Dino Medanhodzic: Pop & Metal Production, Massive Low-End Secrets, Switching to Reaper

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by two notes. Audio Engineering two notes is a leader in the market for load box, cabinet and mic simulators. Gunner, the days of having iso rooms or having to record an amp at ear bleeding volumes to capture that magic tone. The Torpedo Live reload and studio allow you to crank your amp up as loud as you want, but record silently. Check out www.two-nodes.com for more info. And now your

Speaker 2 (00:00:33):

Host. Eyal Levi. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. I am Eyal Levi. With me is someone I've been looking forward to speaking with for a while. His name is Dino Medanhodzic. He's from Sweden. You may or may not know of him if you're Swedish, you definitely know of him, which I've come to learn from all our Swedish listeners. I actually haven't had a more requested producer on here by Swedish listeners than him. So it comes in pretty high demand. I didn't realize that. I've been listening to his work for quite a while. Sometimes I will put on, I'll just search pop music or European pop music or something in YouTube and put that on in the background while I'm doing stuff. And I came across an artist named daughter. It's a female artist from Sweden. And I remember listening to the mixes and being like, God, this is so lush. This sounds so damn good. I love this. And eventually I did some research and I realized that this is the dude that everyone was telling me about. Then I came to learn that he also does a ton of metal and heavy stuff, so that's kind of interesting to me. He owns a studio called Ika Studios in Stockholm, and what else can I say? Welcome. Thanks for being here. Thanks,

Speaker 3 (00:02:09):

Man.

Speaker 2 (00:02:11):

Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you here. Let's get right into it. What leads you, or what draws you to producing music that's such, I guess, so far apart? Metal and pop and electronic and then brutal?

Speaker 3 (00:02:35):

Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm just, I dunno. I just get so bored too early on in everything I do. So I'm not able to do the same thing over and over again. So I dunno, just restless guy. I dunno.

Speaker 2 (00:02:51):

I understand the boredom factor. Actually when I was producing full time, it used to make me insane. I felt like maybe getting out of metal would've been the answer, but then this whole thing happened with the podcast and now the mix, and

Speaker 4 (00:03:09):

That

Speaker 2 (00:03:09):

Was my ticket to not being bored. But I totally agree that when you're doing the same thing over and over, there's a certain personality type that it seems like they can't do that. They'll just go nuts, get depressed and anxious and just hate life. So that's what it was for you?

Speaker 3 (00:03:29):

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just need some excitement. That's what I need. And I also mean I've always loved all kinds of music. The metal thing for me came pretty late, actually. I didn't listen to metal music up until maybe I was, I dunno, 14. I actually started playing guitar when I was 10. So I had kind of long period of listening to Beatles and I don't know, I am from Yugoslavia originally, so I listen to a lot of Balkan Music Vic and stuff like that. So I dunno, I just like all kinds of music. And that's important too, because you have to have a passion for what you do. You can't just take on a lot of different genres and you don't know what you're doing basically. So yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:04:15):

So you would say that you're pretty familiar with the genres you work on from the standpoint of a listener?

Speaker 3 (00:04:23):

Yeah, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, of course from time to time there are projects I do that I just don't have a clue and I just try to absorb it as much as possible right before I get into them. But I'm really open to anything and I truly love all kinds of music, so it's not a big deal for me to get into new stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:04:43):

Well, I think it's interesting that you say that because lots of times when I hear metal guys trying to do other genres or other genres trying to do metal, they tend to do a really bad job

Speaker 3 (00:04:56):

Because

Speaker 2 (00:04:57):

Usually when you get a metal guy trying to do something outside of metal, if they don't listen to it and they don't understand it, then they typically try to do a metal mix for another genre and you have something soft with huge samples or whatever that just don't make any sense. And then sometimes I've heard with some productions by guys who don't understand how metal works when they try to do metal, it sounds really, really weird and weak and doesn't have the same level of power. So I definitely think there's something to be said for knowing the genres that you're going into. So you're not originally from Sweden. How did you end up there?

Speaker 3 (00:05:41):

Well, it was that war we had in Yugoslavia 92, in the start of nineties, there was a big conflict between all those different parts, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia. So there was a huge war there. And all the people since my family, my mother and father was from two different religions basically. And that was a big, big, so I was like a bastard child or something. You can't be the mixed religion over there and it would be horrible. So we had to move there, move from Yugoslavia, and we just went as far up as possible basically. And we ended up in Sweden and they just the most amazing country ever to just bring in people like that and taking care of everyone. There was no issues at all.

Speaker 2 (00:06:38):

Do you remember life there or were you too young?

Speaker 3 (00:06:41):

Yeah, I was six, seven years, something like that. So I started school there actually, I learned, we have a different scripture, I dunno what you call it in English, we say it's like in Russia. In Russia, you have those different, it's not typical letters. I know what you call that.

Speaker 2 (00:07:04):

I know what you're talking about though. Don't know. I'm not going to try to name it because I'll reveal how dumb I am.

Speaker 3 (00:07:12):

Same here. So I learned that type of stuff. And so I remember a lot of stuff from the war as well, a lot of horrible stuff going on there. So in some way, I mean in some way that kind of made me a bit colder person. I dunno, I got really nerdy and to myself and really shy and introvert and stuff like that. So I think that was kind of a good thing for me when it came to playing music and getting into all this stupid studio work when you really have to be introvert and nerdy to get into this field, I think,

Speaker 2 (00:07:54):

Well, it takes a special kind of person to be able to sit there for 10 to 12 hours in a dark room with a computer. Yeah, definitely. And listen to things over and over and over and over. Yeah. So did you start with music when you were still over there? Or did that start in Sweden?

Speaker 3 (00:08:12):

Yeah, that started in Sweden. I saw my dad play guitar when I was 10 years old. He just played a couple of chords and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. He bought me an acoustic guitar and the thing is that he also bought me an instructional video, and that video was those old VHS cassettes you could buy with the Guitar Hero play. So that was a video with inve moms team. I dunno if you know that guy. That's Swedish. Of course, yeah. Imagine me like 10 years old acoustic guitar. That's hilarious. That video, my mind was blown. It was just crazy. So I just started practicing.

Speaker 2 (00:08:51):

That video is so funny. That's the one where he's like, here, I'm going to play it full speed. And it's like 300 miles an hour and he's like, now I'm going to play it slow. And then it's the exact same speed.

Speaker 3 (00:09:02):

Exactly. Oh man. Yeah, that was the hardest thing ever. But it was so exciting to me. I thought he was the coolest guy ever. But yeah, so that's how I got into music basically. I

Speaker 2 (00:09:16):

Mean, you didn't actually start learning tunes right from the beginning though. You

Speaker 3 (00:09:20):

I had to. I didn't know anything else. It was just, okay, this is how you play guitar, basically. So yeah, so that's how I got into the guitar Shred music. Not really shredding, but Joe sat and Steve I and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (00:09:39):

Interesting.

Speaker 3 (00:09:39):

Yeah, so that's my first contact with kind of heavier music you could say.

Speaker 2 (00:09:48):

So how does it go from Guitar Shred to pop? Yeah. Well

Speaker 3 (00:09:53):

That's mainly because I've been listening to Pop earlier on, I always liked softer music, more like the old school Pop Beatles and stuff like that. But also, I mean, my family always played pop music at home and it was pop everywhere. All my friends listened to pop and that was the thing. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:10:18):

That's great stuff. So how long, okay, so you started playing guitar at 10

Speaker 4 (00:10:26):

With

Speaker 2 (00:10:26):

14 you Metal, you're onto Shred. Where does the studio come into play?

