EYAL LEVI: Leaving Berklee, Overcoming Self-Doubt, Tube Amps vs. Digital

Speaker 1 (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 host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:21):

Welcome to another installment of Dear Eyal. I apologize for the weird acoustics on this one. I'm in a hotel room in Wisconsin. There's a lot of air moving in this room and I can't get it to stop. So I appreciate you guys listening. This is the show where I answer listener submitted questions. If you want to get your questions on here, just send an email to EAL at M Academy with the subject line. Dear Eyal, and ask me your question. The more detail, the better. I just want to open this by saying that I'm in Wisconsin. I come to Wisconsin quite a bit it seems these days because Joel Wanex studio is here and we're filming stuff for a very exciting upcoming project, and I realized that I've gone into film every day for the past maybe 10 days, and I am getting in later and later every single day like I'm sleeping just a little bit later.

(01:31):

And it kind of was bugging me out a little bit because in my mind I like to be on things all the time and I hate being late, and I feel like every minute of the day is meant to be spent working, but in reality, not taking a day off in my opinion is the reason that I'm starting to show up late every day because we've been doing a very repetitive filming thing. We're filming something that's the same thing every day, all day long, and it's starting to grind on my head. And I noticed that towards the end of maybe the seventh or eighth day, I was starting to get super impatient with the filming, and I just wanted it to be over. I couldn't wait to get back to my hotel room, and that's not the way that you should be doing things. And then I ended up actually taking part of a day off, got back to it, and was totally refreshed, had a great day, kicked a ton of ass.

(02:37):

So the reason I'm saying this is because I know that for a lot of you, you've got the same problem that I have, which is you just want to get shit done all the time, right? Go, go, go, go, go, go, go. But this isn't necessarily the most productive mindset to have. We need time to recharge our brains. We need downtime to, downtime is actually not a waste of time. The downtime is when our brain processes everything that we've already done and figures out the next step of the way. Usually the best ideas come to us during downtime. At least that's how I work.

(03:17):

So don't burn out, keep a moderate pace, just stay consistent with it. One thing I like to remember is that when planning out a year or goals for a year, it's hard to see that far advance in the future. So sometimes we'll plan out goals for the next day and for a week, and we will overdo our to-do lists and get very, very, I guess negative that we didn't get everything done. But if you just keep doing that and try to take it easy on yourself, but stay committed and consistent, when you look back on an entire year, you'll be blown away by how much you got done. So it's hard to get everything done that you'd like to get done in a day, but it's amazing what you can accomplish in a year if you just stick to it. Don't burn out and stay moderate. And that said, I'm going to get to your questions. Here we go.

(04:16):

All right, first question is by Mr. Dylan Gory. Here it goes. Dear Eyal, I have been listening to multiple podcasts and notice that my creative idols think that going to the university for the arts or music is a waste of time. I thought going to university wouldn't be as dedicating the time to learn the craft instead of working as well as having the knowledge in great teachers at fingertips. I know you briefly talked about dropping out of university. Could you tell me why you did this and your thoughts about it? Thanks for the advice. Okay. Well, first of all, I think that if you want to go get an education, you should go get an education. I never want to discourage anybody from educating themselves, and for some people, the academic structures are the best way to go. If you can survive in that environment, you may as well do it, but don't kid yourself.

(05:18):

There's very limited things you can do with an arts degree. If you want to teach guitar for instance, the hell yeah, going to a music school and getting a guitar degree might be a great idea. If you want to work in Hollywood at a big post house, maybe you do need to get a degree from a recording arts academy, I mean from a recording school because they screen people that way. If you want to work in music education or music therapy, you probably need a degree, but if your goal is to be a professional artist or professional musician, then it's questionable whether or not the degree is going to help you. And if you are looking to go into business later or something else like that, it's not going to help you at all. However, getting a business degree will help your music career substantially.

