ep 224 | Patrick Stump and Sean O'Keefe

PATRICK STUMP: Fall Out Boy’s origin, making Take This to Your Grave, and surviving studio chaos

Eyal Levi

Patrick Stump is the singer, primary composer, and multi-instrumentalist for the multi-platinum rock band Fall Out Boy. Long before the band’s global success, he was a teenage drummer in the Chicago punk scene, where he first connected with producer Sean O’Keefe. Sean recorded all the members of Fall Out Boy in their various early projects and went on to produce their iconic debut album, Take This to Your Grave. After 15 years, the two reunited to record the fan-favorite track “Lake Effect Kid.”

In This Episode

This episode is a reunion between Patrick Stump and Sean O’Keefe, diving deep into the origin story of Fall Out Boy and the scrappy, high-pressure sessions that created Take This to Your Grave. They share incredible stories from the early days, detailing Patrick’s unexpected transition from drummer to frontman and Sean’s role in capturing the band’s raw energy on a shoestring budget. They get into the creative process, discussing the crucial role of harmony and song structure over simple melody, and the technical hurdles they overcame—from sneaking into a major studio at 2 AM to track vocals on a U 47 to recovering from a catastrophic hard drive failure. The conversation comes full circle as they discuss reuniting to record “Lake Effect Kid,” reflecting on how their workflows have evolved while their creative chemistry remains unchanged. It’s a great look at the determination, resourcefulness, and happy accidents behind a scene-defining album.

Products Mentioned

Timestamps

  • [2:06] Sean O’Keefe recorded Patrick’s first band when he was just 14 years old
  • [5:13] How Patrick accidentally became a singer just so he could write songs
  • [8:02] The shift from being a dedicated instrumentalist to having a producer’s mindset
  • [17:01] The early magic of overdubbing and layering harmonies on cheap tape recorders
  • [19:31] Learning how to feel and create a groove within the confines of a click track
  • [25:28] Sean’s story of discovering Patrick’s singing talent for the first time
  • [29:52] Patrick’s philosophy on why harmony and structure are more important than melody
  • [32:33] The importance of treating vocals as a musical instrument with intentional notes
  • [36:42] Debunking the myth that learning music theory will kill your creativity
  • [44:48] The real story behind how Fall Out Boy formed
  • [49:46] Spending hours crafting and orchestrating a perfect feedback swell
  • [55:55] Sneaking into a pro studio at 2 AM to track vocals with a Neumann U 47
  • [1:00:38] The horror story of an intern formatting the main drive AND the backup
  • [1:05:24] Mixing an album on an analog console with no recall while the band is on tour
  • [1:10:03] The decision to use Auto-Tune for the first time under intense pressure
  • [1:15:23] How the process of working together felt after a 15-year break
  • [1:23:23] Patrick’s perspective on Auto-Tune and how some producers use it for its tone
  • [1:28:07] Using subdivisions to create energy and a feeling of speed without changing the tempo
  • [1:30:05] Learning how to give and receive effective mix notes

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by tele Funken Electroacoustic Tele Funken. Electroacoustic has been following the tradition of excellence and innovation set forth by the original tele Funken gm BH of Germany that began over 100 years ago with one foot rooted in the rich history of the brand and the other in new microphone innovations for both stage and studio applications. Tele Funkin Electroacoustic is recognized as one of the industry leaders in top quality microphones. For more info, go to t-funk.com. And now your host, Eyal

Speaker 2 (00:00:39):

Levi. Welcome to the URM podcast. I am Eyal Levi, and I just want to tell you that this show is brought to you by URM Academy, the world's best education for rock and metal producers. Every month on Nail the Mix, we bring you one of the world's best producers to mix a song from scratch, from artists like Lama God Shuga, periphery The Day to Remember. Bring me the Horizon, opec many, many more, and we give you the raw multitrack so you can mix along. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, our collection of bite-sized mixing tutorials and Portfolio Builder, which are pro quality multitracks that are cleared for use in your portfolio. You can find out [email protected]. I'm going to keep this intro short and sweet. Earlier this week, I flew to LA along with Mr. Sean O'Keefe to conduct this podcast with Patrick Stump, who's the singer from Fallout. Boy. Sean O'Keefe is on Nail the Mix this month, April, 2019, and he's basically follow-up boy's, original producer who produced that new track that we're doing Lake Effect Kid, well, new Old Track. So I got them in a room together and we talked about the old days and also kind of how it came full circle. It's just a cool episode. I'll shut up. Enjoy Patrick and Sean, welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. Very stoked to have both of you here.

Speaker 3 (00:02:00):

Stoked to be here. Same here. Yeah, thanks.

Speaker 2 (00:02:02):

Let's just get right into it. You guys have known each other a really long time.

Speaker 4 (00:02:06):

Yeah, I guess we have. I was thinking about today, I forgot that Sean recorded my first band, my first real band. I was about 14, and it was a really kind of weird, bad new metal hardcore band. Oh, I could be wrong with that. Yeah. Well, it's the kind of thing that in retrospect, my uncle at the time was like, like, take pictures, man. Take pictures. And we didn't. And that's the great thing is there's not a lot of pictures out there of me with the pants, the JCO pants and the, is that what you had? And the spiky hair. And I didn't really have the hair for it, but I had the spiky hair and I don't know, it was a moment.

Speaker 3 (00:02:49):

It was pretty good. I won't mention the name of the band unless, yeah, no, no, no. Thank you. I can reserve that one.

Speaker 4 (00:02:55):

How long ago was that? I was about 14.

Speaker 3 (00:02:58):

Yeah. Sweet.

Speaker 4 (00:02:58):

That was like 20 years ago. It

Speaker 3 (00:03:00):

Was like 20 years

Speaker 4 (00:03:00):

Ago.

Speaker 3 (00:03:03):

You could do the math. Yeah, that's right. And the interesting thing is that, so I had my little studio, which is where we met. We met at the studio, and I had recorded all of you guys in Fall Up Boy in separate bands. Separate bands,

Speaker 4 (00:03:19):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:03:19):

Joe in a separate band. Andy and Pete were in the band together.

Speaker 4 (00:03:23):

Yeah. Arm evangelists. Yeah. You

Speaker 2 (00:03:24):

Recorded them together. Well, I want to understand something. I know you're not 50 years old. Were you the kid in high school who had the rig?

Speaker 3 (00:03:34):

I was, but when we did that, I was just out of high school, so I must have been 18 or 19. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:03:43):

When we did that first thing. Yeah. I mean, from the outside it was basically this thing where Ka Sean had been in a lot of bands and a lot of the bands around it was a small community of punk rock bands in the Chicago suburbs. And Sean had been the drummer in a lot of these bands. And it was pretty apparent early on because he started recording everybody that you seem to be more interested in the recording part. You still played drums and you still did it, but it was really obvious. And so it was within, it kind of exploded in a very short amount of time where everyone was like, we got to go to Sean because I remember you did the Danny and the Ketchups record. That's

Speaker 5 (00:04:25):

Right.

Speaker 4 (00:04:25):

That was my band, which is your band. And then in the span of maybe two years or something, it was like everyone was trying to record at Rosebud or whatever.

Speaker 3 (00:04:36):

It really became a scene. I think it was that more than anything, it was just like we were all friends, bands were friendly with each other, and I just happened to be the guy who had the little recording set up and it was like, yeah, come in and record. Well,

Speaker 4 (00:04:48):

He knew what he was doing. That was the other

Speaker 3 (00:04:49):

Thing. At least I was able to fake it.

Speaker 2 (00:04:53):

Just out of curiosity, what was the rig? Do you remember?

Speaker 3 (00:04:57):

Yeah. Yeah. It was an Aada machine. Yeah. Or maybe two ADAT machines. But yeah, it was ADAT Machine and Okay. And so Patrick was a drummer in that band at the time. I didn't know Patrick as a singer. Did you even sing

Speaker 4 (00:05:13):

That ing? No, I didn't sing. So the singing happened very much by accident because I couldn't, it was weird. Everyone kind of is finding their place. Sean was kind of figuring out that he really wanted to record, and that was more your thing. Even though he's a very, very good drummer, it's just kind of one of those don't come up all that much anymore. And I was kind of one of these guys that was on the periphery where there were a good two or three other drummers who were so good, who were so much better than me. I was about Rocky. Yes, Rocky. Rocky and DeMar. Those two guys, DeMar ended up in plain white tees whenever bands would, because drummers, that's one of the things that's the premium that everyone's looking for. Everyone's looking for a drummer in every scene. Everyone's looking for the drummer.

(00:06:02):

So every good band would go out for Rocky DeMar, and then I was the third guy. You would call him maybe, and I would never get it, but I would always audition and stuff. I got in a couple bands, but I was kind of one of the also rans, and it was really frustrating for me because I was like, I just want to have a capacity to write songs or be part of the songwriting or part of that thing of, I like being in a studio. I always knew I liked being in a studio and I wanted to be part of the creative, and the drummer really didn't get to do that much in the bands I was in. It was kind of, you had a songwriter or songwriters and you were on the outside. But yeah, I had been a drummer and the singing was literally, it was me just being like, I'll do anything if you guys let me write songs.

Speaker 2 (00:06:54):

Was production kind of like that for you? I didn't know that Sean, like that you were a drummer, but you wanted to have more involvement in the actual creative process and found production as your calling?

Speaker 3 (00:07:08):

I don't know. I don't know if I can say that. I don't know. I think I just was interested in recording basically, and definitely had the thing where I was a drummer and I played in bands. But yeah, the drummers around me, the good drummers in the bands around me were noticeably like, holy, those guys are good. I better figure out something else. But

Speaker 2 (00:07:31):

It's really good, I think, and I think it actually is really tough when you're young to realize maybe I'm not great at this one thing, but there's this other thing that I could probably kill at.

Speaker 4 (00:07:45):

And I think for a lot of people that get into recording, especially, and songwriting especially, is you realize, you look around and you see instrumentalists, proper instrumentalists. Rocky was a Fullblown drummer, and he lived and breathed drumming and was so good at it

Speaker 6 (00:08:01):

And

Speaker 4 (00:08:02):

There was no competing with it. Right. There was no chance that you were ever going to do it their life. Exactly. That's a real full-blown instrumentalist. And guys like Sean and I, and this is a thing that we kind of bonded on, it's like, well, I'm not the best drummer, but I'm good enough and I'm not the best guitar player, but I'm good enough. I'm not the best anything, but I can kind of play a lot of things. And you start to go like, oh, maybe my role is more like I know what everyone should do, and it kind becomes producing, you know what I mean? Not like that arrogant, what everyone should do, but you know, have a way of communicating with other musicians that maybe an instrumentalist, a strict instrumentalist might not be able to. Because one thing that I noticed pretty early on was like, oh, because I am kind of an okay drummer, even though I'm not the best drummer, I can communicate better with my drummer than the guitar players can.

