Alan Douches: The Loudness Wars, Analog Mastering, and Over-compression

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Creative Live, the world's best online classroom for creative professionals with classes on songwriting, engineering, mixing and mastering. The Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is also brought to you by Isotope crafting innovative audio products that inspire and enable people to be creative. And now your hosts, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 3 (00:00:23):

Alright, well welcome to another episode of the Joey Sturges Forum podcast. With us today is Alan Douches. Douches.

(00:00:32):

Douches. Yeah. I learned how to fight early in my life

Speaker 2 (00:00:35):

Like couches, douches, like couches. I just want to say, when I was younger, I grew up listening to your masters and I think I got a little sense of equalization and I guess loudness training from your records. And one of the bigger records that really impacted me was the red Chord. I forget which one. Do you recall?

Speaker 3 (00:01:02):

Yeah, I don't remember what's funny. As you guys probably know, lots of times you don't know album titles or song titles because they're still in the, well, especially back then there was a six month lead time on a release or four month lead time. So artwork was barely done at the time when you're mastering a record and even some of the things that you do, your name was left off because they didn't know who was mastering it. The prints were already done or something. But yeah, I remember a couple of records. I think Zeus, I think did one or two of those, I think, if I recall correctly.

Speaker 2 (00:01:37):

That sounds about right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:01:38):

So yeah, they were good records.

Speaker 2 (00:01:40):

For those of you who don't know, Alan's been in the game for a really long time. When did you start mastering?

Speaker 3 (00:01:45):

Wow, man, I guess it was early nineties. Yeah, probably about 92, 93, something like that. I didn't want to get into the mastering business. It was really more just a side product of me having one of the first digital editing systems in the tri-state area up in New York City and was able to help make indie music palatable for mastering, because the other choices really back then were really just sending it off to the pressing plant or something. So a lot of guys gravitated to me because I understood their music and I could turn out a master.

Speaker 4 (00:02:25):

So let me ask you something, because that's actually kind of fascinating. If you weren't interested in mastering, what inspired you to be one of the first guys to have that system?

Speaker 3 (00:02:38):

Well,

Speaker 4 (00:02:39):

Because Not a small

Speaker 3 (00:02:40):

Thing. No, no, you're right. Yeah, I mean, I think it stemmed mostly from finances on both sides. I had worked early in my career with larger artists, Aerosmith, George Benson, Barbara Streisand, Grandmaster Flash, all different genres. And I was just one of the freelance engineers in Manhattan that was working with a lot on a lot of these projects. But I wasn't that cool of a freelance engineer that I was getting booked all the time. So I was often doing indie records, and those indie records had one 10th, if one 20th of the budget of those larger records. So we would find a way to make those records downtime in studios. We'd go into studios at 3:00 AM just like everybody kind of did back then. And then we needed a way to master them. And I had some of my friends who had mastered the other things that I was working on kind of do me a favor here or there, but you can't keep going to the well asking for the favor. So we wound up just starting to do it ourselves. And one of the big labels that I was actually producing records for Caroline Records asked me to kind of step up and take on a lot of their catalog, the bigger pieces in their catalog, which were in fact just going kind of straight off to the plant and somebody at the pressing plant was saying, okay, I'll master it.

Speaker 5 (00:03:57):

So if you didn't want to be a mastering guy originally, what did you foresee yourself originally as being?

Speaker 3 (00:04:02):

Definitely, I was producing records at the time, producing indie records.

Speaker 5 (00:04:06):

So you wanted to be a producer?

Speaker 3 (00:04:07):

Well, yeah, and I mean, in a sense, I was being hired by labels to produce indie records. Typically, I guess back then the budgets were 10, $15,000, something like that. Again, one 10th of what, and that's kind of what I got known for doing was being able to deliver a great product at a reasonable price. But that unto itself has a flaw in it. It's kind like people aren't in the business of saving money. Record companies in the business of saving money, they're in business of making money. So whenever any of those indie bands kind of got signed on to bigger labels, the hope was always that they'd bring you along with them. But that never happens. So yeah. Then I mean, I still produce records now. I don't want to digress off of the mastering, but we have a full two inch analog studio here that we loan out. There's very little money involved in it, obviously, so we just call people up and invite 'em over and say, Hey, let's make a record this weekend. Sweet.

Speaker 4 (00:05:08):

Yeah, I actually think that's interesting because my philosophy on having a sustained career in music, any field in music is that obviously you need to have your focus and what you're good at, but you also need to be able to roll with the punches and recognize when something is doing really well for you and exploit it. And I mean that word in a good way, but make the most of it rather than if something that you didn't foresee as your number one moneymaker becomes your number one moneymaker. You've got to go for it. And I think upcoming guys need to understand that flexibility. There was a producer that I was friends with who has actually done really, really well in Latino pop and is a metal guy.

Speaker 5 (00:06:09):

That's cool.

Speaker 4 (00:06:09):

That's awesome. Totally didn't want to do that. Totally doesn't even like that kind of music. It just happened by accident,

Speaker 3 (00:06:16):

But being well-rounded is a big part of being a professional. Yeah, there was a period of time, I think from 89 to 91 where a studio I was working at did a lot of salsa music, so, so we would crank out an album back in the days to two inch tape in four days, and they would have the live section come in. And just knowing the genre, knowing what and how that music is constructed just stays with you for the rest of your life.

Speaker 4 (00:06:47):

Well, and on that topic, I got to say that I've worked with you as a mastering engineer, mastering stuff that I've either been an engineer on for another producer or a mixer or mixed myself. I've worked with you more than any other mastering engineer, and I think that a lot of guys in the heavy genres go to you because you actually understand the style of music, which is fairly rare among the really awesome mastering guys. And I think there's a lot to be said for understanding the genre.

Speaker 3 (00:07:23):

And it was even rarer back in the early nineties, especially with the Lower East Side hardcore bands in New York City, Murphy's Law, crown of Thorns, all those bands. They would go to master a record with a mastering engineer who's used to doing r and b or something because he was the most affordable guy at that particular facility. And so that's clearly where I gained a lot of ground was understanding what that music was all about and how it had to come across. It is not about a pristine capture of the signal, as we all know now. It's about how do you translate that live energy to that playback system hopefully at all volumes.

Speaker 2 (00:08:08):

Right. Well, let's take a second to just talk about your actual method of mastering, because I think there's definitely a rise in a lot of people doing it in the box, and I personally master in the box as well. I know Joel does a little bit of outboard gear mastering and stuff, but I'm curious, what are you doing exactly? Are you using hardware? Are you in the box? Is it a combination?

Speaker 3 (00:08:29):

It's all hardware. Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 5 (00:08:31):

What kind of toys?

Speaker 3 (00:08:34):

Obviously it depends upon the project, but the things that are normally in line are Weiss Digital eq, a Massenburg eq, a massive passive eq.