(06:27):

Now, reasons that I didn't like music school were because I was not able to really pursue what I wanted to pursue. I was very artistically minded on the guitar, and a school can't be tailored towards artists. It can only be tailored towards craftsmen, right? Artists are unique and they follow their own voice. Craftsmen just learn a craft. So you have to look at it from the point of view of a craftsman. Now, what's a craftsman? A craftsman as far as music goes, would be a guitar player who plays in cover bands, plays weddings, bar Mitzvahs, does some teaching, might fill in a jazz gig on Monday nights, a blues gig on Tuesday nights. They can walk in and out of many different situations. They might not be an artist that we all know of. They might not have the most unique sound ever, but they're usually damn good at their instruments and they make a solid ass living at it.

(07:42):

And if that's what you want out of your music career, then actually music school is a really good way to go about it because you'll learn the skills you need to be able to do that. You'll learn how to read charts, you'll learn how to read music, and you'll learn the language of playing those standard tunes and being a pro musician in that vein. However, if you're looking to be an artist, like a guy in a band, an original band, that may not help you very much. It's definitely not going to help you find your own sound and the kinds of things that you need to do to become successful as an artist, you kind of need to figure out on your own. I mean, sure, it helps to get as good as possible, but we only have 24 hours in a day, and you have to choose what you're going to dedicate yourself to. So when I went to Berkeley, I could have spent all day every day working on how to read charts and doing a good job in jazz ensemble, but I fucking hate jazz, and that was not in my future.

(08:58):

I ended up getting really bad grades because I just decided to stop going to those classes because I was busy working on things that I thought were going to actually further my future. I guess transcribing music that I wanted to learn, learning about the music industry or the facet of the music industry that I wanted to go into, none of that stuff was covered at the school, and so it just ended up being a waste of money. I didn't feel right about being there anymore. There was nothing there for me, so I left. I feel like if it's a good fit for you, then by all means stay, but it wasn't a good fit for me and it's not a good fit for many individualists out there, and I don't judge people if they're not individualists like I am. I don't work well in a school environment.

(09:55):

I never did well in school. I did horrible in middle school, horrible in high school and horrible in college. I do not fit well in a system. I've done great in life, but horrible in school. I would probably not do very well in a job that had a boss either. And a lot of people are perfectly fine with that kind of situation. I need to be my own boss. I need to be in charge of where things are headed and it needs to be my vision or it needs to be a vision that I can really get behind or else I don't do very well, but I know this about myself. So is that you? No, you're not me and I'm not you, and that's perfectly fine. So you have to ask yourself what works best for you and what you want out of life.

(10:44):

If you think that not working for a while, studying under great teachers and just having time to practice is great and that's what you want, then cool. But let me ask you, is that really what school is going to give you? What are you going to practice when you're in school? Are you going to practice the things that you want in order to get better? Or are you going to just practice the standard curriculum? And if so, are you okay with that? Are you going to have to do all the other subjects too? Does that matter to you? What do you want out of it? This is something that you need to answer for yourself and only you can make that decision. So I hope this helps and good luck with your school choice.

(11:30):

Next question is from Kevin McCurdy, dear A, what is the secret to that base tone on futility? Sincerely, Kevin. Alright, Kevin, let me just tell people what futility is. Futility is the doth record. My band from 2004 that I think sonically sounds like shit because I mixed it before I knew what I was doing and I generally don't look at it very favorably. However, the bass player on it was phenomenal and it was a session player from Atlanta named Chris Dale. He came in and basically played the stuff by ear and just did it. Now he played with his fingers and at the time I didn't know anything about recording metal bass, so I just went with it and he was really good and he also used a fretless, I believe at times, and he just did his thing. I have no idea what the secret was to the tone because I totally forgot what we did.

