Tom Lord-Alge: The “Higher Love” Intro, His Hybrid SSL Workflow, and Mixing With a Listener’s Ear

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,

Speaker 2 (00:00:38):

Eyal 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 A Day To Remember. Bring me the Horizon, opec many, many more, and we give you the raw multi-track 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 multi-tracks that are cleared for use in your portfolio. You can find out [email protected]. So welcome to this episode of the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. With me today is Mr. Tom Lord Alge, a man that needs no introduction in our world, but in case you've been living under a rock, Tom is one of several siblings in the very musically inclined Lord Alge family. He's worked with basically every artist under the sun, and some examples include Oasis, Weezer, blink 180 2, pink, U2, Peter Gabriel, the Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, and many, many, many, many more. Three-time Grammy Award winner and accolades that would fill up all our time to talk about. So I'm going to stop talking about those. Thomas undoubtedly one of the pioneers of modern rock and pop mixing. Welcome to the URM podcast, Tom Lord Alge.

Speaker 3 (00:02:08):

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Greetings from beautiful, sunny Miami Beach, Florida.

Speaker 2 (00:02:14):

I used to live in Florida. Does the climate there at all mess with your ability to mix because it certainly did mine

Speaker 3 (00:02:22):

With all the distractions that South Beach has, that messes with my ability to mix and the distractions being one, the absolutely fantastic weather that we have here in South Florida. Two, the absolutely beautiful women that come to visit or live here in South Florida. So yeah, I'm pretty good at staying focused on the task at hand. Obviously, as you can hear maybe or maybe not in the background, the slight hum of air conditioning in my control room, which is a necessity here in South Florida. But no, the hot weather, again, the only distractions are really, especially nowadays that I'm mixing at Spank Studios, which is my personal studio now in my home, my control room has windows and the only real issue is on a day like today when I'm looking out the window and it is just a stunning day and sometimes I'd just rather be anywhere else but in the control room. But at the end of the day, I have a job to do and it is the best job in the world, and I've been very fortunate to be able to work with awesome artists, helping them make their records and making great sounding rock records.

Speaker 2 (00:03:44):

So speaking of that, is that the reason that you got into recording? Was it to help artists basically fulfill their artistic dreams or was it for recording your own music? Why did you even start recording in the first place

Speaker 3 (00:04:01):

To meet women? Why didn't you play guitar? Exactly. Probably would've been a better move, but I am not a musician, so that would answer the question why I didn't play guitar. But yeah, all joking aside, I'm the youngest of six kids come from a musical family. My father was in the jukebox business, so we always refer to we had the worst sounding music in the world because nothing sounds worse than a jukebox around the house. So we always had music around the house. My mother is a jazz piano player, jazz pianist, a jazz singer as well as a jazz educator. And in my teenage years or preteen years, always grew up around musicians. As mom would be rehearsing in the house and they would take a break and these musicians would come down into the basement where Chris, my brother, Jeff, and myself would be kind of sequestered and of course they'd all come down and here Tommy try some of this. And they had me a joint. It was kind of my introduction to sort of the musician's lifestyle. And to be quite honest, when I was a preteen, I had asthma and they found that just that little bit of weed actually helped to clear it up. But believe it or not, that's the case. But yeah, always grew up around music.

Speaker 2 (00:05:40):

I would believe it now. I would believe it now. I wouldn't believe that back then. People believe that, but I would definitely believe it now.

Speaker 3 (00:05:49):

Yeah, it did. And again, always surrounded with musicians and music, whether it be from my mother and her trio of musicians or my brother Chris and my brother Jeff. Chris began to, in his teenage years, used to pilfer a moms recording equipment. Mom had a little four track teac quarter inch machine and a little mixer, and when mom was either gigging or not rehearsing, Chris kind of pilfered that set himself up with a little control room in the basement of whatever house we were living, and he was kind of screwing around. Chris was also a musician as well. He played guitar, he plays keyboards. He was also an accomplished drummer, and my brother Jeff played bass, so the two of them where their friends would be screwing around, and of course I failed to mention it.

Speaker 2 (00:06:50):

Was your mom aware that her stuff was getting pilfered and moved into a control?

Speaker 3 (00:06:57):

Yeah, she was never very pleased about that. Just did it anyways though. Yeah, look good blaming it all on Chris, but again, mom would be out. Mom was a working musician when I was growing up and her gigs, aside from her touring in Japan where she would do once a year for about six to eight weeks, aside from that, her gigs were mainly in the city, in the jazz clubs of New York City. So when she would leave for the gig, which would usually be about seven o'clock in the evening, that's kind of when all the shenanigans began. Again with Chris kind of pilfering the gear and inviting some friends over and certainly there would've been an alcohol delivery involved. And yes, my mother is here, she's in the shower, we can sign for that alcohol.

(00:07:57):

And again, one of the other funnier things about those days was Chris and Jeff and their friends would be either recording or partying during the time that mom was gigging. And of course mom played in jazz clubs in New York City, big smoky jazz clubs. So when mom got home at three in the morning, she never noticed the cloud of smoke that was lingering in the house from all of our friends leaving probably 20 minutes prior to her arrival. So it was pretty funny. But yeah, Chris kind of pilfered the gear and also during this period of time, we all kind of amassed a reasonable stereo system with a turntable and a cassette player and God, back then we had eight tracks. I remember having an eight track recorder and we always would fight over the records and who would get to use them. And of course, I always tried to, when Chris was down in the basement, I would steal his little sound, craftsman 10 band equalizer, hook it up to my sound system, kind of figure out how that worked, and only took a couple of times of getting beating beaten up by Chris for doing that.

(00:09:13):

I finally kind of saved my money and bought my own Soundcraft Men Dual 10 band, which I actually still have, and it still functions. I think I bought it when I was probably 13 years old.

Speaker 2 (00:09:26):

So it sounds like you kind of had no other choice but to get into what you got into. Sounds like it was just an indoctrination basically.

Speaker 3 (00:09:36):

It was kind of a natural progression. The music, I think first and foremost, I know I can speak truthfully for my brother Jeff and my brother Chris as well. We all just really love music. We have a love, true love for music. When we're not working, when we get together, we go out and see the bands that we enjoy to see. We're big progressive rock fans grew up. We listened to a lot of Genesis and we're talking about the Peter Gabriel version of Genesis and even the Genesis up till about 1978 or 1979 when Steve Hackett was still in the band. But we listened to a lot of that and we still go out and listen to that style of music. Modern artist today would be an artist named Steven Wilson from Great Britain. Oh yeah, he's fantastic and happens to be a very great mixer in his own, but making really great progressive.

(00:10:34):

He hates when people classify his music, but making just really great challenging music. Then of course, there's also the slew of tribute bands that are really doing great things like a band called The Musical Box, which performs the early genesis, Peter Gabriel era, Genesis shows, Australian Pink Floyd, again doing the Pink Floyd stuff. So we have a tendency to get together to see these bands, especially when they're playing in the northeast and near New Jersey where our mother lives. If Steve Hackett is playing or Steven Wilson, we all kind of use it as an excuse to one visit mother and then go to show. So it's kind of like when we show up at mom's house, mom's always like, okay, what concerts are you going to?

Speaker 2 (00:11:25):

What's kind of fascinating about what you're saying is that so many producers say that they never listen to music. They're get done working and it's the last thing they want to do, and the first thing you're talking about is how all you want to do is listen to music and go to concerts and still be involved.

Speaker 3 (00:11:43):

It's the love of music, it's the love for music, and it's the love for live music in particular, again. So with the tribute bands, some of that early genesis stuff is pretty darn challenging, and it's really nice to see how these guys embrace it, don't improvise, play it note for note and are able to perform it with almost well, to be quite honest, we always joke that they perform it better than Genesis would've ever performed it because Genesis wrote it and they had the artistic license to change it. Whereas tribute bands generally take pride in performing it note for note. So yeah, it's just a general love for music. Now, when I finished work, do I listen to music? No, obviously I've spent my whole day listening to music, so I like to wind down In the days when I lived in Los Angeles, I would listen to talk radio in the car, but now that I obviously don't have a commute anymore, I wind down, I'll sit outside. I live in the water here, so I enjoy sitting in my backyard and kind of decompressing after a full day of spanking. Speaking

Speaker 2 (00:12:53):

Of compression, what's your normal length of time mixing these days? Because I know when you're first starting out, you 16 hours, 18 hours, 36 hours, it's all good, but as you grow up, you realize that you start getting diminishing returns, and I know lots of people that used to work those hours that now kill it in four or five, six hours and they're good.

Speaker 3 (00:13:20):

Yeah. What happens is you got to know where your sweet spot is, and for me it's pretty much eight hours nowadays. After eight hours, I'm just thinking of nothing other than just getting the hell out of the studio. When I moved my studio from South Beach Studios in Miami Beach to my house here over at Span Studios, I jokingly refer to my clients. I ask them, what's their deadline? And I go, well, if your deadline is really close, you're going to want to consider mixing with somebody else only. I like to work at my own pace. Obviously now I don't have that kind of overhead that I did have at a South Beach studio, so I'm able to work the hours that I feel I'm most productive. So a typical day for me here at Spanx Studios, try to wake up by 10 in the morning and enjoy an hour or so of private time with my coffee sitting by the bay.

(00:14:24):

And then eventually around noon, I like to just get myself prepared and head up to the studio by 12 so that I can finish up by eight o'clock. Because normally around the eight o'clock hour, all I'm thinking about is, okay, what's for dinner? What are we going to eat? What am I going to do? And especially if I have visitors or clients in town, which I get quite often living in south Florida, you get a lot of visitors. But yeah, I mean over the years, you got to know where your sweet spot is when you're chasing your tail and when enough is enough. And the great thing about that is in normal conditions, when I finish my day at eight o'clock, I end up with what I call an overnight mix. My overnight mix is kind of my mixed, all balanced out where I feel it's sounding really good, and that's what I'll send out to my clients to get comments on. And then usually when I come in in the morning on first, listen, I'll know immediately on first listen what needs to be addressed. And sometimes I'm like, oh shit, what the hell was I thinking last night?

Speaker 2 (00:15:26):

So do you also expect to get feedback from your clients by that point in time?

Speaker 3 (00:15:33):

Yeah, so when I send out the overnight mix, generally it comes with a little note for if it's the first time I've worked with somebody that explains to them, this is kind of where I've left it, I'm ready for you to hear it, please feel free to tear it apart and make whatever comments you feel necessary or whatever comments you would like to be addressed. Again, the goal is now to come in the morning because if they're not with me to come in the morning to have their basis of comments, which with any luck are small comments, but sometimes, sometimes I may have taken it too far in a direction that they weren't looking for. But again, I want to be able to address those things so that the next version I send out, which would be called Update one, would have addressed their comments.