Speaker 5 (00:09:01):

And

Speaker 4 (00:09:01):

Because I'm also a guitar player, you kind of become a, and Sean's also a multi-instrumentalist. I think

Speaker 3 (00:09:08):

The language definitely opens up. Yeah, it definitely helps, doesn't it?

Speaker 4 (00:09:12):

I was listening to a conductor on NPR talk about having to understand the mechanics of every instrument in an orchestra, and

Speaker 2 (00:09:22):

It's kind of not, I can confirm that it's true because my dad's a conductor.

Speaker 4 (00:09:26):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:09:27):

Oh,

Speaker 4 (00:09:27):

No kidding.

Speaker 2 (00:09:28):

Yeah, that's what he does. And when he was in university

Speaker 4 (00:09:33):

Back

Speaker 2 (00:09:33):

In the 18 hundreds, he double majored in violin and percussion, but also new piano and accordion of all things. But that

Speaker 4 (00:09:43):

Accordion's a mystery.

Speaker 2 (00:09:44):

Yeah. I don't know how that happened, but it did. I think that was his first instrument. That understanding is what led him to be world-class at conducting.

Speaker 4 (00:09:54):

And you have to be fluent in it, is what they were talking about, which I don't want to make, I don't really know anything on the scale of an actual conductor, but in a little punk rock sense when you're in a punk rock basement band,

Speaker 2 (00:10:10):

But you know what you need to do for your world.

Speaker 4 (00:10:14):

Yeah, exactly. And so you have a better idea. It kind of just became connective tissue. And I think watching the way Sean grew into a producer, it was extended out of that where somebody in the room has to know how to tie it together when you're in a basement and whatever, one of the four or five of you has to have some idea of what the second guitar line should be or what this harmony line's going to be or

Speaker 5 (00:10:45):

That

Speaker 4 (00:10:45):

Kind of stuff. And so that was pretty early on. That was the thing that I think everyone knew about. Sean was like, when he was around, you were going to sound better.

Speaker 2 (00:10:56):

This is an interesting thing that actually someone I work with told me about that, like a term from business and sorry, business people if I butcher this, but basically T-shaped people versus eye shaped people, and an eye shaped person is basically down the street and narrow like an instrumentalist. The person who for 30 years didn't go more than one day at a time without practicing guitar, six hours. And that is their life. That is what they do. I mean, they can write a little, and maybe they can operate pro tools a little, but guitar, guitar, guitar. And that is what they do. And then there's people who have one thing that they're pretty damn good at pretty damn good compared to most. But then there's a bunch of other things that they have more of a broad understanding in. So those are the people that usually can communicate the vision and that's why they make good producers, for instance, or songwriters. It is interesting.

Speaker 3 (00:11:56):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:11:57):

I mean, it makes a lot of sense. I feel like the, sorry.

Speaker 3 (00:12:00):

No, wait, I have a question for you then because Okay, so I briefly knew you at that point, right? Yeah. But then, and I'll, okay, and I'll get to when I discovered that you were a singer, funny, and I have to tell story because it's a fantastic story, but actually my question is, and I guess I've actually never asked you this or really understood it, so when did you start doing that? So in high school, doing the singing? In writing.

Speaker 4 (00:12:26):

So I had always tried to be a writer. That's like the, so for me, even from when

Speaker 3 (00:12:32):

You came in?

Speaker 4 (00:12:33):

Oh, yeah. They didn't really, I didn't know that that band didn't really have, it was kind of one of these things where since I was a little kid, I would compose and write. I wasn't really one of these people that would write Oh shit, huh. Yeah. I wasn't really one of these people. I guess it shouldn't be surprising. I don't know. I mean, I did that more that led me to play instruments. That was more the thing is to write. I wanted to compose really strictly melodically harmonically. That was what I wanted to do. From the time I was really little, I remember my brother got, so my brother and I shared a room and he had this Casio in the corner of the room, and he had gotten the soundtrack to 1980 nine's Batman, thinking it was going to be the Denny Elfman soundtrack is a good one, which is amazing.

(00:13:22):

But he got the prince cassette by accident. He's like, well, I don't want this. And he's like, if you want this, you can have this. And I wore that thing out. I was obsessed with it. I was about five years old, and I listened to that every day. But I also loved the Danny Elman score, and my brother had that too. So I just obsessed over those two sides of that score. Interesting. And really, I feel like it's one of those things where if you listen to anything I've ever done, that should be obvious that I was really obsessed. Totally, totally makes sense though. I was really obsessed with the 1989 Batman soundtrack. That's fantastic. Fantastic. But anyway, so it was me trying to do those things, and I was kind of an ass when I was little. I didn't really want to study or practice, and I just could play drums. It wasn't a thing I had to practice at. And I think that kind of stunted me too, because I was never going to be a shredder, but me not practicing pretty decent. It was better than the other kids in the snare line or whatever. And so I kind of just relaxed on that. And I think in a lot of ways, that's kind of how I fell into drums. But it was always with the bent of, I want to write your songs. And

Speaker 2 (00:14:34):

So were drums kind of a mean to an end, almost

Speaker 4 (00:14:37):

Mean, but then there's also they were in terms of this is how I play in bands. But then there's also that innate, I'm one of those people I know a lot of us are, most of us that do music are this, but where you'll be tapping on things and beating out rhythms on the table without knowing it or whatever. So I do think there's that kind of thing where it's, well, I didn't necessarily practice, but I'm probably always practicing

Speaker 6 (00:15:06):

On

Speaker 4 (00:15:06):

Some level in terms of limb dependence. I'll be driving and whatever. Well, my right foot's on the brake, so my left foot's doing the kick.

Speaker 3 (00:15:15):

That's the one that needs more work anyway.

Speaker 4 (00:15:16):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, totally. So you find yourself subconsciously doing these things. So drums, they weren't necessarily the means to an end, but I think I fell into them because I had the earliest start on him where guitar was a little bit harder for me. My dad's a guitar player, and I would, oh, I didn't know that. So I would my hands, he had this, is

Speaker 3 (00:15:42):

He a writer? Did he write?

Speaker 4 (00:15:43):

Yeah, he wrote songs write, he still writes. He's out there playing songs, but he used to have a 12 string harmony from the sixties or whatever that he took every other string off. And he let us have as our guitar. That's cool. But it was so wide, and you're a little kid and you can't get your

Speaker 2 (00:16:01):

Hands. Great. That seems great.

Speaker 4 (00:16:03):

It was very painful. And so that's what I learned guitar on, and I just couldn't get anything to happen. So drums, I could flip over a bucket and make that happen.

Speaker 3 (00:16:13):

Yeah, right. Wait, okay. Well, it's funny. I'm just trying to piece together all this time between the drumming and when I discovered you as a singer, I literally never thought

Speaker 4 (00:16:24):

Of me singing. That was never part of the thing, but me singing happened because progressively I got more and more frustrated with the lack of capacity to contribute to the music.

Speaker 5 (00:16:39):

I

Speaker 4 (00:16:39):

Just, all I wanted to do, the only reason I wanted to be in bands was to be part of writing the music. And part of the, there's something about when I was a little kid, I got a tape recorder from my grandparents, this little blue tape recorder, and it blew my mind that I could take that tape recorder and take my mom's tape recorder, borrow my mom's, and I would record, I'd press record, sing into it, and then I could play it back on the other one and press record and I could start layering things. And it was, that's amazing. It was the coolest thing, and it was so exciting. Had the similar, I think that it's the coolest thing, and it was such a eyeopening thing. You're playing with harmonies, and that was really what composition was to me, was the idea of I can layer these things together. And so it was kind of interwoven with recording to me, but I was in bands and they wouldn't let me do it. It was this thing. It's the silliest thing. I don't know where it comes from, even though all the drummers that I know are the most musically capable people I know, but they're like, oh, well, drummers aren't musicians.

Speaker 2 (00:17:48):

I think that, especially in the late nineties and stuff, there was that stigma about drummers. I don't know if it's true so much anymore, but I know exactly what you're talking about.

Speaker 4 (00:17:59):

What a weird thing it was though. It was this big cultural thing. It was almost like the dumb blonde jokes where it was like the drummer jokes, this stereotype that came out of nowhere where you're like, what? I mean, the guy that has the most limited dependence.

Speaker 2 (00:18:12):

It's weird. At least the thing I've noticed coming from the metal world is drummers have gotten a lot better. So I do think they're respected a lot more. I remember maybe when I started recording professionally in 2002 or three, just getting someone to play to a clique was like, I was asking them to hurt a family member or something.

Speaker 4 (00:18:35):

Well, yeah. I mean, people used to get so offended about it, especially I think it's something like metal where it's like part of the weight of it is how much everything's landing on that, on exactly that same rhythm. Right.

(00:18:48):

But yeah, it's really funny. There's also stylistic choices. I remember recording with a guy when I was a drummer and when we were listening back, he had my kick just almost inaudible. It was kind like a skate punk band, and my kick drum was just not there. And I'm like, this is 90% of this band is that one instrument. And he's like, well, you didn't use very many dynamics. And I'm like, come on, turn the face around. Exactly. Yeah. No, but anyway, but the click thing, that's one of those ones that I've learned a lot about that on working on, take this to your grave,

Speaker 6 (00:19:30):

Me Too,

Speaker 4 (00:19:31):

Was the way you can groove within a click. Absolutely. That's almost, it's funny, people be like, oh, I don't need a click. I mean, you can't feel the beat. And it's like, no, it's harder, I think to feel the beat within the click to feel your groove within a click. I mean,

Speaker 2 (00:19:46):

It's hard.

Speaker 4 (00:19:47):

It's tough. It's like,

Speaker 2 (00:19:48):

Plus this is a big one. I think you can program clicks to speed up and slow down, which

Speaker 4 (00:19:54):

I do all the time, depending on what it is. But yes, you can. And it's like,

Speaker 2 (00:19:57):

So there's no reason not.

Speaker 4 (00:19:59):

Yeah, it's a very, well, I guess maybe in the days of, because I know we're all old enough to have dealt with tape and probably had a recording where we had to record a metronome track. So if you've ever done, and if you've ever done that, then you know, couldn't program that. True. But otherwise,

Speaker 3 (00:20:24):

I got to give the story then of when I discovered you were a singer because Okay, so from that gap of when, I guess you're 14 to, when

Speaker 4 (00:20:34):

Was that? I was about 17, so it was really about three years from the time we met to time. You

Speaker 3 (00:20:38):

Were still in high school.

