JD OF ICE NINE KILLS: Digital Orchestration, His 5,000-Track Template, Lessons from Fleshgod Apocalypse

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Ivanez Guitars and Basses. Ivans strives to make high quality, cutting edge musical instruments that any musician can afford and enjoy. Visit ivanez.com for more info. And now your hosts, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal

Speaker 2 (00:00:21):

Levi. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. I'm Joey Sturgis. I've been out for a little while, but I'm back in the game. So

Speaker 3 (00:00:31):

Welcome back.

Speaker 2 (00:00:32):

Thank you. Thank you very much. And that was our good friend Eyal. As you know, if you don't know his voice by now, then you probably only listen to one episode or something. I was

Speaker 3 (00:00:41):

About to say,

Speaker 2 (00:00:43):

They probably haven't been listening today. We have a really special guest with us. JD from Ice Nine Kills. Welcome to the show. Thanks

Speaker 4 (00:00:52):

So much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. It's really cool. I've heard a bunch of your guys' podcasts and you guys talk about some really cool stuff, just some really cool people, and you guys are cool people yourself, so I'm glad to be here.

Speaker 3 (00:01:01):

Oh, thank you. That's very flattering. We only bring cool people on, so that means you're a cool person too.

Speaker 4 (00:01:06):

Nice. So I can sit at the table with you guys at lunchtime.

Speaker 3 (00:01:09):

Yeah, welcome to the Cool Club. Yeah, totally

Speaker 4 (00:01:12):

Cool. Cool.

Speaker 3 (00:01:13):

We should just say cool 18 more times.

Speaker 4 (00:01:16):

It's one of my favorite words. I use it all the time.

Speaker 3 (00:01:18):

That's cool. Yep. Alright, cool. So I think it's really cool that you're in a cool band, but you also do cool production stuff. Do you think it's cool?

Speaker 4 (00:01:31):

I mean, it's pretty cool. It's cooler than most things. That's really the coolest thing I could probably say.

Speaker 3 (00:01:37):

Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty cool. That's what I thought too. No. Alright, cool. I think we've said cool enough, but Alright.

Speaker 4 (00:01:46):

Noise. Noise. Alright,

Speaker 3 (00:01:48):

So for those of you who are unfamiliar, JD plays in a band called Ice Nine Kills, which I would consider you guys veterans at this point. You guys have been around a long time.

Speaker 4 (00:01:58):

Yeah, the band has been around even before my time. I was in a couple other bands when this one was just getting started. I joined the band around 2009 right before we put out Safe is Just The Shadow, which was the first record that I was contributing with the writing and the rest of the band had kind of formed with these two bands that existed separately. At one point we were Ice nine Kills, and then I was in another band with a handful of the members that are currently in the band called Remember Tomorrow, and we had fused our musical styles and our bands together to create the new Ice nine Kills when there was a lapse in some members and Spencer came to us and was like, you guys want to be the new band? We're like, sure, that's cool. You guys are a couple years ahead of us. We don't have to sell CDs at Warp Tour in the lines for two years. Let's do it. Let's jump in.

Speaker 3 (00:02:44):

Yeah, that's definitely a plus.

Speaker 4 (00:02:47):

We were literally ready to go out that year. We're like, ah, this is going to suck so much. And then he called us and we're like, okay, sure. Perfect timing.

Speaker 3 (00:02:56):

Any opportunity to skip past that crap is good in my opinion. So were you doing production stuff back then too?

Speaker 4 (00:03:04):

Back then, I was more of the guy that had the production ideas, but I wasn't so much hands-on with the creative process of, well, I guess I shouldn't even say the creative process. I mean, I did do a lot of the writing and the facilitating everyone's ideas, the demoing, all that stuff, but a lot of it was just an idea that I wanted to move towards. And that first record that we did in 2010, save is just a shadow. There was a lot of electronic stuff and a lot of the things that bands like Chios were doing, it was kind of that time for sampling and the keyboardists and such, and we kind of didn't want to have the keyboardist, but we wanted to have those sounds in the music. So I was at that point looking to get started in that direction and kind of just jumped right in. It was really hard thing to get into. I think the only programs I knew of that got me in that direction was Fruity Loops and Reason, and that's kind of as far as it went.

Speaker 3 (00:04:08):

Isn't that where everybody kind starts? I

Speaker 4 (00:04:11):

Fruity,

Speaker 3 (00:04:11):

Loose and Reason

Speaker 4 (00:04:12):

I hope I made the first Step. Right,

Speaker 3 (00:04:16):

Joey, did you ever use those? I

Speaker 2 (00:04:17):

Did, yeah. Absolutely. I kind of think that maybe those companies are probably positioning themselves as the gateway to recording in a sense. Right.

Speaker 3 (00:04:29):

Isn't FL Pro Fruity Loops?

Speaker 2 (00:04:31):

It's the same thing. Yeah. FL Studio.

Speaker 3 (00:04:33):

FL Studio, okay. FL Studio. Alright. Yeah, I didn't know that. That was Fruity Loops for the longest time.

Speaker 4 (00:04:38):

That's why I think they stopped calling it Fruity Loops and

Speaker 3 (00:04:41):

It

Speaker 4 (00:04:42):

Was

Speaker 3 (00:04:42):

FL Studio. Yeah, that gives away my age. I used Fruity Loops and it was called Fruity Loops and then all these people I knew who were in bands and stuff would use FL Studio and I'd be like, what the fuck is FL Studio? Come to find out is Fruity Loops. But have any of you guys ever been able to make a cool sound with reason ever?

Speaker 4 (00:05:05):

Honestly, most of my sampling that I did for that record came from Reason. And the thing that was hard about that program for me is that I didn't really know what I was doing. I had a toy around and especially when I'm looking for a sound, just constantly searching through all these banks and I had no idea saw waves and triangle waves were doing, I was just looking for cool sounds that DJs were using and electronic guys were using. I had really no idea what I was doing. I just had to search around forever. I think it kind of got me cool results, but I mean I guess I could say I'm happy with what I got for that time period, but man, it was so grueling and it took forever to find stuff that worked for the song.

Speaker 3 (00:05:49):

Is it faster now?