Speaker 3 (00:10:33):

Yeah, so I was 15 I think when I started a band called Soul Breach. We released one record. But yeah, it's really crappy and there's a reason why it's crappy. When we were, I was 16 years old and we got a deal from, there's a local studio that was quite big and that producer guy over there, he told us, you can record an album here and when you get signed I'll get paid. So that was the deal, and we were really excited about that since a lot of bands that we looked up to recorded over there. And we got into that studio and he started recording us on tape. This was back in 2003 or something, so we didn't know how Studio worked. I mean, none of us has ever been in a studio basically. So he started recording us and the next day he wasn't even there, he just wasn't in the studio. So he just showed us, this is the record button, do this thing and call it a day. We just sat there by ourselves and recorded ourselves on tape and it was a nightmare. You can imagine.

Speaker 2 (00:11:45):

No. Well that actually happened to me once

(00:11:48):

When I was 16, went to the studio the first time and the guy that was recording us was like, all the local bands went to this guy's studio, but he was a horrible drug addict. And I mean, look, we were like 16 and 15 and he would just do heroin in front of our faces. At the time, I didn't realize how fucked up that was. Now as an adult I'm like, I can't imagine someone being so fucked up that they would just do that around a bunch of kids who are going to get picked up by their parents later. But

Speaker 3 (00:12:22):

Anyways,

Speaker 2 (00:12:22):

Yeah, my dad would've fucking murdered him if I had said it, literally would've murdered him. My dad caught me smoking weed once years later and I thought that I was literally going to get killed.

Speaker 4 (00:12:37):

Oh

Speaker 2 (00:12:37):

Shit. But if he had found out that this guy was doing heroin in front of me, my dad would be in prison for murder for sure. But anyways, so he would do heroin and then go to sleep on the couch. Insane. And there we are, just a bunch of kids standing around, what do we do? So then one time he's like, okay, this is how you operate the tape machine. This is how you get it to loop. When you want to record, you press this, I'm going to sleep. That's how I started recording.

Speaker 3 (00:13:10):

Wow. Wow. That's kind of similar story, but that was way more horrible. Wow. Yeah. Funny. That would never happen today. There's no room for those kind of guys, it seems like.

Speaker 2 (00:13:26):

I can't see that happening today.

Speaker 3 (00:13:28):

Right. Yeah. That's crazy. Well, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:13:31):

Yeah, things have definitely changed. I mean back then it was like there's two studios that did all the local metal bands in the entire city. So you go to one or you go to the other,

Speaker 3 (00:13:42):

They are the power.

Speaker 2 (00:13:43):

Yeah. Now, no, now you

Speaker 3 (00:13:47):

Have to work.

Speaker 2 (00:13:48):

Yeah, you got to be fucking awesome if you're going to get clients coming to you.

Speaker 3 (00:13:51):

Definitely. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:13:53):

Wow. Alright, so back to your story though. I didn't mean to derail

Speaker 3 (00:13:56):

You. No, no, that was interesting.

Speaker 2 (00:13:59):

Yeah, I'll derail if it's a good story.

Speaker 3 (00:14:03):

Yeah, so I mean that's almost what happened to us, but I was still excited about that because I always liked to have control. So the thought that I could sit in a studio and record wherever I want, that was the most amazing thing to me. That's how it sparked something in me. So right after we were in that studio and recorded that album, we redid our rehearsal room, we had the rehearsal room next to a friend's band, and so we just decided to make a hole in the wall and put a window between the rooms and it looked like a studio. So we bought really cheap gear. I got a 24 channel top of the line Beringer mixer. I dunno if you know those. Hell yeah. Yeah, I had one of those. And there was also those Fostex D 88 Track hard drive recorders. I don't know if you know those.

Speaker 2 (00:15:06):

Yeah, I hate those.

Speaker 3 (00:15:07):

Yeah, they're horrible. But I

Speaker 2 (00:15:09):

Ate those.

Speaker 3 (00:15:10):

Yeah, me too. I still have one left actually in rack. Nobody wanted to buy it a bunch of years ago. But yeah, that's what I started out with. And since there wasn't many studios in the neighborhood, so all of the bands, they rehearsed there, they came to us and we did it free. We just wanted to learn. So I did a couple of years just doing horrible work. I didn't have a clue and it sounded awful, everything. But at the same time, we learned a lot of stuff. Especially for me, it was really important to get out of my introvert's personality basically. I was so shy and had a lot of anxiety being with people. So I think that was a huge thing for me to just,

Speaker 2 (00:15:57):

You think that that anxiety was carried over from having to leave under traumatic situation and then end up in a brand new place?

Speaker 3 (00:16:06):

Yeah, I mean, yeah, a lot of people have been telling me that, and it probably is something like that because no one in my family has been the way I've been. Like my dad was the most social and extrovert person you can imagine. I don't know, maybe something happened there when we flew the war. But anyway, it helped me a lot just being in that environment, recording a lot of bands, you especially know how people like that are. Young kids wanted to be rock stars and

Speaker 2 (00:16:44):

And they worship you if you're recording them. So that's actually a really good way to get good socially when you're a lot younger,

Speaker 4 (00:16:52):

Because

Speaker 2 (00:16:53):

Even if the recordings sound crappy, I don't think anybody, when you're that age, I don't think anybody knows that they sound crappy. That's right. If there are a bunch of teenagers in the band and they don't know any better, they think it sounds great so you can remain friends. Yeah, that's right. No, but it's a great social tool I think when you're younger because it forces you to interact with people and if you want to get them to come back, you need to learn how to interact with them in a very positive, pleasant way, even when telling them things that are difficult to tell them.

Speaker 3 (00:17:35):

Exactly. And that's also a struggle that I've been having. How do you tell people this is not good enough? Basic stuff that was so hard for me, that's really something that had to be developed. And I'm kind of glad that I went through all those really crappy years. I would say crap because I didn't have any knowledge about the craft. How do you make stuff sound good? It wasn't much about that. It was more about psychological factor for me. And so in a sense, I feel like I've spent a lot of years just down the drain. I didn't learn anything. But in another way, when I look at this way, I feel that I'm kind of glad I went through that anyway,

Speaker 2 (00:18:18):

Man, I really don't think that that's years down the drain at all. From my personal experience and also just from everyone we've talked to on this podcast, the personal skills department, the social skills department is so important in this line of work. It's almost as important as being able to do the music part well because people need to hang out with you for all day, every day for weeks or months. And so they better at least be able to tolerate you and not just anyone can make themselves pleasant to be around. You have to know how to do it, in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (00:19:05):

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 (00:19:05):

Especially if you're an introvert. So honestly, man, I don't think that that's wasted time. And I can tell you we have some guys in our group, in our private group for Nail the mix, for instance, who are very talented but have no social skills. And I have to talk to them sometimes aside from the group and be like, guys, if this is how you behave in the world, I just see online. But if this is how you behave in the world and talk to people in the world, you're not going to get very far in your careers because no one's going to want to hang out with you.

Speaker 4 (00:19:39):

And

Speaker 2 (00:19:40):

If they don't want to hang out with you, they're just going to find someone else who will do the same level of audio work, but that they can hang out with or maybe not quite as good. But if they can hang out with them all day, they'll go that direction.

Speaker 3 (00:19:53):

Yeah, I totally agree with you. That's really well put. That's really true.

Speaker 2 (00:19:58):

So I don't think it's a waste of time.

