JOEL WANASEK: Going freelance, building your studio with credit, clipping plugins

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by the 2017 URM Summit, a once in a lifetime chance to spend four days with the next generation of audio professionals and special guests, including Andrew Wade, Kane Churko, Billy Decker, fluff, Brian Hood, and many more. The inspiration, ideas and friendship you'll get here are the things that you'll look back on as inflection points in your life. Learn [email protected]. The URM podcast is also brought to you by heirloom microphones. Heirloom microphones are high-end condenser microphones with something that has never been seen in the microphone industry, a triangular membrane with our patented membranes and our tailored phase linear electronics. Your recording and live experience will never be the same heirloom. Our microphones will help you discover clarity. Go to E-H-R-L-U-N-D SE for more info. And now

Speaker 2 (01:01):

Your host, Joel. Wanasek. Man, does it feel amazing to be back on this microphone again? It's been a while. I have been on vacation in Russia, and I am officially back for another episode of Dear Joel where you can submit your questions to me and I will answer them to you as well as provide some epic rants. So if you've got questions, it's Joel at URM Academy. Shoot me your questions and I'll shoot you some answers. So, hey, it feels good to be back. I mean, come on. I haven't been on the mic in a little while and I miss doing this stuff. I've been doing some good Facebook Live rants with you guys and having a good time and dang, it just feels awesome to be back. So I'm happy to be sitting back in this chair and speaking to you, and I've got a couple of different things I want to talk about.

(01:42):

First and foremost, I want to say thank you to everybody that signed up to take the speed mixing course. Your feedback has been amazing and inspiring. It's changing so many people's lives and it's just great to see you guys doing so much fantastic work as well as hear your mixes and do all that stuff. So it's really exciting. You guys are killing it. Keep working hard. High five. Next thing I want to talk about is we have an amazing opportunity coming up here in December. We have the first Unstoppable Recording Machine Summit, which is going to be amazing. It's something that you do not want to miss. This is going to be the premier event in audio education, and I am so dang excited to tell you about it because it is going to be incredible. I mean, first off, there's two things in your life that can really change your life and help you get ahead and get on the fast track.

(02:30):

And the first thing is knowledge, having knowledge that you're not using or either implementing it or learning things that you didn't know. And this is going to be an absolute knowledge bomb. We're flying in an all-star cast like Finn McKenty, the head of the Creative Live Audio Channel, just the mastermind genius over there. He's now the head of marketing over here at UR admin. He's going to be coming in teaching you all kinds of amazing stuff that you can use to hack your career. We've got Billy Decker's going to come and show us how to mix number ones. I think he just got another number one hit single that he had mixed I believe this week. So he's on fire killing it. He's got lots of great stuff to share. We've got Fluff Ryan Bruce coming to show you how to do it on YouTube and build your social media like a pro and build your brand, which is very, very important.

(03:16):

Lots of great, fantastic applicable stuff there. We got Mr. Kane Charco who's going to come in and he's going to produce some of your songs right in front of your guys' faces, and he's going to show you guys how it's done like a boss. I mean, geez, what an amazing opportunity. Mr. Andrew Wade is going to come in and do a bunch of tracking courses on guitars and all kinds of awesome stuff. Super excited for that man. You should see his studio. Guys, the audio compound is incredible. I just got back from nail the mix with John Brown and I got a chance to hang out and see the URM office down there and Andrew's studio, and it is something from out of this world, it's so beautiful and so incredible. So you definitely want to come hang out with us at Andrew Studio and Andrew's going to show you how to kick some butt and get some stuff done.

(04:03):

So I'm super excited and I mean, we also got Brian Hood coming in and Brian's going to come give you guys some awesome career advice as well as I'm doing lectures, I'm going to do one on how to have an amazing career in audio, and I'm super excited because it has so many awesome action packed things that I've never talked about publicly and I cannot wait to share with you guys. Joey's going to be doing something and so is Al, and there's going to be even more. So that's just a taste of all of the awesome stuff that's coming at the URM summit. You need to go check it out. It's nail the mix.com/summit. Tickets are going super fast, so you need to get on that and this thing is going to be amazing. I cannot wait. This is going to be the premier coolest, most awesome epic event and audio.

(04:46):

So get there, get serious. I can't wait. So real quick, I kind of want to come back to a tangent I was on last time. I did a dear Joel episode before I left for vacation, and another person that's a friend of mine came down with some serious health problems, something very serious. And you know what? I think they'll pull through and they'll be all right and we're rooting and all that stuff. But when these things happen, I think to myself, wow, geez, it's amazing how much we take health for granted. So ever since a few months ago, right before I left to Russia, I've been committing myself to being even healthier and taking better care of myself. And I want to try and inspire some of you guys out there listening to this to take control of your lives and step up your health even if it's just doing something small because it's so important.

(05:36):

I mean, I've been eating a lot healthier ever since I left for Russia, and I've been back and I feel so much more awesome. I have so much more energy and I don mean I usually eat pretty good, but I've really, really stepped it up, I think to the next level. And I'm just like, I don't know. I'm super jacked, so just tons of energy and I feel amazing and that's something I've done. But the other day a friend of mine talked me into running a 5K marathon, or I should say a half marathon or whatever that technically is. I don't know, I'm not much of a runner, but I used to run a lot when I was in college and when I would work out a lot. It was my preferred choice of cardio. I like that and I like plyometrics and jumping and things like that.

(06:13):

So I decided, heck, why not? I'm going to do it. So I started training last night to run a half marathon, a five KI believe, hopefully that's technically right. I think it's called a half marathon. So I started training to run a 5K, which is three miles for my US friends. Not super far, not super extreme, but hey, you got to start somewhere and I'm going to go out and I'm going to run one I think within the next month or two. So that's how I've committed as well as just working out a lot more to improve my own health. And I want to put the onus on you to take a minute to say, listen, your health is something that you're never going to get back. You're only going to have it once in your life, and it's so important to take care of it and to use it now while you have it and you have, because it's always going to go down.

