EYAL LEVI: Overcoming Mix Paralysis, Managing Clients, and Getting Paid

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

Speaker 2 (00:26):

Eyal Levi. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. This is another episode of Dear Eyal and I am your host Eyal Levi. This is the show where I answer your questions and if you like this, be sure to send me more questions to al at URM Academy. That's EYAL at M Academy with the subject line. Dear Eyal, I'm happy to answer any of your questions on any topic, so fire away. We're going to get started with the first one by Mr. Geo Hue.

Speaker 3 (01:05):

Hey guys, I find myself struggling when it comes to doing the whole work on one thing and move on, whether it be with EQ moves or other similar LDFC decisions, I constantly end up spending way too much time on something going down the rabbit hole, which can then lead me to question the whole drum sound or whatever I've just been working on. Ultimately just really getting in the way of the workflow of the whole mix. Do you guys have any advice on ways to stop overthinking your decisions so much while still being able to take a step back and make sure you're not making changes that are way too drastic or something? Thanks again guys. Much love.

Speaker 2 (01:37):

Okay, Gio, thank you for your question. I'd be lying if I said that this wasn't a problem that I think just about every mixer, musician, creative person or just someone who cares about what they're doing faces, I mean, how can you not get neurotic about things if you care about the outcome? Right? And with mixing, there's so many moving pieces that how can you not get stuck in the minutiae? It's so natural. We all do it. It's not necessarily a good thing though. One of the things that happens when we obsess like this is we lose perspective and once we start to lose perspective, we end up in the type of situation that I'm about to illustrate for you. You think that you're doing a really good job of EQing something. You've been mixing for hours and you recently just had a breakthrough. You're going to redo the high end of the drums because you just got some inspiration and you spend the next five hours redoing the high end and you think it's slamming.

(02:45):

You go to sleep, wake up, and it all sucks. Your mix is way too harsh. The high end is out of control and you don't know how to get back to where you were because you didn't save as very well. You didn't document your progress. We've all been there. Now how does this happen? Well, in the case that I just described, it happens because you're mixing way past your expiration point and the high end of your hearing is gone and you're just trying to make up for it by adding high end. While in reality, the high end was probably fine and you can take that example and apply it anywhere. You got to know when to stop. And again, like I said, it's hard to know when to stop because you care. One of the ways that I've gotten good at learning to stop is by making myself stop.

(03:45):

You set a timer, for instance, I'm going to EQ this for the next 20 minutes and then I'm done. Or like Joel EK tries to do with speed mixing, you just get it out of the way and you move on. Now, one thing that you can ask yourself is, is it a hundred percent good? And your answer will almost always, if you're not kidding yourself, be no, it's not a hundred percent good. No, it's not as good as I think it could be. But what if you ask yourself, is it 80% good? Is it 85% good? And then in most cases, if you've done a decent enough job, the answer is yes. And if the answer is yes, then just move on because you're only going to do more damage by sticking in one place and hovering move on. And just like I said in a prior episode of the podcast, hashtag, fuck it, you just need to move on.

(04:48):

Now, like I said before, this is not a natural thing to do. The natural thing to do is to go down the rabbit hole and not come out until the mix is ruined. So you need to keep some sort of mindfulness about what you're doing Once you go over that time period, you say you sit 20 minutes to eq, the high end, say you have the urge to keep going, you just want to keep going. Your voice is telling you don't stop. Don't stop. Be mindful of why. Ask yourself, what's going on? Am I trying to compensate for my high end hearing being gone? Am I just getting obsessive again? Do I have deep seated issues that tell me that if I don't spend hours on a problem that I'm not actually doing work?

(05:43):

Am I being a perfectionist? What exactly is going on? Ask yourself and take the conscious effort to put on the brakes and move on to the next thing. You can only actually move on if you decide to move on. And I know that that might sound a little bit redundant, but you need to make this choice because if you don't make the choice, you're just going to keep on dwelling on the same thing over and over and over again. How do you think it is that local bands somehow end up with the same eight songs for 10 years and never end up with new songs? Because they sit there and dwell, no one tells them to stop. One of the group admins the other day told me that he thinks that he's going to rerecord his old local bands, first two songs just for shits and giggles, and we all had to have an intervention with him.