Speaker 4 (00:05:51):

Yeah, definitely. I mean, this stuff like Contact is a really, really great tool that I use constantly and I use a lot of East West stuff for our music and at this point if I'm looking for a lo-fi drum part, I just make it at this point, I don't have to look for the drum kit, sound Bank and reason I can just pull up a get good drums thing or even an easy drummer thing and just put some plugins on and have some fun with it. But when I was first starting out, it took forever. It was the hardest thing to figure out and I had nobody who knew how to use it. I didn't have any answers anywhere. It just really took forever.

Speaker 3 (00:06:28):

I have a love-hate relationship with Contact.

Speaker 4 (00:06:32):

I think a lot of people do.

Speaker 3 (00:06:34):

Yeah, I mean Joey didn't Jason Richardson just tell us that he does like 90% of his orchestration and stuff in contact?

Speaker 2 (00:06:45):

Yeah, I think that seems to be the industry standard. Yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:06:50):

It's a damn good program because there's a lot of pain associated with using it because first of all, it's fucking expensive. Second of all with certain dos, the routing is just not friendly. And so to put up with all that to be able to use it, it's pretty damn good. That's why I think it's good is because people will actually put up with it in order to use it.

Speaker 4 (00:07:19):

I like contact more recently because I feel like I've figured out how to use it and I had to because our last record, or I should start a little further back. Before every trick in the book record came out, we did the bridge track, which was the track between the previous record and that one. And I hired this guy from Flesh got apocalypse named Francesco Farini to do a full orchestra of one of our songs to accompany the song. And

Speaker 3 (00:07:47):

They're sick by the way.

Speaker 4 (00:07:49):

Oh dude, they're so sick, they're unbelievable. But he did this arrangement to our song that as soon as I heard it, it sounded like something straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean or something Han Zimmer would've done. And I was like, this is unbelievable. Now we have to have this all the time. So it going into our next record, he and I were trying to figure out if our schedules would line up and if he could do the whole record. It turns out his record was being put together at the same time as ours and the schedules didn't line up. So what he did is he kind of mentored me in the direction of writing and composing this kind of stuff, and I kind of took on the entire project of just learning how to create orchestra and full arrangements and such.

Speaker 3 (00:08:28):

I want to hear more about this because this is actually something we've never talked about on the podcast that I think a lot of people would be interested to hear about.

Speaker 4 (00:08:38):

I think it's becoming more popular, especially the people who can kind of take on the learning curve. It is really, really extensive and it takes a lot of time and a lot of patience to figure out how to manipulate all these sounds. But that's pretty much what all of my contact base is for is using all these different orchestral libraries, whether they're Spitfire or eight DIO or East West with their play engine, all that stuff. You said Jason was using what you said? 85, 90 5% of this stuff contact is kind of like 75% and I use the East West Hollywood orchestra stuff for like 25% of my material.

Speaker 3 (00:09:19):

Okay. So let's start at the basics. What are your go-to orchestral plugins or virtual orchestras?

Speaker 4 (00:09:29):

For every trick in the book I used mainly EastWest, Hollywood Strings Gold. I used their percussion libraries for a lot of the bass drums and the snare ensembles and stuff like that. I used a little bit of CNA samples for the string arrangements as well where some things need a little bit more bite. I mean the Hollywood Orchestra by East West has a lot of high fidelity and it's really crisp and it has a sound when you hear it soloed or you hear it in just a regular arrangement of just strings and orchestra, you can kind of tell it's that Hollywood sound. If you're familiar with various sound banks, it sounds very film-like and very movie-like. Whereas a lot of the other contact libraries like Spitfire and CNA samples and eight dio, they have a little bit more of an organic sound. There's so many out there to use and everyone has their strengths. And that's kind of the fun part about putting it into our music is figuring out which sound bankers, which library or which patch has the best bite that you need for each part. But there's a lot. There's a lot you can use.

Speaker 3 (00:10:47):

I found that the east west stuff sounded incredible, but at times it's harder to mix with because the rooms that they record in are so baked into the sounds that I would have a hard time, I would have a hard time getting them dry enough to where they would not get totally swallowed by a super fast mix, like something flesh godspeed or whatever. I would have a hard time with it. I was always searching for something that was a little, I guess more organic sounding or drier sounding.

Speaker 4 (00:11:24):

Yeah, I had the same problem with, I guess I shouldn't say the same problem. I had the same challenge really with Hollywood stuff because like you said, it is hard to get it to cut through the mix sometimes when it has the room baked into the sound, which is a great way to say it. But I recently, in the past year or so, I put some money together and got the next bundle up, which has the additional microphones, the close mics, the surround mics and all that. And even when you get down to the close mics, you can really take away some of that extra room sound. But even so it has that same sound you're talking about that doesn't always cut right through a metal mix, especially with all the bands and the styles that we have in our metal genre. Everything has to be louder than everything else, and it's almost impossible to just add 10 to 20 more organic instruments to your mix that also need to be just as louder as the ones that already were in place. So it's there.

Speaker 3 (00:12:25):

So your solution is to use different libraries to accomplish different tasks, I guess

Speaker 4 (00:12:31):

Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes it's about finding the right library just to start off. I mean, eventually it's got to go to the engineer and really have its final mix done, but there's a million ways to bring out your string orchestrations and a lot of it I think isn't necessarily which one is the best sounding library. Sometimes it's the actual arrangement if you have too many guitar parts happening or if you're mimicking a guitar part and a violin line in the same scale or the same frequency range, they're just going to compete and then they won't sound like either one. They're going to sound like a blend of the two. So it's kind of a balancing act of figuring out where in the mix your string arrangements need to come up and where you can still fit room for guitar arrangements to accompany each one or vice versa. It's just a balancing act.

Speaker 3 (00:13:24):

We always tell people that if you want a good mix, you need to have a good arrangement too.

Speaker 4 (00:13:29):

Right, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:13:31):

It's really tough to have a good mix without a good arrangement, especially the more cluttered an arrangement gets, the more important it is that everything's in the right place. So let's talk a little bit about some of the golden nuggets that bro from flesh God shared with you.