(06:54):

You're never going to get more health, you're never going to get younger every day. We get older, we age our DNA replicates and it slowly kills us, especially after the age of 25, it's all downhill. So I just want to take a minute here to say you can combat that decay by being healthy and putting your body into a growth mode. It's a very, very good way to kind of slow down the effects of aging. So I mean, if you've got some crazy disease or something that's hereditary, I mean obviously it's going to happen, but the thing is, I really believe that through good diet and just healthy lifestyle and having fun and enjoying your life, you can combat that stuff. So take care of yourselves. That's all I'm saying. I want to inspire some of you. I'm going to go do a 5K run, so I want to know what you're going to do.

(07:37):

Drive me a comet here and let me know, but commit to something. Just do something every day. That's all I'm saying. It's important. And I want to see a healthier audio engineering community because come on, we sit in a chair all day, which is terrible for if you're a male, it's terrible for your prostate. You got to get up, you got to get out, you got to walk, you got to get fresh air. Vitamin D do some high intensity training workout. So important. So do something, commit to it, let me know, drive me a comment on YouTube or something, and let's do something in no small time. This another thing I kind of wanted to go off on a little rant before I start answering questions is learning to shut off your producer brain. I know this is a completely unrelated topic, health, which I just talked about, but it's definitely important.

(08:21):

I was just thinking every time I go to Russia and go abroad, I get to hear a bunch of cool music. And when I listen to music, when I'm at home in America, my brain immediately goes into producer mode. So I'm analyzing it, I'm thinking about it, I'm like, oh yeah, that vocal delivery kind of sucked. Maybe that's over tuned. Maybe they should have added a harmony there, that melody would've been better if they would. I'm just sitting there and picking everything apart and then I'm like, oh, the mixer comes on. Oh, I don't like the snare drum. The kick drum's got to be up a little bit. Yeah, the guitars aren't really jelling. They're a little boxy. They're interfering with the vocals. When you work in this business, it is really damn hard to enjoy music because you're sitting down and listening and you're just trained to analyze it and break it down and deconstruct it and figure out how you can improve it.

(09:08):

And it's really hard to sit down and just admire it. And if you think about the original inception, what got us all inspired to be in music and do this for a living in the first place was some sort of moment where some song or record or period of your life or a set of records where you're just listening to a certain type of music just got you really, really into music and really, really made you want to just have it in your life all the time, and it just got you all jacked up and excited. So it's important to remember that part. And recently I had a very interesting experience, so I just got back and of course like the maniac I am, I know small time did immediately the day I got back, I had to mix a very important single for literally probably the biggest artist I've ever done to date.

(09:54):

It was a very awesome J-pop record I did, and a guitarist named Avi who is very, very popular and very famous in Japan, and he's got all these amazing J-Pop cameos and guests, and it's really exciting for me. I mean, definitely the biggest thing I've done in that genre outside of metal, and it's something I just love working on pop music. And it was cool because I came in the first day after 26 hours of just hardcore flying right off the plane, sleep four hours, get up, boom, right into the studio, hit the ground, both feet running, and I'll tell you the second I opened up those tracks, I was just blown away. I really fell in love with the music. There's some really amazing songs in that record. And to come back from vacation and to open up a record and just have the music really speak to me, it just combined a lot of things I love from a lot of different genres.

(10:47):

For example, I love guitar music. I used to be a shred guitar player many, many years ago and listen to a lot of guitar technical inspired things. So it had some really cool guitar licks and things like that, and very creative usage of the guitar as an instrument with modern music, but I also love pop music. So it took a lot of awesome pop music and then it has all these really awesome unique singers, and every song has kind of got its own little shtick and vibe and it's super dope. So it was just a really awesome record to come in. It was so insanely well produced. Everything was so incredibly written. The performances on it were amazing. It was beautifully organized. Everything about it was awesome, except I only had nine days to finish the entire record, which was more than enough. But it definitely, it was a pretty intense, rigorous schedule because I was going back and forth with Japan and changes and LA and lots of different time schedules, so it was just all over the place, but I had so much fun doing it, and I found a couple of songs that I just really loved on the record, and it really just fired me up.

(11:49):

I mean, when you're gone from work for a while, I mean, in my case it was six weeks and I hadn't really listened or worked on any music during the time, I'll tell you, it just got me so stoked and just fired up. It's awesome to be doing it. So at that point in time, I'll tell you this, back to what I was saying earlier, learning to turn off your producer analytical brain is really, really, really important to your long-term success in doing this because yeah, you need to turn it on at work every day when you're here and you're in the studio and you're grinding, but sometimes you get into a rut, and I know there's a lot of you out there that ask me about How do I get out of ruts? Or you're stressed out, you're tired, you've been grinding, and you're wearing down and you're losing your edge.

(12:32):

I'll tell you one great way to get out of your rut is to turn off your producer brain and to sit down and find something you love and enjoy about what you're doing right now and focus on it and just enjoy it. Like that mavi record I did, I throw it in my car and I listen to it and I don't listen to a lot of records I've done, but I listen to it and I just bump a couple of songs that I love, and I've just been rocking it all week, and every time I throw it in, I just get fired up and I'm like, this is great. And I'm not sitting there analyzing the mix like, oh geez, should I have taken that S down a little bit or should I have maybe eq, the guitars? I'm sitting there and I'm just like, this is a great song.

(13:06):

So you know what I mean? You got to really learn to turn that part of your brain off. It's so important for the enjoyment of what you're doing. It keeps you fresh, it keeps you fired up. And I'll tie this back to what I started saying is that that's one of the things I love about going on vacation and spending six weeks in a foreign environment. I discovered a lot of really awesome music. For example, one night I went to a restaurant, which was like an Uzbekistan type theme, and they had a lot of Uzbek food and clove and different types of kebab and things like that, but they had this band there from Uzbekistan, and the band was fantastic. It was very interesting. One of the guys played the rum, the Buca, it's called. The other guy sang and played guitar. They had another guy that sang, and there was a guy who played, I think maybe bass and violin, and it was really awesome because they played some track and they just jammed.

