the class, at least that's not going to make a tight guitar. Even if you have it 100% locked in, your guitars won't be tight and you're going to wonder why. But we have that answer in one of these videos. And I also want to say you listed, so there's so many videos in this, but what's insane is there was a lot more information to put, and we have no repeat information in the class of all those videos. There's no repeating information. It's all, every video is like a brand new concept or set of concepts.

Speaker 2 (37:19):

Yeah, it's a beast. The thing I do like about it though is that it builds off of itself. There's no repeating info, but it keeps continuity going. For instance, when you dial the metal tone, you're using stuff from the shootouts. So you, you're using a guitar and a set of strings and a di box or a signal extender and an overdrive, et cetera, et cetera, on and on, but all stuff that you had tested in the shootouts and decided on. So what's cool about it is that it takes you all the way from the very beginning of the process, setting up the guitars all the way through Beast Tone and the thousand steps in between point A and point B,

Speaker 3 (38:18):

Exactly how to get to the professional result.

Speaker 2 (38:22):

Now, as far as IRS go, this course is heavily geared towards real amps and cabs, but there is definitely, there's a whole bonus section on Amp Sims. There's this section on irs. I mean, we definitely did cover that stuff because it is relevant in this day and age, but why do you think it's important for people to understand how to create impulses and work with them?

Speaker 3 (38:56):

Well, for me, impulses of all the simulation technology for guitars, impulses are the one thing that seem like they've gotten right. If you have everything else in place, I go through all the best and how to make it sound like you're plugged straight into your amp. And then we show the difference between the cabinet and then the actual impulse response. If everything is right, and you have all the dynamics there that you're supposed to have. With the attenuator that I used, it was the Palmer PDI oh five or the oh three. The oh three is the one that I was supposed to get, but that doesn't matter. It's basically the same thing. It's so dynamic that it is just like an actual cabinet, but when you use an impulse response with it, it is like to me, indistinguishable from the real thing. So whenever you use an impulse response, you don't have to worry about your microphone moving or anything like that. And what's great about it is if you fully understand everything, you can dial in a tone on a cabinet. You can take that impulse response or a few, and you can say goodbye to the cabinet and you can have 'em have the band take it home or put it away, or you don't have to worry about anyone bumping a microphone or changing any settings or anything like that, which is a very real thing during an album.

(40:20):

I know everyone claims to not move the mic, but it's moved now and I don't know why. I don't know who did it, but it's moved. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (40:28):

No one's going to fess up.

Speaker 3 (40:30):

So if you understand everything else before the actual just cabinet sound and how to make that as realistic as possible, the impulse response to me is the most perfect technology of all the simulation technologies.

Speaker 2 (40:47):

And I mean what you were just describing, creating one off of a cabinet, then getting rid of the cabinet, that's kind of the selling point for owning the Kemper. But you don't need a Kemper to be able to do that.

Speaker 3 (41:00):

A kemper's impulse response will never be as detailed as one that we show you how to make in the course. The frequency curve that can actually be stored on a Kemper is just not very detailed. I don't know why, but I think that's one of the reasons a lot of people have problems with the realism of a Kemper. It's just the detail is missing. And to me, it sounds like some of the notches and things that make a cab unique just aren't there on the Kemper. It's more like, and I've even done tests where I get the actual one and then I test the Kemper and it just looks like a simple drawing versus a real one where it's a detailed landscape, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (41:45):

Yeah, makes perfect sense. You are providing, which is really cool of you, the IRS that you created in the course, but I think that it is important for people who are getting these to learn how to make their own. You really, really should do that. Don't just get Andrew's IRS and think you're set them to help you make your own. There's really nothing better than having your own custom tool set that you created based off your own experience. And I've noticed the best producers have that the best producers have their own proprietary stuff that they spent a long time making. And yes, sometimes they'll give it out, but the thing they're not giving out because they can't are their ears

(42:35):

And how their brain processed all the information to get to that point. And if they're giving it out to you, that means that they have already moved onto the next thing. So they're already thinking past that. If all you're doing is getting their ir, you'll get short-term, their IR or their samples or some preset or something like that, you will get a benefit, but it's going to be a short-term benefit because you're not going to get the understanding of how to get to that result. So the moment that IR doesn't work for a part, you're screwed. Same with the samples or preset or whatever. If you happen to get something like that from a great producer and it works awesome, but it's only going to work when it works and nothing works all the time.

Speaker 3 (43:20):

That's true.

Speaker 2 (43:21):

And so if you don't know how to do it yourself, whether it's on the next song or the next album or two albums from now, at some point you're going to come up against a situation where you don't know how to solve the problem. So yeah, take these irs, use them, have fun with them, but you need to learn how to make your own. And really, if anything you should look at when you get a preset or sample set or irs, you should use those as more than something to copy or use. Take it as showing you where the bar is. If you know that someone is capable of getting IRS that are this good, then now you know that yours should be this good too or better, and that's how I would do it.