Speaker 4 (00:20:38):

Holy was still very much in high school. And so yeah, the background was, I just got sick and tired of no one letting me write songs, and that was the only reason I even tried to sing.

Speaker 2 (00:20:50):

So did you have songs written or were you just

Speaker 4 (00:20:52):

Okay. Yeah, I had written, I was always writing. And it's also one of those things where in high school, I think everyone writes poetry of some kind, and then I grew out of that very much, but that made it easy. But it was always about the composition. It was always about, I really want the syncopation of what this guitar is doing against this baseline. That kind of stuff was always

Speaker 3 (00:21:14):

What

Speaker 4 (00:21:14):

I wanted to do, and no one would let me have any say in that unless I sang it.

Speaker 3 (00:21:18):

It's interesting how then Point essentially became the first real time for you to basically explode with those ideas, right?

Speaker 4 (00:21:25):

Yeah. No one would really let me, real recording. I didn't really get to, like I said, and I got better as a drummer, so I was getting in better and better bands and people would seek me out to be in bands, but they still wouldn't let me.

Speaker 3 (00:21:42):

Interesting.

Speaker 4 (00:21:42):

Couldn't write anything.

Speaker 3 (00:21:43):

Okay. So this is how I remember it, and you tell me if I'm wrong, it could be wrong. But so fast forwarding the few years, and I am making a record for our friend's band called Knockout. Yes. DeMar, who's now in the Tease was in Knockout

Speaker 4 (00:22:02):

DeMar, the great drummer. The

Speaker 3 (00:22:04):

Great drummer and Knockout had just been signed to an indie label. And this was the first real quote record I had ever made on label.

Speaker 4 (00:22:14):

And the first, and by the way, also, it's kind of this thing that gets forgotten in the Animals of History. That was the first of any of our friends' bands to get a deal somewhere. That was a really big thing for a huge moment. This band, knockout

Speaker 3 (00:22:26):

Fearless Records, fearless, I'm pretty sure. And it was a huge thing. We were all in playing these basement shows and all this stuff,

Speaker 4 (00:22:33):

All for single, for all of these little bands. That was was a big, big thing. Big.

Speaker 2 (00:22:39):

Just out of curiosity, just not to derail you, I'm just curious about this. So when your friend's band got signed back then, and it was that big of a deal, you guys were saying, did your local scene support them or hate them?

Speaker 4 (00:22:54):

Well, the weird thing about that scene was it wasn't really coalesced enough. It was this kind of thing that flew under the radar. So it was the funniest thing In Chicago. We had this scene that supported itself very much, but it was really pretty small.

Speaker 5 (00:23:12):

And

Speaker 4 (00:23:12):

When we would go to play shows at Fireside, or if any of us got lucky enough to play Metro or whatever, you were really playing with Midwestern emo bands, really newly, really technical emo bands, old old style emo, or you were playing with fat records, pop punk bands, and there was a really solid scene of those kinds of bands. And they hated all of this stuff. None of those bands wanted anything to do with us. So it was really kind of a lot of these misfit bands that it was kind of pop punk. But then there were also, we all kind of came out of, there were kind of semi hardcore bands in there too, and semi ska bands. You were in a ska band. Yeah, totally. Yeah. It was all this kind of, basically any of the bands that couldn't get arrested in the old fashioned emo thing or in the Fat records pop punk thing, we all kind of came together. So it was a very supportive scene. I think after, I would assume later it became not as supportive, but at the time, this was a big, big deal for all of us. It

Speaker 3 (00:24:18):

Was really cool. And it was like, yeah, okay. So a few years later, knockout got signed. I'm making the record and I'm making it at my little studio that we were doing all these records at, and where I met Patrick. And during the course of that record, Pete, who I knew and was friends with the band, was hanging out during those sessions. And this is the part, I'm pretty sure I'm right, but I'm curious if I'm wrong, Pete, he would come by and go, Hey, Sean, I've started a new band, and I think he even referred to it as, it's kind of a joke band. It

Speaker 4 (00:24:55):

Was a joke band. We were very much a joke band. Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:24:58):

Can't be sure. Yeah. And he was like, it's kind of a joke, but he goes,

Speaker 4 (00:25:01):

Well, Pete was formally in Arm Angelis and they were touring with Hate Breed and stuff. It was a real band. So it would've been stupid at the time to leave that band for some silly pop punk band. It just didn't. It was more of a thing he was doing for fun, interesting, whatever.

Speaker 3 (00:25:17):

So I remember he had a cassette and he's like, I got demos. Would you listen to him and consider recording us? And he goes, Patrick is the singer. And I go, Patrick's the singer. And he's like, yeah. And so this was during the course of me making my first record for Label. I'm working 20 hours there, whatever. And I didn't listen to it. And Pete would come back and he'd be like, you listen to that demo. I was like, I haven't listened to it yet. You listen to that demo. I haven't listened to it yet. And then one day we're doing background vocals for the knockout record in the afternoon, and Jeff, the singer, I assume it was Jeff or one of the guys, says, we're going to have Patrick come by and he's going to do harmonies on one song. And I was like, oh yeah, I've heard Patrick's like a singer. Like, all right, cool.

Speaker 2 (00:26:02):

Did you have that feeling? You get sometimes when you hear that a member of a band's going to do some vocals, and it's like, fuck, kind Get he did. You know what?

Speaker 4 (00:26:13):

I can confirm that he did because I walked into the booth and it was very much because also context. You got to understand, Sean had only ever recorded me when I was the okay drummer. I was also 14 at the time when I recorded, and I was the okay drummer in a not so good band. So that's all he knew about me. He had no reason to think I was going to do anything but suck in there,

Speaker 3 (00:26:36):

Which probably made for even a better turnout of the story because, okay, so I remember Patrick coming in, and before you even went in the booth, I think we were talking about getting food like Subway, I think Subway. And if I can say that, and we were making an order, and I remember you specifically going, I'm hungry, but I don't want to eat until after I'm done singing.

Speaker 5 (00:26:58):

Yes, this is true.

Speaker 3 (00:26:58):

Okay, good. I'm glad because I've told this story a few times, that's a hundred percent true. I was like, all right. And so Patrick goes in to do harmonies on one, one

Speaker 4 (00:27:09):

Song's just going to be one background thing.

Speaker 3 (00:27:11):

And in my memory killed it. And I was like, oh, this is awesome. And I was like, holy shit. Not only, I was like, you sound awesome. But I was like, these harmonies are great. And just in Patrick's nature of harmony and melodies pumping them out and the band, the guys in the band I think were a lot of bands were not so that their forte was doing harmonies. And so we had this whole record.

Speaker 4 (00:27:37):

So yeah, they had had this harmonic thing, but none of them were really harmony singers. So they had all of them could sing, I think, but none of them released. But all of them kind of were like the lead singer. Meanwhile, you had spent all this time

Speaker 2 (00:27:53):

In secret developing harmonies and layering stuff

Speaker 3 (00:27:56):

With my tape recorder. And so boom, this comes out, and all of a sudden to me it's like, holy shit. All of a sudden, this now sounds like a record that I'm used to hearing. This is the final layer. And I just remember, remember it as I was like, that's it. I was like, you're doing the rest of these songs or one more? I was like, we need you on another,

Speaker 4 (00:28:19):

Something

Speaker 3 (00:28:20):

Like that. And like

Speaker 4 (00:28:21):

It was all night, and I didn't eat for,

Speaker 3 (00:28:24):

It went on. I had Patrick do harmonies. I'm pretty sure it's like nine or 10 out of the 11 songs on that record, if not all of 'em

Speaker 4 (00:28:30):

In one sitting. And I didn't eat until you didn't.

Speaker 3 (00:28:33):

We were done. That was the best part is the guy's freaking

Speaker 4 (00:28:36):

Starving. It was okay though. Yeah. And the thing is too, I mean, for me, that was the coolest thing because all I wanted was to have some capacity to influence the harmonic structure of music. I was never wanted to be the league guitar player. I never wanted to be the star of a thing. But when I was playing drums, I didn't get to be any, A bass player can change it from the root to a suspension, and that's so much power that a bass player has a drummer. You can change a lot, but you never really impact the harmonic structure. And that was the coolest thing for me. Someone was finally letting me do that, and I was like, sure, I'll stay here all night. I think my mom was like, where are you? That's great.

Speaker 2 (00:29:28):

It's interesting. I just wanted to say, you've been talking about harmonic structure a lot. One of the things that I wanted to talk about just in my notes, was about melody writing. And obviously without great harmonic movement and structure and getting that right, there's not going to be a good melody that can come of it. So was that the goal?

Speaker 4 (00:29:52):

Oh, yeah. And it's so funny because I feel like I know this, I know we all know this because we all work in music and we all, it's beating your head against a wall. No one even on the periphery ever gets that. It's always like melody, melody, melody, and you're like, the melody is the least important thing, really. I mean, at the end of the day, and I know that sounds ridiculous, but the melody is entirely dependent on what's happening around it

Speaker 2 (00:30:15):

A hundred percent.

Speaker 4 (00:30:16):

Or even what's implied. So even if you have, I was thinking of that zombie song where it starts off and it's just a lead vocal solo. It's so much of what makes that vocal work, even though it's a solo vocal, is the implied harmonics of what's what you're being led to believe. The chord structure is what moves it. So without the harmony, the melody means nothing to me. And that's always one of the things that I get really frustrated with is it's one of the reasons why I kind of quit the songwriter for hire thing. Because when you're in a songwriting session, you're with somebody else, and I'm like, what are the hard things to do? I think the hardest thing is to find the lyric because especially in pop songs, that's the thing. Everyone walks away remembering. That's the hard part, really, the groove that's like the other, that's the thing.

(00:31:14):

If there are songs, terrible songs that have a good lyric and a good groove and everything else is awful, that work. The very successful songs that have a great groove and a really solid lyric and garbage, everything else. So you're already most of the way there, but every time people be like, melody, melody, and they start humming or something, I'm like, don't do that. Don't even be tempted to do that. Figure out the rest of it first. And then it's almost like writing dialogue. I read a screenwriting book one time and they talked about dialogue is the fun part. Do that last, because that's the hard part. You have to earn that kind of, when you're working on it, it's like you know that you can write the dialogue. You have to build the story first. You have to build the whatever. You have to build the framework of what your characters are going to be interacting in. And that's how I think about melody is melody is the fun part. Get to that last, because if you don't have the backbone of the song, you, melody doesn't matter at all. That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:32:10):

You can just, not to trivialize great melodies, but that's the part that you can improvise and emote and get inspired over. But you're right, without setting the stage for it, it's nothing. And it's the same, not just with vocals, with great guitar solos, that Hotel California solo would not be what it is without

Speaker 4 (00:32:31):

That

Speaker 2 (00:32:32):

Harmonic movement.