Speaker 2 (00:16:24):

And is that basically to keep it from going too far in a potentially bad direction, getting it meaning getting them version one that night helps to prevent from mixing three days on a song and then realizing it's a totally wrong direction? I guess it would help prevent that.

Speaker 3 (00:16:45):

Well, yeah, I mean, of course. But again, the reason I do it is, again, look, time is your enemy sometimes, and you want to stay fresh on it and laboring over it is not going to make it any better. Generally speaking, a good song is a good song, is a good song. I've been very fortunate throughout my career to have had some great songs on my console and all my job was there was to make them sound really good and exciting and bring out the key things in the songs to make them even better. But yeah, I mean, the overnight mix is really there to show the artist, okay, here's where I'm leaving it now I need your comments.

(00:17:32):

And again, nine times out 10 it's, it's something along the lines of tour the guitar up here, or can you turn the drum down here? Or maybe a little bit more effect on the vocal. But again, normally I have a rough mix, their last rough mix, which they're usually married to kind of reference. So I'll reference off of that. And unlike my brother, well, my brother does listen to the rough mix. My brother actually, my brother Chris, spends a lot of time on kind of trying to recreate their rough mix and just making it better. I listen to the essence, what is the essence of the rough mix? What are they trying to get across? What are the big things here? And then I go for what I'm hearing in my head, and as I'm listening to the rough mix, again, in my head I'm hearing, oh, I'd like this to sound like this, or I want the drums to be a little bit more bombastic here.

(00:18:29):

Or maybe if we did this effect here, those type of artistic creative decisions. But again, so the overnight mix is really there so that I am notorious sometimes for taking things too far for taking it out, maybe just a touch too far in a direction that maybe they weren't looking for. So this is an opportunity, while it's still super easy for me to kind of dial things back if I need to be able to do that, but also by this point the band is kind of chomping at the bit. If they're not, they're ready to kind of chomping at the bit to hear what I'm doing, and it's their opportunity to hear that.

Speaker 2 (00:19:07):

I want to key in on something you said a little bit earlier, the topic of laboring over something, over a song, not making it any better, which I think takes wisdom. At what point in your career did you realize that there's a point where you get diminishing returns?

Speaker 3 (00:19:25):

That's a good question. I mean, I'd like to think it was kind of immediate. One of the things I've always thought about that that's helped me be a successful mixer was the fact that I'm not a musician. I don't play guitar, I don't play bass, I don't play keyboards, but I'm very knowledgeable in music. Have you ever played an instrument? When I grew up, I kind of had piano lessons, and so not really though. Not like, yeah, I mean, I couldn't sit down and sit down and play anything complicated. It was all very, very simple stuff. But I always had a very good knowledge of music, and I always considered myself to have a listener's ear. I always kind of considered myself to have the audiences ear, so I'm mixing for that kid in. I Idaho's listening in headphones. I always considered to have those type of ears, so when I mix, I do whatever I need to do to get myself off for the song to give me a rise.

(00:20:27):

So that's kind of how I know when I'm getting to the point of being done is the emotion coming across in this song. But yeah, I mean, you learn pretty quick when you start to spin your wheels. And as an engineer and a producer in the earlier part of my career, you're also the keeper of the session. So when there are other musicians around, you got to know when to kind of reign them in and say, Hey, you know what? This can wait. Let's come back to it tomorrow, or let's take a break. Because yeah, sometimes you can burn out on it, so you got to walk away from it sometimes.

Speaker 2 (00:21:01):

This is really fascinating to me because nowadays most engineers, mixers, producers, whatever, are musicians just because the way that a lot of people get into this now is through making their own music and having a small interface and recording badly, and then eventually getting a little better, and then eventually meeting people that show them how to do it better on and on and on. But there's just a bunch of producers nowadays, good ones started as musicians, and it's actually really, really rare to meet an engineer that is not a musician. And what fascinates me about it is that as a musician, I have this frame of reference for which I always used to use to communicate with musicians when producing them because theory, harmony, all that stuff, or just the reference of how difficult something is on guitar or through the drum lessons I took for six months. It is just a big frame of reference, but it fascinates me if you don't have that frame of reference, how you communicate with musicians in a language that they understand. I figured that having your brothers around and having growing up around musicians helped you develop the skills to communicate with them has to be

Speaker 3 (00:22:27):

Oh, absolutely. I mean, again, grew up around musicians and it was always kind of a competition with my brothers and myself. It was always a competition with the, as far as making music or engineering or who could come up with the wackiest effect or that type of stuff. So there was always a little bit of that as well. But I always joke and say, if it's not there, I can't mute it. I mean meaning to sometimes, look, we all sometimes get songs that are just layered and layered and layered with parts, and sometimes they just didn't know when to stop with the overdubs. And I always jokingly used to say, well, if it wasn't there, I couldn't have muted it. So during the years, I've never felt obligated kind of just because it's all there. It doesn't mean it all has to be there, but being able to make decisions, musical decisions, and not being a musician. Yeah, again, it just comes again from a deeply rooted love and knowledge of music. Hopefully what I like would translate to what the band likes.

Speaker 2 (00:23:32):

I mean, obviously you've been very successful, so those two things have to be aligned. But I think that actually that's engineering in its purest form because you really are just guided by your tastes. You're not guided by any, I guess, preformed tendencies that would've resulted from playing an instrument. And when you play an instrument, you get into habits. These habits start to become your style, and so that style will then start to inhabit other things. You do like mixing decisions for artists. Correct. But if you don't have any of that, it's actually much more pure. It's strictly your taste.

Speaker 3 (00:24:11):

Correct. I've always felt that I'm making decisions that are best for the song as opposed the best for the guitar player. I have the big picture of the song. How is the song Hidden Me? Is the emotion of the song coming across, is the song giving me goosebumps? Is it invoking the emotional response that it should? Yeah, so over the years, I used to get into it sometimes with artists, but again, remember as a mixing engineer, my strong suit was coming in at the last moment, so I haven't sat there through all the overdubs. I haven't gotten used or been married to the rough mixes. I'm not partial to this keyboard part that took you three days to write and then two days to record. All I know is I put it up, is it helping the song or is it distracting from the song?

(00:25:02):

And yeah, that's worked over the years. It's worked really well. Now when you're talking about stuff like Blink 180 2 or some 41, that stuff didn't have that kind of production, that was more kind of band style production. But on albums like Bringing Down the Horse by the Wallflowers, there was a shit ton of artistic decisions that I needed to make when I was mixing that album. And again, I just looked at it, okay, is this part selling the song One Headlight is a great example. I mean, that was just wall to wall guitar parts from the beginning of the song to the end. And how do you deal with that? How do you deal with eight tracks of meandering guitar through a song? Well, here's how you deal with it. The first thing you do is you mix the major parts. Here are the things that I can just turn on and are the major elements of this song.

(00:26:04):

So I make the drums, the bass, the main keyboard part, and probably one or two of the main you guitar rhythm parts, got the vocals blended in, and then just started adding in all these, as I refer to the meandering guitar parts, but all these other elements that now started to create atmosphere. And it kind of worked out pretty good on that record. But yeah, it would be in productions like that. I mean, nowadays I don't see it as often as I did in the past. But yeah, I would just make the decisions. And again, you have to live and die by the decisions that you make as a mixer. It's part of being a mixer.

Speaker 2 (00:26:45):

You didn't start as a mixer though.

Speaker 3 (00:26:48):

I did not having knowledge of audio through my entire life. I mean, again, I remember back to my preteens and teenage years of having sound systems and I had a little DJ set up. Now again, I would've been, let's just say 14 years old in 1976. So I had two turntables and a little mixer and a little cassette player with, and I would do mix tapes. And so I knew about that type of stuff. And I had a little equalizer, so I was always screwing around. But to be quite honest, I mean my first gig at 16, I was hired to do lighting, concert lighting in clubs. When I say concert lighting, it just sounds so glamorous. It was more in crappy New Jersey and New York bars that I wasn't even old enough to get into. But I started out as lighting. One of them would be for one of my brother's bands, Chris's bands. I started at lighting, and then I got job offers from other bands, and I did that for quite some time. I always knew about audio. I was the one actually setting up the PA system when we would get to gigs. So I always knew about the audio.

Speaker 2 (00:28:05):

So you'd set up the pa, but someone else would run front of house and you'd do lights?

Speaker 3 (00:28:10):

Yeah. Well, because the front of house engineer, all he needed to do is set up his console as outward gear. He would mix and then leave. So it was me and the two stage roadies that dealt with the lighting and the stage equipment and setting up the PA system. And then we would take care of everything else and pack it in the truck. And I also drove the truck and it was just a 20 foot straight job. I mean, again, we're talking about not a huge PA system and not a huge light show. We probably had maybe 20 or 40 cans of lights that we carried. The worst part was the Hammond organ schlepping around a Hammond organ, especially in clubs that were upstairs. It was a freaking nightmare.

Speaker 2 (00:28:53):

But is that why you decided to transition to the studio as load ends like that?

Speaker 3 (00:28:58):

No. So it was a fluke why I transitioned to the studio. So I'm doing lights. I'm at a gig front of house engineer, it's sick band comes up to band approaches me, and then they say, look, so-and-so can't do the mix tonight. We need you to do it. They knew I knew how to operate all the gear, and my response to them was, well, can I do lights as well? And they said no. And I'm like, okay, yeah, I'll do sound, no problem. And to be quite honest, I obviously did a good job because the next day I was a front of house engineer and that's what I did from then on. From that point forward, I did front of house. And it wasn't until maybe two or three years later that I began to do work in a studio again based over another dispute.

(00:29:47):

So I believe I'm going to just a long time ago, but it's around. I'm thinking it was probably New Year's going into 1984. New Year's Eve is a big gig. Bands usually get paid triple or quadruple for the gig. By this point in my front of house career, I had purchased and was leasing my PA system to the band I was working with at the time, the band I was working with, the time I approached them, because it was New Year's Eve, I asked if I could get a little, an increase in pay since they were getting paid more, I would like a little taste of the action. They refused, and I packed my gear up and left and never looked back. And a week later, I started working with my brother Chris at unique recording in New York. Now, having said that, over a period of two or three years of me doing concert sound, Chris had been egging me on, Hey, I could use your help. I think you would do really well in the studio. Why don't you come and help me out here. What's the age difference between you two? Chris is two and a half years older than me. I'm the youngest,

Speaker 2 (00:30:59):

So pretty close. But I guess between 17 and 14 and a half, that is a big difference. But once you get a little older, there's not a huge difference.

