Forrester Savell: Karnivool’s Bass Tone, Gorilla Recording, and No-Tune Vocals

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

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 stem audio.com for more info. And now your hosts, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and

Speaker 2 (00:00:26):

Eyal Levi. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. I am Eyal Levi and with me is Aria nominated and an internationally renowned producer and mixer. Mr. Forrester Savell. If you're not familiar with him, you should be. He's worked with Slic Carnival Helmet, dead Letter Circus, 12 Foot Ninja Sikh, and many, many others. I know that this is a personal highlight for me to have you on as it is for our audience. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 3 (00:00:58):

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:00:59):

Yeah, you've been highly, highly requested to come on. So good to finally get a chance to talk to you. And just first thing that I'm wondering, because you bring such a unique sound out of your productions that I'm just wondering why do you do this? What got you into this? What drives you to do this audio thing? I feel like you're coming from a different place than most of the producers that I know.

Speaker 4 (00:01:34):

Good question. I think it all sort of started in my teenage years when I was getting into music. I think I started late. I never had an upbringing where music was in the house. My parents, while they played a little bit of music, it wasn't really a dominant force in my upbringing. I didn't sort of start getting into musical instruments and stuff until really late in high school and definitely had more of an academic focus in school and the music things just sort of crept in. And I started listening to bands in the nineties. I guess that just sucked me right in. And the more I listened to their music, the more I wanted to play music, the more I explored. I ended up getting a drum kit and a guitar and amp and was just sort of playing and writing shitty songs myself at home and just experimenting.

(00:02:30):

And then that experimenting at home, like being a one man band. I sort of started working on ways to record myself so I could play drums and then play guitar part over it. And I had a computer program. People who were a little bit older might remember that these tracker programs that were the very first kind of sequences on PC where they just played dodgy samples and you could pitch shifted and change the tampon. It's only four tracks. So that all kind of pushed me into the world of audio and production and that sort of led me to then going and finding a university course where I studied audio engineering.

Speaker 2 (00:03:08):

So did your friends back in high school, did a lot of them play instruments? Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:03:14):

They did, but they were all

Speaker 2 (00:03:15):

Way better, right?

Speaker 4 (00:03:16):

Way better than I was. I was fumbling my way around all my instruments. I mean, I've never really truly thought of myself as a musician. I've always approached the musician side of just trying to have an understanding and how to, my focus in understanding instruments and how musicians work, it's just being able to communicate with them and be able to talk. I can pick up a guitar and play some chords and stuff, but I'm never a player. And same with the drums. I did play drums and a couple of bands and had a go at it, but it's not something that I ever sort of put high on my list of things to achieve. I was actually from the very get go, I was more inclined to be focused on the recording side of things and song creation in a respect. So even though I was funding my way around playing these instruments, I still felt like I was structuring songs and getting somewhere with that. So that's sort of what pushed me into, I didn't even know what a producer or an engineer really was until I started the university course. So I had no concept of that job or career path. And it wasn't until I met other people who were interested in the same concepts and the same ideas at university that I started to realize that that's what I was actually trying to be or trying to do. And I just refined it and honed it from that point at university.

Speaker 2 (00:04:44):

So in high school, it's interesting, I think lots of people use music as a way to socialize with each other and to overcome social awkwardness, but since you're a late bloomer, you probably didn't go through that phase and were forced to kind of develop your own kind of sound or approach to music just by virtue of doing it in isolation,

Speaker 3 (00:05:13):

I guess. Yeah, I mean

Speaker 4 (00:05:15):

I think that if I do have a unique sound or whatever it might be that you're picking up on, it's also probably got a lot to do with the industry or the vibe of the industry over here in Australia. The isolation, I think we have our own quirkiness over here and music moves in a little bit different cycles to the way it does overseas. So I think one of the things I pick up on is to have a career over here, you need to be quite flexible. And I do work in a lot of different genres, so I perhaps don't hone in and focus on a particular sound or style so frequently as perhaps other producers, engineers who are at the top of their game in a particular particular style. So that influences I think, the way I approach what I do in a big way as well.

Speaker 2 (00:06:12):

That makes a lot of sense. So when you got into college or university and first started learning what production actually was, what was getting thrown at you? Was it the technical side of it or were you suddenly working with bands? What was that like as compared to your self-study leading up to that point?

Speaker 3 (00:06:38):

Well,

Speaker 4 (00:06:39):

The course was actually, essentially it was a theater sound design course. So that was the backbone of the course was basically we were the sound design students who were supporting the acting students and there were lighting costumes, set design, all these different streams to support these theater productions that were going on. But we also, as the sound course, we also had access to working on films, doing jazz concerts and doing studio recordings. And we had all the other facets of audio we sort of touched on and we could sort of choose which way we wanted to go and what subjects we wanted to focus on. So I obviously focused on the music. So day to day I would be dealing with a lot of the musicians in the other streams, even there might be actors or theater students, obviously there's good singers there, so it would get good singers into the studio and record them.

(00:07:39):

And so it was a bit of both. So there was a highly technical aspect to it where I learned, I mean, I only knew nothing when I went into that course and I came out of it still kind of knowing nothing, but at least I knew what the different bits of equipment and the technology was. But then I also had a great introduction to the writing and to the performance and to the artistic side of it, I guess as well, through those interactions with those other players and actors and students in the course, not only that was also a really great networking environment. So I mean, there's still people today who I deal with and work with who I met in that environment.

Speaker 2 (00:08:25):

You said earlier that you're academically minded or that you were academically minded up until you discovered music. Did that academic, I guess, focus help you in recording school?

Speaker 4 (00:08:43):

I think so, yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:08:44):

With the technical side of things,

Speaker 4 (00:08:45):

Definitely. Yeah, I think I struggle to see where I sit on that spectrum, I guess from either leaning towards the really technical side, the engineering side, or the other side of the real creative side. And I kind of feel like I split down the middle as best as I can. But I definitely, I feel like I started in the technical side for sure. That was a lot more comfortable to me. I hadn't begun as a musician. I hadn't begun necessarily as creating music with other players and stuff. I was always sort of building it up from this academic background. So I was definitely more confident with the engineering side of things. And I think one of the first steps I took out of uni when I started getting the workforce over here in Australia, as I was doing a lot of live sound mixing and I think compared to the studio and compared to sitting in a room with a bunch of musicians writing songs, the live work is a lot more technical minded. You've got to be on top of all the different signal chains and feedback and all that sort of stuff. So that was my basis for the first couple of years. So yeah, it was definitely, I think an assistance to have the academic sort of brain working on those sort of problems. And it wasn't until I became comfortable in the studio that I really started to explore the whole creative side of production.

Speaker 2 (00:10:11):

Well, what's interesting to me is that a lot of the times you hear producers who love the artistic types of soundscapes that I hear in your work, but they don't sound as technically masterful. It sounds to me like you do an incredible job of blending both the correct way to do things with a very artistic way of doing things. I think that that's the uniqueness that people latch onto, that normally you don't hear such lush textural work and such a variety of sounds sound that good. You normally hear people trying to make that sound good. So did you enjoy the live work or do you just feel like it was a good training?

Speaker 4 (00:11:08):

I definitely wanted to steer away from it, to be honest. I just felt it was really punishing on my ears. Just the sheer volume of doing live work day in day out was very taxing on my hearing. So I knew that that was going to cause problems if I kept doing that. So it was a definite focus of mine to up the ante on the studio side of things versus the live work. And one of the ways I did that is whenever I was working, mixing a live band, if there was a good band that I came across, whether they were like a support band or whoever it might've been on the bill, I would go up to them after the show and say, Hey, do you guys want to go into the studio and do a song, use that? It's a real good networking forum for approaching new artists and hearing new artists as well. So I think it was definitely a strong focus of mine when I first, in those first couple years when I was doing a lot of live mixing was just to get out and see as much music as I could so I could network.

Speaker 2 (00:12:14):

How often would they take you up on it when you approached them after a gig?

Speaker 4 (00:12:19):

I got a few gigs out of it. You kind of got to be smart about how you approach it. So I was lucky enough to get an assisting job in Melbourne at one of the biggest studios. That was purely through luck because I was mixing a gig and the support band were really good. And I went up to one of the guys in the band and said, do you guys want to record? And I'd love to record you guys. And he said, oh look, it's not going to happen because I'm actually an assistant at this particular studio. I've already got my foot in the door. And oh, I was like, what studio? He told me what the studio was. I said, oh, I've actually already applied for a job there. And he was impressed by whatever I was saying. So he went and spoke to the studio manager and actually got me a gig there.