Speaker 4 (00:32:33):

No, no question. And I think that's one of the things, I also think it's a problem as a singer with vocals is that people don't really tend to think of vocals as an instrument, don't tend to think of it in terms of what it's doing melodically within a harmonic structure. Even when I started, I found myself, I was on a record with Neil Aron, who produced us after we worked with Sean, and I was I in the booth for something and there was a passing note. I can't remember. It was just in between two notes. I had this little run and he's like, well, what note is that? What note are you trying to hit there? And I'm like, I don't know. And he's like, you should know. You should have a plan for everything your voice is doing should be a note. I mean, it shouldn't be, even if you're doing some sort of mento thing, you should still know exactly where you're starting and where you're ending.

Speaker 3 (00:33:21):

It's interesting how a lot of singers, sometimes they don't know that I don't mean it in a bad way, but

Speaker 2 (00:33:26):

They really don't.

Speaker 3 (00:33:27):

Yeah, it's interesting sometimes if I'll be in the studio with a singer who's having a hard time, I'll ask, can you play that on the piano? Do you know that melody? And sometimes it'll take them a while to find it, but it's cool. At least I've seen times when they do find it and they make some connection. It's like, oh, holy cow. These are just

Speaker 4 (00:33:47):

Like, no. I mean, it's a huge part of it. In fact, on take this to your grave there, there's a moment. Maybe it's on Where's Your Boy? I would love for it to be on Where's Your Boy? That was such a landmark song for us in recording, but where there was a harmony that I was working on and I kept kind of singing it out and you're like, it was a three part harmony. And my first part Laird really well, but then my second part, I kept going into this kind of rub seventh or something, or a unison somewhere, I can't remember what it was. And you said, Patrick, go figure it out in tryout. Oh, really?

Speaker 2 (00:34:26):

Do you mean that it kind of just hits you the wrong way? Yeah. Well, something doesn't jive

Speaker 4 (00:34:31):

With it. It was just rubbing wrong. It was just sounding wrong together. And you were go sit at the piano and figure out in triads, what are you playing in all the vocal parts? And I was like, oh, oh. It was something like that where it was a seventh or a ninth that when you sang it as a melody, because I was thinking of it as a lead part or whatever, when you sing it as a melody, it sounded really cool against the chord structure, but with what's already happening in the, I think it created, you know what it was, I do remember this, whatever it was, it created a minor second in something the guitar was doing. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:35:05):

Is that right? Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:35:05):

And so it was like, well, just don't do that.

Speaker 3 (00:35:10):

Let's

Speaker 4 (00:35:11):

Just not do that. Let's just not do that.

Speaker 2 (00:35:13):

So you said you were untrained, but obviously you're not untrained. Where did you pick that up?

Speaker 4 (00:35:20):

Just kind of watching and listening. And I have kind of studied a lot, especially since I was doing the scoring thing. You can't, even though I know a lot of guys who get away with it just with, well, I wrote it in Logic, and this is what the thing is, you hire strings and they have questions that

Speaker 2 (00:35:41):

Yes, they do,

Speaker 4 (00:35:42):

That you can't really answer if you don't really know what you're talking about. So I have had to study a lot. I probably learned more about the terminology for music theory in the past three years than I did the entire time I was working on records. But it's one of those things too, where a lot of it makes sense. That's the thing I think that's scary for a lot of people about music theory is that it sounds so strange and scary, but then you're like, no, no, no. I mean, it's Howard Hansen's concepts of dissonance and consonance where it's like dissonance are just the ones that sound funny next to each other. That's all it is. And sometimes you want that, sometimes you don't. That's all it is, is that, and you know that implicitly, everyone knows that when you hear, even if you don't really understand music, you know that the Twilight Zone theme, you know that those notes are rubbing against each other. That's the intended effect. That's what it sounds like.

Speaker 2 (00:36:42):

I think also people are afraid of it because there's this myth that it's going to rob 'em of their creativity.

Speaker 4 (00:36:48):

I think that's a big thing. Total

Speaker 3 (00:36:49):

Bullshit. You'll lose

Speaker 4 (00:36:50):

The innocence. I couldn't agree more. I feel like that's one of those things that I have a lot of Berkeley friends and they would always tell me, oh, you don't want to learn this stuff. It is just going to ruin you. You're never going to know how to write and all this other stuff. It's such nonsense. I really think it is. Because to me, I'm like, if anything, the more I learn, the more I'm like, oh, it's just a shortcut to what you hear in your head where you're like, and also you can dissect records in a way, dissect music in a way where you're like, oh, I thought he was doing this. This is what they're actually doing. These little things harmonically where you're like, that's the purpose of this chord. That's the purpose of this rhythm. Even things like I was reading the other day about micro rhythms, and it's all these things that we do without thinking about where, oh, the snare is late on the whatever. You do these things implicitly, but when you have some sort of nomenclature for it, some sort of language for it, you're like, oh, I know how to communicate this now.

Speaker 3 (00:37:52):

I mean, it makes sense. It's like if you found something in your creative flow that starts to work for you, and even if you don't fully understand it, it makes sense that it's easy to become scared of losing that. It's like, if I learn this, I'm totally scared I'm going to lose what's what's good. But yeah, totally. And I think that, yeah, it is often, I find it to be often it's true that when you learn something, you just get better. It's like, of course. Of course. Wow,

Speaker 2 (00:38:26):

What an idea. My take on it is that I went to Berkeley. I know those people that are like harmonic wizards who write total garbage. Most of the instructors, the funniest thing was that an arranging class, the teacher who was just walking encyclopedia of arrangement theory, all that stuff, she played us her music, she just got it recorded and it was like the worst thing I've ever heard. But my take is that they weren't going to write good stuff anyways, it's independent of each other. Harmonic knowledge and talent for writing are not, they're two independent variables. And if you put them together, like someone that is a good writer and they know their shit, that's awesome.

Speaker 4 (00:39:13):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:39:14):

But it's not one or the other.

Speaker 4 (00:39:15):

Well, it's funny you mentioned that. My brother has no particular, he hasn't really carried on with a particular interest in music, but he's a very gifted writer. When we were kids, he's about five years older than me, and when we were kids, he would sit there and plunk out these songs, and one of his best buddies ended up teaching theory at Yale, and he was so frustrated with this is a guy who spent his whole life devoted it to music and the study of it. And my brother would sit at a piano and just not really thinking, just plunk out something really catchy. And really, you would find yourself humming. And he's like, how do you do that? His friend's like, how do you do that? That's ridiculous. And my brother's like, I dunno. But there is an innate thing where some people I think just you just write or you just compose or whatever. And I think it's a funny thing too, where it's like you said, they don't have to be mutually exclusive, but they're not, one doesn't necessarily guarantee the other.

Speaker 2 (00:40:16):

No, absolutely not. I mean, I don't think though that getting good at one is going to negate the other. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:40:24):

I don't think so either.

Speaker 2 (00:40:25):

Absolutely. Like you said, the more you learn,

Speaker 4 (00:40:27):

The better you get, the more, well, not to mention, I also think that we do tend to, there's a certain degree of snobbery that I'm guilty of too sometimes where you think of somebody who isn't trained as not being capable of writing, and then you're disproven about that all the time. Some people just write really great songs without having really any clue what they're doing. Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:40:48):

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. 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, OPPE, Shuga, bring Me The Horizon Gaira asking Alexandria 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.

(00:41:44):

And Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for use your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. 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 Mixed 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 Do Academy slash enhanced to find out more. I just went to Denmark for the last nail the mix, and the guy that we worked with, his name's Jacob Hansen, great producer, great mixer. He does all this European metal stuff. And we were doing, we did a class about mixing orchestra

Speaker 5 (00:43:02):

With

Speaker 2 (00:43:03):

Metal, and we're using the newest Flesh God apocalypse, which is one of the most extreme bands on the planet. But the guy in the band that writes the orchestration is a legitimate orchestrator of Jacob who was the instructor. And the mixer knows zero about theory orchestration. Yet the mix is incredible. It's absolutely incredible. So I totally do think whether it's a writer or a producer or mixer, you don't have to know that stuff. What's most important is how you hear it in your head and whether or not you can translate it. But if you do want to communicate with string players, if you want to communicate with an orchestra, you better speak their language.

Speaker 4 (00:43:47):

Well, especially, that's the thing is when it's a couple buddies in a basement or whatever, it's easy to use shorthand. But when 70 players that they're, they're on a schedule, they don't have any vested interest in what you're doing, they don't care. That's one of the things that is really funny. When you record strings or choir or something really quickly, you learn like, oh, this is a job. They're here to work. They don't care about your song. They're not interesting. You tell them what they need to do and they're going to do it. And then the second that clock is up out of the road. So yeah, definitely it helps to know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (00:44:28):

So back to talking about when you shocked him with vocals. How did you get them? You said you were having trouble getting people to take you seriously enough to let you do any vocals. How did you get them to let you do vocals in the first place to where anyone even recommended it to him? Well,

Speaker 4 (00:44:48):

So I've told this story a lot, so I'll try not to give the canned version, but the band, basically, Pete and Joe had wanted to start a pop punk band or something melodic, something more fun because they had been in, really, they were doing exclusively really heavy bands, and that was all they did. And they just wanted to play around with something fun. And my last band had broken up, and there had been a pretty long drought. I was kind of surprised. It was usually, it was pretty easy for me to get into bands and I would audition for stuff and get something or whatever. And there was this kind of, I can't remember how long it was, but in teenage terms, it felt like eons

(00:45:34):

Where no one was really letting me play in their band or whatever. And I bumped into Joe and he was talking about Pete once, and they were putting together a band. I'm like, we, he's in real bands tour and stuff. And I was like, well, I want to see what that is. I want to see what the vibe is. And Joe had said, they're looking for a guitar player, a singer, and a drummer. At the point, it was just Pete and Joe. And I'm like, I was kind of bluffing. I'd only ever played drums in bands, but I was like, I could do one of those, I'm sure in a pop punk band, whatever. I was being kind of arrogant. I didn't take pop punk very seriously. I'm like, sure, whatever one of those I'm sure I could do. But I went in with an agenda of, I'm going to play my song.