Speaker 3 (00:31:08):

Once I turned about 16 or 17, it wasn't as big a deal anymore as it was when, say I was 12 or 13 when Jeff and Chris, they didn't want anything to do with me.

Speaker 2 (00:31:19):

Well, I mean that is a major, major difference between 12 and 15.

Speaker 3 (00:31:24):

So I mean, Jeff is a year and a half older than me, and then Chris is two and a half years older than me. But the three of us are inseparable and weren't. We still are, but we were inseparable during those periods when we entered into our professional life, we were inseparable and we still are. It's awesome. That really is awesome. It is. And again, I walked into unique recording and I was hired as an engineer, which really pissed off all the assistants.

Speaker 2 (00:31:54):

Did they feel like you were getting, I guess, the fast track because of your brother?

Speaker 3 (00:31:59):

Yeah, of course they did.

Speaker 2 (00:32:01):

Oh, well,

Speaker 3 (00:32:02):

Too fucking bad. Yeah, right. I mean, look, definitely too fucking bad. Well, Chris was beginning to garnish a name for himself, and the studio was hoping that lightning would strike twice. And obviously Chris vouched for me. Chris threw me into the chair. I didn't deserve to be there, but he threw me into the chair. And later in life he told me, well, I needed to see what you were made of. I needed to see that you had the ability to do this. I needed to see how you would react to it. And it obviously worked out pretty well.

Speaker 2 (00:32:39):

Sink or swim, you swam

Speaker 3 (00:32:40):

I to, I didn't have a fucking choice, but yeah, I mean, look, and it was a great, great time of recording. There was a lot of innovations happening. I walked into a studio called Unique Recording in New York, unique New York. I can't even say it once, but yeah, say Unique New York Three times Fest. Unique New York.

Speaker 2 (00:33:02):

Unique New York unique.

Speaker 3 (00:33:05):

There you go.

Speaker 2 (00:33:07):

I tried though.

Speaker 3 (00:33:08):

You did. I can't even get it at once. At that time, MIDI musical instrument digital interface was just coming out, and Bobby Nathan, the studio owner, was well into it and he would, I don't know if he purchased our work deals out with all the manufacturers, but we had pretty much every keyboard that was coming out at the moment. We were on the cusp of all that MIDI integration sequencing, God, the doctor Click. I remember printing click tracks to tape to synchronize all these pieces of equipment that we can now operate off of midi. So it was a kind of very exciting time. We had original emulator one, the first device to sample and then play it back on a keyboard. So I mean, of course, Chris and I, the first thing that we tried to do is, okay, let's see how many keyboards we can actually mid up. And I think we meet up close to 30 of the studio keyboards off of one controller or one key. There was no such thing as a controller at that time. We just made one of the keyboards of the master and literally had every keyboard in the studio making this God awful noise, but got it all to work, and it was kind of a big deal. So how

Speaker 2 (00:34:30):

Long did that take?

Speaker 3 (00:34:31):

Oh, God. It took probably about an eight ball of cocaine.

Speaker 2 (00:34:36):

I mean, I just know that different era, but I used to program lights through MIDI back maybe 15 years ago when that technology was kind of in its infancy and just programming an entire set was like two or three weeks of 1920 hour days.

Speaker 3 (00:34:57):

Oh, no. This was just a drug infused kind of craze look, it's kind of what we did in the eighties. There'd be the half inch tape flange sitting on the coffee table with lines and a dollar bill, and that's kind of how it was back then. So it would've been a drug infused binge of either Chris or Jeff or myself descent, just going for it. What happens if we hook everything up? And then it became, of course, it was just like, fuck yeah, let's try that. Let's see. Because nobody,

Speaker 2 (00:35:38):

I can imagine that

Speaker 3 (00:35:39):

We just wanted to see what would happen.

Speaker 2 (00:35:41):

So do you have any idea how much time went by?

Speaker 3 (00:35:44):

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we probably had the whole thing hooked up in five or six hours. Wow. Mean setting it up. I mean, because remember we had all these keywords

Speaker 2 (00:35:54):

That is a lot of coke.

Speaker 3 (00:35:55):

Yeah, we had all these keyboards. I mean, the hardest part was where do you put 'em? The hardest part was do we have enough audio cables? Because again, of course, we tried to set as many of them up in the control room as possible. And when we ran out of room in the control room, just they put the rest, just ran a cable in and put him into the studio portion. And then of course, do we have enough console inputs to get everything in? Then we did, and we did. And again, Chris came up, he was producing some band, I can't remember the name of the band, but he was producing some band and he dialed in all these sounds with all these keyboards and did overdubs, and we all were laughing our asses off. But yeah, so unique recording was kind of a very technically cutting edge place with the keyboards and that type of stuff.

(00:36:50):

It got a reputation of having these New York hotshot engineers working there. So it was when artists wanted to do keyboard overdubs or stuff like that, they would come up or especially if artists were doing programming stuff. So again, in the eighties, a lot of the stuff was all program stuff. So we had all the drum machines and everything to sing them together. This is well before MIDI Time Code I, for God's sake. It was a Dr Click, you would figure out, you'd have to figure out the tempo you'd record it at, and you would record a click track on tape, and that ran all your synchronizers was the printed click track on the tape. So you also had to make sure that you recorded like a bar or two of extra because it wouldn't start on beat one because it had to figure out the tempo.

(00:37:45):

But yeah, so it all started with the doctor click. And I remember we used to trigger before the A-M-S-D-D-L sampler, we used to use the CV and GATE input on the emulator one to trigger snare sounds from an emulator that would show up like a bar late because it took so long to trigger him. I was about to ask if that was a problem. Well, no, we figured out the way to do it is that when you're mixing, hopefully you had an open track on the tape, you would take the snare and you would copy to another track on tape, and then you would run that track off the sink head, which played early, and it played early enough that if you put a digital delay on it, so you would delay the signal that would be triggering the emulator snare drum, and then you would use your digital delight to hone in to time it so that the timing was correct. And that's how we did it.

Speaker 2 (00:38:41):

It sounds like this time period was a huge explosion of technical ability and discovery. Was it also on a creative level in terms of the artistic side of making records?

Speaker 3 (00:38:57):

Well, yeah. I mean, necessity is the mother of invention. So I mean, when I started, we had an MCI 500 series console and a 24 track tape machine. So in order to get these big sounds, we had to figure out ways to do it, and we would create what we would call the poor man slave, where we would take the stereo mix, bounce it to another 24 track machine on two channels, do these gang vocals, 18 tracks of gang vocals, mix that down to you generally only did it in one course, and you mix that down to two track half inch and then literally fly it in by hand to your master tape, those type of things. And then everything changed around probably late 84, early 85 when Unique bought their first SSL 4,000 series console. And we also updated to be able to operate a 48 track analog using a synchronizer. So once we get the SSL and the 48 track tape, then a whole nother creative door opened.

Speaker 2 (00:40:03):

Talk about that. Don't just leave me hanging. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:40:11):

Okay. So yeah, what was behind that door? Well, first of all, untold hours of waiting for the tapes to synchronize. Oh God. But you dealt with it. You dealt with it. But stuff. So no longer, now did I need to, did we need to make poor man slaves when we wanted to do gang vocals? Now we could make another slave and do the same type of thing, but have it synchronized and not be flying it in by ear or by hand. A great example of some of the stuff that I was doing can be heard on Stevie Winwood's back in the High Life album, and the song in particular called Higher Love. So we recorded Higher Love. I spent, oh God, about seven or eight months recording that album at unique recording. And as we were approaching the completion and getting ready to mix, Russ Heidelman, the producer, we are working on Higher level, Russ Heidelman, the producer was like, okay, this song is done.

(00:41:09):

The only thing we need is an introduction. Was an intro. The way the song started at the moment was it wasn't really working. And back in those days, what we would do when we were recording is we would stripe roughly six or seven minutes of tape with sim, and that's what we would record the song on that space of tape. So even if the song was four minutes or five minutes, generally you had music that went right to the end of the tape. And usually when the song was over as musicians do, they begin to fuck around screwing around, messing around, doodling. You know how musicians are

Speaker 2 (00:41:49):

Saying weird shit,

Speaker 3 (00:41:50):

Saying weird shit? Yes. It's always those gems at the ends of the songs or songs that fade out. It's always the little gems that you hear at the end that you're not supposed to hear, but a Higher Love or that whole Back in the High Life album, it started life as all machine based. So it was a drum machine sequenced base, but it was all machine based to a click. And during the time as we were recording, we overdubbed webbed, we over drugged. No, all the above. I probably over drugged, but we overdubbed live drums on Higher Love. It was done a very interesting way. So John Robinson is the drummer of Higher Love. So his first take, we recorded his hi hat, literally just the hi hat. And on his second take, we recorded just him playing bass drum and snare drum. And then on his third take, we recorded Tom, Tom fills and symbols.

Speaker 2 (00:42:47):

Wait, what year was this?

Speaker 3 (00:42:48):

This was in 1985.

Speaker 2 (00:42:50):

Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:42:51):

So none of the parts were the kick, the snare of the high hat and the Thomson Symbols were never all played as a performance. So on the final version of the song, the bulk of the song is a bass drum and snare drum from a machine, but they're John's samples. So in other words, I took John's base Drumm sample, and John Snare drum sample triggered it off the machine, but it's the machine. And then when John did fills, I would just switch to the fill tracks, whether it was a snare fill or a TomTom fill. So again, let's go back. He's doing his TomToms and symbol tracks, and as it gets to the end of the song, remember earlier in my story that musicians just like to screw around? He started to play this kind of really cool, interesting Tim Bali pattern where he took the snares, he switched the snares off in the snare drum and just started sticking the Tom Tom rims and hitting the snare drum like a Tim Bali.

(00:43:47):

And it was this cool little pattern. So when Russ Heidelman mentioned We need an introduction to Higher Love, immediately for some reason it popped in my head, let me see what happens if I do this. So I actually offset the tapes, which what I would do is you would park the tapes. I would literally play the tape and then hit stop on the tape machine on the beat that I wanted them to desynchronized at. And that was close enough, a starting point where you would hit a button on the Synchronizer that would calculate the offset of the two tapes, and then you would fine tune it to make it it in time. And that's basically how I created the intro to Higher Love is I just flew this stereo track of Toms and Symbols over to the front of the song, which is now what you hear as the song. And for those of you that are going to listen to the song, the first thing you hear, it's a signature sound. Now

Speaker 2 (00:44:41):

I'm actually going to listen to it right

Speaker 3 (00:44:43):

Now. Yeah, it's a signature sound. So you'll hear that him screwing around and as soon as you hear the first music note, you hear a music note that comes in with machine percussion. That is the original starting point of the song.