(13:59):

They did a lot of Eastern stuff, and my ear was used to the analytical Western music. And I'm always thinking about it. It always puts me in a work mood. It's hard for me to turn off my brain, but when I listen to Eastern music, it's a very different feel. I don't understand a single word of what they're saying. I mean, it all sounds lyrically the same. I don't understand a word of it, but I love the rhythm, the beat, the melody. It's a different type of set of instrumentation and it always gets me fired up. So every time I go, I discover a bunch of cool songs like Russian Pop or Caucasian stuff, or Arabic pop, or in this case, some uz back music that this band showed me and things like that that really kind of gets you fired up and excited and just really rekindles some of the love that just hours and hours of grinding brutal work in the studio can slowly erode away at.

(14:50):

So it's really good to change up your environment and listen to some music that's really, really exotic for you, because sometimes a lot of it you're like, eh, that's too much for me. But sometimes you find songs that you really like and you connect with and you want to keep listening to. So every time I go on vacation, I always find a couple of songs that are really cool that get me fired up and jacked, and I come back, I somehow find them on YouTube and I throw 'em in my playlist and then I'll listen to 'em and all my friends think I'm crazy. They're like, what is that weird music you're looking for? Listen to? And I'm like, dude, it's awesome. You got to get it. So I just want to say that that's a really fantastic way to keep fresh and really just live in the moment and turn off your producer brain because it's a very difficult thing to do.

(15:31):

You know what I mean? It's like we think about it all day, we train ourselves to analyze, and then it's saying, okay, turn all that off. Sit back, relax, and just enjoy it. So I think it's important. I mean, when you get in the car and you, you're rocking some songs that you love, make a great reel of songs. Don't sit there and analyze the mix. Don't analyze the production, sit back, turn it up, and enjoy the music and just blast it and have fun and don't care. It's a great feeling. It's something I forgot how to do for a very long time in my life. And over the last couple of years, I feel like I've really rediscovered that, and especially as of late, I've really, really relearned how to enjoy a lot of music and not just completely dissect it and analyze it to oblivion and back.

(16:14):

So I just want to share that with you. Maybe that helps you guys. I hope so. Okay, so I'm going to move on here now and talk about a different topic. And this is something, it's going to be one more rant, so sorry we will get to your questions soon, but hey, come on. It's my show. I can talk about what I want to talk about to some degree. So send me hate mail fla me, I'm over it. Okay, so yeah, I want to talk about personal accountability because this is something I've been thinking a lot about lately that I feel like is really, really important that I don't see a lot of, especially when I go onto Facebook and just look at people's behavior. And I mean this goes to all tracks of life because it's always easier to blame somebody else or some other circumstance in your life or something way out of your life that's out of your control that somehow influenced your life.

(17:03):

It's a lot easier to blame any type of failure, any type of problem, any type of setback, anytime or reason for procrastination or reason for why you couldn't do something on something or someone else. It is the easy road. It is the weak road. It is the sad road. So I just want to say that it's really important to be honest with yourself when you're setting goals and you're trying to achieve something and you're out there and you're working really hard towards something, it's easy to self dilute. I mean, I'll give you an example. I was in the lounge the other day and I heard some band come through and they're just a local band and they were just talking so big about how awesome they're going to be and how badass and how famous. And it was kind of funny to me because then I just looked how they were dressed and I just knew right away that it wasn't going to fly.

(17:54):

You know what I mean? I don't even need to hear their music. I know that their image is completely out of date and no one's going to invest in a band like that. But just the way these guys were talking and they were completely delusional and they had no sense of accountability. Their brains were completely in the clouds. There was no sense of these are my dreams, I have to do A, B, C, and D to get there. It was just like, these are my dreams and everything I'm doing is perfect. So I really believe that comes onto a sense of accountability and to be accountable, you got to get rid of self dilution and you have to recognize it. I mean, I'll go back, I've talked about this a couple of times in different places, but when I was in a band, I remember a thrash metal band in the mid two thousands.

(18:38):

We were like, oh yeah, we're really good at guitar and our drummer's really good and we can play, so we will get signed. And I sat back and I laugh now and I think about how stupid we were, but we were totally delusional about it. We didn't know. We're like, well, mega Death has shitty vocals and they got signed and they're huge, but they write great songs. So you find all these crazy arguments to justify why what you're doing isn't working when deep down inside that it's not working. So it's really important to be self accountable. I guess that's my main point here. You have to get rid of self delusion. You need to sit down and really think about what am I trying to do and how can I get there? And you have to analyze it and deconstruct it, and then you have to sit down and be like, okay, well what behaviors am I doing and what actions am I doing?

(19:27):

Am I sitting down every day? Am I spending enough time doing this? Are there things that I'm procrastinating on that I know I should be doing? Is there something that is pressing that's really, really important that I'm putting off and I am out doing something stupid like watching TV or vice versa? These are the kinds of questions you need to ask yourself. You need to sit down and kind of just audit your goals every single week and just ask like, Hey, what am I doing in my life that I know that I'm not doing? Because come on, we all know what we're not doing, but what am I doing that I could change right now? I mean, it's just like I was talking about running the other day.

(20:05):

I wanted to start go to a 5K, and it was like I'm looking at the calendar and it's just like, I'll go out and I'll run tomorrow, get up early and because there's one coming up in a month and maybe I should start training and I just sat down and then I'm like, am I being accountable here? Am I holding myself accountable or am I procrastinating? Am I just saying, oh, I'll do it tomorrow. So I literally came in last night, I put my track pants on am I shirt, and I grabbed my phone and I went and ran a mile and a half around in the dark with my cell phone as a light and 10 30 at night. Because you know what? You could wait your whole life for tomorrow to happen. There's always an excuse why you can't do it. There's always a reason why, but at the end of the day, successful people are accountable to themselves.