(06:36):

We were like, why are you doing this? Move on. Let it go onwards and upwards. It was very, very dramatic. It was like from the show intervention, he was crying and foaming at the mouth and his guy liner was running and it was a sorry scene. But from then he became a man and he realized that while the urge was to sit there and dwell on songs from the past or EQ moves that didn't feel done, the best thing to do was to put it down and to move on. So you're going to need to develop that internal muscle. Start with the timer, and as soon as the timer's up move on, that's it. That doesn't mean that you're done with the mix. It doesn't mean you can't come back later and fix it up. It just means that right then and there in that moment in time, you are done working on that EQ and you have decided to move on to the next thing. Thanks for your question.

Speaker 4 (07:36):

Hello, A all my question pertains to building a studio or a space at my house to do some mixing, do some live band tracking, things like that. So basically I live in rural Ohio between Cleveland and Youngstown. Pretty much I'm 45 minutes from everywhere and Pittsburgh's only about an hour and a half away. I have enough land in my place to build a tracking and mixing space on my property. So I'm trying to weigh my options there. Is it more important this day and age to be located in a major city or is the fact that I'm located within a reasonable drive of those three markets, Cleveland, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh at my home, is that more advantageous? Also, if I'm doing this at my house, there's two options that I see for doing it on my property. One would be put a separate dedicated building out in the backyard with a medium-sized tracking room, isolation booth, and then a control and mix room.

(08:34):

Nice thing with that is I can build the walls and interiors the right way up front, but that's going to be quite a bit more expensive to do. I also have a finished basement at my house and for relatively inexpensive, I could convert that into almost the same setup I described before. A disadvantage there is the noise level in my home leaking through the floor while I'm tracking, and then also the noise if I'm tracking live instruments, disturbing my family. I do have an infant son. He naps frequently and irregularly. So I was wondering if you could let me know your thoughts on which of these options would be the better choice, and then if there's anything else that you would consider that I'm not considering. Thanks aal.

Speaker 2 (09:11):

Okay, that question came to us for Mr. Eric Oli and Eric. Good question. However, you're leaving out something that's really, really important here, which is how much income are you making from this because that would kind of determine lots of things for me. So I'm going to try to give you an answer that's as income agnostic as possible, keeping in mind that the income here really is one of the major factors. So let's start with the major city issue. No, I do not think you need to be in a major city, especially if you're in a tri-state area, like a good middle ground between three places. That's kind of how Joey Sturgis got his start. I definitely don't think you need to be in Nashville or New York or la While there is something to be said for being in those places, there's always stuff around. There's also a ton of competition and the prices, the price of cost of living out there and the cost of doing business is insanely high. So you'd have to be very, very established if you were to consider building what you're talking about building in a place like la.

(10:38):

So that's why I said income is kind of an issue here. There's something to be said also for being kind of a little more in the middle of nowhere where you're at the meeting point of various places, you can grab business from various markets and when one dries up focus on the other. When that one dries up, go back to the original and you can kind of develop more of a regional name for yourself just by doing business from bands that are equidistant to you. So there's more bang for your buck that way. So I think there's a lot of benefit to being where you're at. I think that in general, geography is not the most important thing in the world unless you're in just a place where there are no clients.

(11:32):

I don't know someone from Fargo is going to get mad at me, but it doesn't seem to me like Fargo is the best place to start a recording career. I've been out there, there's not much around it. Shaq could be wrong, but I'd want to be in a more centrally located place. Now, mind you, that does not mean a major city. I just mean centrally located to where it's easier for people to get to you. Orlando was kind of like that in Florida when I was there. You could get people from the northern part of Florida or southern Florida or central Florida. It was generally pretty easy for them. So that was a good spot where Joey used to be in Indiana was a good spot and it sounds like you're in a good spot too. So as far as that goes, I don't see a reason to move.

(12:23):

Now out of your two options on property, obviously based on my experience and I have had a studio in my home before, I would say that it's better to invest the money in a standalone building. Do it right from the start and don't piss where you eat basically. Now that's really expensive though. So again, money comes into this. Are you already making a living at it? Does that make sense for you? Is this something that you will one day make a living at? And if you're not making a living at it, are you willing to spend that kind of money on what's a hobby? Is this a hobby for you? And those are very important questions you need to answer for yourself because, and you're looking at a lot of money out the window spent on a place by itself. But me personally, if I had a family with kids around, I would not feel comfortable having the studio and the house attached, not just because of the noise, but because running a studio brings undesirable elements to your place, whether you like it or not.