Speaker 2 (00:44:59):

Okay, got

Speaker 3 (00:44:59):

It. Okay. So everything before that I flew in, but again, it was actually that where he played that part is actually at the very end of the song. Sounds completely seamless. Well, yet, I guess I did. I get lucky once in a while.

Speaker 2 (00:45:19):

In addition to that, just being a great story, there's something I want to talk about for everybody listening who I've been telling you guys, not you, but the listeners, that technique that you just described of recording one drum at a time has been happening long before Pro Tools even existed.

Speaker 3 (00:45:39):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:45:40):

Yeah. And so thank you for talking about that because I've had a lot of, we featured this metal band Lama God recently with their producer machine, and they recorded their record like that with the drums one at a time. They can definitely play everything, but it was a production decision for various reasons. And a lot of people, I don't know if you know how metal fans are, but they can be assholes, but they were saying that it was an insult to the drummer or that these modern recording techniques are taking the soul out of music or just stupid comments. Haters been trying to get people to understand that this kind of stuff has been done since the eighties, since the seventies of Amping two. This is not a new thing. No, the only difference is maybe now we can do a little faster, but engineers have been creative and have been trying to get the most out of their situation since they've been able to record.

Speaker 3 (00:46:45):

Correct. It doesn't matter how you get there, as long as you get there. Exactly. As long as the end result is the desired result, it doesn't matter how you get there. I totally agree. Look, I remember when all it was going down now. So on that particular song, that's how that song was recorded. Now on a song I believe, which is the next song in the album called Take It As It Comes, which is Mickey Curry playing drum set. That's a traditional drum recording and a song like Freedom Over Spill with Steve Ferone playing drums. That's a traditional drum recording now on Steve Varonis performance that was recorded by the late Jason csro at Power Station Studios. So Jason started the project, and when the project moved over to Unique, pretty much, that was the only song that had live drums on it, and the rest of the songs were pretty much all machine based. And we did the next seven months of overdubs and mixing, finishing the album off over it. Unique recording. So the late Jason Casal and I share a best engineered recording Grammy for that album.

Speaker 2 (00:47:53):

That was your first big project or am I mistaken? The Steve Wynwood.

Speaker 3 (00:47:59):

It was one of my first big projects. It wasn't technically, it wasn't my first big project, but it was definitely the one that exploded.

Speaker 2 (00:48:09):

Was that a surprise?

Speaker 3 (00:48:11):

It's always a surprise. Of course. It's a surprise. I mean, first of all, I get asked a lot of times, did you know that song is going to be a hit? You don't think about that. You never think about that. It's bad luck. I've always considered that to be bad luck. That's not even in your mind.

Speaker 2 (00:48:28):

You're just trying to make a great song.

Speaker 3 (00:48:30):

Yeah, man, in my mind, it's not about is this going to be a hit? It's about is this great? Is it getting me off? Is it providing the emotion? Is this song providing the emotion? It's intent?

Speaker 2 (00:48:42):

It reminds me of an interview I was watching with Sean Connery actually, where he was talking about Dr. No, and he said that everyone around him likes to pretend that they knew it was going to be a hit, but everyone who was actually there making Dr No knows that they had no idea and they all thought it was going to fail, and they were just trying to make a cool movie that nobody actually knew that it was going to turn into this phenomenon. I think that's pretty much true for all projects.

Speaker 3 (00:49:11):

You never know. So again, I always treat it throughout my, and even to this day, I treat every song that I mix as if it's a career making song. They all demand that type of attention and importance, and I never think about, oh, this is going to be such a big hit. At the end of the day, I think about, do I like this? Does it sound great? Do I really feel that I pulled, I squeezed every bit of energy out of this song at the end of the day, that's kind of what I'm going at. But one other sidebar on Wynwood back in the High Life album, it also was the first album I ever recorded live drums in a studio on. So I was scared shitless for real. The first, yeah. Wow. Up until that time, the only drums I was using was coming out of machine or a sample. I'd never recorded live drums in a studio, just another sink or swim moment. Oh, yeah. And again, Chris, first of all, the whole project is I have Chris to thank for that project. He was actually hired to do that project, and at that point in his career, he wanted to focus his energy more on mixing. So he asked me if I would do the project and I said yes. So it was really his. So the plan was I would do the recording and that Chris would do the mixing and oops. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:50:38):

How long did that last

Speaker 3 (00:50:39):

For? Oops. I think, I don't know. You'd really have to ask Steve or Russ Heidelman, but along the way, they were really digging what I was doing. Chris instilled in me that every time you play the tape, it needs to sound like a mix every time. So I got really good at whipping up mixes before the first chorus or before the second verse of getting things balanced and sounding really good immediately as one is to not waste time. And two, the better you get at sounding and the better you get this audio sounding for the individual parts, the better the musicians are going to play. As we were going through the recording, I think Steve and Russ Heidelman were really enjoying or really liking digging what I brought to the table, and there was no issue with Chris. Chris and I always live by one rule. We don't care who mixes it as long as his last name is Lord Alge. That's a good rule. I agree. But because you asked me if this was my first big album and my first hit, and this is another interesting story. It started life in my introduction to this band, started life on a Sunday morning with a 9:00 AM phone call from my brother Chris who said, are you working today? And I said, no. He says, you are now. You have to go in and do this session for me. I got to have a band coming in from London and I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm like, well, why can't you do it? He's like, I'm in jail.

(00:52:29):

Anybody familiar with the Lord? Alge family will know that the only time, the only issues Lord Alges have with the law pertain to motor vehicles generally speeding. He got nicked for something and was driving on a suspended license, and it was a Sunday, so they wouldn't let him go to the next day. He had to do this mix. The band was only in for a day. So he just goes, just go and tell him you're me. I'm like, okay, no problem. I go into the studio, I go introduce myself as Chris again. This is, I think, 1985.

(00:53:07):

Again, Chris's name was, his picture wasn't plastered on boxes of plugins. There were no plugins. The only plugin was when you plug the equipment into the freaking wall. So yeah, so I showed up at the studio, hi, I'm Chris Lord Alge, blah, blah, blah. Did the mix. They love the mix. At the end of the day, I kind of go, alright, I got to fess up to you guys. I'm really not Chris Lord Alge. My name is Bob Clear Mountain, and we all got a good chuckle, but I told him the story. I says, yeah, my name is Tom. I'm his brother. And I go, we don't care who you are. We love this mix. So it was a remix from something on one of their albums a couple of months later.

Speaker 2 (00:53:51):

Wait, did you say Chris is in jail?

Speaker 3 (00:53:53):

Yeah. Oh yeah, of course. Hell yeah. I threw my brother right under the bus because that's what brothers do. Of course. I shared my brother's misery with the band, and like I said, we went out and had a pint and had a good old time, and they laughed. They said, we don't care who you are. We love what you did. We love your energy and we'll work with you again in the future. So a couple of months go by, I get a phone call from the band and they got hired to write and do a song for a movie. So they're going to Los Angeles. They call me up and they say, Hey, we'd like you to produce this with us as well as engineer and mix it. I'm like, okay, that would be freaking awesome. Of course, why wouldn't I want to do that?

(00:54:38):

The only downside is it actually coincided over the first week of the back in the high life recording. So Chris covered the first week of the recording while I went out to Los Angeles to record this song with this band. The band was called Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark or OMD. The song was a titled, if You Leave, it was on a movie soundtrack called Pretty and Pink, and they still play it to this day. It's actually, I think in a Fidelity life insurance commercial now. But for years it was just awesome to walk through the grocery store, especially with whoever I was dating at the time. You walk through the grocery store, you hear the stuff, it's

Speaker 2 (00:55:11):

Definitely points.

Speaker 3 (00:55:12):

Oh yeah, yeah. But yeah, again, that was the story again, Chris gave me the back in the high life gig, and yeah, again, as brothers, we always look out for each other. And again, it doesn't matter who mixes it, as long as it's a Lord Alge.

Speaker 2 (00:55:29):

So speaking of mixing, at that point in time, had you already started transitioning into becoming primarily a mixer

Speaker 3 (00:55:37):

After back in the high life, the success of back in the high life, more and more mixing jobs were coming my way. I was actually focusing my energies on being a producer, but I found myself on all weekends I would be mixing. So I was working nonstop, and again, if I wasn't producing on the weekends, I would be mixing some band. And then over a period of time and actually had reasonable success as a producer, I produced with Steve Wynwood the next album called Roll With It, which I got my second Grammy for best Engineered recording.

Speaker 2 (00:56:14):

Not bad.

Speaker 3 (00:56:16):

So I thought, oh man, I got this producer shit down. I got this Grammy thing down. It was another 11 years before I won my third Grammy.

Speaker 2 (00:56:26):

I was about to say were those famous last words?

Speaker 3 (00:56:28):

Exactly. But remember, look back in those days, engineers were kind of left out of Grammy warts. The only Grammy engineers could win up until, I believe it was 1997 or 1998. The only Grammy engineer could win was best engineered recording. It didn't matter if you mixed the best, the album of the year up until that point. If at one album of the year, the only one that got it was the artist in the producer, none of the engineers got it. Then the Grammys changed the rules, and I think this is for the better because it also allowed my brother to win Grammys, and that to me was very important. I felt he was far more deserving than I was. Unfortunately, they changed the rules like 10 years too late. If they had changed it earlier, I would probably have like 10 or 15 Grammys, but that's okay.

(00:57:21):

For me, I have the important Grammys and I've won it twice, and that's best engineered recording. The third Grammy I got was first the mixing I did on Santana Supernatural, and it won Album of the Year, which entitled me in 1999 to a Grammy. Having said all that. So yeah, so big thank you to my brother Chris, of course, and I say without my brother Chris, I would not have a career. Having said that, it was a tough, I know it was a tough thing. It had to be very tough for my brother to swallow that a gig he gave to his little brother was so successful and his brother won a Grammy on it. Fast forward somewhere in, maybe in the early two thousands, I don't remember the exact year, I get hired to mix a band from Los Angeles. I'm living in Miami Beach.

