JOEL WANASEK: Subwoofer placement, the myth of selling out, opportunity cost

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by STA Audio. Sta Audio creates zero compromise recording gear that is light on the wallet only. The best components are used and each one goes through a rigorous testing process with one thing in mind, getting the best sound possible. Go to audio com for more info and now your host, Joel Wanasek.

Speaker 2 (00:24):

Hey, what's up everybody? I'm back for another episode of Dear Joel where I answer all of your questions and try to entertain you to some degree while informing you. So if you guys have questions and you want to submit them to me, the email is al. That's EYAL. For those of you who do not know how to spell Al's name by now, it's al at M Academy. That's al at URM Academy and the subject line is going to be, dear Joel, ask me whatever you guys want to talk about. I'll try to rant and give some good advice or at least be entertaining while answering your questions. So we got lots to talk about, some good questions and some fun rants. So let's dig in. Alright, our first question of the night comes from Michael and Michael is asking, Hey Joel, how do you approach sub placement and do you dial back the output relative to your reference monitor size?

(01:16):

Also what you're doing with a mixed CRI with Ale the other day, and one of your comments on the mixes was that it sounds like two streams of piss canceling each other out. That's the funniest shit I've ever heard. Thanks and keep up the good work, Michael. Yeah, that was definitely a fun, legendary off the cuff moment. We have a lot of fun on those mixed Crip Mondays and again, we try not to take ourselves too seriously and have a little bit of fun doing this. Yeah, it probably makes a few people angry, but most of you guys are pretty cool and you have a sense of humor and you like to have fun. So while we all work on this quest of getting better at audio and trying to better ourselves and educate ourselves and practice and train to become great at this stuff, we also need to always remember to have fun and keep in mind that it is not the end goal, it is the journey that's important.

(02:02):

So my long-winded way of saying that is live in the moment, enjoy yourself, try to have a little bit of fun and have a sense of humor. You can't keep your shit so tense all the time, and I've definitely been a violator of that in the past. I feel like many times I've been so focused that I didn't have fun. So I just want to say that it's important to have fun while you're doing this stuff and not take yourself too seriously because I sure as hell don't. Neither does Al nor Joey. So you guys have fun and we'll continue doing what we're doing, trying to have fun with you. So how do we approach sub placement? That's the question here from Michael. Well Michael, if you've seen the fast track I just did at U RM enhanced or if you're not a member, it's UM Academy slash I am enhanced is the link.

(02:50):

I have a very long fast track that's about four hours long on low end and learning how to mix low end and just becoming a master at it and all that stuff and teaching a lot of concepts. One of the things I talk about is sub placement, and I have a few things to say about that, but basically the gist of it in a very non long-winded approach is I go in, I take the sub in the room, I get my speakers and listening position usually where I'm like, let's just say 33% of the room back from the front wall, always in the longer side of the room. So you want to have more space behind you and in front of you as opposed to on the sides of you. So I go for the longer room dimension and then I sit around like 33% ish, somewhere in there for the listening position.

(03:34):

So you can get your speakers off the wall. When I place the sub, I try to get the sub at least twice to three times the distance of the size of the sub from the wall. I have a ported sub and it's important to let that airflow because again, what happens in corners is corners build up base. So the closer the sub is to the wall, the more base you're hearing that's uncontrolled and affected by your environment. So I try to just get it back. I like the center of the room. I don't like to throw it in the corners because again, corners accent base. So I'd rather have two surfaces, so the front wall and the floor meeting there and have a two wall corner as opposed to two sidewalls meeting and a floor. So having a three-way corner, I think it's less detrimental to your sound.

(04:17):

And then usually I throw a trap behind it or something like that. You can tune your room by ear and figure out your base response and all that, but basically if your sub has a port, you got to give it a little bit of air to breathe. It's very important. Aside from that, I don't really screw with the output in terms of any specific measurements. What I do is I go grab a reel of mixes that I really know well and I really like and I know intimately on many, many different sets of speakers that I've been listening to for years. I then take those really awesome super bass heavy mixes and I listen to that reel, various volumes in the room, and when the reel sounds right, like the bass on the chavelle track or the Nickelback song sounds like I'm listening to it and what I'm expecting, then I know the bass is right and then I'll go in and I'll listen to a bunch of my mixes and if the bass sounds too loud and everything, I'll turn it down a bit.

(05:09):

If it sounds a little bit under mixed, then I'll go and do it. So I kind of do it by ears, you know what I mean? At the end of the day, we can measure this shit all we want. We can sit down, look at peaks, nodes, valleys, graphs, science, math, but at the end of the day you can either fucking mix or you can't. And at the end of the day, if you want to be a great mixer, it's about your ears. It's not about math, it's not about numbers, it's not about science, it's about art. It's about emotion and you have to really learn how to hear things. So I set my sub bite ear where it sounds badass to me. That's pretty much it. I know that doesn't sound super exciting and it's not super technical, and I know some people go to great lengths, but hey, all I'll say is this.

(05:53):

I've had plenty of songs on top 40 radio and various genres that I've mixed and mixed plenty of bands, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of songs. And not once have I ever measured out my room scientifically, but my mixes seem to translate decently enough where I keep getting hired and I'm not getting calls back from program directors saying, yo, your shit sucks, and the radio man, you might want to remix this or whatever. So it's important to know that while the science is important, and I definitely love and I'm a huge proponent of science, at the end of the day, this is a fucking art. So if you're going to place your sub, I like to do it by ear. I like to get my volume by ear, my crossover frequency by ear. I basically am just listening for my reference material to sound badass, sound really balanced in full spectrum, not too overblown on the bottom end, but I can really hear when I'm screwing around with an EQ down at 45 hertz with no problem.