Speaker 4 (00:13:52):

Would

Speaker 3 (00:13:52):

You mind sharing some of those?

Speaker 4 (00:13:55):

Oh sure, of course. I mean, he is amazing, and the thing that's cool about him is that he is completely, he took the time to explore his instrument, which is the piano mainly, and he's an incredible piano player, and what he does is he kind of takes his piano ideas and he brings 'em to life through these different orchestra arrangements. And one of the cool things that he taught me was when you're coming up with a melody or a theme or a rhythmic pattern, you don't necessarily have to keep it on the same instrument the whole time. Like you said, start off by writing a five piece arrangement on a full string patch where you have the whole piano at your disposal and you're coming up with this line across the entire thing, which will cover your double bases, your cellos, your violas, and your two violin sections. And then when you go back and look at your sketched out midi diagram, you can start removing things like if you have a happening where you have the double bass and the cello, you can maybe take out some of those rhythms.

Speaker 3 (00:15:05):

By double bass you mean the contra base? Correct. The instrument, not double bass drum.

Speaker 4 (00:15:11):

Right, right. And sorry, I should clarify that. There's a couple different ways to describe that instrument, but it's like the oversized cello that plays the bass lines. It's the contra bass. Some people just call it the bass. It's still bode typically, but you can take certain things out of your rhythms that you create with your base. Maybe the cellos are still doing the, but the base is just doing bump babu, babu, just like highlighting certain parts of the rhythmic pattern. And then you could even take those low parts and strengthen them with a brass section. Maybe you're using a tuba or a MSO or a trombone, and you can put that same pattern in with those and start pulling midi notes out of the rhythmic patterns to kind of strengthen certain areas. And then while you're doing that, you can switch over to your higher register where your strings are, and if they have pads going on top of 'em, or I should say chord patterns where there's two violins and a viola playing a three part line, you can start dispersing some of those notes in the chords to each instrument, start bringing in a trumpet.

(00:16:26):

And it's kind of like this open canvas of taking this a simple theme or a simple melody and kind of tossing it around the orchestra and giving specific parts or random parts to different pieces in the orchestra and seeing how that sounds and then start cutting it up and chopping it up from there. It's a really, really an incredibly overwhelming experience sometimes, but it can also be really fun to just think of this cool little themed line and then hearing what it sounds like when 10 or 15 different instruments are tapping on specific notes in each section. It's really cool.

Speaker 3 (00:17:01):

So basically what you're going for is a very interesting sonic blend, which is, I guess the sum is greater than the individual parts

Speaker 4 (00:17:15):

When

Speaker 3 (00:17:15):

You're talking about that. So if you're talking about a single simple line spread across all the instruments, that simple line is still being put out to the listener, but any one instrument may not be playing every note in the line,

Speaker 4 (00:17:31):

Right? If you have a melody line that's like, nah, only some parts will play or some instruments will play, maybe the trumpets will just go and then the violins do the things like that. It's really cool to find this theme and split it up between all these different instruments and totally add these layers to it that bring it to a whole different place. It's exciting, but it's a lot of work. It takes time. And like I said, it takes patience to learn how to manipulate these things because not only are you actually recording this stuff through midi, but you have to go back in and control the velocities. There's envelope lanes in your MIDI that will control the velocity of the notes. It'll control how loud it is and the expression of it. There's controls for how much of vibrato you have, or if you have notes that are only played one at a time. There's the legato control, which is for those of you who don't know, it's when there's one note that kind of swoops into another and has kind of a bend almost or a connection, and you have a control for that connection of the two notes that controls maybe how fast it's going to the other note or how slow it is. It is very complicated, but it really comes to show how much control you have over an orchestra in a digital world in comparison to an organic orchestra in a big hall.

Speaker 3 (00:18:58):

So with the, I guess what we're programming drums, when people ask How do I get my drums to sound more realistic? My first answer is always velocities, velocities, velocities, velocities. The best way you can get your fake drums to sound more real is to make the velocities match more what a drummer would do in real life. And does that same principle apply when programming orchestra?

Speaker 4 (00:19:35):

Yeah, I would say it applies in the exact same way and then tenfold because not only do you have to control your velocity, but there's multiple layers of control for the samples.

Speaker 3 (00:19:46):

Let's talk about that.

Speaker 4 (00:19:47):

Yeah, it's wild. With a string patch, if you play on a violin, a note that maybe you're just playing a B flat, you can control how loud that B flat is being played. You can control how much vibrato is in that. So that right there is just two layers. And then the third layer is if you're adding another note to that, or if you want to go from that note to another note and have that legato sound of kind of curving into the other note where it has a bend, instead of going, you have that actual swoop is controllable as well and how fast it's actually transitioning. So that's another layer. And then you have another layer for how much or how many samples get put in, because when they program these libraries, they record multiple musicians and then they'll record a few less musicians and then they'll record one or two.

(00:20:49):

And then you have this control to blend how many of those instruments are being played. So you can on your fader or your expression or your mid lane, you can bring up the control for that. And that'll basically add well from one violinist, three violinists to five violinists to a full section of eight. There's just this unbelievable amount of control you have over these samples. And how they do it is they program it in to actually add the recorded samples of each section in seamlessly between your transitions of your control of your faders. It's really wild.

Speaker 3 (00:21:26):

That does sound wild. So I'm guessing that with it probably took you a good little while to get comfortable with this, but at this point it's probably more intuitive than it was at the beginning.