(00:58:11):

I've lived in Miami Beach for 20 something years, and I knew when I moved down here, there's going to be a handful of gigs I'm going to lose because the bands don't want to come down to Miami Beach to work. But I get hired by a band. This is probably three or four months in advance of the mixing. That's how busy I am. I'm booked that for in advance. So as we are getting closer to the dates when the mixing would commence, probably a week before the mixing is going to commence, I get a call from my manager, they want to mix the album in Los Angeles. Would you consider mixing the album in Los Angeles? And my response was, well, do they want my best mixes? And of course she said, of course they want your best mixes. And I said, well, we need to mix in Miami Beach at South Beach Studios. Well, the band can't do that. And I said, you know what? Chris can do it. See if Chris would be interested in doing it. And of course, Chris was into it. Chris mixed the album and he won his first Grammy on that album, and that album was great. See, it all works out. Yeah. And that album was Green Day American Idiot.

Speaker 2 (00:59:20):

Yeah, that mix was ridiculous. Fucking killed it. Yeah. Holy shit. That mix was

Speaker 3 (00:59:25):

Ridiculous. He killed that. I couldn't have been happier for me. Everything fell into place.

Speaker 2 (00:59:32):

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, Opeth, 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.

(01:00:28):

And Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for usage, your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. 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 in, 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 academy slash enhanced to find out more. So do you think during that time period though, what was it like 15 years or something like that, where between when you won your first Grammy and when he won his, you said that it must have been a tough pill for him to swallow, but it sounds like your relationship was still great.

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):

If I've implied anything other than that, it's wrong. I mean, Chris and I we're brothers. We look out for each other. We don't necessarily talk shop, but we love hanging out with each other. We love traveling with each other. Over the past couple of years or three or four years, I've kind of lived like a hermit down here in Miami Beach. When I leave work, I like to leave work, but I've always missed hanging with my brother and over the past four or five years now I'm out to the trade shows with him hocking his goods, and he kind of got me involved with the mix with the master stuff. And I enjoy the hang. I love hanging out with my brother. We spend a lot of time together and I just love it. I love it. There's never ever in our entire life been a moment that we didn't just, there was never that kind of jealousy again. It was always, as long as one of us is mixing, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):

That's so great. You don't always hear stories like that,

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):

But let's just call it what it is, Chris, as yet to win a best engineered recording Grammy, I've won it twice. So that's the next thing we're going to get him is he's got to get a best engineered recording Grammy. He truly deserves it and earns it. But look, I also benefit from the Lord Alge brand that he has created. So I'm very thankful for that. And yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):

Have you had no interest or have you just, is that just his thing being more, I dunno, being more into that side of things is just, is that not something you're interested in or is it something you're interested but just haven't gotten into as much the products and all that?

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):

It's one of those things I think that Chris's technical knowledge has always been far outweighs mine. I only know I turn this, it does this. Chris has a much better technical knowledge of how all this shit works as opposed to me, my mixing style is based more on emotion. What's the emotion coming across and how can I make it just sound fucking killer? How can I make it sound better than Chris's mix? But yeah, I mean he really saw the writing on the wall with the plugins and jumped in with both feet. He truly lives the music life. I mean, look, I do as well, but there was quite a bit of time and during the years when I was married, I'm no longer married ladies. There are no ladies listening to this show.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):

I was about to say, this

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):

Is the wrong audience. There are no ladies listening to this show. But look, there are, because I know some very talented, no, there are just not that many engineers, but especially during the times I was married and one of the reasons I moved to Mindy Beach is when I left the studio, I kind of wanted to leave that life and just have a regular life. But Chris is like, he's all in. Every waking moment is about gear. Every waking moment is about equipment and all that stuff. So he's put a lot of work into doing what he's doing with the plugins and creating a brand. And again, I benefit from it and I love going and doing trade shows with him. And we just have a blast because again, when there's two of us, it's just, yeah, it's on stun. We're both on stun, so yeah, it's good fun.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):

So let's talk about mixing a little bit. I'm just curious, are you still using the SSL and Pro Tools for your mixes

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):

Sitting in front of it right now? Yeah, I have an SSL. It's built in 1993, July, 1993. It's SSL 4,000 series. It's a g plus 4,000 G plus. It has the Moving Fader automation, which is called Automation, and it's a gem. It's a gem. South Beach Studios bought this from Chung King Studios in New York City. They purchased it from SSL, they had it for three years and then South Beach Studios bought it when South Beach Studios went out of business. I took it, I bought it from South Beach Studios and we completely disassembled the console, cleaned everything up, got it. All the consoles always run, but in order to get it into my room, I had to disassemble it. So it's all been brought back to new, it's now wrapped in a very, very sexy red bolster and it's just awesome. And I've mixed on this console for 20 years, this exact console. For the bulk of the time I was at South Beach Studios, it was this console and I'm very happy to have it. Yeah, this is the Blink 180 2 console. This is the PSM 41 console. All that stuff was mixed on this console.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):

Wow. And what role does it still play or what role would plugins play, I guess would be the better question?

Speaker 3 (01:07:13):

Yes. So when I saw that Pro Tools wasn't going away, which probably would've been in the early two thousands, late nineties, early two thousands, when I saw the potential in the system, I really focused my energies on becoming proficient in using Pro Tools. Fearing the day might come when I don't have an SSL to work on. So I really focused my energies on getting to know pro tools, getting to know the plugins, just becoming, having it become second nature. So the way that I am able to refer to it now is back in the day when we were recording with all analog equipment, even if I was using my 33 48 digital tape machine and my digital tape machine, my 33 48 was purchased out of, I purchased it out of convenience because I did not want to have to lock up two analog tapes, 2 24 tracks for anybody that's done that they can understand what a fucking pain in the ass it is, especially when you're mixing, it adds so much time to the whole equation. So it was worth the investment to transfer to buy these tape machines.

(01:08:28):

It's an amazing tape machine. And I would transfer the projects over to my Sony 33 48 and leave their master tapes intact, untouched, and then I would mix off of the Sony so I didn't have to lock up tape machines. But again, so back in the days of analog mixing, we really only had about 20 colors. And when I say colors, I mean different pieces of gear. You had the 1176 LA three a, LA two, a DBX one 60, a handful of other compressors, you had some PCM 40 twos, SD three thousands delays, and then you had like your 40 L 2 24. Back in the days of an analog recording, we only had 25 different colors, different colors, I would mean by the compressors that we had, the reverbs that we had. And then with Pro Tools, all of a sudden now we have three and 400, 500 different colors.

(01:09:24):

Look, let's call a spade a spade. They sound the emulation sounds similar to the originals, there's no doubt about it, but none of them sound exactly the same. The great thing about the plugins is they're instantly recalled and they don't break. So that's always been my thing with when I was mixing analog is if I had to recall a mix, there's so many variables involved with patch cords and this, that, and the other thing that when I recall the mix, the little subtleties disappeared and that was pretty much down to, unless you numbered every patch cord, you know what I mean, and used the exact same patch cord, obviously it's not going to be the same because each patch cord might have different resistance. But with the plugins, I found that they come back exactly the same. So what the plugins did is opened up this whole new creative window for me.

(01:10:21):

So to be quite honest, I mean I'm sitting in my control room with an analog console and racks of analog gear. And aside from on my stereo bus, I'm really not using my analog gear that much. I'm using plugins. But where I feel I benefit from still using my SSL is my audio comes into my console as if it was an old school. So I've always referred to Pro Tools as a multi-track on steroids. So I'm doing all of my EQ and compressing within the box, but remember it's not coming out of the box. In other words, it's not just coming out of Master Fader in a box. It's coming out 56 or 64 channels onto my console. So one channel is the bass drum, which would be the bass drum in and out. Mike. One channel would be the snare drum, which would be the snare top and bottom mic.

(01:11:14):

Two channels would be the left and right TomToms. No matter how many TomToms there are, two channels are going to be the symbols. So again, the drum set's going to be made up of roughly 16 channels. On my console. You have your bass guitar and then all your guitars and then your vocals and so forth and so on. So again, all this audio is coming into my console just like it did in the old days, except it's coming from Pro Tools. So it's one thing when I see guys come in and they run their stereo mix out of two faders and the SSL thinking they're going to get this great SSL sound. Now that's not how you get it. How you get it is by bringing it in via as if it was a multi-track. So having it come in on 40 or 60 different channels that does it.

(01:11:59):

And again, you're hitting the sweet spot level wise and you're using the wonderful analog summing that the SSL has. And then depending on how I'm feeling that day or what my flavor is that day will depend on whether I'm using the console quad compressor or whether I'm using the focus right Red three or the Tube Tech or whatever analog outboard compressor or the 33 6 0 9, whatever that mix calls for. And then I use the console equalization as kind of mastering eq. So sometimes as I'm nearing the end of my mix, it's easier just to kind of like, Ooh, let's just add a little bit more mid-range to the guitars here, and I'll do that on the console. Sometimes I find that just to be a bit easier, but again, most of the automation moves, at least with the drums as concerned, are all done on the console.

(01:12:51):

You have to remember, at least with the drums, drums are hitting the console at the sweet spot, which generally means that if I do automation, at least upper level automation on the drums, I'm going to have overs. So therefore I'll do a couple of passes of automation on the console generally to do drums and any other obvious moves that I hear. But yeah, but the bulk of the work is done in Pro Tools. And again, I've done it in the past where I've taken the mix after the fact, summed it into a master fader redone the drum moves or whatever moves. And it sounds pretty similar. There's not a night and day difference. So one of the things that I teach in my mixing seminars or when I talk about mixing is it's not the gear dummy, it's your ear

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):

A hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):

So I get it all the time. Hey man, you get an SSL. That's how you get those mixes. No, man, I get the ear,

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):

Man. I have heard lots of terrible mixes on an SSL. Yeah, the SSL is not doing it for you.

Speaker 3 (01:13:53):

Yeah. Well obviously I didn't mix those songs.

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):

You brought something up that I actually haven't heard anybody say, but that I just wanted to highlight whenever people talk about the advantages and disadvantages of one versus the other, which is kind of a tired argument either way there. You did say something that I really haven't heard before. Everybody talks about the workflow and the recall ability because of time, and that's great. I mean that's true. The recall ability is great on A DAW, the one thing that you said that I have not heard, which makes perfect sense is that the recalls never sound quite the same because even down to micro details like resistance in a patch cable, because nothing is exactly the same in the analog world, everything's just a little different. Those little differences add up to a different result when you plug it all back up.