(20:55):

They hold to themselves accountable. They hold themselves accountable to the other people in their life. If you say you're going to do something, you commit to doing something. Don't sit around feeling bad about not doing it. Sit down and put in the work and put in the time and get it done. It's so important. So you got to hold yourself accountable because a lot of people aren't going to do it. People will say it behind your back. They'll be like, oh yeah, that guy, he's crazy. He talks a big game, this or that. But at the end of the day, you either put in the work and you put in the time or you don't. And it's so important to do it. So you got to be accountable, especially if you're going the solopreneur route, you're trying to start a studio, rise up, kick butt, take over, do something great with your life.

(21:37):

You know what I mean? Do music for a living. You need to really, really be on top of your stuff. You need to really push yourself. You need to hold yourself accountable and say, you know what? I don't have a lot of time this weekend. Maybe I can't watch this episode of Nail the Mix. That's a terrible excuse. Listen, you make time, okay? If you got to stay up an extra hour and then aggregate it over eight days to watch it, an eight hour event, you're going to learn something. So you got to do it. So I'm just saying if you want to take control of your life, you need to take control. You can't sit around and talk about taking control. You can't think about taking control. All of that's a precursor. You need to sit down and actually take control and start immediately.

(22:14):

A big part of that is holding yourself accountable. Sit down, set goals. Say, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. I'm going to do this. And start now and hold yourself accountable. Come up with consequences for yourself. Commit to doing something online so you'll be embarrassed in front of all of your friends and family if you don't do it. I mean, find a way to hold yourself accountable. That's all I'm saying. So accountability is something I've been thinking about. I wanted to share my thoughts on that. And that being said, now I'm going to get to your questions. Alright, so our first question comes from our subscriber, Simon and Simon's asking, Hey Joel, I was wondering what your thoughts are about clipping between plugins. I'm usually mixing into a mastering chain, so I do the process at the same time in the same session.

(22:56):

Because of that, I'm mixing pretty loud into my mastering chain. Some of my plugins do indicate that I'm clipping showing red, but I can't actually hear it. I can't hear it if I'm clipping out of the output though, he said Dough, I should have. I truncated that. Sorry, if I'm clipping that output dough, like if I take away the limiter, if it's too intense in pro tools 10, the faders on the channel's low red. If the output channel or ox is too hot, this is not the case. And 11, it's just that the output glows red. If it's clipping, I've read that there's no difference between 10 and 11. In this case, 11 doesn't show red clipping because there is none since there is 32 bit floating bit death, we do have a lot of headroom inside. Is this the case between plugins two? Do they show clipping that are actually not?

(23:46):

Love to hear your thoughts and facts on this? Alright, Simon, maybe this is not the most scientific opinion on this. People will probably pull up the torches and come and tart feather me and burn me or something like that. But I'm going to tell you something about clipping plugins. I do it too. Sometimes I try to gain structure. Sometimes I shoot overs, but if you can't hear it and it sounds good, who cares? Seriously, just do it, man. Me and Decker had a really good conversation about this and Billy Decker has more number ones than I do, so I'm going to listen to his opinion. He's got some really, really good ears. I don't have any number one. So Billy, Billy's a smart guy man. He does some really amazing mixes and him and I were talking about clipping because he was just like, dude, man, I'm always pounding the red.

(24:36):

He's like, I don't care, dude, I'm just, if you're not in the red, you're dead. You just got to gain it up. You got to duct tape. And I'm like, dude, I know, man, it just sounds awesome. Who cares? I don't care if it's everything in the mix is clipping, everything is red. If it sounds dope, it's dope. Now, if you're hearing audible distortion that degrades the quality of your mix, then obviously you probably want to back off. So sometimes I'll be sitting there gain structuring and I'll be running everything into the red super hot and then I'll hear some clipping on my guitars or something like that. You're definitely going to hear clipping a lot more on sustained instruments than you are on transient instruments by the way. But if you're hearing clipping and it sounds like it's distorting, then you got to pull some stuff back.

(25:13):

But just because it's in the red and it's clipping doesn't technically mean that it's wrong or it sounds bad. I mean, heck, I love clipping. I use clippers all the time on drums and all sorts of things when I mix. So clipping can be a very, very powerful audio thing. I mean, it just takes the transient and lops it off and brings the body closer. Now, in terms of the technical behavior of how pro tools works, I don't know if you switch the 32, I'm assuming it works similar to calcu Base does. Meaning you can take your buses and your tracks, you can throw 'em all into the ride, and as long as you have enough headroom on your master and scoot your input gain down and you're not clipping, you're not going to hear any distortion. You can get away with it. The internal summing mixer can handle it.

(25:52):

So all I'm saying, man, Simon pounding it into the red baby, if it sounds great, just rock and roll and keep going. Don't let it slow you down. I mean, yeah, you want to get good gain staging and stuff like that, but dude, I mean, come on, some plugins just sound cool. I don't mind if I'm clipping the waves SSL channel strip. Sometimes I do. I do it all the time. It's okay. It never sounds bad to me when the meter's in the red, I just keep mixing. I got better things to worry about. Is this song capturing the emotion? Does it sound good? Is it inspiring to listen to? Am I telling the story that the vocalist is trying to do That stuff is way more important when you're mixing than if you got a little bit of distortion on a transient here or there or something like that.

(26:37):

So I don't know, that's just food for thought, something to think about. It's my opinion, your mileage may vary. Some people might think that's crazy, but you know what? We all have ears. Use your ears. What sounds good is good. All right, our next question comes from our subscriber, Patrick. Hey Joel, what are your thoughts on using credit to buy gear for your studio? Should you wait until you have the money to buy the next upgrade or should you just calculate your risk when taking on debt to fund those purchases? Oh, Patrick, I love this question because I am a huge fan of credit. Okay, now let me preclude that statement. There is good debt and there is bad debt. And a lot of people don't understand the difference. They just go buy a bunch of crap in the credit cards or getting hit by 26% interest because they never took a class on finance.