(00:46:17):

I'm going to play a couple songs for them and see if I can get them to take my songs. All I really wanted. I wanted to make songs and make music really. But I had my kit set up in the corner knowing that that was what was going to be the thing. They come over, I play them a couple songs, and it wasn't even in my mind to even consider being a singer at most. I was like, well, I could be the rhythm guitar player and who does maybe backups or something, but that was never even a thought of mine.

Speaker 5 (00:46:52):

Interesting.

Speaker 4 (00:46:53):

And I play a couple songs and they lean over to each other and Pete goes, I think this guy should sing. And Joe had told him that, by the way, Joe had heard something I had done. I posted some song somewhere. Again, I think I was trying to just get people to let me write songs. And I posted on mp3.com or something, whatever, a song that I had written or something. And Joe had heard that, and he is like, oh, this guy can sing. They knew before I did. And it was kind of like, you should sing. And I'm like, what'd you think of the song? And it really started from there. So I mean, it's really one of those Disney movies from the nineties where the kid had no clue, where you just find out that you can throw the football really far. It was just one of those things I had no idea it wasn't. And the other thing too that's weird to me is I didn't know that that wasn't a thing everyone could do. I had no sing. Yeah, I had no idea. I hadn't really had a lot of experience with other people singing, so I didn't know that. I thought everyone could sing to some degree if

Speaker 2 (00:48:05):

Only that were true.

Speaker 4 (00:48:06):

Yeah, yeah. Now I understand. But I had never experienced people singing really badly, I guess. I dunno. And so I didn't know that. And I also, I had the blind luck of being a drummer, so my rhythm was pretty good. So I could do a lot of that. And that also, that was the other thing too, is because I was a drummer then, we're doing all these stacked harmonies and they were lining up really well, which is huge.

Speaker 2 (00:48:31):

Was it a major relief for you? Went in there and knocked it out and you're like, fuck.

Speaker 3 (00:48:37):

Yeah. When he did those background vocals? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:48:39):

Oh

Speaker 3 (00:48:40):

Yeah. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. It was huge. Yeah. Yeah. It was a relief for the record I was working on because it made the record better. It made me feel like I looked better because I had this extra element in the record, like my ego or whatever. And

Speaker 4 (00:48:59):

Sean was amazing at record. I can't stress enough for what we had to work with. It was pretty magical. Going into Sean's studio, I still listen to those records and I listen back on those. I'm like, it's crazy how we pulled this together. Now, this was a long time ago, so now it would be fairly easy to make a record sound like that. At the time, it was a lot of work, and I was very impressed with, I'm still impressed with how good we made those records sound.

Speaker 3 (00:49:27):

I am too, actually. Yeah. Yeah. I think back to that, it just has to be, we were just totally determined, basically. And it had an endless amount of energy and yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:49:36):

We're talking about youthful energy. I remember those days of I can't do it anymore, but 36 hour long sessions, just going for it.

Speaker 4 (00:49:46):

Oh man. Yeah, no, we did all of that. And that was the other thing too, is I think Sean and I both had this kid to candy store kind of thing, where when you have an excuse to stay up till six in the morning working on, I remember the feedback. We spent fucking hours on just like, okay, I'm starting to remember on the feedback, there's this somewhere on Take this Your grave. I think it's between two songs. There's this feedback that goes on for 30 or 40 seconds.

(00:50:22):

We could not have spent more time getting that just so, because there's layers of it. And then it plays across the stereo field where one comes in on the right and then one comes on the left and there's one that comes down the middle. And we're like, no, that's too soon. That one should come here. And I think we actually were going in, and I don't think we had melaine or anything at the time, but we were going in and trying to tune them. Interesting. We were trying to get it to work, and so if it wasn't making exactly the right note, then we would go back and record me standing a little bit further from the amp or whatever. We really, and it's this thing that no one cares about. Yeah. No one cares about now ever. No one cared about it then, or then even in the band. We showed it to the band and

Speaker 3 (00:51:11):

They

Speaker 4 (00:51:11):

Sums up cool. But the two of us were like, oh man, this is,

Speaker 3 (00:51:14):

Yeah, we spent all night. It's funny. Yeah, actually totally randomly, I was driving the other day in my iTunes in my car, if I just get in, sometimes it just shuffles iTunes or whatever. And that song came on from Take This to Your Grave, and I listened through and I hadn't heard it in forever. And I was like, ah. And then in the end happened with that feedback, and I completely forgotten we did it. Which is so funny because other than that happening a few weeks ago, I haven't heard that probably in 15 years. And I do remember thinking like, oh, that's pretty orchestrated or something.

Speaker 4 (00:51:46):

We worked so hard on the damn feedback.

Speaker 3 (00:51:48):

That's pretty good.

Speaker 4 (00:51:49):

But yeah, it's those kind of things. I mean, when you're, we were just not teenagers, I think I still was actually.

Speaker 3 (00:52:00):

You were a teenager.

Speaker 4 (00:52:02):

So you have that thing. And there's also that thing where when you're the kind of person that wants to be in a studio and you have an excuse to be in a studio, it's like we're,

Speaker 2 (00:52:11):

It's

Speaker 4 (00:52:12):

A really cool thing. Oh, it's amazing. You were sleeping there for a while.

Speaker 3 (00:52:15):

Oh, totally. Oh, totally. Yeah. So I have along these lines, this is maybe my all time, one of my favorite stories, and I think I've maybe told it once publicly, but so when we were making the record, and again, you have to stop me if this is wrong, because this is how I remembered it. So when we were making the record, we were up at Smart Studios, a nice full blown recording studio, cutting the rhythm section or guitars and drums and guitars, and we did your scratch focal there, and we cut those guitars to tape. We were on a tape machine, and they have a super fancy mic collection. They had a Norman U 47, a $10,000 microphone,

Speaker 4 (00:53:06):

Which I asked if we could record on. They're like, no, no, you can't denied See it. They let us see it.

Speaker 3 (00:53:13):

And I thought, okay, so maybe this is wrong, but I thought we did a scratch vocal. They had a 2 51 that we couldn't record at, and I'm pretty sure we did a scratch vocal on their 47 to the tape machine. Just as a guide vocal?

Speaker 4 (00:53:27):

No. Okay. I thought they told us we couldn't use the 47 because the capsules degrade over time. The

Speaker 3 (00:53:32):

2 51.

Speaker 4 (00:53:33):

Well, I mean, but 47 does too. The Oh,

Speaker 3 (00:53:35):

No, no, totally. Yeah, I meant, because other times I brought bands up there. The 2 51 was always the one off limits. It was Shirley's mic. Oh, yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:53:45):

Yeah, yeah. But I thought the 47, wasn't that cur Kurt's Mike or something? Wasn't that the deal?

Speaker 3 (00:53:50):

That's the 2 51.

Speaker 4 (00:53:51):

That is the 2 51, yeah. Okay. So we were allowed to use the 47 then.

Speaker 3 (00:53:53):

And I'm certain only because I've used it on many other occasions. But also if we didn't, this whole story goes to shit.

Speaker 2 (00:54:02):

Wasn't an upcharge to use.

Speaker 4 (00:54:03):

No, because garbage owned the studio and they had this 2 51 that was used in utero and then it became Shirley Manson's mic. It was like her vocal mic for everything. It wasn't 2 51. You're right. That's totally the one. But that was her 2 51. It was her 2 51. It was Shirley's. Yeah. And you could look at it in the basement, they would show it to you, but you're not allowed to use it. And yeah. Anyways, okay, so we

Speaker 3 (00:54:33):

Use the 47, we settled for the 40. Oh, we settled for the 47. So darn Patrick does some guide vocal scratch vocals on the 47 basically. So we had a vocal or whatever. So the plan was to do the guitars and bass at Smart. And then because we didn't have enough money to stay there and do all the vocals and the rest of the overdubs, we went back to my little studio where Patrick and I met. It was just this little place. At that point, I had Pro Tools and the plan was do his lead vocals, background vocals and all the other stuff until we mixed it. And I remember we go to do Patrick's lead and I don't have a 47, I have forget what it was at the time, but probably a thousand dollars microphone at the most. And we're recording to kind of primitive Pro tools and at one point we needed to reference your Scratch vocal for a part or something like that. And we pull it up and I remember thinking, holy shit, the scratch vocal sounds so much better sonically. And I think I was like, do you guys hear this? And you and Pete were there. And I remember you guys being like, oh, it sounds like way better. What's wrong with your studio? I was like, nah, fuck. Well, I don't have this microphone. We don't have it in the budget to have this microphone.

Speaker 4 (00:55:51):

Well, yeah, I mean, we didn't have any budget

Speaker 3 (00:55:54):

At the time.

(00:55:55):

And so the solution that I thought of at the time was, okay, I was like an intern at a larger recording studio that we were going to mix it at in Chicago called Gravity Studios, which was another nice studio. It was about 45 minutes away. And because I was an intern and then I did a lot of work there, I still had a set of keys and I was like, well, gravity has a 47. And that's right. Also, it was Scratch Vocal was the 47 and it was done to the tape machine. So I think in my head and with a Knee pre or something,

Speaker 4 (00:56:30):

It was great. It was like that, the Scratch vocal

Speaker 3 (00:56:33):

Chain. No, it was ridiculous. And it was like, how do we get to that? And so the thought was, I remember thinking, well, we don't have money to go to Gravity, but here's what we could do. Everyone's probably gone from Gravity every night at one or two in the morning. And so we can get in the car. Mind you, this is January in Chicago, so we're talking like zero degrees and we can get in the car and drive down to Gravity at 2:00 AM sneak into the studio, not tell anybody and record your lead vocals from 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM before they get back. And we can do that three days in a row and seemingly we'll get away with it and we'll get this vocal change. But it was Patrick, you need to sing your lead vocals from 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM in the dead of winter on a tape machine with X amount of tracks. And we had the rest of the rhythm section on the track. So it was like maybe three tracks. Basically the worst conditions you could give any singer.

Speaker 4 (00:57:38):

So it's funny, this session, so the funny thing about Take this to your grave because whatever, the way that it ended up happening was we had gotten a long story, but we had gotten money to do three songs as a demo at Smart. So we, we did get to go to Smart and record these three songs that ended up being, there's three of the songs on the record. We shopped that demo around and there was some interest, but everyone was basically like, well, we don't know if you can write more songs, what can you write? So we go back and with now our own Money, which was none was we record two more songs. I don't remember which was the one of them, but the other, oh no, it was Grenade Jumper and Hey Chris, where's your boy? Yeah, grenade Jumper and Where's Your Boy?