Speaker 3 (00:19:59):

No, well, I try to tell myself that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:20:04):

So just a few years. When did you feel like you started to get better?

Speaker 3 (00:20:10):

I mean, still I'm never happy, but Well, when I kind of got serious into the whole thing was when I got a chance to work on a Milcho album. Do you know the band Milcho, Swedish Punk? It's one of the biggest Swedish punk rock bands. I mean, they're not that big anymore here in Sweden, but yeah, most Swedes know who they are and they've been touring the world for many years and stuff. But they have their own studio, sound lab here in the neighborhood, and I

Speaker 2 (00:20:44):

Feel like I've heard of Sound Lab.

Speaker 3 (00:20:46):

Yeah, that's their studio and a lot of bands been recording there, but I was in a music store a lot and there was this guy working, he produced a lot of Milli Colin stuff earlier and Don Wan, no, I dunno if you know who that is. Oh, of

Speaker 2 (00:21:05):

Course.

Speaker 3 (00:21:05):

Yeah. Alright. Of sanity and stuff. He'd been doing a lot of stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:21:10):

I would love to get him on the podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:21:12):

Yeah, yeah, you should.

Speaker 2 (00:21:13):

He's done some great work.

Speaker 3 (00:21:14):

Definitely. Yeah. And yeah, I'm really thankful because he asked me once, but since he knew I was doing a lot of stuff and played in bands and he thought I was kind of good on guitar. I dunno why he approached me, but he told me that, oh, do you know Pro Tools be Detective? I was like, yeah, sure. I never used Pro Tools, I didn't know what be Detective was. So I kind of lied him straight up in his face and he asked me, oh, then maybe you can work on the next Me Call album, do some editing and stuff like that. And I was, oh yeah, definitely. That was the biggest deal

Speaker 2 (00:21:50):

For me. Had you even used a computer for audio

Speaker 3 (00:21:53):

That point? Yeah, yeah. Until that, yeah, I have mean we switched pretty early on to, I bought a Power PowerBook G four and it had Logic way back before Apple owned it basically.

Speaker 2 (00:22:08):

Okay, so at this point, it's not like you were recording on one of those Stech hard disc

Speaker 3 (00:22:13):

Recording. No, I mean it's been a slow transition, but Got

Speaker 2 (00:22:16):

It.

Speaker 3 (00:22:17):

Yeah. But I knew some stuff up until that point, but I haven't used Pro Tools and I wasn't really interested in other dots or anything. I just thought, oh, I buy this computer from Apple and I get Logic and that's it. So I never questioned what.to use or anything. But anyway, immediately when you asked me to do this thing, I went to the other shop music store and bought Pro Tools, but it's maxed out, so you can have B Detective back then, you could have all those upgrades and stuff to get all the functionality that HD Pro Tools had. So I got that and just spent all my money on that and just practiced the whole week before the actual recordings. And then I went into the studio with, it is actually an American producer, Louis, I dunno if you know who that is, but he produced the whole album and just being there with him for these two weeks, I learned a million times more than in those years before. I mean that was a complete game changer for me to see how a professional works.

Speaker 2 (00:23:32):

It's almost like until you see how pros do it, you won't understand what quality is.

Speaker 3 (00:23:41):

Exactly. You just have to experience it. Right?

Speaker 2 (00:23:44):

Yeah. How are you supposed to figure that out for yourself?

Speaker 3 (00:23:48):

Exactly. It takes forever to read. Yeah. So no, I'm really thankful for that opportunity. And so I just sat there and edited a lot of stuff and Lou, he correct me a bunch and he had critiques and it was so good to hear like, oh, I'm doing this wrong and somebody can correct it for me. So I just practiced a lot and all the information he gave me was really valuable. Right after that recording, the guys in Milli Collin started giving me some other jobs, like random bands from all over the world came in and I would just sit there and track a lot of bands basically. So yeah, so that's how it got kind of serious. So I decided after a while to get my own place, and that's seven years ago or something. So that's where I'm sitting right now. How

Speaker 2 (00:24:44):

Did it lead to doing major label

Speaker 3 (00:24:46):

Pop? Well, as I said, I've always been attracted to pop music, but here in Stockholm where I am right now, I mean there's whole different vibe. Nobody does metal. I mean, yeah, people do metal, but it's so many songwriters, singer songwriters and people writing pop songs to pitching to Asia and stuff like that. And I just got involved with some people in that realm and I thought it was kind of interesting that you could also be a songwriter. So that's how I got into songwriting in pop music as well. And since I already was a producer, I combined those things and the first project was actually daughter that you mentioned, and that's actually my girlfriend. So we decided to just develop her project. So we did everything from scratch and promoted her for different labels and eventually Warner picked her up and that's how I got into having more connections in the major label.

Speaker 2 (00:25:59):

Now is she still your girlfriend?

Speaker 3 (00:26:00):

Yeah, yeah, actually we live here in the studio. We're leaving the music bohemi lifestyle.

Speaker 2 (00:26:10):

A lot of people I know have said never record your girlfriend, but I guess in your case it worked out.

Speaker 3 (00:26:19):

It worked out. I mean, yeah, having a girlfriend is so hard when you do this, it's almost impossible. So for me, the only alternative was to be with someone that understands this lifestyle and does the same thing. So she actually, we have two control rooms here in my studio. So she sits in the small studio and I'm sitting here and we just work all day and then we get together, eat food. So we kind of do the same thing but in the same building. So we see each other.

Speaker 2 (00:26:51):

Does she just work on her own music or is she also working for other artists?

Speaker 3 (00:26:55):

Yeah, she works for other artists as well. She writes songs for, she's mainly a songwriter, but she also does some vocals. I dunno what you call it, ghost vocals, do you say that? Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:27:07):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:27:09):

For a lot of stuff. And that's how she gets her money right away. And then the songwriting, it always pays off years later, so it's not as secure income.

Speaker 2 (00:27:22):

That's cool. So you guys have a little music factory.

Speaker 3 (00:27:25):

Yeah, that's actually why it's called radon, because that means a small factory in Serbian. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:27:34):

I obviously had no idea that that's what it meant. So this is interesting. I had no idea that that's where you came from or that you recorded your girlfriend and it actually worked out some interesting things. I have some more technical questions. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:27:53):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (00:27:55):

Says you have massive control over low end in your mixes. It's pretty perfect sounding.

Speaker 4 (00:28:02):

Wow, thanks.

Speaker 2 (00:28:06):

Do you have any thoughts about how you go achieving the huge low end sound, your mixes? Is it different every time or have you spent a lot of time thinking about it? Or did you just luck into it? I doubt you just lucked into it. No one lucks into good at low

Speaker 3 (00:28:21):

End. Well, that's really interesting that you mentioned low end since actually I've never thought about low end. I'm mixing NS tens and I barely hear the low end up until the end of the mix when I have a suber or some headphones at the end. So I never really thought about the low and that much. I just try to pick sounds that work together. I don't know, I don't have an exciting answer for that one, but I mainly struggle with the high end, like the symbols and stuff like that. That's where I spend a lot of time and I always struggle with that, but

Speaker 2 (00:29:00):

Well, do you think that maybe the low end is a lot easier for you because the arrangements and your music are very, very good?

Speaker 3 (00:29:09):

Yeah, I mean, arrangements for me is everything. It doesn't matter if the arrangement is horrible, a bass is playing something that doesn't work at all with the kick drum or whatever. I mean, I can't fix that. Instead I just go in and cut the bass the way I like to hear it basically. Or I do stuff like that. I don't really try to EQ or make stuff work together, even though I feel it doesn't sound good in context. So yeah, I would say

Speaker 2 (00:29:43):

It's most so better work arrangement wise.