(12:33):

However, I can tell you that he's one of the best bass players I have ever worked with in my entire life. He's one of those guys who once he starts playing, suddenly the groove is established, the bottom end is there and in metal, there aren't very many bass players who provide that. So I would say that he's a real bass player and that tone, whatever it is that you like about it was mainly in his hands. I did not know what the hell I was doing bass tone wise. Back in 2003 when we recorded this, I thought that we would do something special for the next question because that's what I like to do for you guys. I love you guys. Anyways, if you listen back a few episodes, we had badass manager and entrepreneur, Mr. Mike Mowry on just talking about the record industry and things that bands should do to get ahead and to make themselves noticed.

(13:39):

And one of our subscribers submitted a question for him. He actually submitted it to me, but I thought that it would be better to ask Mike. And so Mike recorded a response and I'll play it after the question. So here's the question, and this is from Charlie Sandberg on the podcast episode with Mike Bowery. He mentioned that lyric videos are becoming passe. My band is about to drop our first single and we had talked about doing a lyric video and pushing that on social media to get better reach for our band. Are there other alternatives we should look into for social media content? One of our members is really good with video and I'm the audio guy. Is it too early as a local band with under 500? Facebook likes to do a full on music video. Any ideas help? Thanks in advance, Charlie Sandberg.

Speaker 3 (14:28):

Hey Charlie, thanks for your question. And it's awesome that your band is about to drop your first single and I think that lyric videos are completely fine. I was referencing the fact that sometimes artists prefer not to use them any longer and they opt for something more like a visualizer, which could be the manipulation of the artwork. So if you have single art or album art, you might be able to take that and manipulate it. We did something really cool whenever we launched the last refused album. If you go online and Google refused Electra, you can see that we took the cover art and had somebody just manipulate it and have it move to the rhythm and the beat of the music. There's also plenty of other great content ideas that you can do. I encourage all of my artists to have multiple visuals in this day and age whenever they're releasing a single.

(15:29):

If you are a heavy act where the guitar might be something interesting, you may want to premiere a guitar play through, or if you have a drumming that could be interesting, you may want to do a drum play through. But for your very first impression, if a lyric video is what seems right to you guys, then there's no reason that you shouldn't proceed with that. I would just suggest that you make sure that you have something that looks really great and is competitive with all of the other artists who are releasing things in this day and age. I hope that's helpful to you. Thanks for asking the question and for paying attention, and I will catch you on the flip side. Take care. Bye.

Speaker 2 (16:12):

Next up is a question by Mr. Rodney Elba. Dear Eyal, first off, thank you for the great service you Joey and Joel provide. You're welcome, sir. I can see I can't see myself without URM in my life and I owe you guys so much for this new lifestyle. I have adapted well, thank you for saying that. Recently I hit a bad spot with trying to bring in clients and where I am in my mixing ability. It came to a point to where I wanted to throw in the towel and give up. But thanks to my URM brothers, they help bring that fire back. I'm sure I can speak for many people that have confidence issues and the thought of giving up. Is there any advice you can give from your experience of running to that wall and having self-doubt? Thanks and keep up the great work you wizard. Well, first of all, kudos for not giving up. That's great.

(17:07):

It's too easy to do. It's too easy to give into that. Let me talk about this a little bit, if you don't mind. I think that it's totally natural to have confidence issues. As a matter of fact, I think that people who don't have confidence issues are fucked up in the head. Anytime that I am around someone who thinks they got this or they got it, I start to get nervous because to me, that's just fucking stupid. It's kind of like when soldiers talk about how they are terrified of going into combat and if a guy isn't terrified, that's the guy you got to worry about because something is obviously wrong with him or he's just an idiot. I think that when it comes to something as personal as making music or recordings, there's a lot more of your confidence tied up in it than say whether or not you're good at a job that you don't have a personal stake in because it's art art's a personal thing.