Speaker 5 (00:58:26):

Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:58:27):

And that was this session was these two songs that, and so we're sneaking into Gravity late at night. It was funny, man. Gravity wasn't by any means in a bad area, but it wasn't a great area. No, yeah, it was before Worker Parker gets a little worse two in the morning. And that's the other thing too. Our van broke down and it was also one of these things where the van didn't really fully lock or anything like that. So somebody had to stand guard of the van that's outside in the middle of winter in Chicago. Zero degrees. Zero degrees, and then the stuff, you see it at four in the morning on North Avenue. North Avenue. Crazy. In

Speaker 3 (00:59:11):

2002, 2002

Speaker 2 (00:59:13):

North Avenue in Atlanta, which is where I live also in that time period was shady. Yeah, I was saying North Avenue,

Speaker 4 (00:59:21):

Go figure.

Speaker 2 (00:59:22):

It's universal. So were those two songs were kind of prove yourself

Speaker 4 (00:59:30):

And

Speaker 2 (00:59:30):

You had to do whatever it took to.

Speaker 4 (00:59:32):

And so it was basically, yeah, beg, borrow Steel, make this thing sound good. And we did, and it worked. And Where's Your Boy? That was basically the, because we had that and we had the song Dead On Arrival, and those two songs convinced ultimately Field Ramen like, okay, we'll sign you. But the record wasn't made as one album. We had had those five songs recorded and in two different, totally two different, six or eight months apart. And then it was, okay, here's Budget Now. Real Budget. We did have real budget, but here's real budget to go and record seven more songs at Smart.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's funny how that works because I'll often get asked by people like, oh, is it okay, is it okay if we split up the drums this week and then we do drums for our record this week? And people who might be Follow-up Boy fans. And I'm like, yeah, can you pinpoint which songs and take this to your grave? Were done in this period, this period in this period. Because they were done in three total different

Speaker 4 (01:00:32):

Sections and parts. So funny, not so funny story. I don't know if you want me to tell this story kind of a bummer

Speaker 6 (01:00:37):

Now. I do.

Speaker 4 (01:00:38):

Yeah. Kind of a bummer. But I think it was an intern for you formatted his drives.

Speaker 6 (01:00:45):

Oh yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):

I'd forgotten. And he lost a lot of stuff, lost entire projects for his studio, lost most of the files for the three songs we recorded. You went to a recovery place and there were some things that you couldn't recover, but you did get, and again, a lot of this was to tape, but we were backing it up on the, and some of the stuff, a lot of the harmonies and stuff we did not have on tape.

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):

Yeah. We wound up in proton

Speaker 4 (01:01:11):

And so of the, we ended up saving some of the guitars and things like that, but there were some of the harmony vocals

Speaker 3 (01:01:17):

That

Speaker 4 (01:01:17):

We had to go back and rerecord a year later.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):

And you redid it. You just redid 'em.

Speaker 4 (01:01:22):

It's

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):

Funny, until you mentioned that the other day, I had totally forgotten about that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:25):

Oh, I remembered because I was so that sounds traumatic.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):

What was the scariest

Speaker 4 (01:01:29):

Thing ever for both of us? Because I mean, for me, I'm like, this is my baby. This is the stuff that I worked on

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):

And be a huge opportunity.

Speaker 4 (01:01:38):

Yeah, totally. And then for Sean, I was like, because the way you described it, it was like, I think I'm going to lose everything. It was basically mean. It's the scary.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):

Yeah, it's the last thing

Speaker 4 (01:01:50):

You ever, it's the scariest thing. And he formatted both of them. That was the other thing. He formatted the main and the backup. That was the thing. And so

Speaker 3 (01:01:58):

I'm impressed I was even backing up in those days, to be

Speaker 4 (01:02:00):

Honest. No, I remember. Because you were like Dude and the backup. Wow. Holy cow. It was the scariest thing, whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):

Did it just happen to be that moment where you have both hooked up at the same time?

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):

I honestly

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):

Know that hour.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):

I really don't know that magic. Yeah. I don't know. My memory's

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):

So dramatic.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):

Yeah. I'm sorry to bring you on. No, I mean now it doesn't matter anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:02:27):

But it was such a scary time to be like, and for us we're like, we have a deadline to make for this album, for our first album.

(01:02:36):

So now we have, and we don't know how much we lost. We have no idea. There's this story about Toy Story two that this is actually exactly what happened to Toy Story two. No kidding. Yeah, it's true story, that Toy Story two, somebody erased all of the hard drives by chance and whatever, and it was almost completed. And by chance someone in the Sound Department or something had it on their laptop, had a copy on their laptop that they weren't supposed to have, but to make things easier or whatever. So did you get fired or rewarded? They ended, they saved the entire film or whatever. I rewarded, but it kind of felt like that where for a minute there you're like, I think we lost the whole thing. I think I don't know what we lost. And so

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):

That is so brutal. Once in 2005, my studio got struck by Lightning. Oh

Speaker 6 (01:03:22):

My gosh.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):

While I was backing things up. Oh

Speaker 6 (01:03:25):

Geez.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):

This was before Cloud backup. So I had the main drive, the backup drive, and the computer all hooked up at the same time and heard a storm start brewing. And in the South Lightning is a real issue. So I was like, well, there's three minutes left on the backup. The moment this backup is done, I'm pulling everything out of the walls. Well, at two minutes the place got struck by Lightning.

Speaker 6 (01:03:52):

My gosh.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):

And when I say everything exploded, I mean it exploded.

Speaker 6 (01:03:56):

Really?

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):

Yeah. And everything was gone luckily. Holy

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):

Cow.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):

Yeah, it was so bad. But one of the bands was there with me, so they believed me, obviously because they saw it happen. Fair enough. So we just rerecorded their stuff, but the other bands did not believe me. One of those, why would you?

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):

My studio got struck by Lightning.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):

Yeah, I lost your whole record.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):

Yeah, they definitely did not believe me. I get your check. Do you use cloud backups now? Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:04:27):

I'm not familiar with that. My, I've heard that one. A lot of people are using that

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):

Now. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:04:32):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):

That's

Speaker 4 (01:04:32):

A good one. Got to do it Boys and Girls, please. Yeah, I know, right? You do backup everything. But yeah, it was a very, very scary time. We're going to record, but anyway, but the point is that you can record years apart

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):

And

Speaker 4 (01:04:46):

Have a cohesive sounding song.

Speaker 3 (01:04:48):

Yeah. I mean, somehow we did, which was kind of amazing, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):

Well, did you remix everything at the very end?

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):

No. No. So actually that's interesting. And again, you correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm pretty sure this is right. So obviously we made the whole record. These guys had a tour that was scheduled immediately after the recording. We finished recording, meaning I had to mix the record while they were gone or I had to mix the rest of the record. These seven songs, we had had five that were done,

Speaker 4 (01:05:18):

Were done for a long time.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):

Again,

Speaker 4 (01:05:20):

Another eight months or so, they were done.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):

And the plan was, I'm going to mix the other seven. And I think my plan was I'm going to remix at least a few of the original ones. We did Dead On Arrival and Saturday and maybe one other

Speaker 4 (01:05:36):

Homesick and Space Camp.

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):

And I wanted to top my mix. I remember that was my thought. But the trick is that I'm mixing at Gravity, which is at that time it's a vintage Neve and there's no recall of any kind. The bands on tour. And so I'm left to mix the record and make every print on my own. And then I had to play it for these guys when they got back from tour, which is maybe the most amount of anxiety I've ever had as a mixer, because here I'm trying to mix this, their debut record, it was a big deal for me for sure. And I knew it was for them, and there was no going back. And so I mixed those seven songs by myself, and this is pre-internet speeds of being able to send it to them and they can, none of that. And so I did mix the seven songs, and I was there, you would expect all night, pulling my hair out, doing this crap. And then I tried to remix a few of the old ones, and I actually remember thinking, I can't beat this. I'm leaving this. This was okay. And I think also I was beyond exhausted and used most of my time to mix the other seven, whatever

Speaker 4 (01:06:41):

We were happy with. I mean, those were the things that got assigned. So there's no real reason to,

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):

It

Speaker 4 (01:06:45):

Wasn't broke.

Speaker 3 (01:06:47):

Like my ego, it's I can beat this shit. And so I didn't do that. So the funny part about that is that, so I printed him and you guys, they came back and I remember you guys coming into Gravity and me playing you the mixes. And I was like, I mean, these are my buddies. It's like, I'm friends with them, but still I'm really nervous. I'm like, I'm probably feeling like I'm going to throw up because I'm playing.

Speaker 4 (01:07:09):

Well, because the stakes for all of us were really high, super high. It was an indie label, but it was kind of overseen by a major label. This is the first time by islands. This is the first time that we were ever, that any of us had ever dealt in swim in those waters at all anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):

Oh no. Yeah, it was big for all of us. So I played it for him. And thankfully, I think generally speaking, everything was cool, which was great, except for there were definitely a few moments, a few parts where I think I remember specifically some screams that Pete did. He was like, those need to be louder. And I was like, that's not possible. And I think maybe some harmonies or something. And then what we realized we could do was we took the tapes back or the prints back to my little studio, and Pete actually over, I dunno if you remember this, but Pete overdubbed them again. I don't remember that. Yeah. I was like, if you over dub these again, I can make a proto session with the mix, which eventually came off the two track, but the analog two track that went to mastering. But I lined it up against the Pro Tools print of it, like the digital print. And I had Pete do a few of the screams. And I made a Pro Tools template with the mix with Pete's Screams, and I sent it to Dominic, our master engineer, and said, I need you to fly these in against the master. And so in order to get these screams louder, he had to redo 'em. And that's how some of those screams got louder. That's crazy. Isn't that crazy? I I forgotten about that. Yeah. And so that's Dominic, the mastering engineer who did that.

Speaker 4 (01:08:44):

I didn't want to tell this. You were talking about, there were a couple of things. You were talking about ego, you were talking about the schedule, the timeframe. We had no time because it was really funny. Like I said, this record was recorded over the span of a year and a half or something like that in these separate heats. But then at the very end it was like, we're really down to the wire. We have a release date and all this again, the other thing too is that we had half of a pretty good record. So Label was pretty confident that we're going to put this out, we're happy with this. So it was like something's coming out, whatever you finish is coming out. And we were leaving the next day and you and I were way, way too ambitious with overdubs, with harmonies and guitar parts. And we layered, we've fucking layered like crazy and

Speaker 3 (01:09:35):

Harmony machine.