(27:23):

They don't understand how brutal and savage that is, how you're paying your minimums and you're just getting eaten alive. Now I would say, Patrick, it's a very, very important skill, and this is especially for you young listeners listening here, let me sound like an old man and get on my bully pulpit here and just smash this idea into your head. Listen up if you're young, get a credit card and you need to be responsible. You want to build good credit, okay? There's a reason. I'll tell you why here in a second, which is going to answer Patrick's question. You need to save every month. You need to go and buy something stupid like a pack of gum gas for your car and then pay it off. And if you do that for a couple of years when you're young, starting at 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, over a couple of years, you're going to develop really solid credit.

(28:11):

And then if you have really good credit, guess what happens? Banks come and they throw you credit offers. My credit score is about 800. I've been really responsible. I used to do credit and work at a bank and pull credit all day and stuff. So eight 50 is like the max. You're very rarely in society going to find people that have credit. That's 800. I mean, that's the ultra insane responsible. That's very, very top. A couple of percentage points of people that are that responsible. So you want to be that person. And the trick is that never take on an insane amount of debt, but always pay it off. So take some debt out, use it. So once you get really insane credit, what happens is every single month you're going to get 40 offers in the mail for people that want to give you ridiculous credit card offers.

(28:58):

Here's the $30,000 limit and 0% interest on all of your purchases for the next 36 months. So think about that for a second. You got three years to pay something off and you do not have to pay interest on it. Think about how powerful of a tool that is. Patrick, as a business building weapon, I mean I built my entire studio. I mean I literally a bought well over a hundred grand worth of equipment on 0% credit. I never paid a single dollar of interest and I never paid a single late payment on any of the stuff. I mean, even the late payments are like 30 bucks. So it's not a big deal, but I mean especially if you buy a compressor for a couple thousand dollars. So the point is, I would go and I would buy one piece of gear at a time and then I would pay it off over the next two or three months.

(29:47):

I'd make it a priority even though I had two years to pay it off. Because for example, Sweetwater does really dope credit deals. If you've got good credit, they'll float you something for three, four years. Now it's ridiculous, even back then just getting six months. So if you can pay it off in a couple of months, then guess what? Boom, you're going to get maybe a two to $5,000 limit at first. So boom, now you have another two to $5,000 in credit, you can go buy something else. So I would pay it off in two to three months, then I would buy something else. Then I'd pay it off in two to three months and I'd buy something else. Then I did this for six or seven years and then I got a bunch of really awesome stuff in my studio and I made a ton of money returning on the investment because when you've got cool gear and people like it, it looks awesome and it sounds great.

(30:32):

And if you do a good job and you've got some talent and you take care of your clients and you nurture those relationships, you'll keep your clients. So the gear definitely, I made my money back many, many, many times in the gear that I've invested. And at some point, if I ever want to sell the gear for some sort of small loss, first off, if you run a business and you're smart and you've set up an LLC, what will happen is you'll be able to deduct. If you're an American, I am not going to speak for any international business. Lemme put that disclaimer. If you're an American, you can write off all your stuff that you buy so you're getting it at the discount of whatever tax bracket you're in. And then on top of that, if you can leverage credit using somebody else's money to grow your business and not paying any interest, to me that's like the double whammy.

(31:10):

It's such a compounding powerful, massive effect that you can use to accelerate to get the things that you need to do the job. I'm going to caution you though here, Patrick, you don't want to get gear lust, okay? It's very important to know the most bang for your buck when you're spending money. So if I had to go and talk about outboard gear, I would say in my experience, the most important things, aside from microphones and room treatment and stuff like that and getting a good interface, I think it's maybe getting two channels of really, really great mic pre so you can get really high quality input. Then maybe getting, if you're going to go analog, like a two bus compressor or anything that affects the two bus, like a two bus compressor, an eq, because it's going to affect everything, all of your mixes, it's going to do a lot of heavy lifting for you.

(31:58):

And at that point, if you really want to get nerdy and start getting individual compressors and patch base and all that crazy stuff like that, you can go down that route. But I think the best bang for the buck is stuff that you're going to use on everything. So getting a really good two channel converter preamp or interface or something like that, you're going to be using for 90% of the stuff. So you want 90, 10 year stuff, like what? 10% of the inputs are producing 90% of your results. So you don't need to spend a ton of money, you can buy some gear and get some really fantastic results, but Credit Patrick is an amazing tool to leverage that. So just make sure you've got the work. I wouldn't go spend five or 10 grand on credit if I didn't have five or 10 grand of work sitting on my calendar confirmed with deposits in my bank account over the next couple of months.

(32:44):

So you want to make sure that you're budgeting properly, you want to be smart about your money, you want to be smart about financing, but if you can do it the way I did it, I'm telling you Patrick, it's a really fast way to get ahead. It's really exciting because you can just get what you need when you need it and you don't have to worry about paying it. For example, earlier this year after I get completely cleaned out by the IRS on taxes and wrote my entire bank account over into check, I needed a new computer because my other computer was dying. So I went out and bought a computer for $2,000 on credits and I had a year to pay it off and I've been paying it and paying it. And finally, now that I am back here and I've collected some money for some people that owe me some money in the studio, now I'm going to pay it off.

(33:24):

So right before the term, congratulations, I got a new computer, didn't pay a dime of interest. I've been using that computer for about six months now and it's made me money and it's been great. So think about leverage. It's a very, very positive thing. It's a very smart thing to do if you have the discipline, which is the real rub, to pay your credit every month and increase your credit score. And once you have good credit, it's an amazing thing because like I said, people will come down and knock down the doors to give you offers kind of off topic, but kind of on topic, I'll give you an example of a really smart thing to do. I make money on my credit cards and I know a lot of people don't think I like this, but I do because I'm a business owner and this is how business people think.