Speaker 4 (00:21:38):

Yeah, it definitely has. And when I first started, I actually just went back into some of the stems for one of our songs that we're doing a video for, and I had to create some stems of the different string arrangements. We're going to have some string players in the video, and I wanted to have them hear the stems so they could learn how to play this stuff if possible. So I was going back listening to John, I was like, wow, this does not sound as good as I thought it did back then. It's almost like going back to any project you've ever done. If I went back to some old recordings I did five or 10 years ago when I was in college, I would probably throw up. That's just how it is. You have a learning curve and you get better at it over time. So I'm still learning. I've just recently set up an entire template of every single string library that I have and each different articulation, which for those of you who don't know, the articulation is the word that they use for the actual type of playing. Like with guitar, you have finger picking or picking with a pick or

Speaker 3 (00:22:43):

Down picking

Speaker 4 (00:22:44):

Down picking or upp picking. Exactly. So with strings you have a soft playing or you have a really aggressive playing, or sometimes you play with the bow and you smack your strings with your bow or you pluck with your finger. All those things are individual articulations. So what I've set up is this template in my cubase to have each individual articulation on its own midi track. That way when I go and I make a sketch of an idea or I'm writing a song in orchestra, I can create something on a midi lane on a piano roll, and then if I don't like the way it sounds in that library, I can just take that MIDI lane or that midi piano roll section and I can slide it down onto the next track or a different track and hear what it sounds like on a different instrument or in a different articulation. And that has really opened up the creative side for me. Now, I'm not searching for hours on end trying to find the right one. One, it's already in the project. All I have to do is drag it around until I like where it sounds and try to manipulate it from there.

Speaker 3 (00:23:51):

That's very similar to what we tell people to do with mixing that you should have a template to start from so that you're not trying to reinvent the wheel the whole time. And if you start from a template, once you're set up, you can get straight to the creative stuff.

Speaker 4 (00:24:07):

Exactly with reason. When I was doing that years ago for that 2010 record, there's so many times that I just gave up. I had to stop. I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do anymore because I spent so much time just pressing the up and down buttons in a library to find, what does this sound like? What does this one sound like? That sounds cool. Oh no, that sounds terrible. And then the next thing you know, forget what you're looking for in the first place. So creating this template has really changed the game for me. I can just get to work right away. And that's really important in any engineer's space. If you're creating or if you're trying to do any project, it's good to have a starting place that is beyond the basics of just tedious work of setting up drum tracks and setting up your EQs and your compressors and getting all your plugins in line and checking to make sure that you're not overloading your PC or your Mac or anything like that. Having a place to start is really, really vital to your process as a musician or a songwriter or any type of engineer of any kind. It's really good to have that.

Speaker 3 (00:25:09):

Tell us more about your templates. So you have all your orchestral plugins in it as well as all the different articulations on mid lanes.

Speaker 4 (00:25:18):

Yes. And the thing that's cool about cubase, currently, I actually was a pro tools guy for a long time, but I switched over to Cubase because their MIDI is really intuitive for this kind of stuff, and their control is really nice. They have cool options, like you can drag the, just from sliding your mouse up to the corner and going into your inspector, you can drag your track midi in, I forget what they call it. It's like when you're playing on your piano or on your instrument, your MIDI instrument, it has to trigger, and sometimes it takes a certain amount of time to trigger the actual sample. And if the sample sounds a little bit late, then it's going to sound off. And you have to basically take your piano roll notes and you have to drag them back behind the grid, which can really screw up your entire process if you're an engineer, you know what I mean? But with Cubase, there's this cool little fader, you can just drag back a little bit and it automatically sets it to start a little bit earlier and you can keep your mid notes right on the grid. So that makes it really helpful. With that,

Speaker 3 (00:26:23):

Joey and Joel have sold me on cubase and I actually bought Cubase. I just haven't really, now the mix and URM have become such a monster that I haven't really had time to learn it, but I have been sold on the merits of cubase.

Speaker 4 (00:26:41):

Yeah, just conceptually, there's a lot of really great things about it. I know a lot of great engineers that use it, and I mean, everyone's got their daw. Some guys like Pro Tools, some guys like Cubase, some guys like Reaper, some guys like Amplitude. I've worked on a handful of different ones and saw that, and I've seen some different advantages to a lot of 'em. But Keybase is definitely great for this. It has so many little functions that really help control and allow me to manipulate what I need to in a fast way.

Speaker 3 (00:27:12):

What about audio wise? What do you have in your template?

Speaker 4 (00:27:16):

Well, I've also kind of put together this pre-pro template and my orchestra template into one because for myself in our band, I'm starting to find that in previous projects, I've had to write music and take other people's ideas in the band and put 'em into a program and create the song until we're all happy with it. And then I go back later and I put all the strings and samples in, but at this point I'm like, it's kind of a lot of work to do it that way, and it really can make me miss out on some of the opportunities that the music has for different advantages. Or if you come up with a vocal line and you have a lead guitar in the chorus and you want to put strings in it and you find out you can't have it both, you have to sacrifice one of them. So this time around, I've created the template so everything's in one. So I can write my drum parts, I can write the guitar parts, I can write strings as I go, and everything can have its place while I'm creating so that I don't get kind of stuck later on wishing I could do something else, but still being in love with the thing I already created and having that kind of battle between myself or the other guys trying to figure out what's best for the song.

Speaker 3 (00:28:33):

So you mentioned something really, really important, which is CPU. It sounds to me like you probably have a pretty powerful computer.

Speaker 4 (00:28:44):

I recently just made the switch to something that is going to change the game for me. I was using an iMac for a while, which was great, but it had its limitations because if I wanted to make any changes to the inside, which are already limited, you got to take the screen out. You have to fit things into certain places that have kits that are aftermarket stuff, and then you have to put the screen back on properly. And if you want to get it back at it again and make modifications, you got to take the screen off again. It's like a hundred to 200 bucks every time you want to do it, unless you're really good at doing it yourself. But if anyone knows, anytime you take something apart that's delicate like a computer screen, you run the risk of damaging it every time you do it and you run the risk of damaging it even more the more often you do it.

(00:29:31):

But I was using an iMac that had, it was an I seven and it had 32 gigs of ram. I had two solid state hard drives in it, and I had a regular hard disc drive. It's like 7,200 RPMs, but it was only running on SE A two, which is slower than SE A three. Saya three is the standard for transfers and hard drive stuff now, but that's all the computer had. I couldn't get more out of it. I couldn't connect more things to it, I couldn't do anything. That was it. And the max for the RAM was 32 gigabytes. And these samples and these sample libraries, they demand so much of your computer. I was constantly hitting roadblocks where the computer couldn't keep up with the samples, or I put a 500 gigabyte solid state drive inside the computer behind the screen and did that whole thing.