Speaker 5 (00:08:47):

That's a beautiful eq. I have one,

Speaker 3 (00:08:49):

But it's very different. Yeah,

Speaker 5 (00:08:51):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:08:52):

It's really not surgical at all. It's really meant for wide strokes, and that's really what it does best. Then from a compression standpoint, it's ECL engineering lala, which is basically a stereo LA two made by Bruce Reed up in Massachusetts, and then the pendulum 63 86, which actually I believe is now called an ES eight and a complex limiter made by audio design recording.

Speaker 5 (00:09:16):

So you use the LA two stereo, I'll call it clone because I'm not familiar with the remake, but it's an Opto compressor, correct?

Speaker 3 (00:09:25):

Right. Well, basically as you go through the chain, like the Weis digitally queue, it's the dynamic EQ one. It's arguably but probably the finest digital EQ on the planet. The Massenburg is again kind of halfway surgical, but yet really transparent, and then you've got the massive passive, which is all about broad tone strokes. So you've got all three bases from an EQ covered there. I mean, I have APIs in the back, I have Langs in the back. I mean, if there's a project that I'm working on that's like, ah, this would really use that Lang eq, I'll go into the back room. They're on multi pins. I don't pull it back into my room, which actually that's one point I want to get to later about the amount of options that are available to you is not really a good thing. And then the same is true of the compression.

(00:10:14):

The Lala is optical, the 63 86 or now known as an ES eight, which by the way is probably the world's greatest compressor, is very mu, and then the Compex is an FET, so that's cool. Yeah, so you have all the bases kind of covered there. So depending upon, that's why there is no, and obviously it doesn't even necessarily stay the same within the project. You come up across a song and you go, oh, wow, this is a much slower thing. I really have to switch over to the optical for this because I really want that slow release to just kind of soak up all of that highend energy rather than EQing it down.

Speaker 5 (00:10:49):

I think it's interesting that you use an optical compressor because I have the Shadow Hills mastering comp, and I've got the limited edition all class A version, and sometimes I use that opto comp on a master, and sometimes it's a ticket. It's not like every day, but I've just, it's not something you hear a lot of people using optical compression on masters, which I dunno, I think that's cool. That's a little bit different, at least from what I hear.

Speaker 3 (00:11:13):

Sure. And it's kind of why you have to have the whole palette and often trying them all. You don't just, even as AAL said, yeah, I've done quite a few things for aal, but it's not like, oh, let's pull up AOL's chain. It's quite to the contrary. As a matter of fact, sometimes I'll just get a setup together and I'll go, oh, okay, there you go. That's it right there. And then you go, well, let's just try another version and just change something just for the sake of change. Right.

Speaker 4 (00:11:38):

I actually think that's one of the reasons I like working with you so much is because I guess the traditional understanding of working with a mastering engineer is you give them a mix, you get it back, and that's generally that, but you actually will work with the mixer to make sure that it's exactly what it needs to be.

Speaker 3 (00:12:02):

Well, that's the most important thing. I mean, especially in these days where it's not just you're sending off a tape to one guy and he's doing it. It's almost more important to work with your mastering engineer than to work with a great mastering engineer. If you have a dialogue with them and you know that you can call them and speak to them about what's going on and it doesn't work on one record, many people will send me a record to master and they get it back and they'll go, so what did you do? What's wrong with my room? And it's like you can't tell on one project. It has to be over a course of time where you start to realize there's a particular producer down the Jersey Shore that I do a lot of his work and his work is really, really dynamic, and it took us several records to figure out how to make sure all of that dynamic range was captured and yet still made in that commercially viable marketplace from a volume standpoint. And that only happens over the course of a body of work over the course of time.

Speaker 4 (00:13:07):

So let me ask you back about the toys question. So did I hear that you're not using any plugins at

Speaker 3 (00:13:15):

All? Well, no, that's not true. I have a variety, but it's rare when I'm using more than one, and that might only be a limiter and it's never the same. Well, actually there's also the TC 6,000, I should have say that that's kind of my first go-to limiter is the brick wall two in the TC 6,000. It just absolutely sounds the best. It's not right for everything though. I use an L two. I've got Steven Slate limiter, that's really great too. But each one has its own, just like the character of different analog gear. Each one has a different sound, and there are certain producers or engineers that I work with that mix with the intent of an L two being on their final bus, and then they'll pull that off for me to work with, and then it only makes sense for me to put that L two back on at the end because they're mixing into that same kind of algorithm. So if I just, I might change it and give them an option, say, okay, yeah, here's the version with the L two, but check this out. This has the TC set in the more dynamic mode.

Speaker 4 (00:14:24):

Yeah, so I mean, I guess that the takeaway for me is that regardless of your super awesome tools, you're still keeping up with what people do with cheaper tools in case you need to pull them out and use them to fulfill their artistic vision, which I think is cool.

Speaker 3 (00:14:47):

And it's not a matter of cheaper or more expensive at all. If I could just make up another studio with all inexpensive tools in it and I could be vacationing down on the Florida coast with you, I'd be there. It just doesn't sound as good, not in the way that I process it. Other guys can make that happen. I can't. And then there's a whole thing about a visual. The TC 6,000 is such a wonderful box. They've got a white paper about how when you are visually watching something on a screen like tracking a mouse and making small muscular motions with your right hand and rapid eye movement from watching the visual on the screen and that small muscular right-handed motion interrupts the flow of neurons from your ear to your brain so you can't hear properly. Interesting. Yeah, there's a whole philosophy on that kind of stuff. Are you looking at a response or are you listening? I was taught on how to use a compressor in my early years in a tracking standpoint. You'd always look, you'd set the compressor out the meter to look at your gain reduction, and Jack Douglas, who was one of my early mentors, said, what are you watching gain reduction for? He said, look at the output level. Isn't that what you're trying to do? Aren't you trying to get a consistent output level? Isn't that the point of that?

Speaker 4 (00:16:08):

I actually think that that's very, very true, and I've noticed it many times. Correct me if I'm wrong, and Joe and Joel, you guys use cubase. Is it true that cubase once upon a time had a feature that would black out your screen?

Speaker 2 (00:16:24):

Not to my knowledge. Yeah, I've never heard of that, but

Speaker 4 (00:16:27):

Maybe it was a different DAW. There was a DAW about 10 years ago, and I forget which one that had a feature, which was literally based on what we're talking about right now, it would black out the screen. It was called Listen mode.

Speaker 5 (00:16:43):

You guys ever turn off your monitors to simulate that? Because sometimes, I mean, you're a computer monitor, it's not your speaker monitors. Sometimes I go do

Speaker 4 (00:16:51):

That. I turn off my speaker monitors all the time, listen to it. I do telepathic listening, telepathic.