Speaker 3 (00:29:47):

Yeah, I think that's more important actually than trying to struggle making something work that really doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (00:29:55):

Let's talk about the high end then if that's where you say you struggle a lot because you're, you're high end sounds silky smooth, especially in the vocals. I would never guess that you struggle up

Speaker 3 (00:30:06):

There. Okay, well thanks.

Speaker 2 (00:30:07):

Because you've got that pop polish on everything you do

Speaker 3 (00:30:10):

Where

Speaker 2 (00:30:10):

The high end is present, but it's very, very smooth. No pain points or anything like that. Oh

Speaker 4 (00:30:17):

Wow.

Speaker 3 (00:30:17):

Thanks. It

Speaker 2 (00:30:18):

Sounds polished, so let's talk about that struggle.

Speaker 3 (00:30:21):

Yeah, yeah, I mean I just spend a lot of time with it. I always feel like symbols have so much nastiness going on and I don't know if it's, yeah, they're terrible. Yeah, it's pain in the ass and I don't know if it's because I'm really a minimalist when it comes to equipment and stuff like that. So I've been using the same stuff for years and maybe it's time to change things up, I don't know, because I always get those same problem areas all the time and I just found ways to work around it. But you have to notch out some frequencies here and there. And also the dynamics, the symbols can be really dynamic at times and some people like that, but then you get all those sudden bursts of high pitched stuff and you just have to control it but still have it dynamic and I dunno, it's just a lot of tricky stuff going on up there, I think.

Speaker 2 (00:31:22):

What kind of approaches do you take to handling it?

Speaker 3 (00:31:26):

Well, yeah, as I said, I try to cut out all the nasty. The

Speaker 2 (00:31:29):

Nasty,

Speaker 3 (00:31:30):

Yeah. Notch out, horrible frequencies.

Speaker 2 (00:31:34):

Now when you do that, how do you keep from neutering it? Meaning, have you ever noticed that sometimes if you notch too much out, you end up killing the whole sound?

Speaker 3 (00:31:43):

Yeah, yeah. That's the struggle. There you go. So yeah, you just have to find the good balance point. And what I noticed is if you sit too long with the same thing also you kind of lose track of where you are. So I always want to finish that stuff up as soon as possible, just go like, okay, this is good. And I just leave it for a while and then work on something else. Because

Speaker 2 (00:32:08):

I think that's especially smart when working on high-end material because that will blast your ears so quickly.

Speaker 3 (00:32:15):

Definitely. Definitely. That's what I noticed after a couple of years that, okay, that's the approach that works best for me to just leave it for a while and come back and then you'll really hear those problem like, oh man, I just scooped out too much over there. And it's really apparent when you do it for too long, I think. So do you consider yourself a fast mixer? Yeah, I would say, yeah. I try to do it as fast as possible and I dunno what's fast today. I don't compare, I don't have many friends in this game, so I don't know how fast they do it, but I try to do one song in six, eight hours tops, like the finished product, basically

Speaker 2 (00:33:02):

Meaning mixing or everything?

Speaker 3 (00:33:04):

No mixing. I mean now I'm talking just mixing, but do you mean recording and everything or

Speaker 2 (00:33:09):

No, no. Okay. I'm glad. Six to eight hours from, I'm sure that there's some people out there who do everything in six to

Speaker 3 (00:33:17):

Eight, eight hours. Oh wow. Yeah. That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (00:33:21):

So basically a song a day with mixing.

Speaker 3 (00:33:24):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean it is fast. It's always the first song if I do an album, I mean the first song is what takes the whole day and then the rest is pretty quick right after that.

Speaker 2 (00:33:35):

Okay. So if I sent you an album, how quickly do you think you would turn it around?

Speaker 3 (00:33:40):

What's

Speaker 2 (00:33:41):

Normal

Speaker 3 (00:33:41):

With today's budgets? Especially if we talk metal.

Speaker 2 (00:33:45):

Yeah, sure, let's

Speaker 3 (00:33:46):

Talk metal. Yeah, I mean it's different stories for each genre, but in metal I would say I usually get five days or something that's like tops and then maybe some corrections one hour later on.

Speaker 2 (00:34:04):

It's amazing. I'm just bringing this up because, and I brought this up on the podcast a bit lately, I feel like every few years the standards change and I feel that now, just now in the past year, year and a half, the standard changed for how long it's okay to spend on a metal mix. And now I think that it's days for most mixers it's days. And I'm saying this because I feel like five years ago it was weeks, it was normal, normal to get two to three or four weeks. And I know some guys who thought that two weeks was moving really fast, they want to spend a week just on that first song and then the second week on the rest, and that was considered moving quickly.

Speaker 4 (00:34:52):

Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (00:34:53):

But now it's like you spend a day on the first song maximum and then you do the rest. It's interesting to me. So yeah, I'd consider you a fast mixer. What about with pop speed wise? What kind of turnarounds?

Speaker 3 (00:35:08):

With pop, it's a little bit different since I always do the production as well. Oh, usually I do the production, so it's hard to say since the mix is kind of integrated in the production phase as well. So when I do pop, I actually do production mixing, mastering in just one go. No, it really goes hand in hand.

Speaker 2 (00:35:34):

By the time the song is done, it's done.

Speaker 3 (00:35:36):

Yeah, yeah. Because I'm from that mindset that, okay, now it's time for mixing, but always when I do pop it ends up with, but what am I going to do? I mean, it sounds the way I like it, so I dunno what to do else. So I just leave it basically.

Speaker 2 (00:35:53):

I mean, I'm sure that you've had the experience where you have a production where you're kind of mixing as you go and then you stop and you're like, okay, now it's mixing time, and you start to mix from scratch and it doesn't sound nearly as good.

Speaker 3 (00:36:06):

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (00:36:08):

Yeah, I've had that happened a few times.

Speaker 3 (00:36:11):

Yeah, that's really common actually.

Speaker 2 (00:36:15):

Yeah, mix as you go I think is great. If you're doing the production,

Speaker 3 (00:36:19):

I think it's the most fun as well doing the production. And then you have the whole idea. For me, the mixing is so, so easy. If the production is correct, everything works together and it's just a bliss working that way when yourself can decide how stuff go together. And that's why I always like to track bands here myself, produce them myself instead of getting just mixes in to work on.

Speaker 2 (00:36:48):

Understood. So you've got a very crisp vocal sound.

Speaker 3 (00:36:52):

Oh, thanks.

Speaker 2 (00:36:53):

Can you talk about what your signal chain is for tracking vocals?

Speaker 3 (00:36:57):

Oh yeah. I mean it's different. I always like to, I have one mic that I use every year or something and I just sell it and buy another one and try out. So I don't have a pile of mics that I use all the time. And I always try to avoid those typical mics that everyone uses as well. So right now I'm using, there's two actually. I have a, what do you call it when you modify a microphone yourself? So I replaced the membrane and stuff like that. So it sounds almost like a U 87 or something. So I use that one pretty much. And I also have a Mojave, I dunno, I think it's an American brand.