(18:22):

So there's an added layer of that, and I think it's absolutely a hundred percent normal to doubt yourself and doubt your abilities because you probably hear the best of the best work and it crushes yours and it makes you want to kill yourself. We've all been there and also couple that with the fact that the studio business is cyclical in nature and sometimes you'll have up months and sometimes down months, it can be very, very demoralizing. And one of the ways that I learned to get over it, which is really what you have to do, you really do just have to get over it. I know it might sound insensitive, but since it's a hundred percent natural to feel the doubt, you can't really stop that voice from coming at you. You have to learn how to overcome it and get over it. What I started doing was I started researching what some other great performers did to deal with it.

(19:30):

First of all, I wanted to know do they feel this way? So I looked up a great actor and I looked up Daniel Day Lewis because I think he's the best if not one of the best actors alive today. And I thought to myself, surely he knows that he's the shit. Does he ever feel self-doubt? And I watched his interview on Inside the Actor's studio and a few other extended interviews, and he said that before every movie, before every role, he gets this crippling fear that he can't do it, that he won't be able to pull it off, and he basically gets debilitated by it and crawls into a ball and cries and wants to quit the movie and is convinced that he can't fucking do it. And then he gets over it, picks himself up and goes and does the job.

(20:35):

I remember, and I don't really like this movie, but it just comes to mind, this movie Collateral with Tom Cruise. There's a part where Jamie Fox is a cab driver and he's talking to this lawyer about how she gets ready for a trial. Apparently she's like this big badass lawyer and every night before the first day of a trial, she pulls an all-nighter and has basically a mini panic attack, thinks that everything is wrong, that she's going to fuck up everything, that people are going to see that she's a complete fraud and that she doesn't belong there and they're going to see all the holes in her case, and she redoes her opening statement and figures out the exhibits and goes in and kicks ass. And I thought that that was a really, really cool way to put it. You think about it, a lot of performers vomit before they go on stage so damn nervous.

(21:40):

And I think that that lack of confidence is a lot like stage fright and you just need to do what you got to do to get over it. For me, it was finding out that everybody feels it. Everybody who has something to lose feels it and studying what it is that top performers did to get past it, I just started doing those things because look, man, that voice will haunt you and there's nothing you can do about it. We all get it in the middle of the night or whenever telling us that we suck or we're not good enough or that the idea is stupid or that it'll never get better or that this is the last good time that we're going to have. And it's real. The struggle is real when it comes to that. Some of us have it worse than others, but the idea, you have to learn how to turn that voice down, not let it take control and how to get past it. How you do it is up to you. I just told you how I did it. Again, for me, it was researching what other great people did. How you do it is all on you buddy. But you got this.

(22:58):

Next question is from Andres Ramirez as a producer and guitar player, do you think we're seeing the end of Tube technologies and analog in general? I'm asking because every year digital technologies get better and better. I don't release a point of buying extremely expensive tube amps if I can just use a modeler instead. Greetings from Columbia regards, Andres Ramirez. Good question. Well, first of all, I was just filming something and we have a Mesa, a dual rec in the room with a recal cab, and we're also using an AMP sim. And when you hear the dual rec in the room being played compared to the AMP sim, it just swallows it whole. It is not even funny, it just obliterates it. However, we should all know that what a guitar sounds like in the room by itself is not what a guitar sounds like in a mix or live in a venue.

(24:08):

It almost doesn't matter what it sounds like by itself. And we all know by now that so many great sounding records have been made with Sims and so many big bands play with digital technology live. So my opinion on it is that yes, there will come a day when Tube technology and analog are no longer a part of our lives. I don't know when that's going to be, but as more and more generations are born into a digital world where these cell phones and smartphones are just a part of how they live, and the internet being what it is, is just a part of how they're raised. When that generation is adult, I don't really see what room there will be for analog gear. More and more analog guys are going towards digital only. There's less and less sales of analog gear and workflows are demanding faster and faster and faster turnaround times.