(06:45):

So you may have to treat your room, you may have to turn the volume of the sub up, adjust the crossover frequency, et cetera. There's a lot of different things and variables. You got to tweak 'em, play with it, get it where it sounds right, and hey, make some fucking music for Christ's sake. We can sit here and talk about it all day, but at the end of the day, you have to set the damn thing. You have to turn it on and hit play and start making music and mixing. So don't overthink it. You probably might screw it up. Alright, next question Dylan wants to know. In the previous podcast you briefly said that selling out is dumb. Could you elaborate more? An example of this is when a band takes a chance and changes their image, for example, bring me the horizon. You can imagine you're going to get some hate going from metal fans to rock fans, et cetera.

(07:30):

Thank you and much appreciated. Thank you Dylan for the question. Okay, yeah, selling out is fucking stupid. I mean, I feel like the term sellout is cool when you're like a 16-year-old kid and you haven't ever gotten fucking laid, you've never seen a naked girl in your life, that's when shit like, dude, this band man, they fucking sold out, blah, blah, blah. Literally no one gives a shit about that. I mean, I get it like, okay, a band is a brand, so at some point a band puts out a record, it has a very specific sound. People come to love that sound and those songs, and then the band has the burden of having to come out with a second record. Oh boy. So then the next record comes out and trends have changed a little bit. The band wants to be modern. The thing is, there's pressures at the label.

(08:18):

There's pressures like, Hey, we want to grow the band because maybe we didn't make enough fricking money on the last album to support ourselves, or maybe we did, but we want to do it even bigger or maintain the same level we're at. I mean, no band wants, it gets smaller and less successful. I mean, come on, think about it like this way. Imagine if you were mixing really huge ass bands and then all of a sudden you're like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm just going to go back to doing local bands from now on. I'm going to take, I'm getting paid a thousand bucks a song to mix, but you know what? I'm just going to go down to a hundred dollars a track overnight. No one wants to go backwards in their career is what I'm saying. So I think it's silly to sit there and be like, oh yeah, this band sold out.

(08:58):

This band changed. It's like, come on guys. You can't expect somebody artistically to just regurgitate the same shit over and over. I mean, think about it like this. When you mix, you're sitting down and every time you try a new plugin than you did from the mix before or maybe tried a new snare sound or some different compression scheme, you just fucking sold out by a band fan standard. I mean, think about how stupid that is. It's like, hey, last mix you had, it was really bang in that last mix you put out and you had really great drones, but this new mix, dude, the band wanted to go natural and you went really natural with them, man, and this mix sucks, bro. You're a fucking sellout man. You changed your sound. So just think about that analogy, equating it to producing and mixing. It's like every time you put out a record or you try to change your sound or you try to be artistic with a band, God forbid, and try something fresh or experiment a little bit or have a little bit of fun and push some boundaries.

(09:53):

I mean, look at it this way. If no one ever pushed the boundaries in the history of music, music would be the most stupid, stale, boring shit to listen to. And I guess a lot of people could argue that a lot of music today is like that, but I mean, think about how fast things change. Just look at the pop market shit now you got stuff like Diplo and a little bit before that you had stuff like Lord, and you had going back, you had the big breakdown to the base and the saxophone, and then it was the 2012 upbeat Pop Kesha kind of thing. You know what I mean? Think about how pop music changes and how brands come in and this is in for a year. Then something else comes in, then something new comes in, and then something new comes in and the sound just keeps changing.

(10:41):

And basically you have people sitting down being creative, trying to come up with cool stuff, and really all of music, all of creativity, all of art depends on somebody sitting down and trying to break boundaries. Now, yeah, of course it's going to piss off some fans that are going to be mad that you didn't make the same stupid fucking record that you already put it out. It's like, Hey, guns and Roses, why can't you just write sweet child of mine 15 more times? Well, the fucking band already wrote Sweet Child of mine. They're not going to fucking write the song again. Maybe they feel they're in a different place emotionally, A lot of shit's gone down in their life. They're going to write different songs because they have different experiences. We emotional beings here trying to connect and share creativity and ideas and I don't know, I just feel like when people talk about bands selling out or artists selling out, it's so fucking stupid and juvenile.

(11:34):

It's literally one of the dumbest things to me. I mean, I get it. Some people are purists. They like what they, they have their head directly up their ass and their elitist and they want to feel better and cooler than everybody else. Truer or pure or more metal or more fucking Prague or more gentle or more shred or more neoclassical. Who gives a fuck? You know what I mean? Seriously, come on, it's so stupid. Why can't we just make music and feel free to experiment? And if it sucks, it sucks. But at the end of the day, sometimes artists experiment and they reinvent themselves and they come up with something really amazing that becomes really legendary. I mean, look at Green Day, look at their sound back in the nineties on their first couple of records, and then compare that to the American Idiot album.