Speaker 2 (00:37:43):

Mojave. Yeah, but you call it Mo

Speaker 3 (00:37:46):

Interesting. Yeah. I dunno. I never said it before, but yeah. But I use one of those mics as well, and it goes through Amex channel in the box basically. And that's pretty much it. I compress on the way in pretty hard. No e eq at all

Speaker 2 (00:38:06):

Through

Speaker 3 (00:38:07):

Through the channel in the box. It has this setting m and MI think it's called, and it's really smooth on vocals, I think. I love it. So it just gets that, it doesn't sound compressed, it just controls it in a good way. I think so, yeah, it's really simple.

Speaker 2 (00:38:29):

I mean, what else do you need? As long as you have a great singer, great singer, great mike, great compressor, what else do you need?

Speaker 3 (00:38:35):

Exactly, exactly. It's always the performer is everything to me. If the vocalist is good, I mean that's 80% of the work done.

Speaker 2 (00:38:47):

So I've noticed that you infuse a lot of electronic elements into your mixes.

Speaker 4 (00:38:52):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:38:54):

Can you give us any insight about jelling electronic or sample music in with real instruments or acoustic instruments?

Speaker 3 (00:39:02):

Yeah, yeah. Nowadays it's really popular with blending everything together and it is a struggle. I think it's the hardest thing to when you have a, yeah, we won an 8 0 8 kick drum together with the acoustic kit and it's supposed to sound huge. Both things are supposed to sound huge. They don't realize that, I mean, you have just so much headroom to use. So yeah, it is a struggle. But I do a lot of cheating. Say there's an 8 0 8 kick underneath the acoustic kick, so during that part I'll just cut out all the low end in the kick and just keep the character of the acoustic kick maybe and keep, I mean, it's pretty obvious stuff. And also a lot of

Speaker 2 (00:39:51):

It's obvious, but I don't think everyone does it.

Speaker 3 (00:39:53):

Alright. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's one thing I would do in that case. And also I do use a lot of multi-band compression on stuff like that. Say I have a good mix of the electronic elements that have a lot of low end and also a good drum kit mix. And I just use, I group them together and treat them as an instrument later on. So I do a lot of automation and controlling the low end with the Wave C four plugin and stuff like that. Of course, yeah, it comes handy in those cases. And yeah, that's pretty much it. Try to treat it like one instrument. I would say all the percussive elements, at least it's easier with the synthesizers, like the melodic stuff, I think it's much easier. But also there I always make all the really low end stuff sound more mono. So I always convert everything to mono beneath one 50. I dunno it is because there's a rule when you do a lot of house music and stuff like that to keep low end centered kind gets messy on the sides if you played in a big club. So that's something I brought into even metal music and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (00:41:13):

I know some guys who do everything below 300.

Speaker 3 (00:41:16):

Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (00:41:16):

In mono.

Speaker 3 (00:41:17):

Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. It depends on if it's really stereo spread base, then I'll do that as well. Definitely. But most of the things that aren't that wide, I think around one 50 is. Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:41:35):

Alright. And I feel like one other tool that I think is fantastic for synth is saturation and distortion. Do you use that at all?

Speaker 3 (00:41:47):

Oh yeah, that's a good point, man. Now when you ask me these questions, I just forget everything I do. Oh, it's okay. Yeah. But situation is really one of those really important tools. I use it more than eq. I mean it's more than compression. I think it's a wonderful tool to shape things. And also if it's a lot of blippy sounds, sounds that really are pointy and stuff, I just like to tame them with some kind of tape saturation.

Speaker 2 (00:42:18):

Yeah, I feel like that's definitely one of the best ways to get those kind of sounds to gel into a mix with real instruments for some reason.

Speaker 3 (00:42:28):

It

Speaker 2 (00:42:28):

Helps them have their own space in the mix, but it also helps them blend. It's like it does two opposite things at the same time.

Speaker 4 (00:42:37):

Definitely. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:42:39):

I love it. Decapitate is probably my favorite one.

Speaker 3 (00:42:43):

Oh, I love it too. It's great.

Speaker 2 (00:42:45):

Yeah, that And Saturn, what about your drum sample library? How do you go about creating that? Do you have a way of creating drum samples? Let's talk about that some.

Speaker 3 (00:42:59):

Yeah. Yeah. I have one drum kit here, so I've been using that forever. So I've decided to just sample it in a bunch of different ways and I have different versions for it. So I have the complete raw kit and also a mixed version of it. I use it in different ways. If I want something to sound good real fast, I'll use my mixed sounds and just blend in or whatever. And the raw is always as a compliment. In cases I get mixes where just crappy drum sounds, crappy drum recordings, I have to replace them. So that's where they come handy.

Speaker 2 (00:43:41):

So you created them for you first?

Speaker 3 (00:43:44):

Yeah, definitely. And also you talk about those I have on my website a couple of kits. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that was just the simplest, those are not the main ones that I use, but those are the more simplified versions of, some guys asked me, can you just put up some samples? Because we would love to use those. And so I did simple kits for contact so people could get just the taste of what I use basically. So

Speaker 2 (00:44:18):

Your own version, your own version is far more intricate then?

Speaker 3 (00:44:21):

Yeah, I mean there's tons of different versions of the kits basically. So it is bigger and there's a lot of more multis sample layers and stuff like that. And that's something that I plan on working on later and making a more complete product, if you could say that. But it also depends if people want it. I'm not really into, I'm not a businessman, I wish I was, but if people want it, I will eventually make it happen, I think.

Speaker 2 (00:44:53):

Well, regardless of a product, let's talk about how it is used in your life for your production. So sounds to me like it's a great workflow enhancer and that you can automatically fix bad sounding drum productions in multiple styles. You have so many different versions of the kit.

Speaker 3 (00:45:15):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I have, for example, the snares. I love to tune them in specific ways for, especially in indie pop and stuff like that, you want to snare to really low and beefy, but not in a metal way, but in a, I dunno the word for it, but it's really sloppy, but it's cool. So you have to have the snare in all those different tunings to make them work in all different contexts, as you said. And I usually, if I record a kit myself here with the band, I usually keep a lot of it the way it is and just enhance it a bit. Obviously if it's metal, I always have some additional sample going on, but if it's pop, usually I just keep the kid as it is. But then if I want that sound for, say a band contacts me and well, we like the sound you did on that record or whatever, then I have to be able to kind of replicate that sound. And if they send me really crappy drum takes, which normal Yeah, it is nowadays it's a shame. I dunno why that is, but Well, it's budget

Speaker 2 (00:46:29):

Thing, I guess. Yeah, there's a few reasons. I mean it's budget and also that a lot of people who don't know what they're doing are now recording themselves and maybe they know what they're doing enough to record di or something. But recording drums is a whole different beast.

Speaker 3 (00:46:48):

It is.

Speaker 2 (00:46:48):

You can't, sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 3 (00:46:51):

Yeah, for me it's 70% of the time spent is on drums. I feel like in every aspect, recording mixing, it's always drums. Drums, that's the hardest part. But it's the most fun as well.

Speaker 2 (00:47:03):

You enjoy it.

Speaker 3 (00:47:04):

I enjoy it actually. Yeah, I think it's so organic and when it's a good drummer, I love it. I can just,

Speaker 2 (00:47:12):

Yes, when it's a good drummer.

Speaker 3 (00:47:14):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I can mean I'm a guitar player myself, but when I'm on YouTube or whatever, I just watch drummers. So I think it's the coolest thing.

Speaker 2 (00:47:25):

Well, I'll agree with you when I'm recording an amazing drummer. It's definitely actually fun. I actually really enjoy it. I get into it and I'm just like, man, this is so fucking awesome. But then the opposite is true. When there's a shitty or not so good drummer involved, it becomes the worst thing in the world. And I'd rather just program it.