Speaker 5 (00:16:57):

Well, sometimes I think that's a good point because the visual feedback from the screen, sometimes if you take that out of the equation, again, you can turn it off physically with your thumb, and once the computer monitor is off, when you listen to your mix, you can hear it, at least in my experience with more clarity. That's something I like to do before I print a final. But

Speaker 3 (00:17:17):

That's not just metaphysical, that's scientific now. I mean, that's what they're finding that if your brain is being stimulated by a visual input, you're not going to hear as well. So it's not really as profound as much as it's just logical that you find yourself maybe making better decisions by not watching a screen. But by listening,

Speaker 4 (00:17:39):

I always check edits like that for instance as well, because I find that if I'm looking at the screen and I can see where the cut is, I will hear a cut,

Speaker 3 (00:17:48):

Right? Sure.

Speaker 4 (00:17:49):

If I look away, I may not hear it. The eyes will play tricks on you. And I feel like without going too far on a tangent, that also can, I'm sure that that's somehow related to people who are missing one faculty of the brain or of their physical body having other faculties that are so much more, I guess developed because the brain can only focus on 100% of input at once. So question for you, if this wasn't your main focus, did you even go to school for this? No, not

Speaker 3 (00:18:29):

At all. Kind of right out of high school, I was going to school for architecture in New Jersey at New Jersey School of Architecture. And at the time I also had a track recording studio in my parents' basement and a band that I was recorded their demos with was going to a professional studio, and they asked me to come along and kind of help out with them. And so I did, and I went along and the studio was looking for a couple of new assistants and they offered me the job. And so at 18, I kind of got started working on a vintage Neve 80 38 console and all Stu Tape machines, and it was just the most awesome experience to hear that's what a record's supposed to sound like.

Speaker 4 (00:19:13):

I feel like that's the best education someone can get actually is having someone show them what the standard really is. I think that that's more powerful than anything you could get in a classroom setting. Well,

Speaker 3 (00:19:26):

Yeah, Joey had said that he grew up learning like a certain sonic image maybe that my mastering has had, and that does stem back from sitting behind that vintage Neve console listening to the playback of a scooter half inch machine. To me, that's forever embedded in my head as that's the sound of a master right there or of a mixed sound, especially that that's what it's supposed to have. It's supposed to have all of that characteristic, the air, the depth, the warmth, the separation, and how that all intertwines being played back from a $15,000 two track machine. That's what you strive for, and that's really sad. I mean, you talk about these schools and all that kind of stuff, they're not experiencing that. And we put that two inch studio together for just that purpose. People come on in, bring in a pro tool session, dump it onto two inch tape, and experience what it's like to mix off of tape and how hard it is. And you kind of look back upon some of those records of the seventies or sixties, seventies, eighties, early eighties that were all done analog, and you go, how did they make that happen?

Speaker 4 (00:20:33):

Yeah, it's pretty mind blowing. I guess that brings me to my next question, which is with all that said, we're probably on the same page about traditional music or audio education, but would you recommend a school for up and comers? And if so, why? And if not, what would you recommend for people who want to do this for a living

Speaker 3 (00:20:59):

For a long time, I would stomp my feet and say, it's just not possible. You can't learn this in a school. But the problem that happened was all of the studios started disappearing. And so where does a kid go to learn? So he goes to institute audio research or full sail or wherever, and well, what are they teaching them there? So I started embracing that a little and started speaking and doing lectures or seminars at a lot of the more local East coast schools here, and recognizing that that's what you got to do. I don't want to say that you shouldn't use those schools, but if it's the only option, then that's great. Go and do it. But if you're paying somebody to teach you this, you better come out of it with a good knowledge base. In most cases, the teachers know what they're doing, they can teach you, but everybody wants it simple.

(00:21:51):

They want the plugin, what's the setting? What's the preset? What do you use? How do you make that happen? And that just, that's not leading them down the road to originality, which is really what pays off in this business. And a matter of fact, early in my mastering career, everybody was using Sonic Solutions and you weren't a real mastering engineer unless you use Sonic Solutions. And I was using Pro Tools, yes, by default initially, but when I started making money as a business at it, the people from Sonic approached me and said, you really should be using our system. And I'd be like, I want to be different. I don't want it to sound like all of those glassy sheen pop records. I want to have a sound that's identifiable.

Speaker 5 (00:22:41):

That's a great point.

Speaker 3 (00:22:42):

Yeah. It hearkens back to when I was in a band, I sold a 1973 gold top Les Paul and sold that and bought a first year BC Rich Mockingbird. Why? Because it had all these buttons that sounded different, and I didn't want to sound like Jimmy Page. I want it to sound like myself. And that's really baffling these days because everybody wants to just clone themself into the next sounding something, whatever. And that's, I think a byproduct of the digital revolution that we can do that having

Speaker 5 (00:23:14):

Your own sound adds a lot of value, and I feel like a lot of people overlook that when they're positioning themselves because just like a band as a producer or a mixer or a master and whatever you do, you have to position yourself in a marketplace against competition. So you need to look and see what other people are doing and say, okay, where can I fit in? And for anybody upcoming, I think that's great advice. You should really, really strive to have your own sound because it will add value. And if it's a good sound, people will pay you a lot of money to get it

Speaker 3 (00:23:41):

Right. But it takes longer. It takes longer to get established, to have your own sound that it does to copy somebody else's.

Speaker 5 (00:23:47):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:23:48):

In a sense. And everybody's looking for that quicker response, so they gravitate to making it sound. Oh, see. But I can make it sound just like, but that's not winning in the long run. Winning in the long run is having that identifiable sound and hopefully that identifiable sound isn't so defined that it's the only thing you do. We know lots of producers that get very pigeonholed into doing that exact same thing that, oh, well, that's that sound. That's that sound. Hopefully that you've identified enough of differentiation within your sound that you can have a broader spectrum. And quite frankly, I enjoy that from my mastering standpoint of just like a lot of people come into the studio and we have a lot of the records on the wall, and maybe it's an anti-fat record or something I'm doing, and they'll come in and they'll see all the metal core hardcore records on the wall, and they'll be like, oh, wow, who does all these hardcore records? And I'll go, oh, yeah, the guy that comes in at night, we don't let him in here during the day. But it's wonderful to be able to jump from one genre to another. I think that's what keeps me fresh about it.

Speaker 4 (00:25:00):

I think that the cliche about the 10,000 hours required to get great at anything applies here as well. You'll never get to any level of mastery by copying other people. In my opinion. It will definitely not get you a sustained career in this, at least in mine.

Speaker 3 (00:25:21):

Right. You'll have an instant blast because of that, but yeah, it doesn't last.

Speaker 4 (00:25:27):

Oh, no way. You're subject to the success of whoever it is that you're copying. Right,

Speaker 3 (00:25:33):

Right.