(34:06):

So you should too. If you're not thinking like this, go find. If you have really good credit, go find a really awesome travel credit card or cashback credit card where you're making money back. And if you have decent living expenses, like for example, lots of groceries and rent and things like that, car insurance, whatever, you can put a lot of those expenses and pay for a lot of things on your credit card. Again, you need to pay it off every month. That's the rub, right? But if you can do that, you could easily put a couple of grand in living expenses on your credit card every month and you are racking up points or cash back. So I fly a lot. So I've got this really awesome card for people with Elite credit and by Barclay and it's fantastic. So I get a really high percentage of cash back and stuff.

(34:50):

So every month I get between one to $300 back. Now there's an $87 annual fee, and I don't pay any interest or any late fees to the credit card company. So every month I'm making just for living like a hundred to 300 extra dollars just by using my credit card for daily living expenses that are completely unavoidable. You know what I mean? For example, if I got to put the kids in daycare that costs a couple thousand dollars a month in the west for the amount of kids I have, so boom, I can swipe, boom, there's three grand and a certain percentage of that goes back. So that stuff really adds up is what I'm saying. So every month I'm getting a hundred to 300 bucks back in credit stuff and the credit card company is paying me, which to me is ridiculous, but it works out in their behalf because so many people are not responsible.

(35:34):

So there's another way. If you're smart, you can use really awesome credit cards. So go get a business card and buy all your gear, get 0% financing for 18, 24, 36 months and get a card that gives you cash back so you can take somebody else's money, build your business, and then have them pay you to do it. That my friend is the ultimate combination and life hack. If you want to be boss mode, like I said, I'm going to say it again, but I really want to pound this into your head, especially younger people that are starting to build credit and need to learn how to be responsible with money, which is very hard for a lot of people in society. For some reason they don't teach it in school. You have to pay your bill off every month, okay? Don't pay the bank interest, don't be stupid.

(36:14):

Let the bank pay you. Be smarter than that. So there you go. Those are the tricks of the trade, Patrick, good luck. Alright, next question comes from our subscriber Charlie, and he has a long epic question, epic tome here. He's prepared. So this is going to take a little bit to get through, but let's start. Alright, so Charlie says, Hey Joel, it's a pretty lengthy question, but if you're going to give me some advice, it'd be much appreciated. Yes, Charlie, I am happy to. So Charlie is saying, Hey, I currently work at part-time in a technical support job for the supermarket. Unfortunately, as of February, 2018, I will no longer have a job. I will receive redundancy pay, although I'm unsure how much naturally I feel like I should start looking for another job. I live with my longtime girlfriend who has suggested that rather than finding a new job, I try to develop myself properly as a freelancer.

(37:00):

She figures that with job seekers allowance plus my redundancy, plus her high paying job. We'll be able to cover bills without me getting another job. Man, you've got an awesome girlfriend, good for you. It's good to have somebody in your life that's supporting you that's positive. I just want to say that. So high five on that one. This might sound like a dream come true, but I'm trying to be practical. I'm currently making money freelancing with audio, but it is very sporadic. Some months might be great and I'll make a few hundred pounds. Alright, we're in Britain, but then I might have a few months of a little or no work. I do make a reliable income from audio. Most of my work is editing and amping, but I've had a couple of mixing gigs before too as well. So my question is as follows. Number one, is this an opportunity to start before I'm ready? Should I just say F it and try?

(37:51):

What I am scared of is spending six months working from home and having only one or two jobs in that time and then finding myself in a position where I'm forced to find a regular job again anyways, that would achieve nothing. And then number two, what move should I make in the next eight months to try and transition into making a more reliable income off music? Alright, so Charlie, that's a good question. So it sounds to me like you've got this set up and I think that's fantastic. So I'm going to tell you something, and I know it's scary, buddy. I've been there, this was me when I was 25 years old when I kind of lost my job and kind of sat down in the old parents' basement and said, yep, I'm going to go for this. And everybody kind of gave me the raised eyebrow crazy look like, dude, what are you doing?

(38:40):

Why don't you go find a new job? And I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty miserable sitting in a cubicle working for somebody else. It's not what I'm passionate about. It's not what I want to do with my life. It's not for me and it's not going to make me happy. So I've been there, I've sat in your position and I know how terrifying it is. What's cool is you have at least a window of time from now to then where you can go and start working on it. So I would say this to you, Charlie, what is the worst possible scenario that can happen for you if you don't go for it? Okay. So if you don't go for it, you'll just find another job, the one you have, you have experience and you'll continue doing something that you've been doing and you are in the exact same place.

(39:26):

So I feel like you lose nothing other than a little bit of time, but I'll tell you there's something important about this. You may lose some time going for it, but what you're going to gain is you're going to gain some life experience that is absolutely invaluable to me. So yeah, the first year I did audio was a pretty rough year. I think I made $6,000. It was terrifying because I had a job that paid me about 10 times more a year after that I had got out of school and gotten, I basically just took my college degree and burned it, which made my parents pretty stoked and proud. I bet, huh, back then. Now it's a different story, but I remember the second year that I made 12 grand and then it went to 20 grand a year and it took a while to build it.

(40:14):

Now I got to say, I'll be honest, I wasn't as proactive as I should have been. I was more focused on being in a band at that time in my life, which I think was partially a mistake and partially a blessing because it was good for getting clients. But I wasn't really focusing on being an audio guy until I was like 27 or 28 years old. I was really focusing from the age of about 25 to 27 or eight, just being in a band and audio was kind of a consequence. It wasn't until I really sat down and started just focusing on being an audio dude that my audio career really took off and really quickly and I started making money and turned it into a career pretty quickly. So you have that going for you. So I'll say like, listen man, nothing in life.