(12:21):

I mean, to me that stuff sounds nothing alike at all. I mean, it's completely a different sound style decade. Compare that versus Dookie. It is just a very different sound. So you could sit back if you're a Green Day fan and be like, oh man, they fucking sold it on that record. But hey, those songs were great songs at that time. They were huge. They were super epic and legendary and really, really popular, and they wrote a really great album and it did pretty well commercially. So I mean, again, at the end of the day, all that really matters, I guess. Are you connecting with people? So hey, artists are going to want to take chances. They're going to want to reinvent themselves, they're going to want to try stuff. Let 'em do it. I mean, their career depends on it. Unless your band is like a c dc, you can't just put out the same fucking record every single time.

(13:09):

I mean, a few bands can do it like Iron Maiden or Man War, AC DC, but a lot of bands have to continually reinvent themselves to keep a big enough fan base because yeah, your fan base gets bored. They get old. They're like, oh yeah. Well, here's the other side of the argument too, is when you make the same record as the last record, people will be like, oh man, I've already heard this shit before. This is boring. It's like the last record really not as good. Yeah, man, this shit sucks, man. Fuck this band. They're just a stale ripoff. They're just so and so boring and they're so dated, blah, blah, blah. And then you get all those arguments, so no matter what you do, people are going to be like, yes, sold out, or You did this wrong or you did this wrong.

(13:44):

Everybody's a fucking expert. You know what? You just got to be like, fuck it, screw everybody. Do what makes you happy. Express yourself and live with the consequences. It's okay to experiment. It's okay to try things. It's okay to make music. So I don't know, man, I'm just saying who gives a fuck with the haters? Say it's like I can literally come on this podcast that I can talk and then piss off a bunch of people because I was too harsh on a mixed crit or something like that, or I said something that somebody disagreed with like, oh, fucking no boohoo, go start your own fucking podcast. Go start your own fucking band. Go write your own songs. You know what I mean? Who cares what other people do? Just if you find something, you like it, accept it and love it for what it is.

(14:27):

And maybe the band never repeats that moment of greatness, but it's okay. That doesn't mean you have to start hating the band. It's like, okay, look at Metallica. I grew up listening to Metallica. I love that band. Then they put out saying anger and people are like, oh, it's the worst album ever. And I hated it when it came out. Now that I got out of that elitist, like, Hey, I'm a stupid 18-year-old kid mindset. I look back at the album and I finally have reconciled with it, and I've been able to find things that I like about that album, and I get it more now. I'm like, okay, this is cool. I see what they're going for. I can relate to this now. And you just have to kind of change your mindset and your paradigm, and I think that's a very critical skill to have as a producer, because I mean, you have to reinvent yourself all the time as a producer.

(15:09):

You can't just do the same shit over and over and over and over and over and over. It has a life cycle because of trends. It's going to come in, it's going to have a life cycle. It's going to die and morph into something else, and you either jump with it or you die with it, or sorry, you jump onto the next thing or alter it, or you die with a trend so you have to adapt or die. Welcome to the world of evolution and market economics, baby. That's how nature's set up. You may not like it, but fucking deal with it how the world works. Next question, and man, am I a vulgar today? Holy crap. Sorry if I'm offending your ears or your children, send me an email angrily and I'll just delete it. So next question is from Nick, and Nick is asking, dear dark Lord Prime Galactica of no small time.

(15:58):

Finally, someone with a good one. That was pretty good, Nick. Good job getting finished up with the low and fast track and it's great. Thank you. I appreciate that, Nick. Now I'm primarily a hip hop mixer. I mix people's beats and vocals most of the time. Lucky me. And then he put a frown face. Yeah, I've been there, I've done that. I'm wondering how much of this is applicable to hip hop That's in the top 10 now, like Migos 21 Savage. I can't pronounce any of these names, so I'm not even going to try. They're really 8 0 8 driven stuff. Also, any chance of doing a song, crit Monday, again, about to start writing with the band and would love to have a shot to be crit. Thank you.

(16:38):

Yeah, okay, Nick. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the low and fast track that we did here at URM enhanced is all about mixing low one and we cover so many topics. Like I said, it's four hours of me sitting down, going through bottom end and everything I can possibly think of about mixing bottom end and how to do it. So yes, of course, that stuff is incredibly important in the 8 0 8 driven stuff because for example, the kick above the base or the base above the kick situation, if you have an 8 0 8 sign wave down at 50 hertz, where are you going to put your kick drum? And if you remember Nick, there was a part where we listened to a lot of pop and hip hop mixes in the actual fast track and we talked about where did they put the kick in relationship to the sub.

(17:20):

So I would say if it's really, really sub driven 8 0 8 stuff and there's really heavy base, for example, I'm just going to say w flock of flame. I don't listen to a ton of hip hop, but that kind of stuff like dark diminished licks, things like that, just really heavy aggressive hip hop or stitches or those type of beats, they're super base heavy. It's all about that sub low and all about that bottom, which is usually like a sine wave driven. So those 8 0 8 kicks if you listen to 'em in solo, usually they're not that heavy and they're not that massive down in the 50 Hertz region and stuff like that. They're a little bit higher tuned. So I think a lot of times like that, you're going to have the base below the kick because the kick is really just there to add some punch and add some rhythm.

(18:05):

But a lot of it is more so the bottom. For example, listen to something like Red Fu ridiculous. I like that song. Or let me think here. I dunno. There's just a lot of songs that have really cool breakdowns and things like that, like L-M-F-A-O or whatever. Now I'm being dated here with my stuff and I guess that's not technically really hip hop, but whatever. It's all kind of the same thing now. It all kind of just blends in. It's just all pop music. But a lot of those things just have super massive subbase and they don't really have the most powerful crushing boom smashing suby kicks. For example, big room breakdowns, for example. We listen to Martin Garrick's tremor. There's something with a pretty massive kick drum that's really got some serious sub because there's really only a saw synth on top of that song.