Speaker 4 (01:09:36):

Yeah, I remember one song in particular, I don't remember I so stupid, I can't remember the name of it. Something about sending postcards from a plane crash that was in the name of it. And I remember the, so up to that point we had had this kind of chip on our shoulder about not auto tuning as much as possible. We really like we're not going to autotune. And so I really stood in that booth and sang the vast majority of this shit.

(01:10:03):

But then there we are, and it's the night before we leave for tour and the lead was done and whatever, and we were very happy with everything. But there were all these layers of vocals, all of these, I mean that song, it's just layers and layers and layers. And you finally go, we're going to tune. We're going to tune these harmonies. We're just going to tune this. There's no way my voice, I'm losing my voice as I'm singing it. I was just getting shredded. It's literally the last day. We're in the studio, we're leaving for tour, we're going to be gone. He has to mix this entire time. He's like, I'm sorry man, I'm going to tune these harmonies. I remember that. And then whenever, and you kind of take it, you're like, all right, fine. So that was my one big letdown.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):

Wait, wasn't there also, okay, maybe I've made this up in my head, but I've told this before, so hopefully not. I also remember at that moment, it was the last two days you had all these freaking

Speaker 4 (01:10:59):

Vocals and I saved all these harmonies and it was such a bad idea. I know had, because we'd been lucky up to that point. I mean it just a bad idea to save them to have that because we had done the knockout record and whatever where it's like, oh, we can do all these harmonies. We knock 'em out. But we dreamed even bigger it was going to the buffet and taking and putting way too much on your plate.

Speaker 6 (01:11:21):

Totally.

Speaker 4 (01:11:21):

And so yeah, the last two days sing I had to sing for and my voice was gone. I didn't know how to sing. So my voice was shredded.

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):

It was shredded. And I remember the second to last day, so we had one more day the next day, right, one more full day. And it was the night, the night before, and it was towards the end of the night and Patrick was singing, wanted to sing, wanted to sing. And I remember thinking, man, if he sings any more, he's going to destroy his voice for the next day. And when a singer, I assume when you're a singer and you're in it, you never want to stop. You just want to keep going. You're not thinking about that. And so I remember I thought, I was like, dude, you have to stop because we have tomorrow. And you're like, I'm not going to stop. And I was so frustrated that I think I was like, I remember going on the talk back going, if you keep singing, I'm going to come in there and fucking punch you with the No, that's true actually. And you're like, okay. We kind of had a little spat

Speaker 4 (01:12:15):

About it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:16):

I totally lost it.

Speaker 4 (01:12:18):

And because it was getting really diminished returns, back to the thing about the being learned in your craft singing, I apparently was doing just fine without having any technique. But then you run up in these limitations where it's like, well, you can't, if I had known what I was doing, I probably could have sung a lot longer,

Speaker 6 (01:12:42):

Of course.

Speaker 4 (01:12:42):

And at the time, I didn't understand breast support, I didn't understand my posture, I didn't understand any of those things. So there I am just singing, just singing. You sing. And my voice is just, I'm Tom Waits by the end of it. And he's like, we're not doing this. Actually had started to, my voice had started to produce these little harmonics that when you mixing

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):

That bad, okay,

Speaker 4 (01:13:09):

Yeah. When you're layering together and you're like, well, the fundamentals in tune with each other, but there's these harmonics that it was that bad. And so it's like, okay,

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):

It's pretty cool. I mean, basically it's just a huge learning experience for all of us. I mean, I know for me it was, that's for sure. It's like we're really learning how to make a record. I mean, we had some resources and a crap ton of energy and

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):

Determination. I kind of think too that it's hard to really evolve unless you're under pressure. That pressure cooker brings the best out of you.

Speaker 4 (01:13:43):

Oh, so much better. I mean, I feel like the stuff you do when no one cares, it's like whatever. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):

You can't really simulate pressure.

Speaker 4 (01:13:51):

No,

Speaker 2 (01:13:52):

You can try, but it's just not the same

Speaker 5 (01:13:55):

When

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):

Your future is on the line and it's a whole different level. Just out of curiosity, how long are your vocal sessions now?

Speaker 4 (01:14:04):

Well, now I barely do sessions. I kind of just do it. I tend to, when I'm demoing now, I'll just kind of do it myself. And a lot of my demo harmonies are kept. When we did a lake effect kid, most of those harmonies were what I had done when I was demoing a session for us, because I was just laying out what our pro tools click track was going to be. And while I'm doing it, I was singing a scratch vocal and I was like, oh, I'll just sing that. I sang harmonies and whatever.

Speaker 5 (01:14:38):

And they're great.

Speaker 4 (01:14:38):

So most of them ended up being that. So nowadays I don't really sit down and do a vocal session. It's more like I do while it ends up saving my voice a lot, because I'll be recording guitars or something, and then in between there I'll record one line in stereo and then go back to working. And then, so it's a lot of these blasts of that kind of thing. That's

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):

Interesting. So get reunited after 15 years. It's pretty cool. How different was the process? Because when I think back 15 years ago, I was still the same person, but not entirely. You guys have had entire careers since

Speaker 4 (01:15:23):

Then. Yeah. I actually would wonder what you would think. I feel like you've seen us.

Speaker 3 (01:15:30):

I'm curious what you think. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:15:33):

I don't know. I thought it was, in a lot of ways, just getting back to it. It was kind of weird. We had had a really good way of communicating. And most of the time too, it was the two of us in the studio all day. And then everybody else was very involved. But it was one of those things where we were the guys that would stay late and whatever, and it was pretty much just back to that. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (01:15:58):

Yeah. It was, wasn't it? Yeah. It was funny. I told some friends after we did it after maybe literally 15 minutes, it seriously just, it felt, it felt

Speaker 4 (01:16:09):

Like,

Speaker 3 (01:16:09):

Yeah, 16 years ago, obviously in a different studio and under different conditions with no

Speaker 4 (01:16:13):

Stress,

Speaker 3 (01:16:14):

It

Speaker 4 (01:16:14):

Was the same exact thing, but minus any of the stress and totally and more resource. And now they would totally let us use, it wasn't at the studio, but they would've let us use the 2 51.

Speaker 3 (01:16:24):

I think we did. We did use some two 50 ones. We did. We had a pair, which is really funny. We had two A pairs, overheads, right? Yeah. Their rooms or overheads or something. But yeah, it really did just feel like it really went right back into the old, I noticed our sense of is between

Speaker 4 (01:16:40):

The jokes are all the

Speaker 3 (01:16:41):

Band, they were all the same. And the dynamic of who weighs in on what and who pushes what things. It was just like that. But then on the flip side of it also, there's no way to recreate something. Even same people, same everything. It's just going to be different because it's so much later. So it's just like all those inherent differences were different just because of time. But yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it was pretty similar.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):

I don't think it was a good time, though.

Speaker 3 (01:17:09):

It was great. It was a great time. Yeah, it was hilarious. It really fun. It was really fun. Yeah. Well, we were supposed to do it in two days at Sunset Sound and two 12 hour days is how they give you the studio, I think, or whatever. And I think the night before, two nights before Patrick, you text me, you had an obligation that came up on the second day where he had to leave a couple hours after our session started, a couple hours after. I guess it kind of did. Yeah. Because really the pressure there the second day would typically be Patrick and I. Yeah. And we're like, cool, we're going to do it. And it was just great. We're still going to make it happen. So we spent the first day and we just went through everything. We did everything. But I do remember thinking that we would probably still do your lead vocal the second day. For whatever reason, I had that in my head. But we had been going for, I remember this, at least 11 hours. We get the studio for 12. I mean, I'm sure you could stay longer if you need to, but

(01:18:10):

Patrick had, at that point, Patrick had done all of his stuff, piano, organ guitars. I mean, it was a full day. And I remember you said to me, it was like, whatever it was 11, 10 or 10 within the last hour, and you said, I want to do the lead vocal. Let's do the lead vocal. I was like, great. And I think I remember saying to you, we've got 50 minutes. Is that cool? And you're like, great, let's do it. And I was like, awesome. Yeah. And he just typical went in the booth. And I'm kind of commenting on this mainly you were talking about how you do lead vocals today, and I don't know if maybe this was the one studio version of many, I'm sure of how you do it, but he did it in one. We just did it normal, I guess, in one sitting and just went through and yeah, I thought it was awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):

There's a ton of harmonies. But you're saying that those are from the demo

Speaker 4 (01:19:01):

Sort? Yeah. Well, this song was one that we had demoed a bunch of years ago on a record do, and it kind of came back up as like, Hey, we should record this song for real. It was out there as a demo. And so I kind of told Sean this when we put the session together. He is like, we can't change much production wise because the audience has already heard a demo version. They're already acquainted with it. So basically we need to do a properly recorded version of this song. So structurally, that's another thing too, is every producer has a different methodology, but Sean and I, the way I'm used to working and the way I'm used to being worked with, we really get our hands dirty with song structure, that kind of stuff. And it was like, we can't change anything.

Speaker 3 (01:19:50):

You've got the most massive case of demo because you,

Speaker 4 (01:19:55):

We've heard it. We know what it is, so we can't change it. It is the demo, but we have to now record a proper version of it. So I said, basically I was like, so I was recording, I was basically to try and expedite our recording process. I was playing with just setting out a tempo and maybe having a scratch track for Andy to play to. So we didn't have to deal with that on the day. And while I was doing that, I was like, well, I'll just do these harmonies. And my chain was basically the same as what we'd be using. The only difference was it was a C 800, which was way brighter. So I think that was one thing that we had to contend with, but it was fine. So

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):

Just in your personal writing

Speaker 4 (01:20:44):

In between studio studios right now. So it was in my closet. I love it. His personal studio is a closet. He showed me a picture, I'm a closet. There's a C 800, there's my vocal chain in a rack and my shirts. It's great, it's great. So whatever. So I brought those in and I was part of it was like, it's to help stabilize the session, but then also if we don't need to rerecord these, if we get these, I sent 'em to you. I was like, what do you think? And you were like, oh yeah, these are usable.