Speaker 3 (01:14:53):

Exactly. So analog mix, I did, let's just say Fat Lips on 41. There's a totally analog mix. I didn't have a Pro Tools rig back then, so that mix probably had two or 300 patch cords in the Patch Bay. And they're there for numerous reasons. One, to move the channels to where I want them to live on the console, two compression equalization, outboard compression, outboard equalization, whatever, not being used by any stuff that's being used, vocal compression. So yeah, it's not just a couple of patch cords, it's a multitude of patch cords. And yeah, I've always said that you lose the subtleties. It took me, I'm going to honestly say it took a decade for me to get to it. First started by just using Pro Tools as a tape machine, no plugins. Then I would put a couple of plugins in, let me try this and that over probably a decade, probably around 2000 and I don't know, 2008 or 2009, I found myself just using plugins, but still, again, still bringing it into the SSL because I feel why not use the SSL for its really strong suit, and that's if you bring it in as if it was a multi-track, summing it through the SSL and again, through these great analog compressors I have, that's really the strong suit.

(01:16:28):

And I always felt that that's the weak point or one of the weaker points in Pro tools now, that was one of the weaker points. It's obviously gotten a lot better and the caliber of modern engineers has gotten a lot better to create again, this kind of really cool sound. And now I go, anybody that has the balls to come up to me and say you used to mix with a lot of compression is I'm going to smack in the face because the amount of compression that modern engineers are using is ludicrous. And sometimes it sounds really good and sometimes they miss the mark. What I find, again with a lot of modern stuff that I'm getting, because I like them to send the sessions to me as last they had them, but sometimes they're over baked.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):

So the production session,

Speaker 3 (01:17:17):

Well, yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:17:18):

Not prep for mixing, so just send it straight from the producer.

Speaker 3 (01:17:24):

How are you going to prep it for mixing? What are you going to do? Take all the plugins off?

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):

Well, sometimes they pre-prep it. Sometimes

Speaker 3 (01:17:32):

I've heard it. Here's what I want. I want the session of your last rough mix.

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):

Okay,

Speaker 3 (01:17:35):

That's what I want all plugins in it. Whatever rough mix the band is listening to whatever version got approved by the band. That's what I want. I want it with all the plugins and then I want make the decision about what I'm going to use or how I'm going to do it. I used to want it where they took all the plugins off and I realized that I was spending my time chasing their roughnecks. So now I want it where their last rough mix was. So again, a lot of times I'll be pulling stuff off the drums, but a lot of times there's a lot of really important stuff in there in these days of non-committal audio of engineers, recording documents and then using plugins to create the sound. You got to have it. And again, it's like when they used to send me the sessions without the plugins and they go, well, why does it sound so different? I'm like,

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):

Why do you think it does?

Speaker 3 (01:18:38):

Why didn't you fucking print this guitar going through X, Y, and Z? Which made it sound fucking amazing. And there you have it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):

It's fascinating that you're saying this is because part of how a lot of people prep for mix is they don't, a lot of people don't want to, I guess, inconvenience the person who's going to mix by sending them a disorganized production session, production session that only the producer understands.

Speaker 3 (01:19:08):

You're fucking joking,

Speaker 2 (01:19:09):

It's my mess.

Speaker 3 (01:19:10):

I know my mess. Yeah. Well, it's called sabotage. First of all, the shit, it's written hieroglyphics. You know what I mean? Really? I don't need to know that. It's fucking SG one A 4 14 57 0 1 dupe. You know what I mean? I need to know. It's the chorus guitar.

Speaker 2 (01:19:30):

So some pre prepping could be good, at least making sure that the titles make sense. Look,

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):

If you're too lazy to take the dot dupe out, just leave. Okay, turn off the podcast now. Okay, just turn it off.

Speaker 2 (01:19:49):

Oh, man.

Speaker 3 (01:19:50):

Okay. This is not a dot dupe podcast. This is the original.

Speaker 2 (01:19:53):

What about Audio 48?

Speaker 3 (01:19:55):

Oh, Chris always taught me, he taught me early on, if you don't have time to do it right the first time, you're not going to have time to redo it. And that comes down to notation and everything involved. We don't need to know. Look, there's a come page if you really feel the need to write a Bible about each song, I mean about each microphone and each instrument, put it in the comments. Otherwise, it's chorus guitar, chorus guitar one, or label it however you would. And once you've gotten to when you're done with your drum edits, please take out the dot 12, which showed me that you had all the different duplications you had to make of it. God, this is

Speaker 2 (01:20:41):

Giving me anxiety. Just so many bad memories

Speaker 3 (01:20:45):

Of, well, look, we only have so much real estate to look at on our screens. You know what I mean? So I'm really anal about this stuff. In order for you to be able, you have to set yourself up for success. If you can't navigate your session, you can't succeed in mixing it. Hence why they're handing the mix to me or to Chris or to whoever. But it's like when I was recording, Chris told me, he goes, just think about it. I want you to record this as if Bob Clear Mountain was going to mix it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:19):

That's exactly what I was about to say.

Speaker 3 (01:21:23):

And that still rings. I still hear that. So when my clients get sessions from me, you know what I mean? There's no question about what everything is. It's all labeled correctly. It's all laid out really nice. No, like what the hell is this? Yeah, it's called professional courtesy

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):

Produce as though someone you respect is going to mix it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:50):

Right? Exactly. Look, I've called cats up, I've called engineers up, and it was actually, I haven't done it in a while, but I did do it two months ago where I got, there's this new modern trend, stereo mono. Yeah, everything comes in on stereo tracks and it's technically mono. Do you know that when you do that to me, first of all, there's a button in logic that you hit that stops it from doing that. Secondly, when you do that, you're just giving me the finger and I'm going to send the session back to you to fix it. Because for me, if it's a stereo track, I mean aside from the obvious bass drum or snare drum, which come in stereo, a lot of times I feel obligated to have to listen to the whole fucking thing to make sure there's not one part that it becomes stereo. It's a huge pain in the ass, but you know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:22:46):

Yeah, totally. I mean, this is why I tell people to prep their sessions properly and why I really do think that

Speaker 3 (01:22:54):

If you think about it while you're recording and while you're working and you set your rig up, look, I know what it's like to be in the trenches. Okay, I know what it's like and I know how it can get away from you really quick. But that's how you lose the gig. Part of the gig is maintaining a clean session, managing the session. And remember, if you have a hard time navigating it, just think of the next guy. You know what I mean? So with a little bit of work and a little bit of thinking about it, but while you're doing it, it can be really easy to do and really easy to set up. Nowadays, the CPU Power, you're able to run so many plugins. There's no reason you should be sharing effects. Like in other words, all the parts should have their own effects. You shouldn't just have one set of reverbs that everything's going to. Again, at least for me, sometimes I'm running 10 or 15 different reverbs. Again, my lead vocal would have one, and then on my console, my background vocals come up as a stereo track. So they need to have their own set of reverbs.

(01:24:01):

Again, it's just how I do it, which makes it very easy if I need to bounce out stems because nothing is being shared. So this way, I'm not worried about it. I mean, I get stem tracks all the time where you get reverb leakage from other instruments because the guy was doing it in his sleep. So yeah, don't get me on that bandwagon.

Speaker 2 (01:24:24):

Well, I mean, I guess the moral of the story though is that you have figured out a way to still integrate everything you love about the analog world, but to have a workflow that matches the modern age and that won't fuck you up

Speaker 3 (01:24:38):

Well, yeah. I mean the great thing about pro tools is like your imagination is now your brick wall, but it's always been that way with mixing. I mean, there's so much you can do. It's ludicrous how you can manipulate the audio in wacky and creative ways, and it all stays there. Again, you can create what I do. I work with a Japanese band called One Okay Rock. I do a lot of concert DVDs for them where I go over, I'll record the shows and I bring 'em back here and mix it. And what I do is I'll create work sessions as I'm mixing. So I'll be compiling stuff onto stereo tracks, and then I have the ability to create these work sessions that are the physical, raw audio files process that created these work tracks that if I ever had to go back and rebalance something, I can do that.

(01:25:33):

I just did a concert with a 52 piece orchestra in my mixed session because I need to manage my mixed session. In my mixed session. I broke it up into sections so that violin, first chairs, violin, second chair, violas, cellos, harp, and brass. So the five stereo tracks of that are so much easier to deal with than 52 different channels. Course, once I got my balance the way that I wanted it, I bounced it, I committed it, and then I saved the session. That was just those tracks that made up the comp, and I had to go back three or four times and make tweaks, you know what I mean? But it was so super, super easy and it didn't clog up my whole mix session. So again, it's like with just a little bit of thought, a little bit of ingenuity, you can do all this stuff. And the same with the plugins. If you're using a shit ton of plugins and a lot of people either freeze them or they commit it, well, to be honest, the committing is the right thing to do. And then just create to cover your, your backup session that has the original raw data.

Speaker 2 (01:26:49):

Well, we've been talking for a while and I actually have a few questions from our listeners. I don't want to take up all of your day, so I'd like to get into some of those, if that's cool with you.

Speaker 3 (01:27:02):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. Bring it on.

Speaker 2 (01:27:04):

Alright, this one is from Russ Miller. He says, thank you for taking the time to share your experience and knowledge with us. You seem to have your studio and workflow really dialed in, and you've got an incredible discography in your credits at this point in your career. How important is it for you to use other mixes for reference as opposed to, or in combination with just reacting to your feelings and instincts when mixing? And if and when you do reference other material? Are you trying to hit the client's target or your own?

Speaker 3 (01:27:39):

Good question, Russ. I referenced modern music. Obviously, there's a lot of great shit going on out there, and that's how I grow as a mixer. I mean, a lot of times on projects that I'm working on, I'm referencing their rough mix to see what they're doing. And again, the other cool thing about getting them to send me the sessions with the plugins in, I get to see how you guys are recording and some of the cool tricks, and you are doing some cool tricks and see some of the cool tricks that you're doing, and then I get to steal them and make them my own. But that's what I do. That's how you grow as a mixer. So again, I like that. The only comment that I have about a lot of the modern stuff is I find more times than not that sometimes these mixes are sounding what I call a little over baked little too much emphasis put on trying to get it as loud as possible.