Speaker 2 (00:25:34):

So this is kind of a loaded question, but we've been asking our guests on mastering month, how do you feel about the loudness war and where do you think it's going to go? Because one of the things Bobcat Kaz actually brought up yesterday, we were talking to him, he was talking about how YouTube and other streaming services are starting to normalize playback. Once you go past a certain level and you get to a certain loudness, it gets turned down, so it actually ends up being quieter than other masters. So I'm just curious what you think about all this. Well,

Speaker 3 (00:26:11):

That's a newer issue. I mean, it's been around now for several years with the Mastered for iTunes format is very similar. It's a good thing in a sense that we're able to allow the end user to have a more comfortable experience listening to music. But whenever you're starting to have the corporate giant put those limitations, pun intended on your art form, you have to question that as well. I think the more sensible thing would've been to try to educate artists into why things sound a certain way and to try to educate the listening audience into the fact that there is a volume control, but that didn't seem to work. So the algorithm that's going to control the playback volume is probably a good thing. I mean, it works really well on iTunes radio when I'll be listening to a metal station on iTunes radio and I'll hear a record that I mastered that wasn't done for mastered for iTunes versus one that was back to back, and they both playback at the same volume, but clearly the one that was mastered for that playback algorithm in mind sounds far better twice as good, easily. It's a magnitude better.

Speaker 4 (00:27:30):

Do you find that you have to do multiple versions?

Speaker 3 (00:27:33):

Oh, all the time. Yeah. If not more. Yeah, 2, 3, 4. I mean, HD tracks, vinyl master for iTunes, straight digital. Some people want specifics for MP three as well.

Speaker 2 (00:27:45):

Wow, that's interesting. Would you mind naming a few differences that might happen in an MP three version? Because I'm just curious. The

Speaker 3 (00:27:53):

Main thing for the MP three version is if that's the primary format that's going to be distributed, then it's kind of irrelevant what the 1644 straight wave is going to sound like. So you really do have to go through a compression algorithm to get it to that point. The most significant thing that you need to do is not get close to zero. You have to try to stay away from DBFS because the algorithm's going to clip it and it's just going to get crappy. The same is true of the MFI format and some other longer term algorithm processed gear trying to stay down below 0.3 db below DBFS. That really helps. That's cool. Very interesting.

Speaker 4 (00:28:39):

I actually haven't heard about the mastering for MP threes before, so I'm actually fascinated by that.

Speaker 3 (00:28:46):

Well, again, it's so many people are, that's what their primary

Speaker 4 (00:28:53):

Makes perfect sense

Speaker 3 (00:28:54):

Distributed format is. So you can make this wonderful 96 k, 24 bit file that as a mastering engineer you think is going to go up on HD tracks or something. But the reality is that three quarters or maybe even more of the audience is going to be listening to an MP three that's downloaded from Bandcamp or something. So why do we care about the, I mean, certainly we care about the 96. We want to sustain the catalog, we want it to sound great so that years later we can pull it up and say, Hey, listen to what that sounded like. Just yesterday we did the Scream Bloody Gore album for death, the reissues for that, and the original mix downs are on quarter inch, and you hear the quarter inch playback and you go, ah. So that's what this record sounds like. Whereas if we only had a 1644 digital source of that, it would've been horrible.

Speaker 5 (00:29:50):

Here's a question for you we haven't really covered this month, and it's been alluded to a few times, but we haven't really directly discussed it. For our listeners, what is the difference between mastering to vinyl versus CD or MP three? So essentially what I'm talking about mainly in regards to vinyl.

Speaker 3 (00:30:07):

Well, I think that shifted recently 15 years ago or so, maybe 20 years ago. I would say that there really wasn't much of a difference because the playback volume of vinyl was still of paramount interest to everyone. As vinyl waned away, the audio files realized that this is an analog form that we don't have to face the volume wars with. And kind of the same is true. Now there's kind of two things, three things that you have to realize. One is that the vinyl is not going to play back a full frequency spectrum. If you put too much low frequency information in there, something else is going to suffer. And the same is true of the high frequency. If you have an extended high end response and you're trying to cut that into the lacquer, it's just going to distort all the other frequencies as well.

(00:30:57):

So you've got to really think about what frequencies you're going to sit in there as well as where in the groove, where in the circumference of that spiral it's going to sit, if you try to pound a lot of low frequency and high frequency information on that last track on the inside groove, it's going to suffer. So you have to put that into the equation of the mastering. It is like, well, maybe this is not a good sequence for the vinyl. Maybe we should be rethinking this and put that acoustic vocal saw as the inside track on side A. So you've got a frequency response that you have to adjust as the cut moves in and then dynamically. The thing about it is that nobody's really comparing the volume level of one record to another record anymore. I mean, it's all kind of in a relative format now.

(00:31:53):

So it's like we do have a volume control for vinyl, and most of the time we're allowing it to be more dynamic. So when we're making a vinyl specific master, we are normally pulling a significant amount of digital limiting off of it because it just doesn't sound great, and it's not as blatant as just, okay, let's pull the limiter off and run it through so we can cut it to vinyl now, because now you're changing the sound of the record. If the mixing engineer, like I said, was used to hearing that L two and that L two algorithm in auto recover mode as part of his compression scheme on his master bus, and I used it for the digital, you can't just pull that off and say, well, there's the vinyl master, because now the snare jump's just going to be too loud. So you've got to kind of play with that and say, where do I let more dynamic happen, but yet still let that final sound come across on a vinyl playback.

(00:32:55):

The other interesting thing about vinyl, I think is again, when we talked about the visual, the screen, watching it, et cetera and so forth, I have a 13-year-old daughter and watching her listen to her iTunes library, it's schizophrenic. She 10 seconds on this fiber, oh no, I don't want this. I don't like, and you're constantly skipping all over, and we've seen this over decades now happening when people put on vinyl, it's kind of like going to a show. It's an experience that when they drop the needle into the groove, they're not going to listen to 10 seconds and then take the record off and say, I don't want to listen to that. So you've kind of got a captive audience, and I think that's one of the reasons why vinyl playback is making a comeback. I've got a couple of really rock and turntables here, and I can blow people away with the sound of what vinyl can sound like, but that's not what, even though people are saying they love the sound of vinyl, they're not really experiencing the true sound of what vinyl has as much as they're loving the experience of letting.

(00:33:54):

So I never heard that track three. I actually kind of like that because they're not going to get up out of their chair to skip track three to go to track four on the vinyl. Right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:34:03):

I also think that vinyl is a much more social experience for people to listen to on.