(25:17):

With that, digital technology is just getting so much better. It's made so many advancements in just the past five years. Amp Sims for instance, they sound so much better than they ever have. It just keeps getting better. Yes, I definitely think there will come a point where we will be in a digital only music world, and I don't fear that world. I think it'll be just fine. Now, I know that some people might hate me for saying this, but look, I'm not saying you do bad work on analog or that it's bad. It sounds great. In some ways it sounds better, but I do think that eventually everyone who uses it is going to get old and die, and there's not going to be enough need or enough demand for it except for maybe the most niche and elite of circles to where it's going to make sense to keep producing it.

(26:21):

So yeah, maybe the old stuff will keep getting sold and resold and resold, but I think it might turn into extreme collector type stuff like old airplanes. There are guys who like to fly World War II airplanes and more power to 'em. They love it. They restore them, they fly them, they have air shows with them, and that's cool. I have a feeling that at some point boards will be something like that. We're not quite close to that yet, but I do see things going in that direction. And to answer your question about spending all your money on a tube head, well, I've spent a lot of money on tube heads that I never use anymore. I spent three grand on my Bogner ecstasy and it just sits there and I never use it. I've gotten so much more use out of my Kemper or out of amp sims. But that's not to say that Bogner Ecstasy isn't a fantastic amplifier because it is a fantastic amplifier. I might sell it one day though. And if anyone wants to pay me three grand for a boar ecstasy, you know where to email me.

(27:45):

Here's a good one. Dear Eyal, I've been re-listening through all the podcasts and in episode two in the middle of discussing a nightmare project that kept taking longer and longer, you mentioned my engineer and myself figure out some cool stuff to do with drum programming and real symbols. And you mentioned having to schedule a drum session as a result. Could you elaborate on what this involved? Was it a case of hiring a session drummer, but only to play symbol parts over top of the band's mid drum or recording something? Many thanks indeed. That's from Michael McDonald Memories. You bring back some memories. Okay, so there was a time period where I was getting shitty drums after shitty drums, after bad programming, after shitty drummer after shit, just shit and shit and more shit and just fucking shit in the drum department. And John Douglas and I were getting sick and tired of this because it's really hard to make shitty drums sound good without making them sound completely fake.

(28:54):

And also, I've never thought that midi symbols sounded good to begin with. And we were just getting all these mixed projects with program drums or really badly recorded drums, and we just got sick and tired of it, and I had a great drum room, and both of us are talented guys, and we just decided, what if we just play all the symbols over the sample drums because we were going to sample their shitty drums anyways. Or what if we recorded a bad drummer who played shitty symbols and stuff? We were going to sample the drums anyways, right? Well, one of the hardest things to get right are the symbols. So we figured, why don't we just play it? So we would set up a set of symbols in the drum room and maybe some drum pads so that we could hit those. We micd them up like usual. We got really, really good sounds and we played the kick and snare through the headphones and we literally just recorded passes of cymbals and me or John learned them. John did much more of the tracking than I did. He was a better drummer than me. But yeah, we just did it ourselves, man. So it was just a case of us getting sick and tired of the goddamn garbage that was being presented to us to work with.

(30:29):

We just couldn't take it anymore and just decided to take matters into our own hands. And we didn't just do it with that. We did it with guitar. If people sent us bad guitars rather than sitting there trying to fix everything, we would just play replay everything. Fuck it. We would just replay everything. There are records where the lead vocalists in the band only did the lead lines, and John did all the doubles, harmonies, everything because we just had this moment of fuck it that we're not going to, we didn't get into this to deal with your bullshit. We didn't get into this to fix your garbage. We're just going to do it ourselves. It's much more empowering to do something right from the get go than to fix something terrible. And we had enough, there are a lot of bad players out there who want recordings done or who record themselves.