(00:13:06):

So that was kind of the foot in the door to working in this great studio. And that opened up a lot of possibilities because as you well know, when you work at a studio, there's downtime and you're able to entice bands in on cheaper rates. And I mean, to be honest, I worked for free a lot in those early years just because you just want to get experience and you just want to get your name out there. So the band would come in on a discounted rate, pay the studio, but you'd be working all night through the night for free just so that you get a great product and a great result. That attitude, I think really formulated my attitude to recording and how I approach things was just about getting the best result no matter how hard or how long or how late you needed to work.

Speaker 2 (00:13:55):

A lot of our listeners ask, they submit questions of how do I get bands? How do I get clients? How do I get that whole thing started? And one of the things that we tell them more often than not is go to shows and walk up to the bands afterwards and sometimes they don't believe us that it's that's simple that that's what you have to do because they feel awkward doing it. How did you overcome that awkwardness of just walking up to them?

Speaker 4 (00:14:28):

I think usually because I was involved in the scene, I guess I was an active live mixer. I was comfortable at the venues that facilitated me approaching bands and that, but in the end, they're just guys and girls like the listeners, people like me. I just go up to 'em and go, Hey man, I really like your guitar part in that song. Or I really like the drum kit's really cool. What is it? Just name questions like that will get you in a conversation and then you can obviously just steer it to a point where, well, this is what I do and you guys are great and I really love your music, and how about we have a chat about doing a song. And I think alcohol helps. I think when you're younger you get cup of concrete with you. So I mean, everyone's approachable.

(00:15:19):

Obviously it's going to be harder to get your foot in the door with more established bands who have already got their guys that they're working with and they've got a lot of fans, it gets difficult to get one-on-one with the bigger bands, but you don't start there. You start with the small local bands and if you do a great job on one of those and they'll tell their friends and you'll get another gig and then do a good job on that and you'll get another gig. That was the approach that I took. It was just about getting, I look back at my show reel that I used to have, you could just see it getting better and better with each track, each band that I worked on. So in terms of going out and meeting bands and networking, you sort of start at your local scene and just got to find music that really excites you and interests you and just just basically find the guys before the show or after the show, after they've packed up and get in there and have a conversation with them.

Speaker 2 (00:16:24):

Just do it.

Speaker 4 (00:16:25):

Yeah, just do it. That's it. I mean, this job really is about networking, especially in your early part of your career. I mean, I feel like where I'm at now where I've got a bit of a name and a bit of a profile that I don't need to do the networking as much because work comes to me. But definitely in those early years I was anxiously getting out there to try and talk to people and rattle up some work that was high on my agenda when I was starting out.

Speaker 2 (00:16:59):

Well, sometimes networking has a dirty connotation to it or some people tend to feel like you shouldn't have to do that, but I think it's just as important as your musical skills. I think you absolutely have to network and you absolutely have to work on your social skills in order to make this a career. And it's almost like your musical skills are assumed. It's assumed that you're going to be good at the musical side of it.

Speaker 4 (00:17:32):

Yeah, that's right. I mean, even if you're not, it is all just a learning experience and you're going to improve as you work with each band and learn different things off different musicians. I mean, I look back at my understanding of things like pitch and what I understood was in tune and out of tune 15 years ago is vastly different to what I understand is in tune and out of tune these days and things like that. You just learn and you just learn this little tricks of different musicians. Everyone's got a different concept and has a different upbringing in terms of how they process music and the way they work. And if you just take a little bit of knowledge from each person you meet, it just builds up your experience. I think finding good musicians and finding music that really excites you and brings out a passion inside of you is really important in that sort of starting stage as well. There's nothing worse than working on a project you don't have your heart in, so you do have to also work to try and find music that excites you, that music that's going to make you passionate about working on it.

Speaker 2 (00:18:46):

What kind of music made you passionate enough to stick it through the hard times?

Speaker 4 (00:18:53):

I think I was just excited about music in general. I think you've got to be that, especially over here in Australia, it's not huge. It's definitely a struggle to have a career in this industry, but I think just my drive to just do what I do made me excited about lots of music. And it was only, I guess it was only a handful of bands I can say that I was not excited about working with. And often you don't realize that until you met the personalities in the band and that sort of thing that you start to realize that it wasn't really the thing you thought it was. But yeah, I just love, I can find something I love about most bits of music and going back to what I said earlier about working on different genres and different styles, I think that was exciting to me to work on not just one particular sound and one particular style.

(00:19:54):

I had access or needed to have access to a whole broad range of genres because that was the only way you could survive over here. Just working with different styles of music. So I still am super passionate about what I do and any kind of access that I had into a studio to use microphones and use different bits of gear and then talk to the bands about how they, I'm eternally fascinated about how bands write their songs. Is it one person sitting with an acoustic guitar writing a song or is it one person sitting in front of a computer program in drums or is it the whole band getting stoned and jamming in a garage or that sort of stuff really interests me. So we would always be digging into how that works with different bands too.

Speaker 2 (00:20:46):

What about it interests you?

Speaker 4 (00:20:48):

Well, just the creative process. How do people come up with music? How do they get inspired? And obviously we're all product of our influencers, and so what music are they influenced by and how did they come up with that guitar riff or how did the four or five different people mesh their parts together and did they write all the parts? Did one person write all the parts? And how did it all get planned to be what it was? In the case of when it was really good music, it's like how did you work out these parts to fit together? That just fascinates me, that sort of question. So yeah, exploring the ways in which music is built and created by different brains. That's probably the thing that keeps me going. And every day when I work on a new piece of music, I'm constantly, it's like the behind the scenes thing. We see this documentaries about behind the scenes in the studio and that sort of stuff. I love that stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:22:01):

So do you kind see yourself as a facilitator of those great moments?

Speaker 4 (00:22:05):

I guess so, yeah, understanding the role of a producer took a while for me. I remember having conversations at college, at university about when the term producer first got told to me, I was like, producer, what is that? What does that even mean? And then realizing that there's a whole variety of roles that a producer can take and there is no sort of one role for a producer. And I sort of slowly worked out what it was that I was doing as a producer and that change, I guess, to actually realize that what I was doing could be called producer was a light bulb moment for me as well, that I could actually call myself a producer. I was in a room with musicians throwing out ideas, facilitating, like you said, their creation of their song. And I definitely started in more of an engineering role, no doubt in the beginning.

(00:23:10):

But it wasn't until I started realizing with confidence that I could express ideas to these musicians and they would respectfully listen to it and give me feedback and we would work on something together that I realized that that was the role of a producer and that's what I was actually doing. So I mean, the role changes with different artists. You're expected to do different things with different artists. In a lot of cases you are doing less because the bands have got such a strong creative drive. They know how the studio operates, they know what they want from the studio. So you are just basically taking a step back, just letting them do their thing and helping them, assisting them where they need to go. Some bands need you to write the parts for them. In some instances they need a helping hand every step of the way. So that does vary. So definitely a facilitator. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:24:06):

And do you feel like it's something that you instinctually figure out with each project, or is it something that's decided upon upfront, we need a helping hand, we kind of expect you to finish these songs off for us? Or is it just kind something that's felt out?

Speaker 4 (00:24:28):

I think it's just something you just work out when you're in the room with the people. I mean, sometimes it's sort of mentioned in a semi contractual conversation to begin with, but you definitely, I mean, you're all just working towards the same result, which is making great music together. So you just work out where the band needs assistance and sort of help them and push in that direction sort of thing. But yeah, I don't think it's ever actively, this is your role, you need to stick to this and this is all we need from you. I'll definitely say what I think whenever, and that's where I've come to and at this point in my career, is that I'm happy to say what my thoughts are on anyone's music that I'm working with and whether they take those suggestions or not, I'm not going to force any idea on anyone, but I'll definitely say my mind in terms of trying to make the project or trying to make the music better in my mind. So

Speaker 2 (00:25:30):

Do you find that people are more receptive to your ideas on their music now than earlier in your career?

Speaker 4 (00:25:39):

I think I'd say definitely yes. But I think it's also just more about my confidence in terms of I understand music a lot better now, have smarter ideas, have a more acute sense of what needs to be done to improve the performance or the end result. So it is maybe where in the past I would've held back and not said anything. I wasn't confident, I wasn't sure about what the best set forward was in the early days. These days I think I've got a much better idea and a clearer picture of what to do to get a good result. So it's probably more that than necessarily the people's respect for me, but that definitely plays into it for sure. I think with the body of work that I've done, it's much easier these days to throw your idea in the mix and have it listened and taken on board. Definitely

Speaker 2 (00:26:37):

Can hurt. So onto slightly more technical track, I was wondering if you could share some insight or techniques or preferences that you have when tracking drums.