(01:28:39):

Yeah, sometimes it's just a bit much. I mixed this album last year for a band called The Interrupters, and they had a couple of guys mixed one song, and as they hired me to mix the album, and as I was mixing the album, Kevin, the bass player, said to me, he said, yeah, we picked your mix. It was the lowest in volume, but it was the best sounding mix. So remember that there usually is another guy at the end of the rainbow called the mastering engineer. So I always leave a little room for him. But again, it's unrealistic to think that all artists now are going to be using a mastering engineer. So obviously I try to get my mixes as loud as possible, but yeah, I'm listening to modern stuff and when I hear something that impresses me, yeah, I might listen to it, try to figure out what they've done. Especially with the Beck stuff, I really like Beck and he knows how to craft really good records and he gets audio. So when I hear stuff like that, I may listen to it and dissect it, but I never really use it as a reference point. I'm really more likely I like this effect here or this effect there. So thank you, Russ.

Speaker 2 (01:30:01):

Okay, this one's from Ruben Sanchez. And when you deal with returning artists or returning clients, do you find the tendency to repeat things you did on older works for them, or do you try to get it fresh with every single new project? And is this something that you talk in advance about with the artist?

Speaker 3 (01:30:25):

No. Well, one, I don't talk in advance about it. Two, of course, I'm always trying to pawn off the old tricks. Going back to going way back to the tape flange days when I used to do the tape flange. I still love tape flange and found a way to be able to do the same effect with plugins. But no, I mean, if a trick works, a trick works because remember, every song is different. And even though that trick is your starting point, it's always going to end up being different. You're going to make it so that it fits the song or the project that you're working on, but I have an arsenal of tricks up my sleeve, but they're always a starting point. I hope that helps you out there, Ruben.

Speaker 2 (01:31:15):

Yeah. I mean, what you're using the trick on everything about it is completely different. Correct. So how could you be repeating yourself anyways?

Speaker 3 (01:31:23):

Correct. That's like, okay. So it's almost like if I wasn't going to use a trick, it would be like, okay, so on this album we're not going to use any compression. And you know what they call that? They call that a fucking document.

Speaker 2 (01:31:40):

That's hilarious. This next one is from Dave Holmes. Wait, wait,

Speaker 3 (01:31:45):

Dave isn't neither tour manager for Coldplay, Dave, Dave Holmes, David Holmes.

Speaker 2 (01:31:51):

It's entirely possible

Speaker 3 (01:31:56):

We

Speaker 2 (01:31:56):

Have

Speaker 3 (01:31:56):

Lots of pros. He was always very nice to me, but

Speaker 2 (01:31:59):

I'm certain this is a different Dave Holmes. It very well could be either or. I wouldn't be surprised either way, but he is just wondering how do you deal with fatigue for mixing? I find it difficult to mix for longer than an hour or so without missing details or feeling like I'm rushing or overcooking. Whoa, that's just an hour. Wow,

Speaker 3 (01:32:19):

Wow. I'm a perfectionist. So there's like, yeah, I have my system dialed in and I have my workflow dialed in. So it's just kind of like when I sit down to mix, I try to keep the tedious and stuff, the tedious stuff that I dislike doing. I try to have that in the beginning part of my day when I have energy so that as my day progresses and maybe ear fatigue starts to set in, I'm onto more of the creative and the things that kind of get me off. And that's what keeps you going because it's weird. You do one thing in the mix and everything changes, and all of a sudden you're like, fuck yeah, I am the man. And you get that energy back. So that's kind of how my workflow is. So if you're getting fatigued after an hour, oh boy, I don't know what to tell you, but again, I would focus my energies on, again, start your day with when you have the most energy on doing the dirty work.

(01:33:25):

Now, when I do dirty work and idiot work, which is the beginning part of my mix, and let's just make the record clear, I am an idiot, but the beginning part of my day, I'm monitoring at low volumes. So the first listen in my day is I'm listening to the rough mix. And while I'm listening to that rough mix, I'm also putting the cues into pro tools to my specs, even though they might already have, might delete 'em and do 'em again. And I would listen to that at a moderate level. And then when I begin my work, I'm always listening at a low to medium volume. And then when I get to the work where I start to do my equalization, obviously the monitoring level comes up, and then as the basis of the song start to come together, the meat and potatoes, I'm cranking it.

(01:34:17):

And when I get into the vocals again, I'm listening at a medium to high volume, and then around this time, the things change that excite me. So that's how I keep the energy. Again, you do one or two things and all of a sudden you have this, God damn, I am the man. You get the confidence. It's like the light bulb turns on, the light bulb turns on, your confidence level is on stun, and you're like, yeah. And the other thing I do is take breaks, take a couple breaks, I will stop. I'll have lunch, I'll sit outside. I'll get away for a minute, and then I'll come back to it. It's amazing what 20 or 30 minute break will do for

Speaker 2 (01:35:00):

You. I also wonder if the reason that he's experiencing that is because he's just monitoring way too louder. He's got some messed up situation, like he's trying to mix in earbuds and it's really, really loud, and he'll sit there for an hour, EQing, notching symbols or something that will just take the life out of you.

Speaker 3 (01:35:21):

Yeah, hard to tell. I mean, look, headphones are for when you're walking, when you're traveling airplanes or for critical listening. So when I listen in the headphones, I'm listening for technical issues. That's the only time I use my headphones generally because in the headphones I can pick out some technical issues that I might miss when I'm listing on my monitors. So the main thing is to trust your monitors, the monitor at a level that's not going to blow your brains out, because again, eventually you'll get ear fatigued. So good luck with that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:57):

All right. This next one is from Marco a Km, and I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce his name, because it's spelled K-T-C-H-S-M. So we'll go with that. How do you approach mixing a live album like Last Tour on Earth by Marilyn Manson? How did you make recordings from different dates sound as one concert experience while still polishing the sound and especially the live version of Last Day on Earth, which puts the listener right into the arena

Speaker 3 (01:36:26):

One. I don't remember mixing that album, so I may or may not have, but I have no memory of mixing a live Manson album. If it sounds good, then yeah, I did it. If it's questionably sounding and it was somebody else, I can tell you, I mean, I do a lot of, look, I really enjoy mixing live albums. Again, earlier I spoke of a band called One Okay Rock, Japanese Band. I've done six different live tours with them that I've recorded shows and mixed them, and I love it. It's a labor of love, it's a shit ton of work, but it's a labor of love. And what I do is, I mean, with the live recording, I focus on being able to control the audio. So in a modern live recording, let's call it what it is, we're going to be using autotune. Back in the day when I did, I did a Sarah McLaughlin.

(01:37:27):

I did two live albums for Sarah McLaughlin, and she would come in and we'd spent a week and we would fix her vocals because look, that's the thing about Live, it's not going to be perfect. But now I don't have to do that anymore. So what I do do is when I do modern live albums, I record two shows, and again, with one okay rock, they have been doing it for quite a while. They've realized that by just taking a split off a front of house and sending it to a computer at front of house is not working for them. So they've hired me, and what I do is I actually, we have a truck, it has a e VR in it. We take a split. So before I could take a direct mic split, so I get any EQ or processing from front of the house, and I sit in an e VR and I'll get a nice clean recording, that's my job, and I'll, I'll run a rough mix.

(01:38:31):

We record two shows, and I bring it back to Miami Beach to my studio, and that's when I begin to put it together. And the reason we record two shows is mainly for the vocal. This gives me the opportunity to fix the odd mistake or anything that's out of tune. The other thing with the live mixing or mixing a live performance is again, we're going to be using autotune on the vocal. It's going to happen. So for anybody out there that's done that you'll understand completely that as soon as you put that on, you get all the aliasing from all the other microphones that aren't auto-tuned, because the vocal is usually the loudest thing. It's screaming through every microphone, it's leaking through every microphone, and you have to control it. So I have a process in which I spend a shit ton amount of time cleaning and being able to control the leakage.

(01:39:29):

And again, it works out magnificently and I really enjoy doing it. It's a lot of work, but it sure is rewarding. I just did, and actually just earlier this week, I finally got the band to sign off on a concert that I did in October with the orchestra, and literally the comments they sent me for a two hour orchestra concert, I got three comments that were so minute, one that was just a guitar note that was a mistake, another in a vocal note that I missed, just to get only three minor comments on a two hour show. That's a dream. It's a dream. It's an absolute dream. But again, it's because I put the effort in to making it sound amazing. And again, by controlling the ambience. So again, when the drummer's not playing, like I go through and the drummer's not playing, those microphones are muted on the bass guitar, same thing.

(01:40:28):

Even though I'm only using a DEI, but I'm cleaning out all the finger noise when he's moving his hand up and down the strings. Same with the guitar player, all that type of stuff, all those little things, when you start adding spank to it become big things. And when you have just nice, clean, just audio, then you can just pummel the shit out of it and make it sound amazing. So yeah, good times. But yeah, I don't remember. I may have mixed the Manson Live album, but to be honest, I don't remember. But Manson, the Mechanical Animals album I did is to this day, one of my favorite albums. That's

Speaker 2 (01:41:07):

A great record.

Speaker 3 (01:41:08):

Yeah, that I mixed. It was such a great experience working with Nen. I'm just waiting for that sound to disappear, and we'll take that again. It was such a great experience working with Nen. He's very articulate, and I really, really enjoyed, again, enjoyed my time working with him.

Speaker 2 (01:41:28):

And just for the record, I'm just looked on your wiki. You did mix last tour on Earth. Oh, I have no memory of it. I'll tell you what year. I mean, take this with a grain of Salt 99. So

Speaker 3 (01:41:41):

Wow, it's

Speaker 2 (01:41:41):

Been, it was a while ago.

Speaker 3 (01:41:43):

It was a while ago. I have no memory of it. So one thing that I've learned about live recordings, as long as they're done on the same tour with the same gear, it doesn't matter the venue. So in other words, if I took, if on that particular album, let's just say the songs vary, the song as it goes through the set list, it goes from a different venue to venue, to venue to venue, and this cat was complimenting me. How I got 'em to sound the same, that's not that difficult because again, generally the mics don't move. Remember, we're taking a split off of what front of House is using, and front of house is pretty good about setting things up exactly the same every night. So I did again with the one okay, rock that I just did. I did concerts in April at Tokyo Dome and in October in Osaka, and they were using the same rig, even though the Osaka show was an orchestra show and the Tokyo Dome was not, it was the same stage gear as my starting point for Osaka. I used the EQ from the Tokyo Dome Show, and it matched up pretty close with just a couple of tweaks. So it's not that difficult, but there you go. Thank you for that bit of information, and I really nailed that Manson album. Yeah, it sounds

Speaker 2 (01:42:59):

Amazing. I didn't even, I deserve the Grammy for that one.

Speaker 3 (01:43:03):

I didn't even know I mixed it.