(00:30:26):

And then I get more sample libraries and I'm like, okay, I don't have any more room on my hard drive. So then you got to go to external hard drives. And the problem with my iMac is that it had USB two connections, which isn't ideal and isn't really fast enough to do the transfers from the hard drive because the computer reads each sample that you play on your piano or on your midi, it reads it off of the hard drive. And if the hard drive isn't fast enough, then the computer slows down and your project slows down, and then you get hiccups, you get clicks and pops, or it gives you errors and you can't continue. And next thing you know, it just interrupted your entire workflow and you get pissed off and you get stuck with it. Every engineer knows the issue. But I recently switched to pc, which is weird for me. It's been a long time.

Speaker 3 (00:31:19):

Joey, you

Speaker 2 (00:31:19):

Smiling

Speaker 4 (00:31:21):

Joey, you a PC guy now too.

Speaker 2 (00:31:23):

So I was PC guy forever, and now I'm a Mac dude. So you

Speaker 4 (00:31:27):

Went the other way.

Speaker 3 (00:31:28):

Well, just on your laptop though.

Speaker 2 (00:31:30):

Yeah, as far as recording goes, I'm probably still pc. I definitely, it is weird for me because I make plugins, so I spend a lot of time testing the plugins in Mac and windows and just crossing the streams a lot, so to speak. But I think when it comes down to the nitty gritty and I had to perform really well as a producer and make a really sick track, I would want to do it on a pc.

Speaker 4 (00:31:59):

Yeah, I mean, each computer operating system has its own advantages. I think we all know that. But I actually switched to PC for a couple reasons. One of 'em was because the capabilities the computer had getting a tower, or for me, I got a rack mount system that I can just take it out of the rack. I can take the case off and I can make changes to it. I don't have to use special glue to put the screen back on or special tools to take it apart and then worry that I'm going to screw something up. I love Mac user-friendly, and they're really great for recording programs. But the problem for me was that I couldn't afford a Mac version of the PC that I just got made. It was just too much. It was like three times more expensive. And if anyone knows being in a band, you're not raking in the dough and you can't just buy tons of gear.

(00:32:54):

It just doesn't work that way. So I had this PC made, it was another I seven, the Sky Lake processor, and I got 64 gigabytes of RAM as opposed to 32. And even from there, I believe I can still get more if I wanted to, but that's one of the nice features of these PC setups that I can continue to change whenever I want. Whereas Mac, nowadays, they're hard soldering so much of their hardware to the motherboards that if you want to upgrade stuff like that, you have to just buy a new computer or you have to commit to paying for one of their towers and the towers set up. You can make changes like that. But again, it was just out of my budget and I switched to pc. I've been on PC before years ago, so at this point it's kind of getting used to the key commands and all the shortcuts.

(00:33:50):

That's the biggest change for me. But navigating is the same for the most part. Using the actual programs is pretty much the same. But getting back to what I was saying about the actual hard drives and the connection with the samples is that these sample libraries are so big, and to be able to stream them, it has to use a certain amount of ram and memory in your computer to process all that stuff. So the more you have, the better, and the amount of cores you have in your computer is important as well because there's processing that needs to happen separately for your recording programs and for other background tasks and stuff like that. So it's like this big balancing act of figuring out what you need. And I did the research and I got a rig that can handle all these sample libraries. So kind of back to my template, I have one of my sample libraries and articulations in cubase. And what I love about Cubase is that I can set my key command onto one button that enables or disables each sample articulation, because on each track it runs into its own instance of contact. So I have 3000, or I think it's like 4,000, might be even five of all these different sample articulations throughout the entire template.

Speaker 3 (00:35:11):

Holy shit.

Speaker 4 (00:35:12):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:35:12):

It's nuts. Can you give us a screenshot of your template or a few screenshots just

Speaker 4 (00:35:18):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:35:18):

For us to post on the show notes because 3000 to 5,000, that sounds enormous. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:35:24):

It is enormous, and I think it's partially enormous because I went crazy as far as just doing literally every single thing I think I would ever need and just putting in the template. And the only reason I was able to do this much in my template was because cubase gives me the option to disable it by disabling it. I'm removing it from RAM and all computer processing, so it just sits there. It doesn't actually use up any of my computer usage or my ram, which is what is amazing about it in Cubase is that I can have all this stuff there and it's not doing anything until I turn it on. So it took me a week and a half or so to put all these things in and make the template. But from now on, that's all I need. I just enable the track whenever I want to try it. Drop the video in there here, what it sounds like if it sucks, just disable it, move the MIDI track somewhere else and keep working,

Speaker 3 (00:36:18):

Man. Your computer has got to be a powerhouse. What are the specs on it?

Speaker 4 (00:36:23):

Let's see. So it's actually not as much of a powerhouse as people might think it would be. There's much crazier computers out there for guys that do crazier things, but I tried to cover all my bases. What I did was the 64 gigs of ram, I got the I seven skylight processor, which I think it goes, I think it's a 3.8 gigahertz, 3.7, and you could overclock it to four, which I don't really know too much about, but I know that you can overclock your computer to basically work harder.

Speaker 3 (00:36:56):

It takes Joey, can you tell us anything about that?

Speaker 4 (00:36:59):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:36:59):

You're a PC

Speaker 2 (00:37:00):

Man. The overclocking doesn't really tend to affect recording software in my experience. However, I think my experience is somewhat limited to that kind of stuff with cubase, whereas with Pro Tools, maybe overclocking your computer could help possibly.

Speaker 4 (00:37:21):

Yeah, I think it's just like it makes it so the processor works faster, right?

Speaker 2 (00:37:27):

But the thing is, if the developers aren't doing much to take advantage of those types of things, then the end result isn't much. I mean, yeah, you can sort of overclock the processor to the point where it can just churn numbers faster, but

Speaker 4 (00:37:48):

There's a bottleneck somewhere.

Speaker 2 (00:37:50):

Sometimes there's a bottleneck in places where you necessarily can't, it just won't go faster.

Speaker 4 (00:37:58):

Yeah, and there's a lot of it that I don't really fully understand, but after doing the research, the things that were most important with this orchestra composing and film scoring and all that stuff on your computer is that it has the capability to stream lots of samples, which means you need a lot of ram and you need a fast processor and a lot of solid state hard drives. So that brings me to the next point about the computer is that getting it in the tower gave me space to add more hard drives. So instead of getting stuck with two hard drives in my iMac, I can now put, I don't know, I could probably get eight or 10 in there, and then I can do external stuff. So currently I have a solid state drive for my operating system, which helps the actual computer run faster and run programs faster.