Speaker 3 (00:26:52):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (00:26:53):

I mean, for instance, do you have a drum room you prefer?

Speaker 3 (00:26:58):

Yeah, I do. It is kind of limited here in Australia. Studios are closing down left, right and center. The one

Speaker 4 (00:27:07):

Studio down in Melbourne called Sing Sing, which is where I recorded the tune track, the Progressive Foundry Library is a favorite of mine. It's a great drum sound there, and though they've got a classic collection of microphones and some great gear there, so it's a good space to record in. There's a few other nice studios dotted around Australia as well. There was one up in Brisbane, which I really loved, which has closed down now. And the studio over in Perth where we did Carnival Sound Awake, great drum sound from that studio. There's two studios actually over there that were really good. There's a studio in New Zealand called Roundhead, which I've just done some drum tracking in which I really love the sound of that room. And of course the one that ly always uses, which I had a chance to record in with the Good Tiger record earlier this year in Middle Farm is really good as well.

Speaker 2 (00:28:03):

He told me about it.

Speaker 4 (00:28:05):

Yeah, the funny thing is when I think of all these studios, they're all very similar in size, they're not massive, they're actually all of, I dunno, the exact sizing was maybe 20 meters by 15 meters or something like that. They're all very similar in size. And yeah, I think all the tone I get from room sounds and those sort of size rooms is what I really like and I know know's Express, he loves the sound of that room as well. So yeah, I think there's probably a perfect range for a great drum room which exists in this particular sizing. So yeah, that's what I definitely keep that in mind when I'm trying to work with a band and trying to work out what the best location is to do drums. I'll definitely consider that as much as I can in Australia. I'm definitely way more flexible when it comes to drum recordings. I mean I do a lot of gorilla recordings where we're just going into a house or

(00:29:09):

Into storage unit or something like that and recording in those sort of environments. So it is not always in this pristine studio, so need to sort of be flexible in that respect. But I do weigh up all those sort of options. I mean the last Dead letter circus record, we recorded the drums in the studio, but we recorded them in the kitchen, which is sort of upstairs. It wasn't actually in the recording space just because this particular studio, we'd use the studio for all their other recordings and I felt like I wanted to change the drum sound and I just always, the kitchen just had this really awesome reverberate live sound and we ended up bringing all these baffles and putting the drum kit up there and doing crazy mics down hallways and that sort of stuff. And I think that camera really good. It was a bit of a nightmare in terms of bringing all the equipment up there. But yeah, it was a great result. Just something really different, had a different flavor that none of us had never heard before come out of that studio. So it was exciting to do those sort of different things.

Speaker 2 (00:30:18):

It is funny, I've heard some kitchens with damn good drum sounds.

Speaker 4 (00:30:22):

Yeah, walk into a room, I walk into any kind of room and go, I do it. I actually do a time. My friends, they're actually looking for a rental and went out with 'em the other day and were like, man, this lounge room would make a rad drum room.

Speaker 2 (00:30:36):

It's funny, man, what you can get away with drum room wise sometimes I've even had the experience where very highly regarded drum rooms don't quite live up to the hype and sometimes the gorilla recording versions sound better.

Speaker 3 (00:30:56):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, a hundred percent happens.

Speaker 4 (00:31:00):

Yeah, there's plenty of studios I think where they've been designed with all this great intention and all this great engineering and math and it just doesn't work out. And there's a particular studio here in Australia that's got that reputation. It's just one of those things, I think there's so much randomness that goes on when you're talking about reflective surfaces and dimensions of rooms and that sort of stuff that it's such a difficult thing to articulate, especially even if you've got a degree in acoustic engineering, it's still a tricky thing. So yeah, I'm always interested to hear how a drum room sounds. There's actually a new studio where I'm living at the moment, which I'm keen to go and check out. I've got a friend of mine, we're going to go and check it out next week I think, and take a snare drum or take a drunk kit down there and have a listen, see whether it's suitable. So yeah, definitely not restricted to just using studios. It's always looking at all the options and what might sound good.

Speaker 2 (00:32:08):

And do you use a tech or do you tune all your own drums?

Speaker 4 (00:32:12):

Yeah, I always tune my own drums. I realized early on that that was a skill that I needed to learn. So I've always been hands-on in terms of tuning drums from a decade ago. So it's funny you joke about it all the time with different guys about the amount of drummers that are out there that play drums, but dunno how to tune their drum kits. Oh my

Speaker 2 (00:32:36):

God,

Speaker 4 (00:32:37):

It's fascinating. But no, Nolie was showing me his tuning method, which I've kind of cherry picked a few ideas from, which is quite consistent. I like the way that he does his drum tuning. So I've always, while mine's been semi-technical, it's always just been like, does it sound, how does it sound by ear and under the microphone? Whereas his is kind of very mathematical and systematic, so trying to implement that in a fashion into my technique as well, gone through it. Has he gone

Speaker 3 (00:33:10):

Over that before with you guys?

Speaker 2 (00:33:13):

I've seen him do it before on video and it definitely is, like you said, very consistent.

Speaker 4 (00:33:22):

Yeah. So yeah, it's just something that I've just experimented with every drum session that I've done, so I've just always been one of the veins of drum recordings is snare drums going out of tune just depending on the type of drum you've got. And depending on the play you've got, if you need to do a million takes on a song, then the snare obviously starts to drift a lot. And I learned that the hard way, particular recording until I sat back at doing the mix and was like, man, this stare sounds really different at the end of the song, what's going on there? And had to use samples to correct that. But from that point on I was like, okay, I've got a really fine tune. I hone in on the snare tuning as we're doing the performance. So it's one of those things where almost every second take, I'll get the drummer at the start to hit the snare drum and compare it to the first track that we've recorded and make sure the tuning's lining up. It's a tedious process, but it's the way to get the snare sounding great throughout the song.

Speaker 2 (00:34:30):

That's exactly what I do. I actually don't let the drummers touch the lugs though.

Speaker 4 (00:34:37):

You do it, do you?

Speaker 2 (00:34:38):

Well, me or a drum tech, I just don't trust drummers to tune the drums.

Speaker 4 (00:34:44):

Right.

Speaker 2 (00:34:44):

I have just seen too many disasters. Sure,

Speaker 4 (00:34:47):

Yeah. I find say for the snare drum, for example, for me it's usually always the lug where the rim shot's occurring. And if you just get them to just tune that little lug up and then solo the snare mic and play the first track that you've the first take that you've got and then flick input monitoring back and forth between what they're playing and what's coming off the recording. And you can usually get it pretty close. It's not until you're doing hundreds of takes, a lot of takes that the snare head starts to deform and it gets a little bit trickier to keep it in tune, but through good choices of snare heads and good preparation essentially is the foundation of keeping your drums in tune for the bulk of the song. I think the more I learned as I was recording is that this pre-production becomes such an important part of what I do because having a drummer who knows what they're playing and isn't changing and playing random things through a drum performance because I don't understand the song yet, having them completely prepared saves so much pain and suffering when it comes to getting a good drum sound in the actual recording.

(00:36:04):

Yeah, they're not doing lots and lots of takes because they don't know what the part is. So the performance, how the performance needs to go. So something that's occurring more and more these days is actually doing the drum recording last.

Speaker 2 (00:36:17):

I was about to ask you about that.

Speaker 4 (00:36:18):

Yeah. So yeah, doing the whole recording to Superior Drummer, which has been fine tuned and programmed and often changed as the rest of the music goes down as a guitar parts and everything come get worked out. We can change drum fills and modify it right to the very end. But during that process, the drum is sort of really learning and practicing to those program parts and then you go through and do the recording at the end and it's a much more efficient process and I feel like you can also tune the drums to the music that you've recorded and get the drums working as best to the music that's going to be there as opposed to the reverse where you're recording the drums first and kind of having a bit of a guess as to the tones of everything. There's two ways of looking at it. The thing is I'm completely split down the middle is which way is the best way to go? Something really I find really cool about flying by the seat of your pants and just going for a drum sound and then going, okay, we've got to match everything else to that drum sound or vice versa, going recording of the guitars of bass and vocals and then putting the drums down at the end and matching the drum sound to the music haven't yet settled on which way I prefer yet.

Speaker 2 (00:37:41):

I think I'm split as well. I think it really depends a lot on who it is you're working with and what their level of preparation is or what type of band they are. Because I feel like there's some bands that the song is, the song is the song and it's not going to change and they're just tight and the songs aren't changing. And maybe sometimes in those cases I prefer to do the drums first because they've all been practicing to these parts that are set in stone.