Speaker 3 (00:34:10):

Sure, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (00:34:11):

I know that the last few times that I've actually heard something on vinyl have all been in a social setting, interestingly enough, and the entire album was listened to as exactly what you said, just echoing it basically. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:34:26):

And that's a wonderful thing. It's like everybody can release all these singles, and we thought that the new future was just going to be a singles future or something like everybody release a song a week or something like that, but there's no depth to the artist there. And I'm watching my daughter, she said, dad, didn't you work it with Fallout Boy? And I'm like, yeah, why? She's like, well, do you have their vinyl? And she's asking me to pull copies of the orally Fallout Boy vinyl for her to listen to because she's got it in her iPod. But she wants to experience the playback, like you say, socially with her friends off of the vinyl. And as much as I can disagree, I mean she's got a pretty rock and turntable too, but that people are hearing the actual sound of the vinyl. They're loving the experience of music being played back on vinyl, which is just amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Speaker 4 (00:35:16):

Well, it's kind of the only really, I don't want to say old school, but it's the only traditional way of listening that's kind of left besides the live show.

Speaker 3 (00:35:27):

Yeah, LP long playing, that's what it stands for. It's what the point of it was, is that you could fit 40 minutes, 45 minutes on two sides of a vinyl pressing. It's awesome.

Speaker 4 (00:35:37):

So let me ask you a question, and there's actually a reason I'm asking you this, which is that I would like to get your opinions on what you like to get out of a mixing engineer when you have something submitted to you. But what's your number one gripe about mixes that you have submitted to you these days?

Speaker 3 (00:36:00):

Well, it's probably just over compression. I mean, that's kind of cliche to say, but it really is. And that goes back to sitting behind that Neve console and listening to the playback of the scooter half inch and saying, wow, that's awesome. That holy cow, that experience just moves me. People don't have that in their history to say, that's what I'm searching for. And so often they're reaching for dynamic tools rather than the fader tool. I was teaching an old assistant something once about mixing, and I had kind of set up a mix for him, and I said, this is pretty much it. Now all you got to do is just ride the base. It needs to be here in the chorus and here on the verses. And his first response was, well, let's compress it more. And it didn't need more compression. The texture of the base, the attack, the release, that kind of dynamic was fine.

(00:36:56):

But he was trying to use the compression to not automate the fader, when in fact, the answer, the best answer was to automate the fader. But that took manpower. That took work to do, and nobody wants to do that. So that's what everybody's doing. And there are times where we'll do something from stems or something, and people will bring in their entire hard drives, and you open up these sessions and there's two dozen L twos across stereo buses, and you go, why? You watch the faders and nothing's moving, and you wonder why it sounds static, and it's because it is. There's nothing movement and that's not music. And again, that hearkens back to being in that kind of experience. So without a doubt, the biggest problem is over compression. But again, it's not that thing where you can't just say, oh, okay, well, my mastering engineer doesn't want me to over compress, so I'll set up the mix of all this compression and then pull it off. That's not it at all. What you've got to do is you got to learn to understand what a mix is supposed to sound like versus what a master is supposed to sound like. And we've had many people that'll say, oh, Alan, what did the calculating infinity sound like before mastering? Can you send me a copy of that? And it's like, I could, but then I'd lose all credibility within the industry. But the reality is that the mixes sounded great before mastering as well, and that's why the album sounds great or sounded great.

Speaker 4 (00:38:30):

That's actually one of the topics that I get asked about the most, and I think that gets submitted the most, and that is one of the reasons that I like working with you the most is there is a lack of understanding. And man, I admit that I've had this lack of understanding in the past as well about the difference between what a mix should sound like and a master should sound like. It sometimes is very tough to anticipate what's going to happen when it goes to the mastering engineer,

Speaker 3 (00:39:04):

But that again, really that comes back to people just wanting to copy some other sound. If an artist was truly believing in themselves in their art form, they wouldn't be worried about making it compressed or limited all the other records that they're hearing because it's true that in this generation, we're not used to hearing dynamic music. We're hoping that vinyl may bring that back, in which case there's even more hope for high definition audio. But people don't hear that. They're only hearing Spotify. And it's like, well, if that's what their learning experience of what their peers are doing, then it's logical that they're just hyper compressing and limiting their own music as well, but not really realizing that that's limiting, pun intended, their future. And that's just the mastering engineer's job is to train their mixing engineers that they're working with that like, dude, chill it down.

(00:40:01):

Relax. If you want it loud, we can make it loud. As a matter of fact, some of the loudest records that I've mastered came in really dynamic, and that's the key is that if you give me something that's malleable that I can work with and twist and feed into the compression and limiters, then we can make it sound cool when the stuff comes in kind of all squashed. And with no dynamic range, I've got some of the coolest compressors on the planet. Both the Lala and the 63 86 are point to point wire. They're like everybody, they're modified, whatever, they sound awesome, but if I can't let them do their thing or hitting to tape, right, you can't, oh, could you hit this to tape? Why? You've already taken all the dynamics out of it. You've taken away what the thing the tape does best. You want to add white noise, and that's a learning list.

(00:40:56):

Yet I just have to teach people that you have to work with your bands, with your artists, with your mixers, with your producers and say, guys, I always say when people have, they'll ask me that question. I'll go, well, give me one with your limiter and one without, and then give me maybe one halfway with half as much compression or something, because it's true. They can't just pull that off. Although I don't think there's ever been a time where there's been a mixing engineer that says, well, I don't know, man. I don't think I can really pull my limiter off because it's really defining part of that sound. It's rare that I can't duplicate that and or make it better in a sense. If I can't, then you don't need me.

Speaker 5 (00:41:39):

How do you feel about the argument of, I was reading a book by mixer, man, I believe the Zen of mixing or the Art of Mixing or something like that, and he had a thing about mastering engineers using compression on his mixes and changing the balances and making him very mad. So how would you reply to something like that?

Speaker 3 (00:41:54):

He's using the wrong mastering engineer. I know mean I've sat on some panels with him and he's very talented, but if you're mastering engineer isn't making it better than either switch mastering engineers or talk to that mastering engineer and say, listen, I love the body of work that you do, but I'm looking to achieve this. How can we achieve that? And that's where that whole kind of test thing doesn't work. Hey, can you do a test master for us? Or whatever. Well, why don't you just put an L two on it yourself and call it done? Okay? Because that's really what you want. It's not about how loud can I make a song or how hard I can lock down on those low frequencies. Really what you want from your mastering engine. And it's interesting too because it's like a lot of people are making records on their own.

(00:42:48):

Now, I don't know if it's a good thing or not, but there's no a and r department. There's no management or anybody looking in. And that's good that we're allowing art to just be art for its own sake. But there was something about somebody else looking out for you and saying, Hey, maybe you're overdoing this, or maybe you should do this. A lot of people are just holed up in their own rehearsal space and they're tracking, writing, recording, mixing, producing it all themselves, and then they turn it over to a mastering engineer. And you want to hope that that person has enough knowledge to say, wait a second. Maybe we should rethink this. I mean, I've got a couple of classic examples. There was a band that flew in from Italy for their mastering session and the

Speaker 4 (00:43:34):

Whole band,

Speaker 3 (00:43:36):

Two of the guys from the band, obviously it's kind of a wonderful thing that they can come to New York City and vacation a little bit and also get their record mastered. But I sent them home without mastering and I said, guys, these mixes suck. Let's go home and rethink this.