(18:56):

So when you're thinking about this stuff, you got to think about what am I trying to accomplish? Is the song supposed to be super breakdown driven? Are we going to have a saxophone breakdown thing with a boom boom? We want to really rattle people's subs or do we want to have a really badass kick drum? So you got to kind of make those decisions when you're mixing, you got to think about all that stuff. It's really important in this kind of music because again, clubs, right? We are making music for the club. It's incredibly important when you're making hip hop and you're making any kind of pop music that's very base driven to get the bottom end correctly and to think very carefully about where you're putting the kick, where you're putting the bass, what other elements are in there. Are you going to distort the bass a little bit to add harmonics or you're keep it straight?

(19:39):

Things like that. Here's another example of a song that's got a lot of bass that's kind of cool is Mil Money by Fergie. That song's got pretty cool bottom end and stuff like that. So again, very, very subbase driven and not so much drum driven. So again, you just need to think about what are you trying to accomplish and where do I want make those decisions and what elements need to go where and how can I make space for them? When you start thinking about music like that and mixing that, you're going to get much better at producing, you're going to get much better at mixing your mix is going to become a lot more competitive. To answer your second question, yes, we are probably down to do a song crit. Song Crits are a little bit more difficult because they're very genre dependent. For example, I'd probably be a much better guy to crit like a pop song than Al would where Al would be much better at crit like a gent song or a death chord song or something like that than I would.

(20:32):

I mean people send me their metal songs a crit all the time, and I'm just like, dude, I'm kind of like a rock pop guy. I mean, I'm just like, where's the hook? Why is this song six minutes long? I don't get why the breakdown riff has to play eight times, but I guess kids need to throw punches so it's harder for me to crit stuff like that. So yeah, song crits are cool, but they're kind of very genre dependent and because we all worked in very different genres and produce very different genres, I mean I guess we've all been primarily doing metal, but metal's a pretty broad term these days. You kind of play in your place of expertise. So hopefully that helps Nick. Just always remember that you need to think about what you're trying to do when you're mixing the type of music and how it's going to translate and the format it's going to be translating in.

(21:20):

You want it to bang in the strip club or in the dance floor or whatever. You might need a lot of sub-base and you might not want a lot of kick. If you want a really powerful big room house, whatever the hell it's called, breakdown, like I said, Ste Aoki and Martin Garrick's and stuff were doing a couple of years ago. You need really powerful kick. So it just depends. What do you want to do, how do you want to do it? So just think about that. Next question is from Mike and holy crap, this is a very long question here, so you guys need to brace yourselves while I read this. Hey Joel. My question is in regards to trying to direct your career and not letting others direct you. I'm currently a venue live sound technician. However, my venue takes that title very loosely. I'm dragged into building decking, rig, lighting it, networking, mopping, moving chairs, and a bunch of other non sound related tasks. I opt sound an average of three times a month. Most of the time there's external engineers and I assist them.

(22:27):

A lot of these tasks can obviously help with progressing into senior technician role at another venue or events company, but the bands that come through here are not original tributes making tours or theater or comedy. So there isn't a lot of opportunity showing themselves up to network and organize some recording. I'm stuck in this situation with a 1.5 hour commute daily so I can stay financially afloat. I'm trying to pay off some debt, save for a mortgage, but I want control over my own career and to stop having to waste my opportunity time on things that have nothing to do with what I want to do. However, I have a much clearer agenda about how I can get clients. I've done some free work with a singer songwriter. I can use the venue on a day off to record it in. I can also offer full live band recording.

(23:17):

However, I wouldn't be surprised if my boss ends up getting surety about it eventually. That must be a Brit term man. I feel like that's something they would say in Britain because we definitely don't say surety in the United States. We'd be like, my boss is going to be a dick. That's what we'd say. What advice can you give me out of this situation? Do I mentally disconnect myself from my day job and focus on building a network of recording clients? Try to get in with a local studio in town, which is ran by a young engineer, but drop my focus and productivity at work to make more mental capacity or do I stay focused and work and learn as much as I can, non sound related and sound related. If I can find anyone to mentor me and work towards being working for a big events company and try to get on tours, just hoping to hope recording will reveal itself the more I get about it.

(24:08):

Thanks for your insight. Greatly appreciated. Love the podcast. Thanks Mike. Mike, thank you. I appreciate it. This is an interesting situation. The problem is I'm not sitting here with you talking about your situation, so I can't ask you questions. I can't see exactly what it is you want to do. It sounds like you want to record a little bit or you might want to do some live sound, but you hate it. I can't tell if you hate doing live sound because you are working with shitty bands at a venue that you think sucks and you want to work on big stuff. Or if you hate it because you're just trying to pay your bills, you want to do something else like record bands or whatever. So that's kind of like the first question I would need to know to really answer this question and figure out what would probably be the best path because at the end of the day, I can't tell you what you need to do with your wife and what's going to make you happy because for example, if you hate running live sound for shitty tribute bands, if you get onto some huge ass tours, are you going to hate it just as much or are you going to love it?