Speaker 3 (00:47:52):

Totally agree. Totally agree. It can be a nightmare and it could be the best thing ever.

Speaker 2 (00:47:57):

So the reason I'm talking about your samples so much is because I think lots of guys don't take the time to make such robust samples that they can use in any situation. I think usually they'll just sample the kit, they're recording, they'll get the sound, and then they'll sample that sound and that's it. I don't think that they'll sit there and spend extra time to get all the different versions.

Speaker 3 (00:48:24):

Exactly. I think for me it's the most important thing to have a system like structure to be able to just bring up stuff you need when it's time to use it. So when it comes to anything, samples, plugins, whatever, you just have to know where you have stuff and what they're good for. And just to bring it up without having to think about it or especially samples is tricky because people can, I know I worked with some producers that sit and just search for samples for two hours before the, oh my God. I mean you have to be efficient, especially if you're, I mean, nowadays it's, they're tight budgets and stuff, so you have to be really efficient in everything you do. So samples for me was I had to prepare everything. So I know this is my stuff, I know how it works, I know how to make it sound the way I want to make it sound. And yeah, it was a lot of work before the actual work, if you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (00:49:27):

I urge everyone listening to pay attention to this segment of this podcast and do the same thing with your own samples. If you watch some of our nail the mix episodes, like the one with Billy Decker for instance, and you saw how quickly he mixed through those songs, his sample choice is a big reason for why he was able to go so quickly. He already knew which samples were going to be layered with, which other samples precisely what amounts, what mix ratios. And if you have that all figured out and it sounds great, you can move super fast. That whole thing of choosing samples and sitting there for hours, that is such a time waster. You should do that stuff in advance and maybe it's not going to work a hundred percent of the time, but if nine out of 10 times you can just go to a go-to, it's a phenomenal time saver. So I have some questions here from our listeners for you actually.

Speaker 4 (00:50:32):

Alright,

Speaker 2 (00:50:35):

Here's one from Santiago Romero. And in your opinion, what makes a modern mix sound polished and what makes a natural and organic mix sound the way it sounds?

Speaker 3 (00:50:47):

What makes modern mix sound polished? I think the combination of the low end and the high end nowadays. I mean if you listen back to the sixties and stuff like that, it was like the low end wasn't even there and there was just a lot of mids and stuff. And I mean, we think it sounds really cool, but nowadays it's like the complete opposite. There's so much, it just goes deeper and deeper and the low end and the high end is just clear and polished. And I think that's where it differs from now. And then I would say, what was the other question?

Speaker 2 (00:51:30):

Well, I think you basically answered it. What makes a natural and organic mix sound the way it sounds?

Speaker 3 (00:51:35):

Oh, right. Organic mix. That's semantics.

Speaker 2 (00:51:43):

Yeah. And I also think that a lot of people don't know what natural and organic actually sounds like.

Speaker 3 (00:51:50):

I think it's not that much about or natural nowadays. I mean, what we do to drums nowadays, it has nothing to do with natural. I think we just completely transformed the sound.

Speaker 2 (00:52:04):

But I agree with you that it's all in the high end and the low end as opposed to older recordings.

Speaker 4 (00:52:09):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:52:11):

John Clock is wondering, do you have a go-to for certain guitar sounds? Do you prefer amp sounds or plugins slash digital sounds?

Speaker 3 (00:52:20):

I've been using amps for a long, long time and when I finally experienced the camper, I just had to accept it. It was such a time saver. And to me, if I don't play the guitar, someone else plays the guitar and we have the setup in the other room and we just ab between the Kemper and the actual amp and I can't hear the difference, then for me it is a done deal. So last couple of years I've been using Kemper all the way basically. And from time to time, if there's a band that comes in with amps, I love to use it when I know we have budget for it, there's time to mess around, I'll use the amps. Since I myself love it, I love the process of miking up amps and stuff like that, but to be efficient and get the best tone as possible, for me, the Kemper is what I use mainly right now.

Speaker 2 (00:53:18):

Definitely one of the best inventions in guitar in years.

Speaker 3 (00:53:24):

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I can't believe it. I don't understand how it works. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:53:30):

Yeah, I love that thing. Robin Je is wondering, how has the transition from Pro Tools to Reaper made a difference if it has to your workflow? Where are the pros and cons?

Speaker 3 (00:53:42):

Wow, that's a good question. I mean, I've been talking about Reaper so much with all the people that come in here. I'm just completely blown away and I don't understand why I didn't make the switch earlier. I mean, where do I begin? All the custom actions, stuff like that where you can customize your whole workflow, it's such a time saver. I mean I save so much more time now than before. And so I have shortcuts for every little unique thing that I do myself. Say I want to duplicate samples that matches the previous track, really complex stuff like that. And you just want to copy paste through the whole project. I can have just one button and it does the whole thing for me in a second. That would take me forever earlier in Pro Tools. And that's just a big thing for me. And also, I mean I come from Pro Tools nine hd and there was no offline bounce. That's also a big thing when I want to send stems to bands.

Speaker 2 (00:54:50):

Well, they have added that.

Speaker 3 (00:54:52):

I know, I know that. So that's why I mentioned that I used the nine. So that was, for me, it was a big thing. But I know tools has changed a lot since then. But I dunno, just a bunch of stuff. I could just bring the whole template from Pro Tools into Reaper and it was 90% the same thing for me. It wasn't like a big transition. I could use the same key commands and everything, so it wasn't a big deal making the switch, but it was a huge deal for me, seeing all the benefits with Reaper. Yeah, I mean I could go on forever with Reaper, but

Speaker 2 (00:55:29):

I'd love to hear about it. I'm sure that some people

Speaker 3 (00:55:32):

Listening

Speaker 2 (00:55:32):

Would love to hear about it.

Speaker 3 (00:55:34):

So the custom action thing is huge. And also all the effects change. So now, I mean there are a lot of talk about templates and stuff. People don't like to use templates, but for me it has changed things quite a lot. Just being able to bring in stuff as effects chains all over the place. So say it's a whole mix. I could bring in whole mix or I can just bring in, sends from another session, I can bring in whatever. It's really customizable so it's not just locked into one system. You can't actually choose what you want to bring in. And it's really quick also having, say I work on an album and I can have the whole album open in different projects, say 10 sessions at the same time, and the CPU, it doesn't affect it at all. I could just jump between projects, let's work on this. So it's a time saver in many ways like that. Small, small things,

Speaker 2 (00:56:37):

But those small things add up. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:56:38):

Definitely. That's what I noticed and it's really, really valuable. And another thing that I like is that the whole approach, having it so cheap and available to people and they listen to people. It's not like a big company that they hide everything from their customers. It's a good community and people help each other and they listen to you and bring in all those features you need. And yeah, it's really cool. Another thing, if I can't continue on this one,

Speaker 2 (00:57:14):

Oh look, I got to tell you that there's not very many voices that come on this podcast to talk about Reaper or why it's so cool. And a lot of people have some weird opinions on that program. And I personally don't care which stuff people use. I think it should use whatever you're comfortable with. I agree. I just think it's good to have someone who makes stuff for major labels and who has great sounding material, come on here and talk about Reaper. It just doesn't happen very often.

Speaker 3 (00:57:48):

Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (00:57:50):

And we do have a lot of Reaper users, so yeah. So please tell us more. I'm very curious about this.

Speaker 3 (00:57:56):

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting to hear. I didn't know that. I thought that Reaper was more accepted nowadays. I was one of those guys that actually I just didn't buy into the thing. I was really skeptical until I tried it actually.