(00:38:46):

And I have a solid state drive inside the computer for samples. And I have a project hard drive that's a regular 7,200 RPM terabyte drive. That's where I put all my pro tool sessions or my cubase sessions. And on my projects I do for ICE nine or other bands, everything saves on there and it reads separately from there from the rest of the computer. And then I'll have a little hot swap dock that I can input laptop size, hard drives, and that's where I keep all my sample libraries, the ones that I'll take with me on the road if I have to do projects while I'm gone. They're all 500 gigabyte SSDs, Samsung eight 50 evos, and I think they can read, or they can write up to almost 500 megabytes a second. Not that you can actually do that all the time, but it's the fastest that I can get my stuff to go right now. And it's actually made a huge difference. So being able to have your samples spread across multiple hard drives that read fast, that write fast, that can get processed through your computer fast, allows me to jump into cubase, sketch out an orchestra part on a piano, and then disperse it between tons of different orchestral libraries and play around until it sounds fun.

Speaker 3 (00:40:05):

That sounds like you've put a lot of thought into every aspect of this.

Speaker 4 (00:40:10):

Yeah, I've been kind of playing in this move for about a year and a year ago it was only a dream. It was like, oh man, I wish I could have that. I wish I had the money to afford that. But I found a company called a DK Pro Audio that builds computers and they build computers for stuff like this and for recording studios and video editing studios, all that kind of stuff. And another guy that helped me kind of spec out my ideas was Dan,

Speaker 3 (00:40:45):

Oh, we love him.

Speaker 4 (00:40:46):

Yeah, I love Dan. He's such a gearhead and he's just like me. I wish I knew anywhere near as much as he did, but he helped me with the computers and suggested that I hit up 80 K when I'm ready. We were kind of digging up specs and doing research on what are these people using when they're making film scores or any of that stuff, or video game soundtracks, what kind of computers do they need? And the baseline was basically some type of I seven with somewhere between 32 and 64 gigs of ram and a ton of SSDs.

Speaker 3 (00:41:17):

Alright, so we've discussed having a template, making sure your velocities and articulations are right, spreading out your arrangements intelligently in a clever way and making sure that your computer is good to go. What else would you suggest is crucial for people looking to up their orchestration game?

Speaker 4 (00:41:43):

Well, I'm still pretty new to it, so there's a lot of different ways to do it. And if you look around on YouTube, you'll see that so many people do it differently. There's a lot of really great tutorials all over the internet now about controlling sample libraries. The hard part about sample libraries is that they can get really expensive, and sometimes you can kind of pass stuff around between people. It's like check out the sample library if you like it, and you kind of build your collection off of the people. But sometimes if you're just on your own, it's really hard to just drop tons of money on sample libraries because they are really expensive. But it doesn't necessarily mean you have to have 3000 tracks or 5,000 tracks in your template. You can get away with a few different libraries. Just depends on how much you need or how much you want or how much your project really calls for. I mean, with metal mean, Joey, you've done projects that have orchestration in them, and I would imagine you didn't have to have thousands of articulations to get the string parts in the right place.

Speaker 2 (00:42:50):

Yeah, I mean, the thing that I kind of settled on was combining real performances mixed with virtual instruments.

Speaker 4 (00:43:01):

I've heard a lot of that too. There's people that will sketch out their stuff, and this is what they do in movies, in film scores, is that they'll actually sketch out their parts on a midi piano roll with a full string patch or various articulations, and then when it comes time to making the final product, they'll either use some of it, they'll use all of it, or they'll replace the entire thing With real string players, it can be a great tool or it can be a final product. It really just comes down to what the mix needs.

Speaker 3 (00:43:36):

Seems like I hear a lot about the blend of real and virtual being used,

Speaker 4 (00:43:44):

And you can blend any amount of anything for days. It just depends on what you want and what the song really needs. And sometimes you can get really cool results just by blending things, even if it's a different instrument. You can blend a trumpet line with another octave of a violin and then have a synth in the middle of them, and you can get this cool gritty kind of organic synthetic mixture of a sound that just creates something new you can just come up with cool stuff like that. Once it's all together in the mix, it'll sound completely different than maybe when you solo it and you can find really cool results from that.

Speaker 3 (00:44:20):

Now what about forgetting inspiration for parts or for, I guess upping your understanding of just how orchestration works? Did you study anything or study other people's works? And if so, and how did you go about it?

Speaker 4 (00:44:39):

There's a couple different things that I did over the past year and a half since Farini gave me his time of day that taught me some of his tricks. I had to start paying attention to everything. It was no longer like, okay, I would really like to do this. It'd be really cool. I had to buckle down and really start asking the questions and doing the research so you can spend a lot of time on YouTube looking around, finding out who's doing what are the topics of discussion. I actually put down the metal collection and the punk rock collection of music that I had, and I just started listening to orchestra. I started listening to trailer music. There's production companies like Two Steps from Hell or Audio Machine. They make trailer music and stuff for marketing and just hearing what these people can do with real orchestras or programmed orchestras. It did help that Farini sent me some of his stems of just the orchestra to kind of study and hear what he did. And it's just really paying attention to all the different ways you can do stuff. It's like when you're in class, you can just go to class and sit there until you get through it, or you can pay attention and learn something.