Speaker 3 (44:08):

Yeah, you should know how to do that and that's what gives value to yourself as an engineer or producer. If you don't have your own stuff, what's different about you? And one of the things in this course that I think is awesome is, and this is a huge question I've gotten, and I don't think there's anything better for this than a lot of the shootouts in this class, is how to listen, what to listen for. Those are the questions I get, and I can't really answer those questions with a paragraph. You know what I mean? You just have to sit here with me and I need to show you different things and show you what I'm hearing. Like Al was saying, you get the raw files and stuff like that of all the files that I play throughout the course, but knowing what to listen for and tapping into that world of subtlety, there's nothing worth that has more value than that, than knowing what to listen for and how to find the differences in different audio sources and why you like something over something else.

Speaker 2 (45:19):

Absolutely. And the thing is, it's not just watching Andrew do shootouts. There's assignments in there. If you do them, we will get you thinking properly about this stuff. So it's not just passively watching Andrew do and explain stuff though. That alone would be great if you actually follow along and take the steps and stop the videos where it says, stop the video and go do this thing. You will learn how to do this stuff. I can't guarantee that you'll become the best guitar tone dialer in the world, but you will certainly get way better for sure.

Speaker 3 (45:56):

You'll hear things that you definitely did not hear before. For sure.

Speaker 2 (46:02):

I mean, dude, just from going through these videos and making notes on them and slides and assignments and all that stuff, I've learned a ton about guitar.

Speaker 3 (46:15):

That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (46:17):

And I can only imagine if I was actually taking the course.

Speaker 3 (46:21):

Yeah, it's weird to think that people have learned so much from the basic class I did with Creative Live and then this is more in depth. I can't imagine what people are going to get out of this. It's going to be great.

Speaker 2 (46:34):

Well, just for a point of comparison, for URM members, if you bought Ultimate Drum production, the course we did in 2018 with Matt Brown and how much information and how powerful that information was, this is definitely held up to that standard. So let's talk about the genres and what's in them. We cover metal, indie pop and pop punk. What was your thinking as far as using those three genres?

Speaker 3 (47:08):

I felt like because we get a good number of tones during each of those, especially when we go into the leads, and I made sure each example was long enough that we had time to do that stuff and had a good place in the song for dialing those tones in. I figured this class is not just for one type of person at all, and I know a lot of people know me for, or they may know me for heavier genres and stuff, but there's so much information that you need to know about everything else as well. So I thought these three genres were definitely rock based enough. I mean, well, the only one that's borderline knot would be the pop, indie pop genre, like 1975 type sound. But I feel like this would cover all the bases. Cleaning guitar, low gain stuff, medium gain stuff, heavy gain stuff, ambient leads, ambient distorted leads, clean, ambient, crunchy, ambient.

(48:16):

I don't know how many more types of tones there really are. And anything that I thought wasn't covered in there, we made a little bonus section and included all any niche stuff that I was like, this is definitely a sound that I've heard and that I really like and I think it's important. And I think this could take someone to the next level and make 'em think in a little bit different of a way. You could even combine some of the techniques you see in the pop one with metal, you know what I mean? Vice versa. You can do. We just figured that there's so many combinations of the information that I actually gave you that it should pretty much cover any situation you're in.

Speaker 2 (48:58):

If it doesn't, I'd be surprised, honestly.

Speaker 3 (49:01):

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (49:02):

I mean, the thing I can't wait to see is people who actually went through the whole thing and where their tones are six months from now. I'm very curious.

Speaker 3 (49:14):

What's funny is just by making the course, my tones have improved because we did all the shootouts and I was like, damnit, this thing's better. I can't go back. I have to use this thing now. You know what I mean? So as I was making the course, I was like, I didn't even know this thing made a difference or that, but if it didn't make a difference, like I said earlier, we still included it just to show the difference that I got to, but there were some things that I was just like with the STD, I'm not sponsored.

Speaker 2 (49:46):

I think it's good that you left in results that were negligible because it's important for people to be able to make that distinction as well. Lots of times people get fooled, like they trick themselves

(50:04):

By thinking that there is a change when there isn't or that there isn't a change when there is, or they buy into the hype of a product so much that they imagine things or their bias informs their decision, which is an important habit to break when doing really anything, but especially in audio. And so it's important for people to go and understand that process of trying things out that you think are going to rule, and them not even making a single bit of difference and being able to say, alright, that doesn't make a single bit of difference, and moving on. It's really important.