Speaker 4 (00:43:55):

That's happened to me before

Speaker 3 (00:43:58):

A

Speaker 4 (00:43:58):

Long time ago.

Speaker 3 (00:43:58):

That's awesome. Well, you have to have your integrity intact. And I always say, with all love in my heart, I say this to them, but it's like I stop listening through the session. You stop it and you go, well, what are you guys looking for? Oh, we love this record and we love this record. And I go, well, you're not going to get that here. And so what do you want me to do? Do you want me to master your record and you can walk out of this and go see a show on Broadway and then go home and then be unhappy with your record, or you can go home, roll up your sleeves and let's get to work and let's make this thing happen. That's a long-term strategy, but it's really what everybody in this industry has to do from recording to mixing. Like a band shows up with bad instruments, what do you do? Do you record it? You tell them, wait a second, guys, listen, let's postpone today. You need new heads on your drums, and what's this slime hanging off of your strings? Can we do something different about this?

Speaker 4 (00:44:53):

I had a band come in from Australia sometime in 2013, and all of them came and Australian dollars are pretty strong, so they were paying full price,

(00:45:09):

And their vocalist was just absolutely the worst thing I've ever heard in my life. We just couldn't proceed. And I remember sending them home without finishing the record because I told them they need to get a new vocalist is definitely, definitely an exaggerated version of just making someone change their heads. But it was quite a painful thing to have to do considering the amount of money that they spent to come over. But at the end of the day, I totally stand by those decisions. You do have to do that. Otherwise, where's your integrity and why are you doing this? It doesn't matter if they came from across the world, they came to you for a reason. So you have to keep that intact, in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (00:45:57):

Yeah, that's an important step. All along the process, like you say, from tracking, mixing, producing, mastering that if you understand where the final product's supposed to be, if it can't get there, you need to discuss with the people why that's the case.

Speaker 4 (00:46:11):

Do you find that you have to go there often with mixes these days more than you used to, or is it about the same?

Speaker 3 (00:46:19):

It's probably about the same because I think there's a group of mixers that I've been working with for years that we're already with that understanding. So there's not as much having to prove each other going on. We've already got our mechanisms in place, we know what's going on, and lots of times they'll send me MP threes along the process just so I can get an idea of what things are sounding like and what they're going for. And I can already have in my head what problems I might think are going to pop up and maybe make a comment to the mixing engineer like, Hey, be careful of that thing because that's going to get eaten up pretty quickly. That's going to chew up a lot of our space here or whatever.

Speaker 4 (00:47:03):

And once again, not to sound redundant here, but I feel like that's another one of the reasons that I love working with you is the ability to send you stuff early on in the project so that we would know where we're headed as a team rather than you do all this work for a month or two months and then you send it off to some guy for one day at the very end, and either he does a good job or not, and that's it. That version of mastering always sucked to me. I like being able to talk to the guy and just approach it like a team.

Speaker 3 (00:47:40):

Oh yeah, I get that all the time. People will call up and it'll be either early in the morning or late at night or on a weekend or something, and they'll call and they'll be like, well, I have a discussion planned with Alan. And I'm like, well, that's me. And they're like, you are? Oh my God, I can talk to you. And I'm like, yeah, yep, yep. I just generally, I just pick up the phone. That's it. I mean, not what I'm working, but, and of course that's what it's, that also then hearkens back to I'm a musician. I mean, I played in a band. My aspirations were probably prior to that was to play in a band for the rest of my life. So you have to understand that mentality of where they're coming from and yet be humble enough to say, it's not about me.

(00:48:24):

I'm a service. I'm here to make you be great. It's not about me being great. It's like, I want you to be great. I want your record to be so awesome that you can say, oh man, you got to hear this guy Allen, because he knows exactly what we were going for and he helped us. He broke it down for us. And that's what it's about. It was one of those funny stories where a guy called and we're just kind talking about the price of mastering and whatever, and he said, well, and I kind of just threw out a ballpark. I said, the office has got a whole form thing you figure out and whatever. And so I said, it's going to be about this. And he goes, and then his next question, and mind you, I haven't heard a note of his music, he said, well, for that price, how many revisions do I get?

(00:49:09):

And we've all heard that this popular, my response to him, which is now a standard response, is like, well, how hard do you want me to try on the first pass, it's like, how many revisions? Well, what if I knock it out of the park on the first pass when I go to master record? That's what I try to do. I sit down, I go, okay, let's go for this. It's not like, oh, okay, let's just turn on the sports chow and watch that in the background while we're mastering a record. It's not about that at all. It's like the doors get closed. My staff knows. Don't bother me. I'm concentrating. I'm trying to get it won with this artist.

Speaker 4 (00:49:48):

So if you don't mind, we have a few questions from our subscribers who'd like to ask them. We've been talking for a while. I want to make sure we get some of these in. Okay, here's one from Phil, I dunno how to pronounce his last name, sorry, Phil. But do you see any benefits to MS mastering? Do you do anything with ms?

Speaker 3 (00:50:14):

Sure. I mean, of course it's part of the toolbox. You're going to get phase irregularities. Things are going to happen that you want to try to avoid. So I think it's an overused tool. One of the benefits of some of the more pro end gear is that when you enter into an MS mode, you have an option to not exit in MS mode, but you can pass the MS signal on through the chain and then only do the decode once as well. I've seen all too many times where guys have maybe two, maybe three things set up in MS mode because that's what's required to help achieve the final result. But you're going in and out of MS mode three times, whereas it's most beneficial to go into MS mode, stay there, pass that signal along from the EQ to the compressor in MS mode, and then maybe even limit it in MS mode and then decode it back to stereo. But lots of times that's not implementable within the software. And again, MS mode and software doesn't touch what it does in the analog world. It's so much more malleable and it sounds better trying to, I've seen that on boxes and I've used it years ago in boxes and it doesn't sound as good as it does in the analog the world.

Speaker 4 (00:51:35):

Do you feel like MS processing is a super over hype technique on the internet that people don't understand to just talk too much about?

Speaker 3 (00:51:46):

Well, it's a very powerful tool, and again, it's also hearkens into the fact of like, are you supposed to be fixing or enhancing if you're going into an MS mode because oh, I've got to get more high end on those guitars on the side. Well, you've really got to recognize that all else that's going to happen with that high end on the sides. And I think people when they're, again watching that screen or they're mixing the records themselves and they're doing that, they're not really listening as that new set of ears, that fresh perspective saying, yeah, but I don't know. That's not because people suggested all, well, how about if you MS. Died, did that on the side. It's like, yeah, right. Well, that's going to make you as the guitar player happy, but the drummer's not going to be happy. Now, it's certainly overused. It's over, and I think if you looked at any of my recall sheets on some of the most infamous records that I've worked on, you wouldn't see any ms. It's just because the mixes are kicking butt on their own.