(41:00):

You only get opportunities like this once in a while. If you think that audio is going to make you happy, dude, Charlie, you got to go for it bro. You got to grab her by the horns, you got to move, you got to take over and you got to get this done, man. The worst thing that can happen to you is you end up doing what you're doing right now. So is it so bad if you're off for six months and you can't get your business started? I mean, geez, walk into a job interview and be like, alright, so why haven't you had a job for the last six months? Because I tried to start a business and I worked really, really hard and I failed, but I learned a lot of valuable lessons and I put everything on the line and I'm sitting there.

(41:37):

If I was an employer, I'd be like, damn, this guy's got balls. I want to put this guy in charge of something because he's not afraid to take risks. Most people won't pull up their pants and they won't go out and they won't go for something because they're afraid, they're terrified. They don't want their friends to know that they're doing something and to judge them and to say, oh, you're going to fail. They don't want their family to judge them because everybody in your life when you go for it is going to tell you that you can't do it because they're all too afraid to do it themselves. So block all that crap out, man, and sit down and look inside your heart and say, this is what I want. If this is what you want through, then you need to go for it. And even if you fail, it does not matter because you're not losing anything.

(42:14):

I could have always went back and got another job. That was my worst case scenario, continue doing something that I hate. But dude, I sat down and I went for it just like you're going to after you listen to this podcast because man, you got nothing to lose. You need to do it now. It's so important to do it now because how are you ever going to know what it's going to be like? Do you want to sit down 50 years from now maybe when you're sick and dying and say, damn, I wish I would've went for it. Okay, so here's your worst case scenario. Let me paint this. I just realized there's another benefit. Your worst case scenario is you go back to having a job and then you keep doing audio work on the side and you make a couple extra bucks and life is good.

(42:51):

That's not a bad life. Even if you have to keep a job and you can still do audio on the weekends and a couple of weekdays and do something in your life that's an amazing life, that's a win. That is a victory because you have found something in your life that you love doing that makes you happy, that you love, that you're passionate about. And so many people don't find that in life. So even if you can't do it full-time, even doing it part-time on the side, like dude, don't ever give up that dream. Just keep working on it and keep having fun. So dude, you got to go for it man. So the next question is, alright Joel, I get it. No small time. Jump in the fire baby, let's go get it. So what move should I make in the next eight months to try and transition into making a more reliable income off music?

(43:30):

So first thing Charlie, I think you need to do is you need to really focus and figure out what you want to do. So if you want more editing work or amping or mixing, whatever you want to do, you need to focus on that and you need to get savage at it. The next thing is you need to get your client acquisition game up. And I've talked about client acquisition in a million places. Maybe you've taken speed mixing, hopefully you have. And in speed mixing there is an hour masterclass on client acquisition that was included in the bonus, which is fantastic. If not, man, hit one of my Facebook live sometime and go through my feed and watch some of those on my Facebook because I always give away a lot of really good client acquisition strategies and we got this URM summit coming up.

(44:07):

You might want to check that out. That's a pretty amazing opportunity and I'm going to have a bunch of client stuff there. I mean, imagine going to King Turco and Billy Ducker be like, yo, how do I get clients? Each one of those guys is going to have a different O'Brien hood or Joey or each one of those guys is going to have some different techniques and they're going to be able to learn something. So that might be a great opportunity for you. But again, it requires you to invest some money. But what better place to go and meet a bunch of awesome people that may need editors or it's just being around people that are going to be successful. And the people that are coming to the summit, just like the enhanced members at URM, those guys, they're on fire, man. They're hungry for it.

(44:45):

They want, they're going to make it. So dude, you got to go get it. So the next thing I would say is you got to be a sponge. You got to absorb as much information as possible. Now obviously you're hit sitting here listening to the podcast or I nail the mix like, dude, you're killing it, man. You just got to keep putting in the work and keep going hard. It takes time to get really, really great at this stuff. And no matter how good you get at it, you still feel like you suck. It's human nature. So you got to keep going man. You got to just really be a sponge and absorb as much information and knowledge as possible and put in the time. But I would say the most important thing, and this is what took me a while to really figure it out, is you have to be regimented in your work ethic.

(45:18):

You need to sit down with discipline and you need to get it done. You need to be like, alright, I'm going to get up at six in the morning. I'm going to study for two hours. I'm going to go exercise, eat breakfast, then I'm going to come back in, I'm going to practice mixing. I'm going to work on some work for whatever the rest of the time. And then on the evening and the weekends, I'm going to go out and I'm going to go get clients, I'm going to go to shows. I'm going to network with people online. I'm going to spend an hour or two hours a day building relationships and rapport with people and trying to find clients, and then I'm going to spend an hour a day nurturing relationships that I already have so I can get repeat work and customers. So Charlie, I hope that helps you, man, I believe in you. You go and get it. You can do it. If I could do it, man, you could do it. It was a hard road for me, but I'm very, very thankful and very grateful that I went down that road and I didn't listen to all the little demons outside my ears that were like, don't do it. I don't know, man. Should get a job. Can't do it.

(46:12):

Don't you feel embarrassed that you're living at your parents right now and working out of your mom? I look back at that stuff and now I laugh because all of those people, I made them eat their foot. So you know what? You can do it too. Don't listen to that crap. Filter it out, get it done, son. Put in the work in no small time. Charlie, I look forward to seeing you at the top. All right, I got one more question here that I'm going to answer, and then I'm going to go do a Facebook live because I just feel like I just want to keep going. So lots of things to rants about. So that being said, I do a lot of good rants for those of you. We have lots of fun on the live, so go hit me on Facebook, man. We're definitely, if you're looking for more information and more knowledge and stuff like that, I also been doing Instagram rants.

(46:56):

You can shoot me a message at dear sorry at Joel at URM Academy and just say rant and then shoot me something. I'll go off a one minute personalized rant for you on my Instagram, or if you hit me on Facebook. I do long form Facebook Lives where I answer your questions and we sit down and we just have a blast and they're pretty intense. So come find me and let's rock and roll. Okay, so our next and last question of the evening comes from Quincy. Quincy says, I was working on a mix in my bedroom when I started hearing some noises coming from other rooms in the house. As I walked away from my speakers to close the door, I noticed the click of the kick drum seemed to really stick out when I originally thought it was well balanced with the rest of the mix.