Speaker 4 (00:38:18):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean that touches on something that I hold to when I'm doing any production is you have to be adaptive to the band and every project is different. So the processes that worked with one band and you've learned something amazing on this one particular project and you're like, great, I'm going to try and use this on this next project, but you realize it's just a completely different beast. You need to be flexible with your ideas and the processes. And in my situation with the different genres and styles that I work on, there's definitely needs to be different approaches to different bands.

Speaker 2 (00:39:01):

Don't be like that guitar player who just got a whammy pedal for the first time and suddenly every new party writes as a whammy bar. I mean whammy pedal part in it.

Speaker 3 (00:39:13):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:39:14):

So I remember thinking, hearing your work, that the first picture I was going to see of you was going to be you with 300 pedals. And then the first picture I saw of you was you tracking some dude with the ax effects. And I thought that was really cool because it just goes to show that these days you can't call it anymore by what it sounds like the gear almost doesn't matter at this point because it's gotten so good. You need to just actually see for yourself what the person was using. And how do you feel about analog versus digital? Are you the type that just use, it's all just tools or do you have a definite opinion?

Speaker 3 (00:40:06):

No, that's spot on. They're all just different tools. I think 10 years ago, maybe a little bit more, there was reason for people to have an argument about digital

Speaker 4 (00:40:16):

Versus analog, but these days it's like no one's going to listen to a recording and go, oh look, that was done on this or that. It sounds better. For this reason, I've done not so much recently, but a couple of years back I was doing recordings to 24 inch tape and I was just going, why are we doing this? It doesn't sound any better than just doing it straight into the door and it's kind of time consuming and expensive. So there's good analog gear out there. There's reasons to use analog gear and there's reasons to use digital. And to be honest, again, coming back to this whole isolated in Australia thing is that you're often just restricted by the equipment you can get access to. So you've got a band in a particular city and they've got a particular amount of gear and you go into the studio and the studio's got a particular amount of gear.

(00:41:16):

So you just use what you've got, just make it work. You just make it work. And again, being passionate about what you do. Definitely in the early days I was just super psyched to be working in different studios for one and then to be using all this different gear and when was a piece of equipment that I hadn't used before. I was always quizzing the in-house engineer and going, what does this do? What do you use this for? Can we use this? Always try and use new bits of gear that I'd never experienced before just because it adds to your palette, it adds to your knowledge about the tools that you can apply to make music industry interesting. So I found myself realizing that when you go into these different environments, touching back on doing the drums in different place, different rooms, different studios, is that you actually find that you start defining the sound of a record or a recording by these strange and unique environments that you find yourself in.

(00:42:19):

So I kind of struggle a bit when I go back to the same studio over and over again. I start thinking in the back of my head, you are going to start sounding the same, everything's going to start sounding the same. And I can understand that some people think that that's a great thing, but for me it sort of gets a little bit tired I think. And I am constantly reminded when I record unique environments that by ring restricted by we've only got this one guitar ramp or we've only got this one microphone or whatever it may be, that that actually will give the record a unique sound that hasn't happened before. So I look for those sort of things when I'm recording. So in terms of finding analog or digital, it doesn't really matter as long as it brings something a little bit quirky and unique to a recording, I have no problem using it either. All.

Speaker 2 (00:43:14):

Well, on the topic of feeling like maybe by using the same place you're kind of repeating yourself, do you travel beyond Australia much to work?

Speaker 4 (00:43:29):

I have, yeah. There's been a couple of times. Obviously just recently I went over to the UK to work with Good Tiger on their new record and I've done a record over in France with a UK band and done a little bit in New Zealand as well. So I definitely do the traveling thing. And yeah, I've actually done a bunch of work in LA as well. I lived in LA for about six months, about 10 years ago or more now, and worked in a whole bunch of really cool studios over there.

Speaker 2 (00:44:00):

What did you think of living in la?

Speaker 4 (00:44:03):

I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought it was really good in terms of the lifestyle. I mean, I was just waking up in the morning, driving straight to the studio and then going home late at night. So I was pretty focused in my time that I was there, but yeah, didn't dislike it. So I feel now I'm a little bit older. I've obviously got family connections here and that sort of thing that I think my place of where I want to live is probably going to be Australia, but I definitely don't mind traveling to other parts of the world to record. It's definitely exciting to go into different new studios and I think the studios elsewhere around the world are probably a little bit more exciting than the ones here in Australia that definitely there's more of 'em and they're usually a little bit bigger. And yeah, it's definitely something that I do enjoy doing.

Speaker 2 (00:44:55):

It's funny because I am friends with so many producers here in the States and going to Australia to record is like the promised land almost. We all have this thing about going to Australia.

Speaker 3 (00:45:10):

Yeah, actually the studio

Speaker 4 (00:45:12):

That sit down the road that I have been at for the last year I met Will Putney a couple of months back. Yeah, great dude. Yeah, he's always over here doing plenty of recordings. So yeah, I mean, Australia's got a lot of really good bands on offer and yeah, there are good studios here to record in, so we're definitely not short of options. But yeah, it's always exciting to get overseas and try something new.

Speaker 2 (00:45:36):

It just puts you in a different sort of head space that you just can't recreate it or fabricate it, even if you're using the same rig, same types of microphones, same types of plugins or whatever as you would back home. There's just some sort of a vibe that it's just different and I feel like it will lead to different types of decisions.

Speaker 3 (00:46:08):

And it's also challenging as well. Early

Speaker 4 (00:46:12):

On I realized that there's something to be said for working in the same space day in day out as you become very comfortable and confident in the sounds that you're pulling and what you're hearing, and you can make fast decisions on things as opposed to moving around different studios. It's a little bit trickier. You've got to deal with different monitoring and the way the different control rooms sound and that sort of thing. And that enhances the difficulty, I guess, in doing what you're used to doing. But at the same time, that challenge, I actually really enjoy that challenge. And again, I feel like it contributes to that thing that I'm always trying to find of making a record sound unique and what does this record do that's special and all those little variations between studios and that can enhance that, the end result I think in terms of it just sounding like a capture of a band in a certain place in certain time. So yeah, I loved going to different studios when I was starting out. I think these days I'm probably working from my home studio a lot more than I am going out and just feel like I'm doing a lot more mixing these days. But yeah, I definitely don't have a single studio that I always go to. I always take a band to, I'm always going somewhere different for recording.

Speaker 2 (00:47:39):

So do you think that your search for unique identity or that unique thing that you think every record should do, is that a conscious thing you're looking for or is it something that you subconsciously do but you're aware of it now?

Speaker 3 (00:47:59):

I think it's a conscious thing. I think

Speaker 4 (00:48:04):

I feel like I don't want to be stuck doing the same thing over and over again. And as much as a lot of my work comes to me, because I've done some bands that sound a certain way in the past, I really want every band to be their own unique thing. And you think of all the classic records that you'll know and love, every record sounds different. Generally every band that's been successful and their music's touched people in a way that is unique to them. I think it's about the recording sounding different and having its own flavor. So that's definitely something in my mind that every band should have their own flavor, which can be difficult to do, but depending on the style and there's definitely sounds that bands aspire to which you're trying to mimic or replicate, which you have to take on board as well. But it's definitely a conscious thing for me to try and make every record. I do not sound like any other record I've done. It could be in subtle ways. It's not I need to make it completely different, but it just needs to be, I like the idea of people listening to a bunch of bands that I've done and not knowing that it's the same guy behind the desk. That's definitely a goal of mine.

Speaker 2 (00:49:32):

Now what happens when you have trouble finding that with an artist? Does that ever happen, I guess the equivalent of writer's block, but I guess it's not really writer's block, it's more like identity block or I don't even know what you would call it, but do you ever have trouble finding what that unique voice is or that unique point of view is?

Speaker 3 (00:50:02):

It can be a little bit murky at the start of

Speaker 4 (00:50:05):

A recording, but usually by the time you've kind of got to the final stages, there's something, there's one thing that I've latched onto that'll be the thing that I'll want to bring forward and make, not necessarily the focus, but that'll be the thing that'll identify this band and make them unique. It's like those things like, it's like the Edges guitar sound or Tom York's vocal style or just whatever band you're talking about that you can easily go that band that's got that thing. And usually by the three quarters of the way through the recording, I've worked out what that's going to be. So it can be a little bit vague at the start of recording. That's actually, whether it's a guitar sound or whether it's a vocal style or a drum sound or a reverb, it could be anything. But yeah, it's not something that's, because every person is unique, every individual in a band or every performer's got their own idiosyncrasies. It's just one of those things that you can pick up on and push to the fore as you're working.