(13:42):

You can't control what the backgrounds are of every band member. You can set rules saying that none of their friends are allowed to show up, but some of their friends will show up and different people have different opinions on how things should be in the studio, but is that necessarily something you want to expose your kids too? You might deal with the squeakiest clean of clients and that's fine. I'm sure that all your clients are perfect, but for those of us who don't have perfect clients, I would be very wary of combining the two. And it's not even necessarily for safety reasons though. That is a good enough reason. If you ask me when kids are involved safety, if you just say for safety reasons, I don't want the bands in the same building as the kids, fine by me, but even if that's not the issue, the noise and the distraction, it'll take away from a good normal home life. In my opinion. Once a house is attached to a studio, it becomes a studio house and I personally wouldn't raise my kids that way. I would build a separate place so that when you're done at night, you're done at night, you can go home to an actual family house. That's my 37 cents. Thanks for your question, Eric.

Speaker 5 (15:09):

Hey Al, this is Benjamin Hall. First, let me say really love the podcast and I appreciate everything you're doing with Nail the Mix to help young and upcoming audio engineers like me keep up the great work. Okay, onto my question. I live in Pittsburgh, PA and I just landed a client from the wake of Texas area. They want to record a full album with me, which is great and I'm stoked, but they're total nubs when it comes to the studio, not the best at playing with a click from other demos that I've heard them and not very much studio experience at all. My question is in regards to setting up pre-production with the band. They don't have a good way of going about capturing their song ideas beyond just setting up an iPhone in the room where they're practicing and capturing a really crappy live performance.

(15:53):

I'm trying to figure out the most effective way to go about pre-production with them, which in my mind would include writing, arranging and getting the rough tracks done all as a part of pre-production. My ideas have ranged from flying down for a weekend to help them with writing and recording some rough takes, advising them to invest in a small recording rig for them to practice their tracking, to having them come up to my studio a few days earlier than the scheduled recording sessions so that I could get all the pre-pro done with them. I would appreciate your best advice for pre-production from your past experiences and maybe pointing out anything that I might have ever looked in my logic. Thanks dude. Hey

Speaker 2 (16:29):

Ben. Thanks for your question. Oh boy, I have been in your shoes and I do not envy you. Now, let me not be so negative. First of all, congratulations on getting an out of town gig. That in and of itself is killer and I applaud you for wanting to make the most of it. However, you got to ask yourself if the juice is worth the squeeze with this. In my experience with these kinds of bands, asking them to buy their own rig or using iPhone recordings is tantamount to expecting a monkey to learn how to play chess via Skype. It is just not worth it. Now, the other option, of course, is to get them to come to you if they're not very well versed in recording, meaning they're Ns, they haven't been in the studio very much, how do you know that they're good enough to actually be recorded?

(17:35):

And then the next question is, if they're not good enough to be recorded, what is your plan of action at that point? It sounds to me like this is one of those situations where if I was presented with it and I was committed, I was doing this gig, I would be ready to have to take over anything. I would have a drum session ready to go, both virtual and real with myself and John Douglas. We would be ready to re-record the drums. I would have my guitars all set up so that I could redo the guitars and even plan on redoing them, myself and John Douglas, and we would even be ready to redo the vocals because you just never know. It sounds to me like that's what you're in store for because in this day and age, almost every band I know of has at least one guy that knows how to record themselves.

(18:32):

That's almost like par for the course now. And so if they don't have that, it makes me wonder what's wrong with them? What else are they deficient in? Do they know how to play to a click? Have they heard of a click? Do they know that guitars are doubled? Do they know what the eyes are? Do they know what amping is? Are you going to have to fight with them about every single little thing? Or are they going to argue about using some 51 50 from 1996 that still has the factory tubes in it never been changed once? What are the kinds of arguments that you're going to be getting involved with if these guys are nubs? And man, that is a long way to go from Waco, Texas to land yourself in that type of situation. And I've been in that situation because I needed the money before and it was not worth a single penny because of the pain, the mental pain of working on that kind of session.