Speaker 3 (00:45:59):

Yeah, I always suggest that people do active listening, which what I call active listening is that you actually listen and write down everything you're hearing and analyze everything about it from the arrangement to what's happening harmonically, what's happening rhythmically, how the arrangement evolves over time. Really write everything down, spend an hour on three minutes of music even, and really get detailed with it and do that with a lot of music. And before you know it, your brain is going to take your own arrangements in those directions. So obviously don't do it with music you don't like because our brain will spit out whatever we feed it with. So whatever you take in as an influence, you're going to end up spitting out, which is one of the reasons that I think that a lot of, for instance, guitar players that go to schools like Berkeley end up sounding so much like each other is because they all take the same information in. And so there's kind of a generic output. So this active listening exercise, I highly suggest that you pick music you're passionate about and that you do want to have it reflected in your style. But once you are sure that it fits that criteria, go for it. For instance, for me, it would be like Gustav Mahler, Han Zimmer, Kovich, and Danny Elfman. You put those

Speaker 4 (00:47:27):

Four

Speaker 3 (00:47:27):

Together and I'd go nuts. And there's nothing that any of those guys have done that has ever offended me musically in any way, shape or form. So I'd be happy to be a blend of those four dudes, but I would never sit there and analyze Phantom of the Opera because it makes me insane.

Speaker 4 (00:47:48):

Well, what if it was instrumental? If it was instrumental, you might think differently.

Speaker 3 (00:47:51):

Yeah, you're right. It's mainly those vocals that make me insane.

Speaker 4 (00:47:57):

Yeah, there's so many things out there you can use to take inspiration. I remember when I first started doing this, kind of getting back to you asking me about getting into this and learning about it. My first step when I realized I wanted to learn how to do this was understanding the terminology. And that's one of the most important things with engineering in general. Whether you're a chemical engineer or you're an audio engineer or any type of engineer, you have to know what people are saying. Otherwise you're just going to get lost. So what I did when I started doing the string stuff is learning what staccato means versus what staccato means, or atmo or legato, all those different things. I looked up on YouTube, I spent a day figuring out what each one was. I looked up on a few different sources, like the actual definition and learned that it has some Latin and Italian derivatives and what it meant there. And then I would look on YouTube and watch someone play something that was specifically a specific type of articulation. And I actually made flashcards for the first couple hours of doing it and writing these out and kind of testing myself. I was like, that worked in school, I think, so why don't I try that? So I did that for the first part of my learning curve. And then honestly,

Speaker 3 (00:49:24):

Hold on. Let me just emphasize that you just said that you made flashcards to help you learn this stuff, and I just want to, if I can make, I've done it

Speaker 2 (00:49:35):

Too.

Speaker 3 (00:49:36):

Yeah. So if I could make bombs go off and flashing lights happen right now, like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding sounds. I just want people to understand that if you want to learn this stuff, you really have to get serious about it and learn this stuff. Exactly.

Speaker 4 (00:49:54):

And your teachers will be proud when they found out that you did something like that. They'd be like, that's what I told you in school the whole time.

Speaker 3 (00:50:03):

So you made flashcards, you went on a rampage

Speaker 4 (00:50:07):

And

Speaker 3 (00:50:07):

Learned all the terms.

Speaker 4 (00:50:08):

So going forward, I was going to mention that the thing that actually helped me learn the absolute most about my software or my ability to manipulate the software was making my 5,000 track template. So I was putting in one sample articulation at a time per library, per developer, and putting 'em into folders. So when I was doing this, I was not only just loading it into contact, but I had to set certain parameters in it so that one of my buttons or faders that I have on a little slider controls a specific thing like the dynamic or the expression or the vibrato. I basically had to program each one of those for each articulation, so I had the time to listen to it and play it before I moved on to the next one. So I really got a great lesson in how to control maybe a legato patch or a staccato and hear the difference between a staccato and a staccato in the actual library.

(00:51:16):

I mean, it's much different when you're on YouTube and you see some guy or some girl playing the actual instrument, but then actually having it at your hands in a sample library, you get to see how it reacts to you, even though it's not the same because it's not the real instrument. There's still an amount of reaction you get from a sample library that helps you learn about what you can do to use it and how to write with it. So doing 5,000 of those tracks or however many it was, it really opened up many doors to figuring out what I can actually do with this stuff. Eventually it got kind of tedious, but it was a big learning

Speaker 3 (00:51:59):

Curve. You don't say, yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:52:02):

But I couldn't help it. By the time I was up to two or 300 tracks, I couldn't help but pay attention to what I was doing.

Speaker 3 (00:52:11):

And then at a certain point, you've done so many that you can't just turn around and not finish.

Speaker 4 (00:52:17):

Right? And by the time I was up halfway through, I recognized each sound by the way it sounded and the way it played, and seeing how each developer allows you to control these samples. I start to memorize all these different things. So now when I go into a session, which I was starting a cover today that I'm doing for our band, right off the top of my head, I'm like, I know exactly which library I want to use right now. I know which articulation I want to use. I have an idea of the part. I'm going to write three midi parts and just drop 'em in. And that's the intro. And it worked, and I felt really happy about it because years ago it was more like, okay, I'll try this piano thing and then I'll just get the guitars right away and the bass. And when I get to the studio in three weeks with the guy that I'm at the studio with, he'll help me figure out what needs to sound good. It's a much different experience now that I have the stuff at my disposal in my house.

Speaker 3 (00:53:16):

I can imagine. Wow, I'm blown away by how much work you put into it.

Speaker 4 (00:53:23):

I think I forgot.

Speaker 3 (00:53:24):

Well, it's cool to hear about it because lots of people, lots of our students, and now the mix want to learn more about how to do this stuff. And I know from kind of doing it myself and working with people that you can do it if you want to, but you have to decide. You want to get good at it, because it's not just going to get good at this stuff by accident. You have to make the decision and you have to commit, and you have to learn a lot of shit, and you have to spend some money and it's going to take a while.

Speaker 4 (00:54:01):

I wish that was everybody's attitude in the entire music industry. I wish everyone was like that. I feel like everything would be easier. I agree.

Speaker 3 (00:54:12):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:54:12):

Everybody would get their shot.

Speaker 3 (00:54:14):

Yeah. You're not kidding. Yeah, that's what in life is worth it and easy at the same time. I can't really think of too many things.

Speaker 4 (00:54:29):

Ice cream.

Speaker 3 (00:54:30):

Ice cream.

Speaker 4 (00:54:33):

That's pretty good. That's all I got. That's all I got. I'm with you. That's all I got.

Speaker 3 (00:54:41):

Ice cream. I used to work with this one producer who had a really bad temper, really bad temper. God. He would get so pissed, and it was so pissed that it would vibe out everything and just ruin the mood and really sometimes scare the clients.