(25:04):

If that's a situation, you might find that you love doing that just as much as what you're doing now or I mean, sorry as maybe say recording and hey, you're totally happy and soaked about that. So I can't tell you what's going to make you happy. You need to decide that if adding a more to the paycheck and a bigger responsibility to the list doing the same thing, a K live sound is going to make you happy and get you stoked. If it's not, you need to get the fuck out of that. So if that's not what you want to do, if you're just doing live sound to do it, then I would say do it just for the sole sake of client acquisition. But I will say you this mentally disconnecting yourself from your day job is always a bad idea because when you stop giving a shit, you start being bad. So I feel like you can use your brain power and not mentally disconnect yourself from your job. You should always try to excel at everything you're doing because you never know who's going to come through or you're going to know or whatever. Just because it's not exactly what you want to do doesn't mean you shouldn't try hard. I mean, I had really shitty jobs. I did construction. I dug graves for a summer.

(26:13):

I begged groceries. I worked at a sub sandwich shop. I did all kinds of bullshit when I was in high school and college to pay for all that stuff. And I'll tell you that at all those jobs, I hated all of them. Or even when I worked at a bank, I hated all of them. Actually, the bank job I slacked. But before that, I hated all of them with a passion, but I worked really fucking hard at them and I built up solid work ethic and really good habits and really good discipline, meaning, Hey, I don't want to do this today. Hey, guess what? Being a business owner or an entrepreneur, going out and doing music on your own is going to require you to have a lot of days in your life where you're doing a job that you're not fucking stoked about, where you're like, man, I got to get up and I got to figure out how to do this stupid fucking web thing.

(26:54):

I have no interest in it, but you have to take interest in it because no one's going to do it, but so you might as well do it and do it savage. Literally get in there and put everything you have into it even if you hate it because hey, I'll tell you one thing I've learned about life. Maybe I sound like a jaded, pissed off old man, which I probably am, but I feel like never write anything off. There are so many things that I didn't realize I was passionate about that I enjoy doing that. When I started doing, I absolutely hated. For example, I've been doing a ton of film work recently because I have to now because of unstoppable recording machine and drum forge, I'm constantly on camera. I was never planning on being a camera presenter or learning how to film or set up lighting.

(27:35):

And when I started learning how to do it, it was really frustrating. It annoyed the shit out of me. I really hated it and I really sucked at it and I've gotten a little bit better. I still kind of suck, but I feel like we can put out a pretty decent looking video now and get pretty decent lighting and et cetera. But I find that I actually, as I've gotten more gear and stuff like that, I've gotten way more into film and I am enjoying doing it. So something I did recently for fun, not for money, is I have a friend of mine who owns a restaurant and it's really, really awesome food and I love to cook. It's how I relax. And he runs a Persian restaurant in town and I asked him for some cooking lessons and I'm like, basically, let me build you a modern website.

(28:17):

Let me teach you how to do social media. We will come and we'll do some promo videos and stuff. So we went down there, me and some of my guys, me and my partner Joe, and my good buddy Steve from I plays in the band Silverside and Steve is our drummer at Drum Forge. He's our amazing photographer as well, very talented guy. And we went down there, the three of us clowns, and we brought all of our camera gear and we shot this restaurant and we did all this video work and dude, I had so much fun doing that, Mike, I can't even tell you. It was just so much fun. We went down there and I'm doing this for cooking lessons because it's something I care about and I love the dude's cooking and I want to learn how to cook Persian food. I fucking love it, and it's so delicious.

(29:02):

We went down, we spent four hours filming, taking pictures. I got a slider in there and all these cool lights and all this fancy shit, dude, we had a blast. And to be honest, I never knew I was going to be interested in filming. I had no idea that I was going to be able to pick up a camera someday and enjoy shooting it and trying to get cool shots and do zoom and focus blurs and slide shots and just be artsy. And I'm just sitting here and I'm like, I've never thought I'd be into that. So all I'm saying is this, right now you're learning a lot of skills at your job, you're doing a lot of shit that you don't want to do, but all of those skills are important and valid. I look back and my wife said to me once, she's like, don't you think you wasted eight years of your life playing in that metal band?

(29:44):

You should have just started the rock band or gotten into producing right away. You could have made a ton of money. And I looked at her in the eye and I said, no. Yeah, we ultimately failed. But what we did is we didn't fail. We learned. I learned how to build a band. I learned how to fail at being a band. I learned what it's like to empathize with my clients, to go out and sit in a fucking van and eat a ham sandwich and sleep on a Walmart parking lot on a blanket out in Tennessee in a hundred degree fucking weather, sweating your ass off and not having a laundromat anywhere near to clean your clothes you've been wearing for three shows in a row because you can't afford anything more. I've been there, I've done that. I've gone around and toured and I've experienced it.

(30:23):

And those experiences and those, that learning process, that whole thing gave me the skills to do all the shit. And I do now, and I wouldn't have been a successful producing bands and coaching them had I not learned all that stuff. Be like, guys, I've already been where you are. I can empathize. Let me tell you what to not do. This is how you do it, right? This is how you don't fuck it up. This is how you go out. This is how you'd be successful. And because I sat down and I had to learn how to do all those skills, it's easy for me. I can talk about it all day. Same thing now sitting here at URM given the pulpit of a microphone or Facebook Live or a camera, a podcast, all these things that we do. Having gone through all that stuff, when I sit down and I talk about to you guys about, Hey, here's how you build a brand with a band.