Speaker 4 (00:52:49):

So no need to fix them.

Speaker 3 (00:52:50):

Well, no need, no need to have to enter that mode. If there's another way, if you can surgically EQ in a linear phase, EQ in stereo mode, it's going to make the stereo spectrum sound better than going into an MS mode and messing with a phase response.

Speaker 4 (00:53:07):

So that actually brings up another question by the same guy, which is do you find any difference from linear phase processing?

Speaker 3 (00:53:20):

Absolutely. But shifting phase response can be a tool unto itself mean in a sense that's even what tape does. The low and high frequency response of a tape deck is out of phase, and this is part of the sound that we've come to love. So if you can use that phase shift to your advantage to create the clarity, now it's that classic thing. Are you going to do three things to achieve one result? If you can use something that has a phase shift, that may even open up a little bit of an area that rather than just, okay, I want to boost that, but I want to tuck this, I don't want to boost that. Well, that's the benefit of shelving EQ, is that you get that little dip, you get that little boost, you get that little nip in the mid. It's really knowing your tools and saying, can I use one tool to do this instead of three tools to do that

Speaker 4 (00:54:12):

Makes sense. Here's one that,

Speaker 3 (00:54:15):

Well, it makes sense in a classic way. We all know that, but we all go to those easier methods, and MS is that way. Well, gosh, the guitars just don't have the sparkle. Well, how about going back to the mix and making the guitar sparkle more? Obviously that may not be an option these days. It is an option usually because so many of these mixes are done in the box or that the mixers that may be mixing in an analog world are storing stems. It's just can we actually go back a step or two and actually make it better rather than trying to do the bandaid?

Speaker 2 (00:54:49):

Well, I think it's easier now than ever to do those kinds of things. So I think it should be more of a viable option. Right.

Speaker 4 (00:54:56):

I

Speaker 2 (00:54:56):

Definitely find myself doing some spatial EQ from time to time.

Speaker 4 (00:54:59):

I think that there's almost no excuse not to do that kind of stuff these days because it is as easy as opening a session. Yeah, it's not any more. I mean, some guys obviously still mix in the spaceship, but it's not any more taking an hour and a half to recall a song.

Speaker 3 (00:55:24):

But the only problem there, which is something I alluded at earlier, was when there's just too many choices at hand, can we properly make decisions? And that's kind of like in my main control room. I've got three EQs, three compressors, three limiters, one tape deck, three different A to D converters. I've got more of all of those, but I don't want them in the control room because it just takes too long to try things, and now I've lost that fresh perspective. I know my tools, like I said, if I know a particular project, it wants those Langs, I'll go back down to the analog room, I'll pull the Langs out and I'll bring them forward. But it's so rare that the massive passive can't do that or that something in the Weiss can't do that. And perhaps better, but you've got to limit yourself as to how many options.

(00:56:22):

That's the beautiful thing that we're finding about two inch 24 track, is that bands are almost loving the limitations that like, no, man, I got to make this one part really sing. I'm not going to do three guitar parts, it's got to be this one and the parts got to be great. And that same philosophy trickles down to all of our gear and our processing, and we know it. Like I said, we know that if you can notch one frequency rather than boosting two around, it is a more effective way of keeping the clarity inherent in the mix. You have to think that way rather than the simple solution, which also is a part of a philosophy, which is when I listen to a mix, I don't listen to the mix and hear what's wrong. I listen to the mix and hear what's right and figure out how do I embellish that the most.

(00:57:15):

Most often in the end result, I've done something surgical for the thing that was in the way, but it is a glass half full, half empty kind of philosophy. But it does help you stay enthusiastic and in the project rather than dragging your feet about like, Ugh, why do they have so much base on here? Instead say, whoa, this base is really thick, and lemme see what we can do to keep all this warmth and just get some clarity going rather than immediately hooking up a band specific compressor on that low end and taking the life that the mixing engineer had intended to be there.

Speaker 4 (00:57:55):

That makes perfect sense, and it's something that we talk about on this podcast a lot that we're really trying to get through to our listeners is the importance of making decisions and committing.

Speaker 3 (00:58:07):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:58:07):

It's hugely important

Speaker 3 (00:58:08):

Because every step down the process gains from that commitment. If you're multi-tracking and your intention is to trigger a snare drum, we'll trigger it right away so that everybody doing their rover dubs on down the process gets to hear the inspiration of what the final result's going to be, rather than just saying, we're going to fix that later. Well then now the person's not inspired to play.

Speaker 4 (00:58:33):

Joe. Isn't that pretty much how you make records?

Speaker 2 (00:58:36):

Yeah. What I started to do is I just came across so many oh shit moments that I would just, for example, let's say there's a part in the song where the band has just pretty much dropped out all their instruments and said, we want you to write an electronic section here with drum beats and pads and stuff like that. And those things would take me a long time. I would never make any decisions. I would just throw up some kicks sound and throw up some pads, and then come back to it, change the pads again, change the kicks and on and on and on all the way to the day that records do, and I'm still changing pad settings and stuff. So to get away from that and to force myself into making decisions, I would just print it and then delete the original track and just be like, well, can't go back, which forced me to actually make better content. So there is definitely something to it. It's an art form though in itself. You're going to have to, the first couple of times you commit your drum mix, you're going to hate it, but that experience of hating that drum mix is the reason why your next one will be better.

Speaker 3 (00:59:42):

Oh, that's so paramount. That's a wonderful learning experience. Yeah, absolutely. Learning from your mistakes, tress

Speaker 5 (00:59:48):

Creates performance also.

Speaker 2 (00:59:50):

Yeah. I find that sometimes it also adds to the creativity involved in the moment as well. If you know that you can open it up again and change it, you'll be willing to accept less than stellar. But if you're like, no, we have to have this done, this has to be printed to an audio file in the next 30 minutes, whatever you come up with is going to be way better.

Speaker 4 (01:00:15):

I think that that's also why people operate better under deadline and tend to leave things to the last minute. I feel like it comes from that too. People tend to just operate way better when there's a final decision to be made that they have no choice about a final deadline, final this, no going and back. If people did that more with their productions and were more focused on that than getting 8 million different plugins, I think productions would be way better. So I guess one last question from the crowd, and this one is, I'm sure that the real answer is, well, it totally depends, but do you have any tips for adding sheen to everything without getting it way too harsh?