Speaker 4 (00:55:03):

Was he the guy who decided that you were going to be in a metal band?

Speaker 3 (00:55:06):

No, no, no, no. I can't say who it was. This is your music now? No, but it wasn't that guy, but I can't say who it was, but my first reaction whenever those moods would happen would be to go to the convenience store and get him an ice cream. I'd come back and I'm completely serious. I'd give him an ice cream sandwich or something. It'd be like, here, have some ice cream. And how could he be pissed after that?

Speaker 4 (00:55:33):

Right. He's like, okay, thanks.

Speaker 3 (00:55:36):

Yeah, and it actually worked. You can't be mad when you're eating ice cream.

Speaker 4 (00:55:44):

I've seen it. I've seen it. My wife would probably yell at me, but I've seen her mad while eating ice cream. Maybe once or twice. Go ahead and edit that out, Joseph.

Speaker 3 (00:55:52):

She must have been really fucking pissed.

Speaker 4 (00:55:54):

Maybe I try to forget about those things. When you're married, you have to forget about the stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (00:56:02):

You must have really made her mad.

Speaker 4 (00:56:05):

No, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 3 (00:56:07):

I can't imagine being mad while eating ice cream. Well, is there anything else from this orchestra stuff that you think is worthy of sharing? I think you've covered quite a bit of ground.

Speaker 4 (00:56:17):

Yeah, it can be really overwhelming, honestly, especially for those just listening and hearing someone talk about it so much in there that it's hard to grasp, but it's really for those who want to give it a shot. I feel like I've been hearing about more people getting into it, especially in bands, because everyone, there's a stage where people are like, okay, I'm hearing the same thing over and over. What's next? What's next in the mix? What's next in the writing process? Who's the band that's got the thing that everyone wants now? And I think string orchestration has kind of kicked in now that there's so many sample libraries available.

Speaker 3 (00:57:05):

I have noticed that too with the bands that I've worked with that tour, it seemed like in around 2014 ish, that's when it started to become a thing where more and more guys were suddenly getting these libraries. Did you ever notice that, Joey?

Speaker 2 (00:57:25):

Yeah, I think I was probably somewhat to blame for some of that. You

Speaker 3 (00:57:30):

Motherfucker.

Speaker 4 (00:57:31):

Well, a lot of bands were doing little sections. I feel like I always wanted that too. When I was in bands in 2007, I wanted to have like, oh, this one part should have a string arrangement. And at that point I was just saying strings, we need strings here. And I never really understood what it took to get it, but I made my first string arrangement for a song called The People Under the Stairs, which is on our 2010 album. Safe is Just a Shadow. And that was the first time I ever did a string arrangement for an entire song. When I go back and listen to it, it was made with reason. So the strings aren't the most realistic. They sound a little synthy, but that was where it started. And I always wanted to do more of it. I just didn't know how to do it really well. And when I heard Flesh God doing this stuff in their mix, I was like, this is insane. This is a movie on top of their blast Beat Death metal, and they're from Italy, and I want what they have.

Speaker 3 (00:58:34):

Yeah. Flesh God apocalypse kind of picked up where I feel like D Borg gear left off.

Speaker 4 (00:58:39):

Exactly. And it took me back to that band again too. I remember their, what is it? Progeny of the Great Apocalypse. That was the first song. That was a song, right? Not an album.

Speaker 3 (00:58:49):

Yeah, that was a song.

Speaker 4 (00:58:50):

Yeah. That was the first song that

Speaker 3 (00:58:52):

I heard. That was the song that was like the song.

Speaker 4 (00:58:55):

And I went back and listened to it not that long ago, and I was like, wow, these guys did it back then. And

Speaker 3 (00:59:01):

It's insane. Dude, that album is fucking sick to this day.

Speaker 4 (00:59:05):

It is. What is that album called?

Speaker 3 (00:59:07):

Death called Armageddon?

Speaker 4 (00:59:09):

Yes. Yes. So good. So good. Yeah. That band rules now for us, for Einstein Kills, it's kind of taken our band away from what we were doing before and kind of given us this purpose almost. Being in a band, especially in our genres, it's not about just playing music and looking good, it's about more than that. You have to have an entire marketable aspect of your band. And for us, it has now become this theatrical kind of almost going to the show type of epicness of theatrics. And having the orchestra and the characters built into the songs and the stories that we sing about it has become this thing that has to happen all the time now. And I think that's what's really cool about the string arrangements now, is that we can not worry about where it's going to fit in maybe a song. And then when it's not there, it kind of sounds weird not having it, because now we can have it across all of our songs. And having this software has made it pretty awesome to just be able to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):

Boom. Well, awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:00:26):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):

Well, great. Well, jd, thank you for coming on the podcast and letting us know about all that. I hope that everyone listening actually took notes about everything you just spilled on them, because that was a lot of info.

Speaker 4 (01:00:43):

Yeah. I'm kind of out of breath. Thanks for having me. I was really excited you guys had me here. This is really cool to talk to you guys, and I'm glad you guys wanted to know about the orchestra stuff. I think a lot of people would find it pretty interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:00:56):

I think so too.

Speaker 4 (01:00:57):

And maybe I answered some questions that some other young inspired orchestrators or composers had, because for me, I had so many questions in this entire process of getting into a band and working our way up to where we are now and becoming a veteran, that having answers would've saved so much time for me. But also,

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):

You know what we can do on that topic? Anybody listening, send an email to if you have questions for JD on this topic, why don't we do a second version of this where we give you Q and a with the listeners? And

Speaker 4 (01:01:36):

I would love that. That'd be awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:01:38):

So yeah, on this topic, so anybody listening, send an email to EYAL at M Academy and make the subject line dear jd, and ask your orchestral questions. And then we will do a follow up to this with orchestral q and a.

Speaker 4 (01:01:58):

That'd be fantastic. I would love to answer any questions anyone's got, and if you have anything that you think I could learn, feel free to share. I'm always down to learn more stuff and share what I know with anyone who needs to know it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):

Awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:02:09):

Thanks for having me on, guys. This is really awesome. I'd love to do it again. So let me know. Absolutely. The

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):

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