Speaker 2 (00:51:22):

Well, I have some questions here from our audience, if you don't mind. I'd like to ask you some of them.

Speaker 3 (00:51:28):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (00:51:28):

All right. Anthony DG Cuomo is wondering if you could please explain the sound awake base tone in excruciating detail. And he left lots of hearts and smiley faces.

Speaker 3 (00:51:42):

I get asked this one quite a lot actually.

Speaker 2 (00:51:44):

I'm sure you do.

Speaker 3 (00:51:45):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:51:46):

Well it sounds monstrous.

Speaker 3 (00:51:48):

Well, first you need a guy like John Stockman to be playing the bass. That's probably the most fundamental thing. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:51:56):

Those space sounds were generally made up of his six stringing. So he had two of them. He had a Corvette, and I think it might've been a thumb I think, don't quote me on that one, but he had those two different bases. So that album is basically flicking between those two, but different bases. And was, I think there might've been a Fender five stringing jazz in there. It might've been a P base. Actually. We had I think three amplifiers running all the time into three cabs. So they were doing different things. So we had a SVT two power amp, and we had I think the pre-amp stage and that was busted. So I think we were using maybe an ash down. And then we also had an ash down, another ash down amp going into an ash down, I think it's a six by 10 or an eight by 10 cab, six by 10 I think it is.

(00:53:01):

The pec was going into an pec fridge, and then we had an agula head and cab as well. So we sort of just blended different combinations of those three cabs for the different songs. So the way I approach it is you kind of can't get what I see as a full bandwidth bass sound from one amp. So I've always got a fat, thick, clean base tone. Usually I think that's probably usually coming from the EG or the agula. And then you have a a honky kind of really throaty mid-range sound, which is indicative of the Warwick sort of bass sound. So that was usually going through the ashdown heading box. And then we would always add a distortion of some kind. And we had a bunch of different pedals to play with. I couldn't actually remember what they are. I think there was a purple XXXL, I think it might've been one of those really bad sounding base drive.

(00:54:10):

The yellow boss pedals was actually in there a little bit. That's the good thing about that. Pedals has got a wet drive blend, so you just use a little bit of it for the top end fizz. And I can't really recall the other distortion we might've had in there, but we would always just find a blend between those three textures for the base and then in mixing, so we get a DI as well to completely clean di. And in mixing, I would always add in a plugin distortion as well. So from memory, I think in sound awake, I have recently gone over those files because I know John's just released the Alpha Omega pedal with dark glass and I had to give them a bunch of the sounds for that. So I think we recorded two mic, two amps and a di, and the DI always had a plugin distortion on it.

(00:55:07):

So the plugin distortion was either amplitude, which I used quite a lot. I love that plugin for just different distortion textures. And it might've been the pro tools 11 guitar amp simulator. It was just sort of bouncing between those two ones for different songs depending on what the song needed. So that's pretty much the rundown. In terms of microphones a hundred percent, there would always be a 57 on each of the cabs and there would always be a condenser. So whether it was a four and four or in that particular studio, there were two different studios. So again, all my facts are a little bit vague at this stage was quite a while ago, but in the first studio, four, one fours and probably a Paluso might've been one of the C 12 copies or something like that. And then in the other studio we did where we did Goliath, that would've been most likely a 47 U 47 or a 49 or something like that on the basin as well as the 57.

(00:56:22):

But yeah, always basically always use a 57 and some kind of condenser microphone and get a blend, the grit and the attitude from the 57. And then the fatness blended in from the condenser microphone. So there would've been six, at least six microphones on those three cabs and possibly a room mic as well. It was definitely a room mic on the Goliath song because the drums and the bass were done at the same time. So I think the drum mics were actually picking up the room mic. Yeah, so that's right. When I soloed recently, when I soloed the bass channel for Goliath, the snare drums cracking through it. Like I said, the actual bass channel is actually a room mic for the snare drums. So just a interesting little tidbit.

Speaker 2 (00:57:13):

Yeah, that sounds like quite the base setup. And he actually expanded on his question, but I feel like you already answered this, which is, was it a split tone in the mix? Did you split it into subs and highs or anything like that?

Speaker 3 (00:57:34):

No, it is not a split tone in terms of the EQ being split. It's just

Speaker 4 (00:57:41):

A split in terms of the different textures. So there's the fat clean texture, there's throaty, midrange texture, and there's the fizzy distortion texture. And you just find different combinations of that. And again, it wasn't the same every time we changed things around. We did swap the cabs between the different amps for different songs and just definitely went for a different vibe on the bass for every song. That's probably something that's worth mentioning. I doing a full album, it will depend on time and budget, but I do approaching each song as its own beast and having the time to create a sound and a texture for each song that's perhaps a little bit individual. So the whole album doesn't always sound the same, which I think sound awakes a great example of that. We had enough time to try different sounds for each song, and each song has a different bass tone on it. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:58:42):

It still sounds like a cohesive record.

Speaker 4 (00:58:44):

Yeah, I think that's to do with the players as well. And maybe using the same bass guitar and using a similar drum kit. I think it's a different snare drum and every song on that record. That's something I'll always do as well. Get as many snare drums as I can on a recording and get the drummer to play through a chorus, a verse, and a chorus with each snare drum and just sit back with a band and go, which one compliments the song the best? And rather than sometimes it's the same snare just because you've got a bunch of shitty snares and you've got one that's way better than the rest of them, and you'll end up using that for all the songs that does happen. But yeah, just try and use the tools that are available and go through all the options before you settle on something.

Speaker 2 (00:59:28):

So Jimmy Glass is asking, how do you keep such a massive mix when working with a large amount of tracks like the Occupants song Wonderland? I guess what he meant to ask was how do you keep such a massive mix organized when working with a large amount of tracks, with things like the Occupants song Wonderland?

Speaker 3 (00:59:49):

Well, he may mean how do you keep it massive?

Speaker 4 (00:59:52):

Definitely a thing that happens with the more tracks you add, the more layers that you add, the smaller it gets. That's definitely a thing I can acknowledge that happens when you're mixing, when you've just got too many parts and too many layers. It gets really hard to make it all fit together and in a cohesive way. And that was probably something that I really struggled with because I love the layering and the ams and the textures, and I love the detail. And I guess that's something I've really wanted to delve into from the early days. But at the same time, I find that the more and more you strip things back and get back to just three instruments going at once, it's way easier to make a great sounding mix out of. So I mean, I think I have what I call when I'm doing my own productions and working with a band and we are in the studio, I've got no fear to throw down every idea and record all these parts that I know that are never actually going to make the final mix.

(01:01:01):

But just to have them there, if there's something that's really cool, just get it down. If we're under a timeframe, just get it all out, put it on the session. And then when I go to the mixing stage, I'll sort of sift through it and sort of work out which parts are working and end up doing what I call as a mute party and basically go through and mute things that don't make the cut. So I think being aware that having too much stuff in a mix is going clutter and detract from the end result. So being brutal, I think in terms of what you're keeping is a great way of making a mix. Huge in terms of the file keeping or I guess keeping things contained and easy to understand in the mixing concept. I've just got a system. I think we've probably all, whoever, if you've been doing this for a while, you've probably got your own way of setting up a session.

(01:02:05):

But I always, in terms of approach session, I always start with the drums at the top, then bass guitar, then guitars, then keys and programming, and then vocals, and then I have all my effects returns down the bottom and then a mastering chain on the very end. So it just goes from top to bottom like that. So I'll always arrange my sessions and that it gets a little bit haphazard while I'm recording a session where you're sort of flying stuff around and lining things up and doing editing and moving tracks around. But in terms of when it comes to a final mixed preparation sort of stage, I'll line everything up in that system that I'm familiar with.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):

I see. We definitely preach the idea of getting your workflow down to a science and how really it's not going to make your mix, but it can certainly destroy it if your workflow's not on point.

Speaker 4 (01:03:08):

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that system, I haven't changed that in 15 years. I think every session I get sent files to mix from bands. The first thing I do is line the tracks in that order, just so I know I can zip around to exactly where things know exactly where things will land. I've always find my buses, I cascade my buses, so I'll have drums and then the drum buses will be underneath it and then the bass and the bass bus will be straight underneath it. I know some guys have all their buses right down the bottom of the session, but I think for editing purposes, I find when you're drawing an automation and that sort of stuff, it's great to visualize where the waves and stuff are changing. That makes sense to me. But yeah, definitely organization and sessions is super important,

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):

Lifesaver or ender, the way that I look at it with mixing. So Eric Burt is during, Hey Forrester, I understand that and sound awake. There's no vocal tuning whatsoever. Can you explain what went into tracking Ian Kenny's vocals for those albums? Is he just that amazing or was there a lot of comping or takes, et cetera to get those seller performances or all the above?