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):

Dynamics digital is a grid, both timing and harmonically. And if you are squashing individual tracks or a mix, you're not leaving room for that sheen or air. So that's the first thing that always comes about is that if a mix has dynamics has air in it, we can help bring that out on the other side of that overdrive gear carefully. And then something else, it's like someone may look at my EQ before the compression and then look at it afterwards. It's like, well, yeah, there's a reason why I'm using two EQs because I want to hit that tube in the Lala really hard so I can open up some upper harmonic stuff happening. But in order to make that happen, I've got to hit it into that compressor with a pre emphasis on the EQ so that the high end is opening up, is getting harmonically more interesting. And then on the backside of that tube, I've got to do the opposite. I've got to tame down some of that top end and bring up some low end. So it's kind of like a pre emphasis and post emphasis through a compressor to get more harmonic content over the top. That's a cool approach,

Speaker 4 (01:02:32):

And I think that that's actually a really, really cool answer and a cool thing to think about because one of the things in mixing that I've noticed makes all the difference in the world is when trying to create a result, oftentimes the thing to figure out is what's blocking the result from happening? What's clouding it? So to approach the sheen via figuring out if, well, the sheen is being destroyed by your dynamics processing. So if you don't want to make it harsh, fix the dynamics first.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):

And in most cases, I start with saying that dynamic issue because when the dynamics are squashed, it just completely takes away a lot of options that we have like that if you're going to hit it to tape hitting it. We just did that with a project. I've tried hitting tape for this person before and it just never happened. It never came across. But now that we've, wherever we're 10, 12 records into working a relationship, working together, this particular mixer knows that I'm going to handle that final dynamic imprint. He gave me a really dynamic mix, and I was able to hit it to tape, and he was just like, oh my God, why haven't you been doing that? And I'm like, because your mix is finally are dynamic enough that we can do that. And in a sense, to answer your question, that's one of the typical ways of adding that sheen. You can't just take 16 K and turn it up. That never works. I mean, especially if the source is 44 1, there's nothing there. Anything that you add up there doesn't have any depth or clarity. It's just high frequency hash. So you've got to have dynamic in that top end as well that you can let hit tape and get harmonic and open that up or hit some tubes. Open that up.

Speaker 4 (01:04:27):

Yeah, that's great. Thank you for that answer. So I think that's about all that we have, man. Just want to tell you how much we appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):

My pleasure

Speaker 4 (01:04:39):

And just you rule. Thanks for making records. Sound great. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):

Well, I mean that's a big factor that you have to, especially in choosing. Again, we get back to that test mode and not just even in mastering, but even in mixing. I've seen so many really talented mixers lose mixing gigs because they lost a test when in fact they were the right mixing engineer for the job. I think we all too often don't look at the solution. I get things where somebody's mastered, oh, we had this mastered, but we don't like it. Well, did you talk to the guy? Well, I don't know. We really like what you do. Well, wait, why don't you go back and talk to the guy? He's already nine tenths of the way through this. Maybe you just need to talk to him and work it through. Again, we're always looking for the answer somewhere else. One of my favorite sayings is, what are you pretending not to know? That's mean. I look at that phrase every day of my life. What are you pretending not to know?

Speaker 4 (01:05:40):

That's great. I'm actually going to write that down.

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):

And if you look at your art form as being an original aspect of who you are, then you should never have to pretend about what you want. It should be very clear and evident. As Joey said, you've got to be willing to learn from your mistakes. Absolutely. There is a couple of records that got away from me that I wish I could redo again. Now, in some cases with HD tracks or with vinyl coming back, we do get a chance at it at reissuing some things that may be post volume war where you know what? This record did sound really great on its own, but at the time it needed to be what it was.

Speaker 4 (01:06:22):

I think we all have those, but I think that it's, I guess one last point I want to make is the ability to actually talk to your engineer about problems is so huge. I have definitely seen people lose gigs that for all musical reasons they had in the bag for just being unapproachable,

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):

Right? Sure. Yeah. And the most, it's been said for decades, communication is key. And as long as you're working with somebody, there's certainly great reasons to work with somebody without a track record, because they may be very affordable, they may be very approachable and very willing to work with you on your limited budgets. Whatever those circumstances are, that's great. But by and large, anybody who's got a body of work is going to be able to deliver pretty much what you want. And it's just are you willing to work with that person? And as a professional, you've got to be able to talk to people and translate that. That's what we do.

Speaker 4 (01:07:28):

Yeah. We are in the service industry.

Speaker 3 (01:07:30):

Yeah. It's not about us. It's helping them realize their visions not mine.

Speaker 4 (01:07:34):

Did you always think like that, by the way? Did you always realize that?

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):

I think so. Yeah. I mean, because it just second nature to me, like I said, with selling my goal top Les Paul, I really wish I had that back because, but you have to make those kinds of decisions, and ultimately you'll probably find the same solution in your own originality, whether it be songwriting, EQing, another popular phrase I have is pick a format and get to work. It's like, who cares what your DAW is? It doesn't make a difference. Is the magic in any one of my compressors? No, because sometimes they go down, you got to change the tubes. They go out for maintenance. If it was only one piece, one magic piece that made it all happen, then I'd buy four of them, hire four idiots to work in the back rooms, and I'd be vacationing in the Pacific somewhere. But that's, that's not what it's about. It's about rolling up your sleeves and communicating with people, and every once in a while you're like, you say, it's like, yeah, circumstances will be that. Ah, we can't communicate. This is a rush. Got to get it done. And most of the times you hear blows back and you go, ah, I really wish we would talk to them and made this happen. Or that happen.

Speaker 4 (01:08:51):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):

Shit

Speaker 4 (01:08:52):

Happens. What can you do? Well, Alan, thank you so much for being here once again.

Speaker 3 (01:08:58):

My pleasure.

Speaker 4 (01:09:00):

Like I said before, you rule, and thanks for sharing your knowledge with our audience. Yes.

Speaker 5 (01:09:06):

Well,

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):

You guys have kind of the platforms now. Like I said, I originally shunned some of these kind of platforms because you really do need to learn kind of old school, get in the control rooms, learn with people, but that's just not an option for a lot of people. So we kind of have to get the people whom we respect, who are now our elders in a sense, and say, alright, well what do you think? How can we communicate? How can we get these ideas across? And it's important. And it's important.

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):

That's exactly why we do this podcast and why we're doing so much to help educate people. It just seems like the old school way of learning doesn't exist the way it used to. Coupled with the fact that there's so much misinformation out there. I almost feel like if you care about the future of music and you're a pro, you'll do what you can to help the next generation not mess it up anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):

Right, right. Yeah. Amen.

Speaker 4 (01:10:06):

Well,

Speaker 5 (01:10:06):

Thank you so much, Alan. It's been very informational. Alright guys.

Speaker 4 (01:10:09):

My pleasure. Keep up the great work. Thank you. You too, man. I'm sure we'll talk soon. Okay, later. Thanks so much. Take it easy.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):

The Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is brought to you by Creative Live, the world's best online classroom for creative professionals with classes on songwriting, engineering, mixing, and mastering. Go to creative live.com/audio to start learning now. The Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is also brought to you by isotope graphing innovative audio products that inspire and enable people to be creative. Go to isotope.com to see what might might inspire you. To ask us questions, suggest topics and interact. Visit QM Academy.