Speaker 5 (01:21:15):

So

Speaker 4 (01:21:16):

It was basically, yeah, it was kind of nice because then the guesswork and the frustration, I feel like harmony vocals are so much fun to write and such a pain in the ass to record. And so it was kind of like that thing of, I liked doing it by myself in my room, in my closet. Just that thing of, lemme get that again. You don't have to do all that a bunch of times. You can just sit there and record that. So then when I'm doing the lead vocal, I really got to just focus on singing and let somebody else hear it. It was awesome. So you got to pick, which was really cool for me to just be focusing on the singing and kind of play like an instrumentalist a little bit. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:21:57):

We did do that. He did his lead vocal in 40 minutes, 45 minutes, literally whatever we had left that night. We both went home. I woke up in my hotel and just comped it on my laptop really quick, knowing I had Patrick for a couple hours the next day I played it for you. I think we made a couple adjustments or

Speaker 4 (01:22:13):

Something. I think we punched in a couple things, but it was pretty much,

Speaker 3 (01:22:15):

Yeah, no, it was done. I think honestly, the punches you did, I think a lot were those bridge runs.

Speaker 4 (01:22:21):

Yeah, there was one run I wasn't happy with, but it was really funny. I think I gave him five takes or something. It was really straightforward. Sometimes I'll go part to part, I'll sing through a section of the song until we get it right. But that one I think we just did just front to back and it's pretty straight forward.

Speaker 3 (01:22:42):

And I personally love the vocal. And I remember even the next day I told Patrick, I was like, I don't have any UNE on here. I don't think it should have any une. And not that I want to state this. Not that I would ever think that Patrick needs it. Patrick knows that. I think he's one of the most phenomenal singers. I really do. I mean, I really, really do. But still, for me, it was like I'm working with now follow-up boy 15 years later, who's a huge band. And it's like, I feel like someone's going to tell me I should need to put auto tune out at some point or I'm going to get fired. And I was like, just want to make sure this is cool.

Speaker 4 (01:23:19):

There's still enough ego in there where I'm like, where I'm like, no

Speaker 3 (01:23:22):

Auto tune man.

Speaker 4 (01:23:23):

Right. I love it. And it's great. It's weird though. It so good. I was thinking about this on the way here. I have done now, I've worked with so many different producers. Some people put it on as an effect. It's almost like you would, and I don't mean the obvious autotune effect that everyone knows. It's got a sound to it. This kind of innate, there's just a slickness to it that some people use the same way they would use a reverb or something or a delay. You don't really think about it. And it's there. And I have worked with some people who've done that and it hasn't seen me carrying in that kind of snobbery. I go, well, it actually sounds okay in this context. Okay. But I still, at the end of the day, I am like, don't tune me, man.

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):

That's awesome. I didn't know that. That's awesome. I've worked with some amazing vocalists who requested it because of that sound. And again, not the obvious sound, but just that thing that it imparts on the tone. They just liked it and they didn't need it.

Speaker 4 (01:24:24):

Oh yeah. We did a record with Babyface. It was very much part of his chain. He had a hardware auto tune and No kidding. Yeah. And it was very much part of, at the time anyway, it was just part of the chain.

(01:24:39):

And it was really funny because his engineer, I wish I could remember the guy's name. He was so great in forthcoming with information, but he was like, oh yeah, there's no secrets here. Yeah, we tune everybody. And he was playing me, I won't say who, but he was playing me a singer, his untuned and tuned, and it was perfectly in key. I mean, this singer was nailing it exactly in tune, but it was like the difference at the time, this was 2007 or something. I don't remember when it was, but it was like the difference between radio and not radio, just turning it on and off. It was interesting. Interesting. I think only just the tone of it or something. Just the tone. Just the way it imparted that thing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:20):

Interesting. The only way to get it to do that to where it does that thing, and you can't really tell that it's tuned

Speaker 4 (01:25:28):

Is

Speaker 2 (01:25:28):

For the vocals to be sung. Well, no,

Speaker 4 (01:25:31):

That's the trick, isn't it? You still have to sing really well. Yeah. Damnit damnit. It's not that short.

Speaker 2 (01:25:39):

Well, it's just, it's funny because there's that perception that people, that it's used because people suck and that's not really the, I mean, yes, it is sometimes used because people suck, but that's not the only reason.

Speaker 4 (01:25:53):

But I'm sure even the majority of people listening to this are probably involved in recording and know pretty instantly like, Nope, shitty singer still sucks. Oh, yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:26:05):

Totally. Still sucks. Yeah, there's no real fixing that.

Speaker 4 (01:26:10):

I know all of us have done that one session where like, I don't even know how to edit this. Just one. Yeah. Well, yeah, but I have no idea how I'm going to make this work.

Speaker 5 (01:26:20):

Oh,

Speaker 4 (01:26:21):

Yeah. Yeah. You're looking at waveforms and in pro tools, I cannot make these match in any way. That could possibly sound like anything anyone would listen to.

Speaker 2 (01:26:34):

Yeah. Auto tune ain't fixing that. Nope. Absolutely not. So question about Lake Effect kid, the extra instrumentation, is that you?

Speaker 4 (01:26:45):

Yeah, usually. That's kind of my favorite thing to do in the studio, honestly, is like I said, I was never the world's best drummer, but I was okay. And I kind of become okay at a lot of stuff. So I can kind of hang at

Speaker 3 (01:26:58):

A lot more than Okay my,

Speaker 2 (01:27:00):

That's what I was saying about a T-shaped person. You want to work with people like that. I think especially if you're an instrumentalist who's great at guitar, you want to work with someone like you who can do all that stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:27:14):

I'll never shred, but I can play Joe and I play the dual, the duet there, the guitar duet there or whatever. So I can play, but I'm not,

Speaker 3 (01:27:28):

Yeah. But that was Patrick, the piano and the organ and all that

Speaker 4 (01:27:31):

Stuff, which that was one of the things too, is we have this extra time kind of, I was like, you got a B three. I remember that. It was great. It was like, oh, you

Speaker 3 (01:27:42):

Got a piano? Like, alright, that's my,

Speaker 4 (01:27:44):

Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:27:45):

That was good.

Speaker 4 (01:27:46):

We got those two 50 ones as using 'em for something.

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):

And one of the details I thought was really cool was how the tambourine at the beginning keeps, makes it feel a lot more intense, gives it a lot more motion, and then when it drops out, the high hat takes that over. I thought that was a nice, nice touch.

Speaker 4 (01:28:07):

That was a thing that I had when the band had done, we did Big Hero six, the Disney movie, and one of the things that I noticed with those notes that we would get from the studio, and they were really cool, by the way. I was really impressed with that. I've worked on other film things where it wasn't that cool, but that one was really, really cool experience to do. But a lot of the notes were like, we want it to feel faster. And I'm like, but without changing the tempo, because we've locked the tempo. And I'm like, right. So the only way to accomplish that is subdivision. I mean, that's the only way you can make something, whatever. So it's like, how do you figure out, how do you balance the subdivision, but that makes it feel up uptempo without actually ruining the tempo. Then you can play things too fast and have it suck.

Speaker 3 (01:28:54):

That's cool. I could see how them giving comments like that actually make you figure out new ways to do things. Oh no, it was great.

Speaker 4 (01:29:00):

It was really helpful. That's awesome. It was very cool. Like I said, the kind of notes, the caliber notes, but it was the kind of like, okay, how do I do this? Because pictures locked, so we can't change the tempo at all,

Speaker 5 (01:29:13):

But

Speaker 4 (01:29:13):

We need it to feel faster. And you're like, ah, I guess we're doing 16th notes.

Speaker 2 (01:29:19):

True. Constructive criticism.

Speaker 4 (01:29:21):

Yes, totally. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny when that happens and you're like, oh, I could actually learn from this.

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):

Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, we've all got in mixed notes and

Speaker 5 (01:29:32):

Know

Speaker 2 (01:29:32):

What it's like when criticism is just painful, but then every once in a while there are people who know how to communicate and tell you something they want that forces you to evolve your abilities.

Speaker 4 (01:29:44):

Well, that was, Sean and I have known each other long enough that we've allowed each other to get really angry in front of each other. And

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):

One of the things that's a good thing, it

Speaker 4 (01:29:52):

Is kind of, because in a lot of ways, one of the things that was really good about it was mix notes. I learned what are really shitty mixed notes, because I watched Sean get fucking livid over some mixed notes.

Speaker 2 (01:30:04):

Well, some are so brutal.

Speaker 4 (01:30:05):

Yeah, some are so brutal. Well, but there's also things where, until I had really studied and learned about frequencies, for example, when you say, I want the snare louder, and then you're sitting there watching a guy not turn the snare up, you're like, what's going on? And you're like, I'm carving out space. Just shut up, man. Just wait. Just wait. I'm doing the thing. It takes a while, but it's that kind of thing where I watched you do it enough times where I'm like, oh, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to just not,

Speaker 5 (01:30:34):

Okay,

Speaker 4 (01:30:35):

Interesting. I'm going to not comment until whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:30:37):

My ego was probably more fragile back then, whatever. Maybe it's just as fragile. I

Speaker 4 (01:30:41):

Dunno. But I mean, it's a thing. You learn it also in the same way talking about probably what I would imagine for a conductor, if you don't have the language, if you can't talk the same language as the people you're working with, it doesn't matter what you're trying to say. And it's the same thing with mixed notes. This is a problem that musicians run into not knowing. What they're really asking for is, I want the drum louder, I want the snare louder, whatever. It's like, no, you want really like when it had this reverb on it, but you don't know how to articulate that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:31:11):

It's a two-way street though. I think good, great mixers and producers should be part of their job is to interpret.

Speaker 3 (01:31:19):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:31:19):

To interpret what non-technical people want.

Speaker 4 (01:31:23):

There's a chapter in one of those mixing books. I can't remember which book it was, but there's a chapter where it's like, I'm sorry, you will have to deal with people. It's great. It's a sham.

Speaker 6 (01:31:32):

Yeah. That's great.

Speaker 4 (01:31:34):

It's

Speaker 2 (01:31:34):

So true. Well, with that, I think this is a good stopping point. I want to thank you both

Speaker 3 (01:31:40):

For

Speaker 2 (01:31:40):

Coming on.

Speaker 3 (01:31:41):

It's

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):

Been great talking to you.

Speaker 3 (01:31:42):

Cheers. Yeah, totally. Thank

Speaker 1 (01:31:43):

You. Awesome.

(01:31:44):

Thank you. This episode of the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast has been brought to you by tele Funkin Electroacoustic Tele Funkin. Electroacoustic has been following the tradition of excellence and innovation set forth by the original Telefon GM VH of Germany that began over 100 years ago with one foot rooted in the rich history of the brand and the other in new microphone innovations for both stage and studio applications. Telefon Electoral Acoustic is recognized as one of the industry leaders in top quality microphones. For more info, go to t funk.com. If you like the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast, make sure you leave us a review, subscribe and send us a message if you want to get in touch.