(31:28):

And your job as a mixer is to make it sound as good as possible. And like I said before, there's nothing better than getting it right at the source. Luckily, I'm a good instrumentalist and so is John. And we figured that the results would be better if we just redid everything. It would be quicker to redo it right than to try to salvage it. Now, I don't think I'm the best instrumentalist. I know John doesn't think he's the best, but we know that we're better than a lot of people and we know that we are pretty good. We're not great, but we're pretty good and we're good enough, but pull most things off pretty well compared to a lot of our clients. And so we with confidence approached it knowing that whatever we did would sound better than what they did. Might sound arrogant, but it worked and nobody ever questioned us on it. So back to the drums with fake drums, with symbols. Symbols because of the nature of a sampler are very, very hard to get right.

(32:44):

There's so many random variations in what happens to a symbol. It's changing directions, it's changing size, it's changing shape, it's spinning. There's so many factors involved in getting a symbol to sound like a symbol that I just don't think that computers and software are up to the task. And so they kind of sound fake. You can't possibly record enough variations and have the sampler loaded to ram and run it right. It is just not there yet. I think computers need to be more powerful. And so a really, really good way to get away with program drums is to keep the drums themselves program, but play the symbols for real. If you can do it, lots of people will not be able to tell that the drums themselves are programmed. Good luck.

(33:46):

Here's one from Brenda. Sir Nikki, this is interesting. What are the most common questions asked during the one-on-ones? What types of preparation or pre-planning do you encourage to get the best out of a one-on-one session? What types of questions would be deemed less than ideal for a one-on-one? Okay, so for those of you who are unaware in our upper level of subscription, URM enhanced, and if you want to find out about that, go to urm.academy/im enhanced. We do these one-on-one sessions, which is where you can get Skype time with myself, Joel Sack or Joey Sturgis. And we'll either cri your mixes or give you career advice. And these go fast, like when we announce them. Usually they'll go in under a minute when we do them every single month. We do multiple a month and our subscribers love them. And it's good that, Brandon, that you ask this question because some of the one-on-ones are more productive than others.

(34:51):

Some of the more common questions asked during them are, how do I get more clients? How do I start charging things like that? How do I get more business, for instance? And also, what's wrong with my mix? Most people just have lots of the similar issues. How do I get myself out there online? And to be honest, lots of these questions we've answered lots of times on the podcast and lots of times in the Facebook group, but I guess you guys want to hear it from us personally, and then we're happy to talk about it now. What type of preparation or pre-planning do you encourage to get the best out of a one-on-one session? I recommend that you write down your questions in advance. Nothing's worse than a one-on-one session where the guy doesn't have real questions for us and just kind wings it. Actually respect the fact that you got time with one of us and that we want to help you.

(36:00):

So try to have your questions thought out. Also though, try to go the extra mile with the questions. Don't ask us stuff that you can just look up on Google, excuse me, and don't ask us stuff that you know we've answered a million times that you can just access anywhere that you can Look in the group or listen to other podcasts. Try to ask us stuff that's much more specific to your situation. So give us a good amount of background. However, don't ramble. Sometimes we get people who just love to hear themselves speak. It's like, are you looking for advice? Are you looking to get through a situation? Or are you just looking for validation? I think that lots of times people are just looking for validation, and I do not think that that's a good use of your one-on-one time. I think that you should be ready to hear that your ideas are bad and that you should do more listening than talking.

(37:02):

But some of you guys just want to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and that I think is less than ideal. So just do your homework. Find out what are the really, really common questions that people ask in the group. Try to find out what we've already answered on the podcast and ask us something different. Do your homework, have your questions written down, and be ready to hear the harsh truth. Those are my suggestions. This has been your latest edition of Dear Eyale. Thank you so much for listening. As always, if you would like me to answer your questions, please submit them to al at URM Academy. That's EYAL at URM Academy with the subject line. Dear Eyal, happy mixing. The

Speaker 1 (37:59):

Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is brought to you by Ivans Guitars and Basses. Ivans strives to make high quality cutting edge musical instruments that any musician can afford and enjoy. Visit ivans.com for more info to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit urm.academy/podcast and subscribe today.