Speaker 2 (00:58:09):

It's accepted among beginners, but I don't think it's very accepted among the pros. No,

Speaker 3 (00:58:14):

I noticed that. Yeah, for me it's the portability as well, like having the whole application on this USB stick and with all your preferences, everything, you just bring it. I like to travel a lot, so I want to be able to work wherever I am. For me, it's a big deal to be able to bring the exact session, my computer with the exact settings and everything. It's just supposed to work. So it's really efficient in that way. And the thing I was about to say, when I track guitars, for example, so you have one track. One track is everything. So it doesn't matter if it's video media or audio or whatever, everything, it's just one track for everything. So even if you mic up a guitar cab, you have tens of microphones. So that track can be, you can have a separate mixer in that track so you don't have to mess with 10 tracks in a session. That's one guitar. And you group them and try to treat 'em as one. In Reaper it's all treated as one track, but you have a separate mixer in that track as a plugin. So you can control the levels of all the separate microphones. And that's also really good for organizing stuff in the session. It can be. So

Speaker 2 (00:59:31):

That's actually really cool.

Speaker 3 (00:59:32):

It's amazing. I missed that feature. And that's like in Pro Tools earlier I was kind of hesitant to use a lot of microphones since it will get messy. I don't want to try that. So I got a bit lazy. So now I just go nuts. And if something doesn't work, just mute it on that track and it doesn't matter if I record it, it's muted. You don't hear it.

Speaker 2 (00:59:55):

Well that's one of the things that I tell people the most about why you should have a really defined template or workflow or set up. Because if you don't, it'll make you lazy. Because if things take too long for the point where you have the idea in your head to actually being able to execute it in your daw, if it takes too long, more than likely you're going to stop drawing. You need to be able to move on your ideas quickly and not have the DAW be in your way.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):

Not let the DAW be a hindrance. And I've personally done this where before I got organized with my workflow, I call it mixing yourself into a corner.

(01:00:44):

You mix yourself into a corner and create a problem. And then to solve the problem would be so complicated because I didn't have the workflow worked out properly that I would sometimes stall out on mixes and not know how to finish. And a perfect example was in a nail the mix session again with Billy Decker where he tried to do this delay trick over one of the songs he was mixing. And the way he did it at first kind of sounded like poop and it wasn't working. And right away he found another way to do it and rerouted things and within five minutes he had it and it sounded fucking perfect. And since I know proto was real, well, I know that the only reason he was able to have an idea, it sounds like crap, try something else. Perfect done was because his template and his understanding of pro tools and workflow are so developed that he can just move quickly. And if they weren't that developed, he might have gone to idea number one that didn't sound very good and been like, oh man, it doesn't sound good. Let's just drop it. Let's not try any harder to get it to sound great because take too long and I don't want to sit here for 45 minutes working on a delay.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):

Yeah, and that's a really good point, and I would like to add that even if I'm now trying to sell the Reaper to all the folks over there, I'm not saying that people should switch to Reaper. If you know your daw, I mean stick if you're happy and you can make stuff sound the way you want it, use your doll. I mean, that's the most important thing. Like you said, knowing it really well is more important than what another dog can do. Basically

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):

Yeah, because grass is always greener.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):

But

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):

Here's another question from Robin. He said, what's your approach on recording drums? Do you want to use as much of the live drums as possible, or do you go in with a mindset of using samples later on?

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):

If the drummer is good, my mindset is always, I want to use the real drums. And when we start to soundcheck and I feel the drummer, I can hear this is doable or not. If I feel that, man, this is a great drummer, there's no way for me to even think about samples at that point. I just try to make it sound as good as possible. And the samples would then be more like an addition to the whole thing. But if I, during soundcheck, just feel, oh man, this drummer can't even play a straight beat. It sounds awful. Of course, I'd done just already in advance think of, okay, what kind of sound? And almost immediately bring in samples in the session, even if I don't use them right away, I just keep them there to quickly then during editing, being able to make it sound good so the band doesn't. So they also like the sound of it, because it's hard if the drummer hits poorly, it's not tight at all. It's hard to get a good drum. It's impossible. I would say.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):

I think that the drummer is like 90% of the drum sound.

Speaker 3 (01:03:58):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):

And I've done this test before where you change out every other little thing down to the preamp, and it's amazing how little those other things matter compared to the drummer.

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):

I mean, people like to focus on preamps and gear like that, especially online, but in reality, you need to be focusing on the drummer.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):

Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. And that's a big reason why I ditched a lot of stuff here. I just keep it so simple with gear and just focus on connecting with the musicians and get the best out of them to begin with. And then you have your amazing computer with all the technology that we didn't have before, and you can always take care of stuff later, but the most important thing is to get the best out of musicians you have.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):

Yeah. That'll get you 80 or 90% of the way home if you get great results out of a human. So Jack wondering, could you give some insight into your involvement on the humanity's last breath?

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):

Oh yeah. Oh man, Buster, he is a amazing dude. He does great job,

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):

Man. He's come a long way,

Speaker 3 (01:05:21):

Hasn't he? It's crazy. It's just crazy. I remember, I mean, when he approached me with that album, I didn't know who he was. Nobody. I don't think many people knew who he was. That wasn't too long ago. What was that? 2013 or something? I don't remember. Something like that. Yeah. And since then, I mean, he's huge.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):

But anyway, if anyone's wondering, check out the latest Oceano record,

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):

Which

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):

Sounds massive. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):

He is done that one. Yeah. Really good job. And he got a feeling for the heavy genre. He knows how to make it sound cool. He knows what people like, and he has a great feel for that. But anyway, he approached me with that one to, I dunno, he already did some kind of a mix. He sent me the files, but they sounded really good from scratch. So I did some mixing tweaks and mainly adding some effects and mastering basically. So the mix was kind of, he'd done a good job with the raw files already. So I mean, he was just polishing the stuff. That's why I kind of got into contact with him again since I was looking for someone to work for me here. And I thought that was the most amazing production I've ever heard from anyone sending something to be mixed or mastered. So yeah, that's what it was. He did a great job with production, so it was really simple work on that one. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):

That definitely helps. So Giovanni Angels wondering what's your least favorite trend in metal today?

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):

Least favorite trend in metal? Oh man. I don't even follow the trends. I don't know what's trendy. Yeah, same here. Hardly listen to music nowadays, but I don't know. I mean, trends, there will always be trends. And if I don't like it, someone else likes it. If it's a trend, then most people like it. So I can't be against that. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):

That's kind of how I see it too, which is, first of all, you can't always like everything you work on, but you should trick yourself into liking it

Speaker 4 (01:07:49):

While

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):

You're working on it. And when you're done like a prostitute, she doesn't have to think about you afterwards, but if she wants to really earn it and do a great job, she should make you feel like she likes you. And I feel like it's kind of similar when you're working with music, you should trick yourself into liking it while you're working on it so that you can do a great job. I've had to do that many times because my personal tastes, for instance, with metal, haven't been really, for instance, with the breakdown stuff. But I mean that's like most bands now, or maybe not most, but a huge number of them. And if you want to work in the modern day, you better know how to do that stuff. There's just no way out of it. So trick yourself. That's my opinion. Don't worry about trends. I

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):

Totally agree. Totally agree.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):

So here's another one from Robin, which is how did you get the adept gig? Production is amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):

Oh wow. Thanks. Well, that's an interesting story. They recorded the whole album in Gothenburg Studio Freeman. All of you have heard of that studio probably.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):

Of course. And we have Henrik.