Speaker 4 (01:04:29):

Yeah, he's an amazing singer. He really is one of the best singers that I've worked with, and in terms of getting those performances out of him, he does a lot of the recording with Drew, the guitarist. I know that on the Marta, we did about two weeks of vocals and then I had to come back. They were in Perth in Western Australia to come back to Eastern Australia, and they probably continued on recording for another month or so. I can't remember exactly how long it was, but they would just continue to do more takes and add more bvs and that sort of stuff. But in terms of doing takes, yeah, you'll get up there. We're talking a lot of takes just to get the right performance and when you're in there in that environment, you kind of got to judge that balance between how many takes am I doing, is it getting tedious?

(01:05:25):

Are you're losing the vibe or are you improving on the performance and getting what you want? So it's this fine balance of how much you push the artist to do take after take after take. But I know that I come from, what I've learned through my experience is that it's pretty rare that you come across a singer who's going to get it in the first three takes. I'll definitely start with a singer expecting them to do probably 10 takes of vocals straight up and expect them to do 15 half an hour of warmups before we even press record what a professional singer or an experienced singer should really be doing to get their voice in top condition. But yeah, he's, he's one of those super professional singers. He's got a warmup routine. He knows how to treat his voice at shows. If he's on tour, he won't drink, he won't smoke, he won't do any of those things on tour. He looks up, he goes home early before the rest of the band goes to the hotel, that sort of thing. So in the studio, he'll just work hard to get the result. He'll do 50 takes if it needs to be that to get what we're after. In terms of the tuning thing, he's one of those guys that he's just got enough control that would didn't need to go down that path and use tuning on his vocals. He is just that good.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):

By the way, John Brown from monuments told me to say hi to you.

Speaker 4 (01:06:57):

He

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):

Just texted me.

Speaker 4 (01:06:58):

Goodday John.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):

Yeah, he's a great guy. So Max Kessler was wondering when working on rhythm based bands like Sky Harbor and Carnival, how do you make it sound incredibly heavy yet still articulate so that everything finds its place in the mix? And also how do you get a dense sounding mix like that without overloading your master bus? Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:07:23):

Look, I think the funny thing is how

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):

Do you do it all in three minutes? The thing is three sentences,

Speaker 4 (01:07:31):

I struggle just like everyone else. I'm no different to anyone else out there battling with bottom end and how to make it work. And it really is just, I mean, obviously using my ears and a lot of trial and error, I play around with plugins and different base amp simulators on the di. If a band sends me a DI and a mic or a DI and two mics, I'll still add three amps IMS of my own on the bass. I find amp sims on bass, they sound great, and you can really craft the bass tone on your own with what else is going on in the mix. So that's probably one of the key things that I do to get bass working in a mix, is we'll always explore my own choices of sounds on top of what the band's actually given me. So I know for Sky Harbor for example, they gave me, I think probably three or four different tones to work with, and then I probably added another three as well. And it sounds silly. It sounds like this crazy clash of just different tones going on, but they're all carefully selected and they all combine and in a certain way that works together and satisfies the mix.

(01:08:56):

But in terms of overloading the master bus, obviously bottom end is a struggle, especially if you're looking at limiting and those sort of things in terms of getting decent volume out of your master bus bottom ends, something you're working against because it takes up so much energy. But yeah, it's honestly just a trial and error thing. I do spend a lot of time crafting that with different plugins and I've got my regular choices, but every mix is unique, so there's not sort of one hard and fast answer as to how to make that work. I'll spend days on some songs just trying to get that balance right between the bass and the drums and the bottom end working with the mastering. But mastering is something that I'll probably do start working on about three quarters of the way through a mix. Once I've got the balance of all the instruments, I'll start adding a few extra mastering plugins to shape it a little bit more, but I'll definitely try and get all that balance and everything done. That's probably one of the first things that I start working on when I'm working on a mix, getting the drums and the bass working together.

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):

I don't think I really answered that

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):

Well. I mean, it's one of those questions, how do you cook a meal or something? Yeah, there's like, do you have six months for an answer?

Speaker 4 (01:10:27):

Yeah, yep. It's just one of those things that it's just trial and error. It really is. I experiment as much as the next guy. It's not like I've got this process down where I'm just bang five minutes, I've got a bass and a drum sound that's kicking ass. It's up to the recording as well. There's only so much you can do in a mix in terms of getting a great bass sound. A lot of it's got to do with the player and how the actual parts, if it's poorly performed and it's not, the drums and the bass aren't glued together in terms of the actual performance, you can't do anything about that unless you got the okay to go in and edit things and no one wants to be doing that one when they're supposed to be focused on mixing. So yeah, all those things add up, but luckily with those sort of bands, sky Harbor and Carnival, the bass players are amazing and the drummers are phenomenal.

(01:11:27):

So that sort of thing already pre pre-work out in terms of the recording stage. So the mixing usually comes pretty easy with that sort of thing. I know that when we were mixing the sound awake stuff, I had John in the room with me and Steve as well, so it was always something we'd probably work on that together until everyone was satisfied and happy with the sounds that were going on. But the Sky Harbor stuff I was doing obviously on my own overseas, but it was just so well recorded and they were just such great players that putting that sort of drum and bass performance together and make it sound good wasn't super difficult. They were just great players.

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):

You just made me think of something I've recently realized that I judge my friends mixes differently than I used to, but I mean, my friends that are really, really great mixers, if I typically love their work and then they have a string of one or two records that for some reason just don't sound like they were on their game or something or just not that great. My initial, now my initial thought is I bet the tracking sucked. I bet you they got handed something they couldn't mix their way out

Speaker 3 (01:12:56):

Of. Yeah, I mean that's the truth. It's when you listen to

Speaker 4 (01:13:01):

A recording and you start going down that path of listening to the production picking at things. Is it the mastering? Is it the mixing? Was it the microphones that they used? There's so many variables that go into how something sounds, so it's just super difficult to articulate at what point things affect me, at

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):

What point things went sour.

Speaker 4 (01:13:29):

Yeah, I still get stuff that I listen to it and go, oh, you probably know from your own experience, you get stuff that you sent a mix, and it's just like 10 minutes later, 10 minutes after opening the session, you're like, man, this mix is smoking. It sounds excellent. And then you get mixes that you spend three days working on, you're like, I just cannot get this to sound good. And it is not any lack of your skill or equipment or anything like that. It's what's actually been recorded dictates how fast that stuff moves or how hard you have to work, and it's even impossible if it's not clearly something that's like, oh, that's out of time, or that's just distorting, or whatever it might be. It's actually really difficult to articulate what it is that's not working about it. Why you don't like that bass sound or why do the drums, why are they not working properly with the rest of the music? It's a tricky one. There's so many variables.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):

Well, sometimes, I mean, I am sure sometimes it's down to there's always going to be a song on every record that sounds the best and always one that sounds the worst

Speaker 3 (01:14:43):

No

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):

Matter how you feel about them. I feel like there's always that one song that just kind of mixes itself and then the one that's just no matter what you do, it's just going to give you problems. And some records come in and they are that song 10.

Speaker 3 (01:15:04):

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, no, it's so true. There's definitely some songs that speaks to me is that it's the music.

Speaker 4 (01:15:15):

You might've had exactly the same setup for each of these different songs and this one sounds better than the rest. Why is that? It's because the music's better. I think it's just the way that the rhythms and the way that the frequencies from because of the choice, the pitch, the notes that have been chosen, it just works glues together a little bit better. And that I think heads into that realm of it's just a better song, which highlights another thing that we probably haven't touched on, which is just the songwriting and how important that is that all this technical stuff that we've been speaking about is sort of superficial and it actually just comes back to the song being a great song and being well-written.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):

Well, I feel like if you want a great mix in some ways, you need to start with a great song. And there's exceptions, and I feel like those exceptions are usually pulled off by the very top mixers in the world. So some people may disagree with me and be like, but there's great sounding bad songs out there all over the place. And it's like, yeah, but look who mixed them. It's usually the very, very best mixers in the world are what's required to make a bad song sound good. You need to have the equivalent of a Navy Seal mixer to salvage a bad song, whereas history has plenty of great songs that don't sound that great technically, but stand the test of decades because the songs themselves are so great. And I'm sure you've had that feeling when mixing when it's a really great song that, like we were saying earlier, it just kind of mixes itself or it just feels so right. It just kind of takes on a life of its own.