(31:09):

Here's how you do this. Here's how you do that. Here's how you grow your career. I would not have learned any of that stuff had I not gone through the path that I've gone through. So as trivial and stupid as some of the stuff you're doing right now may seem to you someday, you may need those skills. I had a period of time where I was really into websites. Well, hey, last week I built a website for somebody at a restaurant, and I am not finished with it yet, but you should see what their old website looks like. It literally looks like 1999, and then I come in with something 2017 and their minds are blowing. Had I not learned WordPress and all of the other stuff in HT ML coding and et cetera back in the day like 15, 16, 17 years ago, guess what? I wouldn't know how to do any of that shit.

(31:51):

So I'm glad I learned those skills even though I don't really need them. Now, every once in a while, something happens where I need to go in and I need to use WordPress on unstoppable recording machine or something like that. So I'm just saying that you're going to acquire skills and you might not know when you're going to need 'em or not, but you're going to have 'em. You're going to be stoked that they're in your back pocket because it's going to give you a leg up. So that being said, aside from that, it depends what makes you happy when it comes to should you pursue doing a live sound, but I don't think you should half-ass it. You got to pay the bills. But in the meantime, if you really want to record bands and you should find a way to make that happen, you just got to ask yourself, what do you want to do?

(32:29):

Now if you're young and you're still indecisive and you're like, you could be stoked doing A, B or C or D, just throw a bunch of lines in the fire and see what starts hitting. Just start working actively at everything and if the path D is really going good, do that. And you might have to pivot in your career example. I never thought I'd be sitting here on this microphone talking to you. This is not part of my life plan when I was 20 years old. This is definitely not anything resembling what I thought I'd be doing for a living right now, but holy shit, here I am sitting in front of a microphone talking for a living, and it's fucking crazy to me because I didn't, I don't know. I didn't even want to record back then. I just wanted to play in a fucking band and rock.

(33:09):

So I'm just saying life is going to come at you. You're going to go down a path, an opportunity here or there will happen. You'll end up going down another path and another path. You got to be able to pivot, Mike. You got to go with it. You might also find that you're going to really enjoy a lot of different things you didn't think you'd enjoy doing. So be open-minded about it. It's not like it's the end of the fucking world if you go down the wrong path because hey, there might be some skills or that might create some opportunity. So I can't tell you exactly what to do or what's going to make you happy, but what I can say to you is that be willing to pivot. Keep an open mind and don't be afraid to close your eyes sometimes and go with the flow.

(33:46):

Because no matter how much you calculate shit in your life and say, my life is going to go like this, Hey, when I was 19, I had my life figured out. I was like, yo, going to get a girlfriend, going to get married after college, going to get a job programming, going to make $50,000 a year. Go buy a house, then I'm going to save up money, fucking retire, maybe have a couple kids, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Dude, my life is so much different than that. It's crazy. My life was like met a girl in college who cheated on me and moved on in my life, was single for a while, then got some crazy fucking idea and met some foreign people from Russia and ended up marrying somebody from 6,000 fucking miles away and started a fucking band after I got a real job and got out of college and decided to do that at the age of 23 instead of 16, and then it got into audio production and this and that.

(34:38):

You know what I mean? I'm looking back and I'm like, holy shit man. It's been a really good train wreck. So I'm just saying nothing works out how you think it's going to work out and it's okay. It's about the process. It's not about the destination. I love what I'm doing right now. I have loved every single thing I loved when I was producing a lot, when I was mixing a lot, when I'm podcasting or whatever I'm doing, I'm having fun doing filming, whatever. It doesn't matter. I'm so stoked to be alive and making music and being creative and working in this industry and just doing things on my own terms. So relating this to my own experience, I'll just say, Hey man, you got to go with it. Do what feels right to you. But you got to kind of know which direction you sort of want to go, but you can't be afraid to pivot because you might think you're going to end up in one place, but you end up somewhere totally different.

(35:29):

We never thought nail the mix was going to blow up like it did, and we'd be sitting here doing this pretty much full of time now. I mean that blows my mind that I turn bands down now because I'm just like, eh, you don't have enough money. Do I want to put up with them that are a pain in the ass? Eh? It's just crazy. Three years ago I'd been like, I wouldn't turn down anything. So I'd be like, yeah, I'll take it. I don't think I'll be able to fit it in my schedule, but fuck it. I'm going to take it anyways. I need money. I run a service business. So I dunno, I guess I'm just ranting now. But like I said, I just want to say to you that life changes, man. It's cool. Go with it, embrace it. It's a lot of fun and you're going to end up probably 30 years from now in a place you never thought you'd end up.

(36:14):

Maybe you won't, maybe you will. It doesn't matter. Fuck it. Go with it, enjoy it. Try to enjoy doing things. Even that you don't try to work hard. You want to be known as a person that always puts their best foot forward and as somebody that's reliable that you can count on because you just never know, man. There's just so many times in my life, and I've talked about this before, where something's happened. I've had an opportunity because some crazy thing happened and then something else happened and 10 more things happened and then I'm like, whoa, holy shit. I wouldn't be sitting here talking on this microphone if it wasn't for one shitty band that came in that led to a whole sequence and chain of events in my life. They came in, they broke up four days later and it just through that I met somebody and then I met Joey and then many, many crazy years and all kinds of stuff.