(19:33):

So I would highly suggest getting a complete picture of what you're in store for. Are you in store for doing everything or is this just a really badass band who can't afford their own crappy recording gear? But if they can't afford it, how are they affording to go all the way from Waco so something doesn't quite add up? Why aren't they on the ball with that stuff? Why are they trying to plan a recording that's out of state without having their pre-pro done? These are the kinds of things that make me wonder and which bring up red flags. And so ultimately, I would do the pre-pro in person. Now, the thing that sucks is you don't want them to come all the way from Waco. That is a long distance to find out that they're terrible, right? But at the same time, if they are total nubs, you don't necessarily want to do the pre-pro down in their territory.

(20:39):

Who knows what you're stepping into there? So maybe suggest a neutral third party kind of situation where you rent a small studio for the weekend down in Texas. Go there and stay there, see what they're all about, and then make the decision. Maybe that's the way to hear them and assess the situation without either party investing too much before going forward. I can see so many ways that this can go wrong, but at the same time, a lot of other people, I would have a really hard time just saying no to the gig. I hate saying no to things I'd want to at least find out. I imagine that getting out of town clients is a new and exciting thing for you, and you would love it if this turned out to be something good that you could use to build your name. So do your due diligence. Don't just jump in though. Just jumping in blindly could lead to a nightmare, the likes of which you've never experienced. Thanks for your question. This next question is from Matt Baton.

Speaker 6 (21:46):

Dear A, I essentially have the ambition to live a life exactly like yours. I'm 20 years old and I'm in a newly formed band with my friends. We've been together for four months and we just played our first show. And preferably I'd like to ride this wave out for the next 10 years or so. And then afterwards, I want to become a professional mixer slash producer. What is your advice for someone in my position if you had to do it all over again? And also, what do you think about the outlook of the industry now that there's so much more competition for mixers and producers? Thanks a bunch.

Speaker 2 (22:22):

Alright, well, first of all, that's like dating a girl for four months and saying that you want to get married to her and start a family and be together at least 10 years while you get ready for the next thing you're going to do. And life just doesn't work that way. If you want to be in a touring band, you need to focus on songwriting, performance, marketing lineup, and getting the word out about your band, having the ability to tour and a fan base, which will support you touring. And none of that will happen without having really, really good songs. But you're going to have to develop some sort of a content strategy. Now that sounds kind of, I don't know what the word is, kind of buttoned up for a band, but really you, are you going to just release stuff on YouTube? Are you going to try to tour for years on end?

(23:27):

What are you going to try to do? And to that end, where do you see mixing fit in the way I did it? They worked very well together. I got better at mixing by working on my band and other bands. And then as I worked with better bands, I got better shows for my band. But those were different times. And I would say that mixing while on the road is very, very, very difficult. And it requires you to be in one of the loftiest of situations, which isn't entirely a realistic thing. Now, I'm not saying that it can happen, but it's not the way to plan out the future to say, I am going to refine my mixing skills by touring on a bus that has a studio in it. I mean, how else are you going to do it? That's not necessarily a way to go about it.

(24:25):

What I would recommend you do is you come up with a plan for how one feeds the other and vice versa. How will you get better at mixing and better at the band at the same time? How will the band showcase both your mixing and itself, how can it become one in the same thing like say Peter Akron from Hypocrisy, or Michael Kean from the Faceless. How does that work? How do you get one of those situations happening where the music reflects how good the guy is at mixing and then he gets mixing clients as a result of it? What do you need to do to get there? And you're already working on the most important thing, the music, but you're 20, dude. How do you know that the guys that you're working with are people that you're even going to know at 21? You don't.

(25:23):

I mean, it might be cool if that works out, but I would worry about number one, and number one is your own skill. I would worry about your songwriting skill, your playing ability, your mixing and recording ability. And I would focus as much as possible on getting as good as possible and becoming as good of a writer as you humanly can and try to make your songs sound goddamn amazing and just focus on that for a little while. And you'll figure out other pieces as it comes along. But if that's the path you want where you're the dude in the band who also has a mixing career, you got to be badass. And so more so than worrying about a band right now, I'd worry more about being badass and focus your energies on that. Thanks for your question. This next question is from Geo per Jan, and I'm sorry if I mispronounced that.