Speaker 3 (01:09:15):

Yeah. Yeah. Actually,

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):

I actually heard that Henrik is coming on nail the mix this month, and he actually, it's kind of funny, he asked me to ask you what it's like re-recording an album. He already recorded.

Speaker 3 (01:09:32):

Yeah, there you have the story. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know really what happened. There was something with the adapts label or something. They couldn't get the record. The label owned the record in some way and they didn't want to release it. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:50):

So he recorded it? They recorded it once all the way through with Enri.

Speaker 3 (01:09:53):

Yeah, yeah. The whole album was almost done. I think there was some stuff, I mean, they changed some production things. They said this was the most expensive we ever did. The budget was bigger for the pre-production than the actual album. But yeah, so they changed a lot of stuff later on. So it was a good thing after all. But it was expensive, really expensive for them. So we did the whole album and did some changes and had more vocals and stuff. And

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):

For people who don't understand why that would happen, basically a label owns what they pay for, even if it's your band. So they own those masters. So if whatever happened with the band and the label, the label wasn't going to release it and the band just decided, fuck that. We're making our album.

Speaker 4 (01:10:47):

Right.

Speaker 2 (01:10:47):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:10:48):

That's right. That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):

So yeah, so that's kind of an interesting story, kind of shitty, but I'm glad that it worked out in the end. They

Speaker 3 (01:10:58):

Have a lot of wind powers.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):

Well, yeah, I was going to say, for the band, I've heard of that type of story, destroying bands, that type of thing. Almost destroyed my band at one point in time. And we eventually got our album, our second album released, but it was released a year later than it needed to be. And there's nothing we could do about it.

Speaker 4 (01:11:23):

So

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):

I know very much. And like I said, I know people whose entire careers were destroyed by getting shelved by the label. So it says a lot that the band was like, fuck that, not going to let it happen.

Speaker 3 (01:11:36):

Yeah, they're good guys in that way. They really have a passion for what they do, it seems. So it worked out.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):

Here's a question from Colton Vance, and I really kind wish that he was more specific, but here it is. Anyways, what's the best way to use your time wisely?

Speaker 3 (01:11:59):

Well, it's not this line of work, I dunno. Okay. I guess he means in

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):

Production study study economics.

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):

Yeah, exactly. Do something of value. Oh, man. Well, that's a tough one, man. I don't know what to say.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):

I think that what we've been talking about this whole time, about setting up your workflow to where you can change a bad situation into a good one very quickly and not whether it's having your drum sample libraries already customized and ready to go and easy to find in case you get bad drum tracks. Or having your templates set up to where you don't mix yourself into a corner that you can't get out of quickly. I think that spending the time to get your workflow awesome, quick and efficient, that is a great way to use your time wisely.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):

Yeah, that's so true. Very good point. Yeah, just prepare everything so you can just get to work and yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):

Here's one from Eric Egg Hammer, which is how do you work with room mics while recording drums?

Speaker 3 (01:13:22):

I have an interesting situation here. My recording room isn't that big. So what I do, I put up some mics in the whole studio, like the hallway and just try to capture the biggest point in the studio. That sounds like the hugest room. It's not the optimal, but I just managed to get it to work for me. I can imagine that when I had people over here recording for me, tracking some other band when I'm not available here, they get all lost. They don't know what to do because the room is so small. So I just found ways around it. And I always use a stereo pair basically left, and they're always on the same spot. Yeah. And it's basically the hallway, the kitchen. My kitchen is my room mics, basically.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):

So you just figured out how to make the most out of the space that you have to work with.

Speaker 3 (01:14:22):

Yeah, yeah. That's it. Yeah. So it's not optimal in any way, but it works for me and I know how to treat it later on in the mix as well. So

Speaker 2 (01:14:33):

That's what matters.

Speaker 3 (01:14:34):

Yeah. For me, that's what matters. But I totally understand that. It's hard to sell my studio for some tracking. It's always, obviously if the budgets are better, I'll always go to another place and track drums. That would be the preferable thing, but I can manage to make it sound the way I like it anyway here.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):

Fair enough. And another question from Eric, which is what makes a band interesting so that you want to work with them?

Speaker 3 (01:15:10):

Passion. I mean, if they have a vision and when they don't say, I want to sound like that band you did, that's when I am interested. Or if they do a genre that I'm not that familiar in, to me. Interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):

Well, what if they said, I want to sound like a record somebody else did. That's even worse.

Speaker 3 (01:15:33):

Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely worse. That makes it just harder, but as boring. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):

I've gotten that before. I want a band coming in and they're like, we want it to sound like Joey Sturgis's I your mix. I said, well, why don't you go to Joey Sturgis? I could give you his phone number. Text him.

Speaker 3 (01:15:55):

Yeah. That always blows my mind. Why do people want that? I don't get it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):

Yeah. It's like, I don't know how to do that. Go to him. Exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:16:05):

That's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):

You're not going to be happy if that's what you want. So final question, and this is another one from Robin je, which is, by the way, I don't know if you know him, but he's our top student in Vin

Speaker 3 (01:16:20):

Mix. He also Yeah, I know. I know. I know. He's a great guy actually. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):

Yeah. Okay, cool. He said, how did you go about balancing the electronic dubstep elements in many of the beyond recognition songs on drop equals dead, and what would you have as tips and tricks to actually have them blend in well to a dense metal core mix where everything needs to cut and sound clear?

Speaker 3 (01:16:43):

That's a really good question. And that's one of those I mentioned before, really struggled blending those eight oh eights and stuff like that with the acoustic drums. As I said before, a lot of C four going on and a lot of automating the acoustic kick drum, automating the low end, basically just cutting out the stuff where you don't notice it, but it's helping the headroom a lot. So just a lot of automation. I would say in those situations. Once again, beyond our recognition stuff, I always treated everything as one instruments, even if it's electronic and acoustic drums together, those are treated as one basically. So they're supposed to sound like one coherent thing throughout the song. So a lot of bus processing, I would say with multi-band compression. And then on the individual tracks, obviously a lot of automation with EQ and stuff to get things to sound, to not pop out all over the place. Because obviously if there's a part with just acoustic drums and then all of a sudden you have the electronic beats going on that they're supposed to sound huge, but you still want to keep it smooth. You have to do a lot of automation. I think

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):

Automation's king.

Speaker 3 (01:18:09):

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:18:11):

Well, Dino, thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 3 (01:18:14):

Thank you. It's been great.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):

Yeah. We should do this again sometime.

Speaker 3 (01:18:18):

Yeah, sure, sure.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):

And where can people find you online?

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):

I'm not the best social media guy, but I have a website, dino mad hotze.com, and I do have Facebook and Instagram and stuff like that, but I'm not the best in updating. Well,

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):

They just want to check out your work. Yeah, they just go to your website.

Speaker 3 (01:18:43):

Yeah, they can check out my website. I think that's the best. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):

Alright, well there you heard it. And if you didn't catch the spelling, just go to the show notes for this podcast and we are linking to his website. So Tino, thank you. Thank

Speaker 3 (01:18:57):

You again. Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:18:58):

The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is brought to you by two notes. Audio Engineering two notes is a leader in the market for load box cabinet and mic simulators. Gone are the days of having iso rooms or having to record an amp at ear bleeding volumes to capture that magic tone, the Torpedo Live reload and studio allow you to crank your amp up as loud as you want, but record silently. Check out www.two-notes.com for more info. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit nail the mix.com/podcast and subscribe today.