(37:05):

It's just crazy. You know what I mean? Everything works out in the end. That's all I'm saying. So don't worry so much about it. It's important to work on it and think about it and plan and have goals and all that shit, but at the same time, dude, it'll be all right. So try to enjoy it. That's all I'm saying. Alright, so let's move on. So I'm out of questions actually because you guys didn't submit enough, but then it might offend it and ask for them or I'd probably have 50 more to answer. So I just want to go on a rant here for a little bit before we kind of finish up and just talk about something. So I look in here at Facebook all the time and I try not to read my feed. It's such a waste of productive time, but you can't not open it and then see the top couple of posts from the day.

(37:49):

I just want to say something to you guys because we're working in a creative business. You're probably an entrepreneur of some sort, and it's pretty hard to make it in this business right now and it's pretty competitive, but it can definitely be done and you can absolutely kill it if you work hard living proof of that. So was Joey. So it was Al, so are like a million other dudes that I know. So I'm sitting here thinking like, man, people just focus on the wrong shit. Let's talk about opportunity costs for a second here. Okay? If you don't know what opportunity costs is, it's a principle and economics that basically says the real cost of something is the alternative usage of that time. So basically think about it like this. I can sit here and podcast or I can mix a song instead of sitting here and podcasting, or I could film a course or a fast track or something like that, or I could master a couple of songs, or I could be sitting and playing guitar or I could be watching pornography or I could be outside running and exercising, or I could be training to be a fucking astronaut.

(38:49):

Who knows? The point is you only have so many hours in your life and what you do with that time matters, especially if you're a high efficiency, productive person. A lot of people don't think about this shit, but basically every minute that you're sitting there on Facebook ranting, arguing with somebody about something stupid, putting all of your passion and fire into some political post, arguing with somebody that disagrees with you because you're pissed off that somebody else in the world has a different opinion, it's a waste of fucking time. That's all I'm saying. You could use that time to be doing something so much more productive for your career, so much more productive towards your goals, towards your life. You could be doing something, you could be building something positive. Instead, you're sitting around fucking off on Facebook, killing time, arguing with people talking about dumb shit right now everybody's all focused on flat earth versus round.

(39:43):

I don't even know how the hell this started, and I'm just sitting here and I'm like, dude, you guys are fucking up like flat earth, round earth. Who gives a fuck? Seriously? Who gives a shit? Let people in coffee shops with nothing better to do, sit around and debate that shit. I mean, obviously the fucking earth is round, but you know what I'm saying? Come on. The fact is somebody sits down for hours and watches conspiracy videos on Utu and gets all stoked about it and starts arguing about it and makes a big deal about it and starts a fucking blog and makes a couple of videos. You know what I'm saying? Doesn't that person have anything better to do with their life if that's what you're spending your life doing? I don't know, man. I think for guys who are doing what we're doing, meaning you guys listening to me talking right now, you need to stay the fuck away from stupid shit like that.

(40:30):

It's easy to get caught up in this or this or that cause or this or that debate or this or that, but at the end of the day, what is your goal in life? What do you want? Do you want to make music for a living? You want to have a business? You want to have, find more happiness, finding yourself doing what you're doing on your own terms. You want to have freedom, both financial and time freedom and comfort tell you it's pretty sweet to have all those things. It's really nice to just wake up and be like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm going to take half the day off and I'm going to go take a nature walk and I'm going to get on a plane and just fly somewhere. I don't have to worry about what it costs or you know what I'm saying?

(41:03):

When you're living that kind of lifestyle, you just see how stupid everything else is because it's like, I don't know, man. There's something about just doing. And I guess you could say, well, those people, yeah, they're sitting there if that's what they're into, they're doing what they're doing, but for you guys that want to do audio and music and creative things or playing a band or whatever, and you're sitting here listening to this, if that's what you really want to do, why the fuck are you wasting your time on other things? Why are you sitting there screwing around arguing with somebody that you're not even going to convince 'em anyways? Why are you reading for hours and hours and hours? You can argue even more with people that don't give a shit what your fucking opinion is. It is pointless. It's stupid. Take all that time and focus on your fucking career because the minute you start doing that is the minute some real shit's going to start happening in your life, you're going to stop fucking around.

(41:48):

You're going to take all of that spent energy that's completely wasted on bullshit, and you're going to use it on stuff that actually fucking matters and is going to make you happy. Arguing on Facebook just pisses people off. It gets people riled up. You know what doesn't get people riled up doing what they fucking love every day, making enough money where they don't have to worry about it every day and just living their fucking dream? That's cool. What's not cool is opening up your feet and getting pissed off and sitting down and being like, dude, fucking so-and-so said this. Fuck that guy, blah, blah, blah, blah, post, post, post wine bitch complaining, blah, blah, blah. It's a waste of energy. Fuck shit. Turn it off. Take your phone. Boom. Disconnect your computer from the internet. Start using your time more effectively, efficiently, and productive. And I'm telling you guys, when you can learn to do that, it's when shit's going to start happening for you.

(42:45):

When you stop wearing 50 hats and focus on something that's working, that is when you're going to accelerate your career and you're going to start seeing the kind of goal achieving and the kind of gains in your career. Hashtag gains a clock for all you lifters out there, you're going to start getting all those things in your life going and you're going to get really excited and it's just going to be awesome. So I'm just saying it's cool to sit around and get all fired up and argue and waste a bunch of your time, but at the end of the day, you got to always think about opportunity costs. What could I be doing with my time that's going to make me a much happier and less miserable fucking person sitting around and concentrating on negative stuff like the news all day? It's just going to piss everyone off.