(26:22):

Hey Al, I have been a URM now, the mix member for a few months now and really like what you guys do. Thanks for this. You're welcome, buddy. I'm new in the recording world and I've been recording and mixing for one year now. I've been working with three local bands and now I record on location. So this means that I have to take all my gear, move it over, and when all is recorded, I move everything back home and reinstall it at home. This causes damage to my gear and takes up a lot of time. I have been contacting a local recording studio and convince them to rent me the studio for 90 euros a day. What doesn't seem a lot the problems that I don't have a name to convince people to pay for the studio where we can record. I've been recording these three bands for of charge, but I can not continue to do this as I also want to improve and have to have the gear to improve with.

(27:13):

Now, what's a good price to charge, to record, edit and mix a song and location? And do you have any tips on how to get people convinced to pay for a studio? Thanks for all. Alright, first of all, let's talk about your gear. I have a feeling that you're just throwing it in bags and carrying it around, and that's very, very bad. You're going to need to invest in an efficient way to move your gear around, like go to the hardware store, for instance, and those big toolboxes tool crates that they have on wheels, for instance. Maybe that's a good place to put your microphone stands. Try to buy cases for almost everything that you'll be using with nail the mix. We originally started doing things pretty ghetto. We didn't plan on touring with it. That only started to happen more recently. And so our rig was traveling in boxes, just ratty old boxes.

(28:16):

And one day I flipped out and started to get custom SKB cases for everything because that's your lifeline, man. That's your gear. You need your gear. So protect it. If you're going to be doing on location, recording, protect it. And then what you need to do is you need to take an inventory and with an inventory, go get yourself insurance. Get insurance on the gear. Now, I don't know what country you're in, I don't know what your situation is, but there's got to be some way that you can get insurance on your gear and it's not going to be that expensive do it, because if it's breaking and you're moving it around, what are you going to do when it's broken? You're fucked, dude. So get good cases for it. Keep it clean, keep it organized, and get insurance for it. Don't be small time about this.

(29:07):

Don't fuck around. You do this. I'm looking at you right now and you're ignoring me. Don't ignore me. Do this right now. Right now. Right fucking now. Okay, next. How do you convince a client that it's worth investing in the studio? Well, the quality of the recording that you do on location should be what convinces them, right? If you're doing something for free, you're doing it for free. A to learn, but B, also to have a calling card. Basically value in advance. You're showing them what you're capable of bringing to the table because you don't have a name yet. And hopefully it's good enough that next time around they're going to want to pay for an actual production. Now, if you're going to a client that regardless of how good you are, they don't have the money, then you're going to the wrong clients. You should be going to a client who won't pay you because they don't know who you are, but they're going to give you a shot for free.

(30:16):

But if you impress them, then they'll have the money to pay for a production. If you're going to a client that no matter what happens, you could be the next will Putney, they won't have the money either way, then you are wasting your time. And it's not a matter of convincing them. What are you going to do, convince them not to be broke. So ask yourself who your clients are and take better care of your gear. And again, if your mixes are that great, if what you're doing is that awesome, it should speak for itself. When it comes time to talk about doing the next thing, you say, well, I did this for free for you to show you what I could do, but now it's going to cost you money if you want to do it for real. And look, like I said, if they don't have money, it's not going to happen.

(31:05):

It doesn't matter how good it is. So choose your clients wisely. I don't have a problem with doing free work. I did a lot of free work too. But you have to learn to differentiate who's just trying you out and who is taking advantage of you. And stay away from the ones that are taking advantage of you. And again, get insurance on your gear, get cases for your gear, keep it clean and keep it organized. Have a good day. All right, that wraps up this edition of Dear Eyal. I had a great time doing it. I want to do more of these. I need more of your questions. Send them to Al at URM Academy, that's EYL at urm Do Academy. You can send them ridden or recorded. As you've heard. Make sure to include your name if you record them. And yeah, I'd love talking to you guys. I love answering your questions. And hashtag, fuck it. The Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast

Speaker 1 (32:04):

Is brought to you by STEM Audio. STEM 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 STA audio.com for more info to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit UR m.academy/podcast and subscribe today. Subscribe today.