Speaker 4 (01:17:07):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:17:08):

Absolutely. I mean,

Speaker 4 (01:17:09):

It's one of the things that kind of inspires me as well, I feel like this decade, this last decade, we've, the music industry or the music production in general has touched on a new level of quality. I listened to the quality of mixes and music that's been created in this day and age and how better it sounds, how much better it sounds in

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):

It's crazy,

Speaker 4 (01:17:34):

The nineties and the eighties and the seventies once going back. But at the same time, the songs from those era, from those eras still sound great. You can listen to these shitty recordings in the eighties, but who cares because the songs are great. It is just one of those things that just inspires me to think that even though we're in this heyday of music production and just being able to notch EQ every harsh frequency out and have the perfect drum sound and samples and all this sort of stuff, it's kind of irrelevant. It just comes back to if you just have a good song and you got to shoot

Speaker 3 (01:18:18):

A recording of it, it's still a good song. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):

I mean, it will still speak to people. And I guess that's a perfect lead in for this question by Sam Mickey, which is how involved did you get with the Carnival guys when writing, and at this point, I assume there's a level of comfort that exists that might not with your other clients.

Speaker 3 (01:18:41):

Yeah, we definitely got a special relationship with those guys. In terms of the writing,

Speaker 4 (01:18:47):

I didn't really get involved with the songwriting with those guys. I mean, I assisted them in finishing a bunch of the songs on Sound Awake, but I mean, those guys were in the studio jamming a lot of those songs out. I think from Memory, sound Awake, they had pretty much completely written six songs I think before we went into the studio. So the other songs just needed to be sort of pieced together a little bit when we went into the studio, the pre-production phase or whatever it was, and we just had a bunch of pro tool sessions and we just sort of all as a group, sort of put structures together of the songs and found parts and put 'em in, that sort of thing. But in terms of writing, I wouldn't really classify what I was doing as a writer with those guys, but definitely getting heavy on the creative production and I mean, coming back to that concept of a facilitating, facilitating all their ideas, I was such a creative bunch of guys that when they go, oh, I've got this idea, it's like, okay, well let's see where that goes and how do we make that work?

(01:20:02):

How do we make that happen? And I think I can remember my role as including all of that was also feeling like I had to stop a lot of the sabotage that might've been going on in terms of them second guessing great parts. They pop out out this idea in the moment and go, oh, what about this? And to be like, that sounds really amazing. They'd be like, oh, nah, you don't really know if I like, no, it sounds fantastic. Let's do it. Let's get that down.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):

Do you ever have to tell a musician that he's being a maniac by wanting to cut something that's incredible?

Speaker 4 (01:20:42):

Oh, definitely. Yeah. I mean, I feel like one of the fundamental roles of a producer is being able to identify parts and ideas that are great, that are things that are classic, that are going to really enhance a song or speak to people on a level that's important for the song. So that's definitely a role that I have with Carnival, I feel is just great ideas. They've got so many of them is helping them filter what's good and what isn't. Most of it's good.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):

I like that you're touching on that because lots of times production gets talked about from the, I dunno how to say this, not from, it's not negative to cut what's bad, but it gets talked a lot about how one of your main jobs is to get rid of the bad takes, get rid of what's bad, get rid of what's terrible, but at the same time, maybe it doesn't get highlighted as much that the flip side of that coin is spotting what's timeless.

Speaker 4 (01:21:53):

That ties back into what I was talking about earlier about finding the thing with each band that's unique, finding that thing that makes that band sound like that band, and that's sort of the same thing, finding those parts that are going to be classic and going to be remembered by listeners to associate that sound or that part with that band.

Speaker 2 (01:22:17):

So here's a question from Ewan Edgar. He says, I've heard somewhere that Forrester was very unhappy with the mix for sound awake when he turned the mix in, and I'd like to know what he didn't like about it, because for so many people that album's production is incredible. Well, so first of all, is that true?

Speaker 3 (01:22:36):

It is true, yep. Yeah, I did. I probably said that

Speaker 4 (01:22:38):

To a few people, but the reason being is because you've got your head so inside a record and a mix, and that record was epic to mix. Think of some of the song lengths on that record that some of 'em are really long songs they took. So we're mixing in an expensive studio on an analog console and an SSL console. The mixers had to be signed off on as we did them. There was no recall, so the band was in the room with it. The band was in the next studio adding parts as we do each song, they have guitars and

Speaker 2 (01:23:19):

Sounds like stress.

Speaker 4 (01:23:21):

It was definitely stressful and long days getting in at nine o'clock in the morning and going home at 2:00 AM in the morning, that sort of thing. So it took three weeks, I think, to mix. So we were in the studio for three weeks and it wasn't my familiar environment to be mixing in. It wasn't my studio. So while I had done mixers before in that same room, and I did enjoy mixing in that room, there was still that little bit of not really super sure how this is a hundred percent sounding. I mean, they sounded like good mixers in the room, but the translation elsewhere was always a little bit of an unknown. We'd take it out into a car and kind of go, yeah, it sounds kind of right. I think it wasn't until the mastering happened that I started to realize what the mixers, how good it was going to sound.

(01:24:20):

I think having Tom Coin do the mastering on it and what he brought to it was just like that made a much clearer picture for me what the end result was going to be and how good it was. But definitely in the days or the day after we'd finished the mixes, I was stressing about silly little things about Tom Fields not cutting through and is there enough bottom end in that base part, just stuff just so irrelevant right now to the overall those hyper details that no one else is going to hear. That was so foremost in my mind after delving so deep into those mixes that I was just frustrated and there's complex music, long songs with heaps of layering with progressive arrangements. It was just like, there's so much going on, so much to be on top of that. I just felt like I hadn't been on top of all of it, and that really got to me when we'd finished it, I was just like, oh, really? But then,

Speaker 2 (01:25:30):

Yeah, could have spent two more years on

Speaker 4 (01:25:33):

It. Yeah, yeah. When's a record finished? It's

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):

Not when they pull it away from you.

Speaker 4 (01:25:40):

Yeah, that's it. So it was definitely something you're spot on. It was definitely something I wasn't happy with when I walked out of there. I didn't hate it. I knew, I knew I hadn't blown it up, I hadn't ruined it, but I just was like, is it as good as it can be? I wasn't sure, and it wasn't until the mastering happened. I was like, yeah, this is pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:26:04):

When you got the mastering and just be honest, did you realize, not saying that you haven't been honest, but did you realize that you were working on what some people would consider a pinnacle type record? Did you just think, okay, it sounds pretty good?

Speaker 4 (01:26:24):

Yeah, no, all I knew was I really enjoyed it. I mean, that's one of the whole things of me working with the carnival is that they're always a band that I loved. I loved their music as a fan. I've always been a fan of the band, so working on their music was a pleasure, and even from the demo stage of those songs, I was like, yeah, these songs are really good. This is going to be a good record, but had no concept of what the potential it had, even when it finished the mixes, I mean it also, again, being a band like Carnival quite p Proggy and there weren't any obvious singles or anything like that. It's always an unknown prospect here in Australia how that's going to be received. It, it's a sort of fringe genre and that sort of thing that you never know how those things are going to get exposed and get out into the industry and how they're received.

Speaker 2 (01:27:27):

I think Australia, to me, I could be completely wrong about this, but is kind known for having some very successful experimental rock acts. I know that Silver Sheridans start weird, but they certainly became very interesting as their career went on and it's here, people forgot about them, but they remain pretty huge till the end.

Speaker 4 (01:28:00):

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're still one of Australia's favorite rock bands for sure. I mean, they're kind of not really functioning anymore, but they definitely got experimental in their later records and the sound evolved, which is I think quite interesting, quite cool. I mean, Australia's got solid, definitely got some really good bands. I mean, I think even more so these days where I feel like it's a bit more global now, and bands have the ability to get overseas and have that exposure where perhaps it was a bit more insulated a decade ago before the internet really opened it up, that the playing field is a lot more open now for Australian bands to get out there and compete. Not that it's a competition, that's not the right word, but to get out there amongst other international artists and write good songs.

Speaker 2 (01:28:59):

I thought it was interesting that for just on the silver chair idea that we heard about them here when radio and MTV was all you had, but then as the internet happened and they actually got better, way better, it's almost like the inverse happened. Less and less people knew about them. But here's a question from Yatin Shiva, which is how did you manage to get such a punchy yet dynamic sound for Tamara considering videos and clips show that the gear used was not particularly expensive or special? I feel like that goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is if you know what you're doing, you can get great sounds.