(43:30):

It doesn't make you happy, but sitting around being like, dude, I'm taking my dream vacation. I'm eating food that I love. I am learning some skill or pursuing some dream or some hobby that I've always had, but I've never had time to have. That shit is awesome. It is so much better. I mean, even simple things like spending more time with your family or significant other, well, actually, I dunno if you want to do that or not. I'm kidding. But you know what I mean? Focusing on the relationships in your life, the people that matter to you, and putting more time to getting to know them better and strengthening those bonds and having deeper, more soulful connection with other human beings. That's a much better fucking use of your time than sitting and arguing some conspiracy theory or something like that. So I'm just saying there's a lot of alternative uses of your time, and you got to ask yourself at the end of the day, what do I want to do with my life?

(44:22):

Do I really want to do this or am I fooling myself? Because I feel like a lot of people don't want to be successful at what they and really don't want to live their dreams because their dreams really aren't their dreams. They're in love with the idea of having a dream. They're in love with the idea of like, man, it's going to be awesome when I'm a producer and I work on big bands and blah, blah, blah. They're in love with that idea. What they're not in love with is the fact is that they actually have to do it and they have to actually go out and make it happen. They'll like to talk about it because it sounds cool and it makes 'em feel good in front of their friends. Like, yeah, man, I've got a studio. I'm really badass. My shit's sick. I'm going to be super successful, blah, blah, blah.

(44:58):

It's fun to talk, but at the end of the day, a lot of people just don't want to do the fucking work. They don't want to sit down. They don't want to grind the 16 hour days. They don't want to focus. They don't want to shut off their Facebook fucking feed. They don't want to stop arguing with people. Stop paying attention to fucking news. I guarantee, by the way, if you do that and then come back in six months, literally nothing important is going to change and the world will still be going and everything will be quite fucking, all right. So I'm just saying you got to focus on what's really important because when you start doing that, it's really going to accelerate it. Focus on things that bring you happiness, focused on things that make you feel alive and make you feel excited. Like I was talking about earlier, like me going to that restaurant, I love to cook.

(45:41):

I'm super passionate about grilling kebabs and I love grilled meat and just different recipes and really making amazing tasting kebabs and getting 'em to just a super a-list mix level only the food version. So for me, it's like I don't mind whatever it takes to achieve that goal. I just love it so much and I'm so into it, and it's so cool to me that I went down and offered all kinds of free time and filmed and did web work, and I had a blast. It's so fun to help somebody out, and I'm helping this guy out, and all he is giving me is a couple of cooking lessons, and he's just super stoked because he doesn't know anybody that can do any of that stuff. And what's cool is out of that, I came in to learn how to cook, but I kind of met a friend and I met a person who's just a wonderful human being and I got to know him a little bit, and some of his staff and just great people.

(46:34):

And it's cool from a very different culture than mine. And it's really interesting to me. And it's like you get to meet somebody with some different views on life and you have a lot of really interesting conversations. And I think to myself going forward, this is a great friendship. I can't wait to foster this friendship. I can't wait to develop the relationship and really get to know these people and make some friends in that group of people because they're great people and they've got a lot of cool things to say and all of that. Because I was following a passion of cooking. And the only reason I was able to do that is because I have the time, because I've focused on the correct things in my life and worked hard when I needed to work hard so I could not have to work hard when I wanted to pursue something that I'm really excited about.

(47:16):

So like I said, the point is do something that's going to get you stoked, that you're going to be passionate about. It's really fucking liberating. It feels amazing to just wake up and be like, today I want to do this. I'm so excited to do this. I've always wanted to do this, and today I get to do it. And then go through it and enjoy every second of that day. And sometimes it leads you into crazy past. You meet new friends, you get cool opportunities, and you end up doing stuff you never thought you'd do, and you're so stoked and so happy that you did it after it happened. So I just want to say focus on the right shit in your life because that to me is one of the important keys in the modern age, aside from commitment and all these good principles of motivation and work ethic and things like that.

(47:59):

To me, one of the most important principles now for the 21st century, for modern today is being able to filter out bullshit. Because you are constantly bombarded by social media and opinions and strife and news and negativity and whining and complaining and entitlement, and it's just like, fuck. It's overwhelming. Get it out of your life, filter it out. If you can filter, you can focus. And when you can focus, you kick ass and get shit done and live the life that you want to do, you've always wanted to have you live your dreams and you live it on your terms. And it is an amazing feeling. And I think all of you guys that aren't doing it can get it. If you really focus and you really filter and those you guys that are doing it and you know exactly what I'm talking about, high fived you guys, you guys are fucking awesome.

(48:47):

You get it. You understand how good it feels to be doing that and living your life like that. So guys, I'm going to sign off with that. If you've got questions for me, its subject line is Dear Joel, shoot 'em to Al, EYL at M Academy. I am here to help answer questions and Brandon provide some entertainment, a little bit of vulgarity and some fucking absurdity and some weirdness because I'm a weird dude. So I'm going to sign off and say, it's been fun. You guys rock. Keep working at it. No fucking small time. Fuck the summit. And as IL would say, fuck it. And yeah, I got nothing else. So podcast theme, go. The

Speaker 1 (49:28):

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