Speaker 3 (50:47):

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (50:48):

One thing that I've heard people say is that they don't want this info because they want to develop their own sound, and I understand where they think they're coming from, but I don't think that they're correct because there's no way that having information and knowing how to judge these things can prevent you from getting your own sound. As a matter of fact, the way this is put together is designed to show you how to develop your own sound properly.

Speaker 3 (51:25):

Yeah. It's not just my opinion on things. You get to hear the difference for yourself. Maybe you disagree, but I choose what my favorite thing is, but I point out this is what the difference is between this thing and this thing, and it's not incorrect, but you can use that difference however you want. You know what I mean? So if you liked that difference, then you go for that thing. So I completely agree with you,

Speaker 2 (51:56):

And not just that people are going to be in completely different scenarios than your scenarios. There's no way, I mean, there is a way, but it's very unlikely that they're going to repeat the exact scenarios you created, right?

Speaker 3 (52:13):

The

Speaker 2 (52:13):

Exact cable with the exact length, with that exact guitar, with that exact type of strings.

Speaker 3 (52:17):

There's so many combinations of things.

(52:20):

I mean, we could have made this class three days long, but we didn't want to do that. So we had to kind of choose a path and go down that path. But you can take the information and you can go down any path you want with it. And what's great about this course, and I remember what I was going to say earlier, is that one of the things that people don't do in the studio is testing stuff. People want to get in there and be creative and just go, go. You know what I mean? So this course has everything laid out for you. We've done all the testing, we've hooked up all the different combinations of gear and showed you so you can just digest it easily and a lot of gear that you probably wouldn't even have access to, but there's no way that someone can watch this and not start thinking in a new way. That to me is what's really valuable about this is that you're going to notice something and be like, oh my God, I could start doing this thing, even if it's not something I'm talking about. It can get your gears turning in ways that you can't get 'em turning yourself. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (53:26):

Yep, exactly. Gear is turning in ways that you can't do it on your own because you didn't know about something. And then have the mental tools to be able to then solve the problem based on whatever information you're getting, because yeah, you are going to be in different situations than the ones in these videos. You might have gear that's nothing like what was in this. And then how will any of Andrew's choices affect you? Well, it's the process that matters,

Speaker 3 (53:59):

And you learn how to test the equipment, you learn how to listen. And I think the perfect example of this, and this is the mindset throughout the course, is the editing section. I can guarantee you that people will judge instantly about editing and say something like, well, I don't necessarily want it to be that tight. And then other people will be like, well, maybe I want it tighter. Well, guess what? We cover editing loosely and editing as tight as you can and having all the information to be loose and rough in a good way, or to be as tight as you possibly can. You now have that information and you can do with it as you please. But there's some challenges along the way when you're starting out. There's certain things about signal flow and editing and workflow that you just may not be able to get over a certain hump and just seeing, oh, hey, that one little tip or that one little tiny little piece of gear that I didn't even know existed, you can now grab it and you can change. It could change your whole world. So we dial it all the way one way, and we dial it all the way the other way, and it's within that gradient lands you and lands your characteristics and your personality, and that's all in the course for everything we do. It's not just that there's one way to do anything

Speaker 2 (55:25):

With the tracking too. Kind of like what I said earlier, if you work on 200 records where the guitars need to sound super, super tight, and then some huge 1970s revival band that sounds like Led Zeppelin comes in and they need their guitars to sound like a record from the seventies. If you go about making them tight like a modern record, you missed the point completely. So it shows you how to do that too, if that's your goal,

Speaker 3 (55:56):

Even if they don't record to a click that's in there.

Speaker 2 (55:59):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (56:01):

That's all in there. We go all over the spectrum. The spectrum is wide, and that's what we understand after doing it for so long, you realize how many different scenarios there are out there. And that's the advantage that I have as a professional doing it for so long. The advantage I have, and a I'll mention this in the very beginning, that's why the course wasn't a waste of time. Whereas if you went with someone less experienced or a little more narrow-minded, the course would've just had one main result, and that's just not the case. It's simply not the case.

Speaker 2 (56:36):

Not at all. So with that, I'm going to end this podcast, but if that sounds enticing, just go to ultimate guitar production.com for more info. If you're still unsure, you know where to hit me up on Instagram or Facebook, wherever, just come ask me a question online at al Levy u RM audio, and I will take the time and answer anything you might have about this ultimate guitar production.com. Andrew Wade, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today.

Speaker 3 (57:11):

No problem.

Speaker 1 (57:12):

This episode of the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is brought to you by Golden Age premiere high quality vintage style products at an affordable price point. To find out more, go to golden age premiere.com. This episode is also brought to you by Fuse Audio Labs, uncompromising emulation of classic and rare studio processors in revolutionary plugin form. For more info, go to Fuse audio labs to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit URM academy slash podcast and subscribe today.