Speaker 3 (01:29:47):

Yeah, I mean that record was kind of the opposite, not opposite, but just different

Speaker 4 (01:29:56):

Sort of spectrum to the sound awake one where the sound awake was lots of live vibes and hold takes and very minimal editing, whereas the Marta was heavily edited, heavily processed, and very, I think it was just a record that was everything was looked over with a fine tooth comb and a magnifying glass to make sure everything worked together. So I mean, think in terms of, I'm not sure what he means by what they mean by the equipment being average. I mean,

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):

The thing, maybe he just means that I really don't know what he means,

Speaker 4 (01:30:39):

But I think mean the same. We used a pro tools rig with good quality microphones and 51 fifties and JCMA hundreds and all the, I mean, it was done in a gorilla fashion for Theta. We recorded in five different locations to record it. We did the drums in a studio. We did pre-production in a house and in my parents' house, we did the bass at the John's at John's parents' house and put the base cabs in there in one of the cellars and recorded, had the recording part up in his bedroom, and we did the vocals down in the house down in the coast just with an inbox, with an inbox one and a road classic microphone. We did the guitars in a holiday house out in the middle of nowhere down in a town called Warpole, which is on the south coast of Western Australia.

(01:31:38):

It's about six hours drive from Perth. So we had to lug everything down in a big van and set it all up, and yeah, we were basically isolated. No phone reception, no television, no internet. We did that for about four weeks recording guitars, but it was all top-notch gear, but it wasn't all in a classy studio or anything like that. It was all kind of just done in different locations. But again, it was mixed in Melbourne and on an SSL console as well. Yeah, but I think that one was a much more manufactured record in terms of the playing and the parts and the editing as opposed to sound awake being a much more organic record.

Speaker 2 (01:32:21):

I see. Here's a good one from David Ros, which is, I'd like to know about guitar layering and panning please, especially with sound awake, since the two guitarists aren't often playing in unison, how do you fill out the mix so that it doesn't seem lopsided?

Speaker 4 (01:32:37):

That's just a feel thing I think when you're sort of playing with two parts that are not playing the same thing, but you're still sort of pushing them out to the side so that there's space for the things down the center of the base and the vocals. Yeah, it's just a balancing. I mean, if they've got different energies, obviously you're just going to ride the volume so that they sound like they're balanced on either side. Maybe a little bit of EQing in the choices that we're making when we're actually tracking the guitars so that they're complimenting each other. But I know for a lot of the heavy sounds in that record, we particularly went with one side being like a 51 50, which is the traditional carnival sound with that particular tuning and Drew's PR s guitar through 51 50. It's very distinctly his sound. And then we purposely went with, I think it might've been a JMP, like an old school Marshall Plexi threw a Marshall Cab on the other side just for a point of difference as opposed to Theta where it was double tracked with JCM eight hundred and fifty one fifty both left and right for all the heavy guitars.

(01:33:53):

Sound awake. We did the opposite and tried to actively go for two different textures, one on each side. But in terms of balancing and getting all that right, it was, yeah, it's just one of those things of just getting the different parts to feel right in the mixing stage, purely through volume and eq. There wasn't any kind of special technique or anything to get that to work. I mean, one of the early discussions on that record was that we wanted the bass to take a upfront position in the music, and that was, I don't remember the conversation that was heavily influenced by the band actually recording their own demos and having a room mic and wanting a room bass sound on some of the songs, and we kind of achieved that on a couple of them. It feels like there's a bit of depth to the bass because we actually had room mics going on, which is that Goliath song where we did the live takes between the bass and the drums. So that kind of made it, I think with those mixes and sound awake, finding the balance for the guitars was easy. You had this strong center backbone with the bass guitar always existing down the middle, so it was just sort of having this wide ambient sort of going on, and it wasn't like I was trying to push the guitars out at the forefront and have them taking up lots of space. They were always kind of second, not secondary, but they're always supporting the bass as opposed to the bass supporting the guitars.

Speaker 2 (01:35:24):

So a lot of it sounds like it comes just from the arrangements being worked to support a mix that's structured that way, so down to the backbone of the music. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:35:41):

Definitely. I mean, the parts were written and the concept of the bass being somewhat of the lead instrument or a lead instrument more so than traditionally in maybe that sort of style of music that the bass was definitely going to be a driving force, and that was something that we'd spoken about and had. I definitely had the idea of that from the get go. I mean, John's parts so conducive to taking the lead is almost like a lead guitarist in a way, in the way he plays a lot of his parts. So it was kind of easy to have that out the front and work the guitars in around that part. So definitely the arrangements facilitated that, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:36:27):

Final question, this one's from Douglas, which is what's typical in your vocal chain, and do you process backings different to leads?

Speaker 3 (01:36:38):

Yes, I do. What's typical in my, so a typical vocal chain for me, if I'm not recording it, if I'm recording it, I'll probably go through a compressor

Speaker 4 (01:36:49):

Like an LA two A or 1176, depending on what I've got my hands on, and there's only a little bit of compression. You will usually rely on a lot of compression in the mixing stage, and I'll always filter the vocal first with an eq, taking out any kind of bottom end rumble, that sort of thing. And then I'll hit it with probably two compressors, just doing slightly different things. So one to be a fast compressor and another one will be a slow compressor. Sometimes I'll use a limiter instead of the fast compressor, depends on the vocalist, and then usually a dsr, then some EQ saturation I play with. Sometimes it's after all that or before the compressors as well. But again, it depends on the part, whether it even needs saturation or not. But one of the things that I've really gotten into these days, which I think is something that I think everyone's doing with this new improved production in this decade is notch filtering, doing a lot of notch filtering. I'll do a lot of automation on vocals, especially evals going through and notching out that nasty 2.7 or 3.3 K frequency when vocals hit certain sounds, certain vows and mouth shapes cause shrill or piercing frequencies that'll go through and fine tune. There was a band last year that the vocalist literally had probably 10 automating notch filters flicking in and out through every word. It's just insane.

Speaker 2 (01:38:38):

It's what you had to do.

Speaker 4 (01:38:39):

It's what I had to do to make it sound good. I mean, it's one of those things that you can do this broad EQ shapes on a vocal to get it sound generally good, but in reality, it's such a moving target that the sound of a vocal that you've got, you realize that when you do all these little automation moves and notch out all these little frequencies, it's so subtle, but it's so noticeable in the final mix that it's just a pleasant thing to listen to as opposed to every now and again, you kind of wincing the speakers are going, oh, what was that? And you realize it's a vocal just having these crazy sure frequencies sticking out

Speaker 2 (01:39:15):

Funny. It's like we've come full circle. We started highly technical, talked about feel and songwriting arrangement and have come back to highly technical,

Speaker 3 (01:39:27):

And

Speaker 2 (01:39:27):

I think it goes to show that how well you blend both,

Speaker 3 (01:39:31):

Well, it is a holistic sort of thing. You've just got to have a touch on

Speaker 4 (01:39:37):

Everything at every stage. I mean, that was a great insight to watching Nolie work and his approach learning off him was really cool. One thing I don't actually get to do too often these days is actually learn from other guys, and I sort of jump at the opportunity to get inside a studio and see how another guy tackles doing a recording, and he's definitely, I think he's on the same wavelength as I am in terms of just, you need to be hands on in every process and every way. You've got to understand every musician, every instrument, every technical aspect of the studio, and then every creative aspect of the studio as well. It's a huge list of things that you need to be aware of and need to be on top of your game in the studio to get the best result. And often you miss these things, and that's when you, in the final stages of mix, you're going the snare tuning thing, taking care of the snare tuning while you're actually recording it, rather than getting into the mix and going, oh, damn, my third chorus, the snares is completely de-tuned compared to the rest of the song.

(01:40:53):

Just all those little things, it's just they all add up to getting the best out of a recording and just knowing what all those little things are and being aware of them is kind of what I try to do. And I have noticed other guys doing it as well. So yeah, it's a big task, but you've kind of got to take it on board.

Speaker 2 (01:41:14):

You do a phenomenal job of it. And we love nali too, by the way. We had him on nail the mix, and it was downright and enlightening.

Speaker 3 (01:41:24):

Yeah, I think actually that was probably the first podcast I listened to, which is funny. He's got a lot of wisdom.

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):

Yeah, he's a great guy. Well, Forrester, thank you so much for coming on and sharing so much of your wisdom with us and just taking the time.

Speaker 3 (01:41:44):

No, thanks very much for having me and listening to me right along.

Speaker 4 (01:41:47):

Appreciate it. The

Speaker 1 (01:41:48):

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