Speaker 2 (01:43:05):

So last question, because like I said, I don't want to take up the rest of your day. This one's on a slightly different topic, but I think it's a good one. It's from John Maceo and he says, Tom, Lord gee, you've been in the industry of very long time, maintained an extremely successful,

Speaker 3 (01:43:22):

Wait, wait. I think he just called me old. I am old, by the way. Go ahead. You can start again.

Speaker 2 (01:43:32):

How about this Tom Lord, Alge. You know what the fuck you're doing, and you're extremely successful and influential. Sound better. So what do you believe are the boy?

Speaker 3 (01:43:45):

This guy doesn't know shit. No, sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:43:49):

Sorry. Go. We'll finish this one. So what do you believe are the biggest distractions you see that stop interns and assistants and upcoming mixers from really coming into their own to make this a lifetime career,

Speaker 3 (01:44:03):

Opening their fucking mouths. Thank you. An assistant. When I worked at South Beach Studios, I had the best assistant in the world. The guy was actually 10 years older than me. He loved what he was doing, and he was the perfect assistant because he knew his role. He came in, he did his job. He was friendly with the clients, but he always kept his opinion to himself. He watched my back. In other words, he would catch me if I made a mistake or something, but he wasn't trying to take my job and he had the ability to do the job. So the main thing with an assistant is shut the fuck up. Always be aware of what's going on in the control room so that you're in the loop so that you know what's going on. Because when we're in battle in the recording and we're barking shit out, you need to know what we're talking about.

(01:44:59):

And the only way you're going to be able to do that is by watching what we're doing and being aware of your surroundings or what's going on. The other thing is to be technically and have the ability to do these things. So be proficient in pro tools. Be proficient in logic. Whatever your DAW is, to be quite honest, you're going to have to be proficient in both. Logic is great, but Pro Tools is a reason why it has the word pro in it. I use Pro Tools because that just happened to be the program that I use.

(01:45:29):

I do have logic, I have a bit of knowledge in running it. I just find that pro tools is a bit easier, so be a whiz on it. Be quick. And then the other thing is be fun to be around. And it doesn't matter how your day is going. Your day is going fucking great. I don't care if you just got kicked out of your house, your girlfriend broke up with you, or your boyfriend broke up with you, whatever, your dog died. It doesn't matter, man. We're making music, and it's all about the vibe. If you're cool to be around and you buy around the drinks, that goes a long way.

Speaker 2 (01:46:04):

One of the first things you said in that answer was, and you didn't feel like he was trying to take your job. I think that loyalty is also so key. So key.

Speaker 3 (01:46:15):

Yeah, it is. Look, go ahead, man. Try and take my job. Good luck with that. But eventually, I know I've worked with enough assistants throughout my career that they move on in their life. Hopefully they were able to gain knowledge from the time they spent working with me. But for God's sake, man, don't be so fucking blatant to do it in front of me. When I worked at South Beach Studios, the interns always ask me similar questions, and I just told him, man, be proficient. Know how to run the stuff. Be invisible, and eventually clients will see your worth. And one or two of the interns that used to work in Studio B with Pharrell ended up becoming engineers and touring with Pharrell, because again, they were proficient. They knew how to carry themselves, and they were in the right place at the right time. You have to be patient. You got to pay your dues

Speaker 2 (01:47:12):

No matter what. You always have to pay your dues. That really is another thing that I tell people all the time, which is, you really need to be patient. It could take 10 years, it could take 15. It could take two years. You never know.

Speaker 3 (01:47:25):

It may never happen. That too. First and foremost, you got to be in it for the main reason, the love of music, because you choose this as a career. You're going to be listening to music. You got to love it from minute one of every day, every day. And I have an SSL in my house, and I come up here sometimes at three or four in the morning, and I just go, fuck, this is just the most amazing thing to have this. When I'm feeling creative, I can just power up my console and get that creative energy out. It's awesome. Like I said, recently in my downtime, when I have downtime, I go through and I remix my old catalog, and I do that for demonstration purposes. So for an example, I did a modern plugin mix of, I don't like the drugs, but the drugs like Me by Marilyn Manson. And it was so much fun to readdress that song and do it with plugins. And I wanted to see, one, how my mixing style has changed, and two, how close I could get it to sound with the original mix that I did using all Analog Outboard Year. And it sounds fucking awesome, and I was shocked at how close it sounds to the one that I did 20 years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:48:52):

I bet it does sound crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:48:53):

And these are things for your listeners, any of 'em that come to NAM or a ES show, they'll usually be in for a treat. If I'm doing a mix with the master seminar there where I'll pull up, I try to pull up one or two of those gems, and usually in the hour or the two hours, that mix with the Masters gives me for it. It's always a good time. And again, the reason that I do it is I want the listeners, I want the other engineers that are out there, the guys that are mixing on their laptops. I want them to get the confidence to know it's not the gear, it's your ear. I have the same gear. This is all done in plugins. And then when they see the plugins that I've used, they're shocked. It's the same ones they own. Yeah. Not only it's the ones that they ignore.

(01:49:46):

Okay, so my go-to plugins, what's my go-to Compressor? The Bomb Factory 76, that's came out with Pro Tools One. You know what I mean? There's something about that, their version of that 1176. That sounds great, which I really love. One of my Go-to Equalizers, it's the avid version of the focus, right? It's red, it's old. It's been there since day one, and I just find it sounds good, easy to operate. I use the Waves, obviously, the CLA Mix Hub, which is a new one, which is awesome. But I also use the old 4,000 channel strip, which is great. These are my go-to starting points. So mainly it's like find the ones that are easy for you to operate, that you can get the sound very quickly, and then take it from there. This way you're not, it needs to be effortless. And then when you're feeling experimental, you start to dig into all these other things, like the UA audio stuff or the Plugin Alliances is coming out with shit ton of great plugins and obviously the fab filter. And I'm a big fan of the rouser, which is the emulation of the distress. All those things are great, but remember, in my opinion, they sound close to what they're emulated from, but none of them sound exact. And again, they react differently. So which means they're, it opens up a whole nother creative door. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:51:25):

And keyword being different, not better or worse, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:51:29):

No, look, what am I going to do? Sit here and tell you that my hundred of thousands of dollars of outboard gear is all worthless? No, I mean, look, I have it, because if you walked into my studio and you just saw a console and a Pro Tools rig, you'd laugh at me. You know what I mean? Trust me, every once in a while, I got to plug in that 10 73, I got to plug in that 33 6 0 9 or the LA three A every once in a while, I'm using those things. But I found for me, I love being able to just use all the plugins. It's not the gear, it's your gear. It's how you're using it. So again, you all have the gear, don't get so hung up on having all this stuff. I often tell my students, here's what you do. Take all your plugins and put 'em in the unused folder, and then just pull in like two EQs, two compressors, two delays, two reverbs, and two specialty effects, and master those. I can get my same mixes just using the basic avid plugins that come with Pro Tools, to be honest. I mean, I can do it with any plugin, any fucking plugin,

Speaker 2 (01:52:50):

And any DW has perfectly good stock plugins.

Speaker 3 (01:52:54):

Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, when you get into some of the specialty ones that some of them are easier to operate than others. So again, it's really about what you can master quickly, what you're comfortable operating, which plugins give you the desire to sound quickly. That's what I would be focusing on.

Speaker 2 (01:53:15):

So really what you can do your best work on, not what has the best marketing.

Speaker 3 (01:53:19):

Correct,

Speaker 2 (01:53:20):

Correct. Because Yes,

Speaker 3 (01:53:22):

Yes, exactly. I'm going to not say what I was going to say, Hey, I love marketing, but really, look, they're all awesome. I have everything. You know what I mean? I have to be able to open up sessions. And I have some really oddball plugins because some sessions I get have some weird plugins in them, but it allows, yeah, I got a leg up. I can see what all you guys are doing when you send me the sessions. Some of you're doing really cool shit. You're there, man. But again, I have to, as a mixing engineer, I have to have all these plugins to be able to open to sessions. But anybody who knows me and has seen any of the videos out there, they either mix with the master stuff or some of the stuff that's up on YouTube sees it. How come he's always using these same plugins? There's a reason for that. They're easy to use and they work and they sound great. And again, I get the desires down quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:54:24):

So if you were airdropped on an island with Pro Tools and those plugins, you'd be akay?

Speaker 3 (01:54:30):

Absolutely. If I was airdropped on an island with Pro Tools, I would get off that fucking island. It sounds like a shitty island. But yeah, I mean, again, I keep saying the same thing, or it's not the gear, it's your ear. So yeah, be the master of your rig. So project management, session management, navigation. You know what I mean? If you can't navigate the session, you can't mix it. Be aware of the level you're sending into your master fader. You know what I mean? You'd be surprised how many times crappy mixes sound bad because they're just overdrive, their master data just

Speaker 2 (01:55:11):

Gain stage to shit.

Speaker 3 (01:55:14):

So set yourself up for success. One of the ways that I set myself up for success is I run all my faders and pro tools at zero, and I allow my plugins to do the work level wise. And then this way, if I need to do moves or if I bump something, I always know, oh, well that was set at zero. So in other words, I put a plugin in and I use the plugin because remember, plugins have faders, they have outputs. I let the plugin do the gain. The final plugin does the gain that levels it into the mix. This gives you 12 db of headroom up and Infinity DB of headroom down. But generally speaking, everybody only just wants to turn it up.

Speaker 2 (01:55:57):

Very true.

Speaker 3 (01:55:58):

So again, and then this way, if you're like, oh, shit, I'm hitting. When you're at the end of your mix and you realize that your master fader, you're clipping your master fader, you can just take all your faders and bring 'em down if you needed to, but whatever. I mean, I do that because again, I've been bit by nudging a fader and then going, God, was that a 12.3 or 13.7? I don't remember. So I set myself up for success. That's all.

Speaker 2 (01:56:25):

So basically, you don't mix yourself into corners, is what it sounds like.

Speaker 3 (01:56:29):

Correct. Absolutely. And I'm constantly keeping an eye, first of all, when I do in the mixes in the box, when I do do mixes in the box, I'm constantly checking what's happening with my master fader to make sure that I'm not pummeling with level.

Speaker 2 (01:56:47):

Awesome. Well, Tom, Lord, Alge, I think this is a good place to stop. We've kind of come full circle back to the love of music, which is what we started with.

Speaker 3 (01:56:57):

Yeah, man. Thank you. I want to thank you

Speaker 2 (01:57:00):

For taking the time.

Speaker 3 (01:57:01):

Thank you, man. I really appreciate it. It's been awesome talking to you. Everybody out there. Remember one thing, if you're going to crank it, you better spank it.

Speaker 1 (01:57:10):

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