(47:36):

I listened to some references, but their mixes seemed to remain balanced no matter where I was standing in the room. The click was noticeable but never stood out. I tried tuning down the frequency boost I had made belt, gave some frequency stuff, but the click sound still set out and I made the kick sound dull in my normal listening position. I tried to turn the kick itself down, but the mixes loses power and the one support, I have a multi-band compressor on the kick and I taming some of the settings. Sorry, I tried some of the settings and it made it sound different, but not better. I've also tried scooping more of the mids, even the clicks sticks out. So what's going on here? I was on the right track with any of these methods or am I missing something out or missing out on something?

(48:17):

Alright, so Quincy, here's what's up, dude. I would first off maybe use a different kick drum sample or something like that if you want a different click, but let's just say that you're stuck with that drum. So a strategy you might not have tried that would probably really help if you're having a problem with EQ is take your kick and split it. So you want to keep the body in the mid range and the low end of the kick because it's sounding awesome. So take duplicate your kick and mute the second channel. On the first channel. You want a low pass filter to whatever frequency where you get in the body, and then on the kick that you split, maybe trigger it with something else and high pass it at maybe one or 2K or something and try to get a different click onto your kick drum from a different sample or a different source or whatever.

(49:02):

You can try electronic kicks. I've seen producers do all kinds of stuff, so that's a really good way to do it. That way you can change out the click so it gels more with the top of your mix. And this is super important because it's like the top of your guitars, your bass, if you're doing metal or EDM, your synths. It's important to get them together and to find a place where the top of the kick punches and it gels and it moves and stuff like that. This is something for my URM enhanced members we spend a lot of time talking about, and I spend a great deal of effort going through on mixed rescues, helping people try to just hear when things are gelling and getting it together. So I just want to say that I would try to find a way to switch out the top of the kick and maybe keep the bottom if it's working.

(49:44):

I'm looking at your notes here. It says like you've used match EQ and stuff like that, but you're going crazy with all these things. You don't need a multi-band compressed. You don't need any of that stuff. What you need to do is you need to find a better sounding kick for the song. I feel like that's more important. If you get the source right, you can find something that gels boom, man, you're going to be in really, really, really good shape. So Quincy, you try that, shoot me an email back. You let me know if you get it. Just be patient with it. Try lots of different stuff. It's like when I'm mixing, I'll sit down and I will try a bunch of different kick drums samples because some kick drum samples are going to sound completely out of space, whether it's EDM, whether it's rock, whether it's metal, whatever.

(50:24):

And then some samples are going to sound, they're going to fit in the mix, but they're going to be too pokey or they're going to be too wolfy. They're not going to be tight enough, they're just not going to have the right energy. But every once in a while it'll come a kick that just has the right energy for the song and it'll just lock right into your mix and you'll be like, oh, that's it. And that's where you want to be. So just spend the time to get it right at the source and try to find a better sample that's going to gel better with the mix. That's my advice to you. So, alright, I'm going to head out and go do a Facebook Live and go spit some hardcore epic rants from my friends and we're going to have a good time talking about audio stuff.

(50:58):

So if you got a question and you want to be on an episode of Dear Joel in the future, shoot me an email to Joel at URM Academy. That is Joel at URM Academy, and I would love to sit down and answer your questions and try to help you and give you advice in any possible way. I just want to take another second here to talk about what an amazing opportunity the U RM Summit is coming up here and it's going to be incredible. We've got an all-star lineup of just amazingly talented, smart, gifted people that are going to fly in December, I think it's the 11th, through the 14th. It's nail the mix.com/summits, and they're going to come in and we're going to talk all about all these amazing things that you can do to build your career as well as increase your chops.

(51:44):

It's going to be an incredible immersive experience. There's going to be great networking opportunities like the people that have come and seen us at the bootcamps that Joey and Al have put on have really, really said amazing things and learned a ton from 'em. So you just got to come in and you got to do the summit because the URM summit is going to be like no other event in audio education. It is going to be so exciting and it is just such an amazing opportunity and it's going to be fully immersive. We're going to really, really make it. We're going to work you guys hard. So I look forward to seeing a lot of you there. We're going to have fun. The meetups that we've done in different cities and with different URM subscribers have been amazing and incredible, and we've had a lot of fun.

(52:25):

So I can't imagine how awesome it's going to be to have a bunch of people from all over the world fly in into the summit and we're going to sit down in one space and it's just going to be audio nerd fest for days and it's just going to be so much fun. So with that, I'm going to sign off. It's great to be back. Shoot me some questions. I'll do another. Dear Joel, soon, I miss doing this and I'm so happy to be back and doing this with you guys again and let's get inspired. Get jacked up. Let's take control of our health here. That's important to me. I'm out of kick right now. Like I said, I want to inspire. So make a health goal. Do something small in your life to improve your health. That's your homework this week. And guys, let's go get it, man. No small time as I like to say. With that being said, podcast theme, boom. The Unstoppable Recording Machine

Speaker 1 (53:09):

Podcast is brought to you by the 2017 URM Summit, a once in a lifetime chance to spend four days with the next generation of audio professionals and special guests, including Andrew Wade, Kane Chico, Billy Decker, fluff, Brian Hood, and many more. The inspiration, ideas, and friendship you'll get here are the things that you'll look back on as inflection points in your life. Learn [email protected]. The URM podcast is also brought to you by heirloom microphones. Heirloom microphones are high-end condenser microphones with something that has never been seen in the microphone industry, a triangular membrane With our patented membranes and our tailored phase linear electronics, your recording and live experience will never be the same. Heirloom are microphones will help you discover clarity. Go to EHR LD SE for more info. To get in touch with the URM podcast, visit urm.com/podcast and subscribe today.