CLIFTON MILES: Losing His Hearing, Mixing With One Ear, Why He Keeps It A Secret

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]. And now your host.

Speaker 2 (00:32):

Hey Eyal Levi. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. I am Eyal Levi, and with me is Mr. Clifton Miles. How are you doing?

Speaker 3 (00:41):

I'm doing great. How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:42):

Good. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 3 (00:44):

Yes, sir. It's an honor.

Speaker 2 (00:45):

Well, it's an honor for me as well. So Clifton is a longtime now the mix, URM subscriber and a studio owner, producer mix engineer at Dead Room Recording Studios in San Antonio, Texas. And reason that he's here, other than because he's a badass engineer is because he is got a particularly inspiring story that we're going to get into. But before we get to that, why don't you tell me real quickly what got you into playing guitar initially and how that translated into you wanting to record?

Speaker 3 (01:16):

Well, I have been a fan of music and growing up with parents that were into music and listening to music all the time, and so just playing guitar was something that it just kind of happened for me. I don't know, I just wanted to do it. I don't know if there's another answer to that question than that. I just wanted to be able to recreate the songs I was hearing on the radio. And around that time to me was kind of like a golden age for metal pantera and bands like that that you're hearing on the radio. Before the internet was really a thing, I wanted to play guitar. And so my parents got me a guitar and I started jamming and eventually that led to me getting one of those little task cam porta studio cassette deck things. I used to have one of those, the big blue brick looking thing. And I got one of those. And real quick, the Quest became getting that cassette information into a computer I used to run and that phono RCA cable into an eighth inch input into my computer sound card. And I would try to,

Speaker 2 (02:37):

What was it? Like a sound blaster or something?

Speaker 3 (02:39):

Yeah, something like that. Some kind of real primitive doll that I didn't know how to use properly. And I would always try to do that into Windows audio recorder or something like that. I just thought it was cool to be able to get that information.

Speaker 2 (02:56):

So this was the late nineties then?

Speaker 3 (03:00):

Early two thousands? Late nineties, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:02):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (03:03):

Right around that time period. I mean, I know I was listening to Hate Breed Perseverance and Slip Knots first record, like 99 2000 in that timeframe. That was what was happening for me. But I didn't actually start playing in a band until closer to the end of my high school time, which is around oh 3, 0 4. And once I started playing in bands, we started needing to record and there was a couple guys in town that were kind of the go-to guys. One was a home studio guy and one was a commercial studio guy. Both were cool guys. It's just depending on your budget, which vibe you wanted, you'd go to one or the other. And I just found myself really captivated with that experience and wanting to be there as much as possible, even if it wasn't my band, I was just always there. So my face kind of became a regular staple in the studio just with friends bands.

Speaker 2 (04:07):

Which one of those two studios, did you find yourself more drawn to The home studio or the pro studio?

Speaker 3 (04:14):

I got along better with the home studio guy just because it was more or less something, I guess, that my brain connected with a little better. But I did the atmosphere of the commercial studio. It felt really expensive to me. It felt like I was a destination almost. I don't know if that makes any sense, but I did find myself more connected to the home studio guy.

Speaker 2 (04:39):

And you've had a fairly lucrative career outside of audio. What made you want to stay in the audio world?

Speaker 3 (04:46):

Well, that's a fantastic question. Sometimes I ask myself that I was blessed to have a father as a salesman, and I got to be kind of immersed in his terminologies and the way that just the people skills, I guess is for lack of better words. And so when I began selling, I came from the auto industry and I was a career car sales person and did really well with that, but it wasn't fulfilling to me. And in 2008 when the recession hit, I wasn't making nearly as much income as I was previously making. And so I had been hobby recording on the weekends.

Speaker 2 (05:34):

You weren't making as much money from the car industry,

Speaker 3 (05:37):

Correct? Yeah. So for me it's like if I'm not going to make as much money as I was making, I'm going to do what I want to do. And I decided in that moment that what I wanted to do was my recording. And so I am real competitive and so I don't stopping. I just don't like stopping doing something I said I was going to do until I feel like I've accomplished what I need to accomplish. And almost 10 years later, I still haven't had that. I still haven't felt like I've accomplished what I am here to accomplish. I'm still learning every day. I'm still trying to get better. I'm still trying to increase revenue for the studio. So it's been a really fun challenge and I don't see it. I think I'm pretty sure I'm a lifer at this point.

Speaker 2 (06:27):

So you're making your full living off of the studio now?

Speaker 3 (06:30):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (06:31):

That's awesome. And how long have you been a hundred percent all audio?

Speaker 3 (06:36):

Well, in 2008 is when I decided I was going to be all audio, and it didn't quite pan out initially. I blew through what I had saved up pretty quick and I needed

Speaker 2 (06:47):

Just out of curious, do you mind sharing how much you had saved up?

Speaker 3 (06:50):

Oh wow. Yeah, it's embarrassing. But yes, I had put away, it's okay, looking back, it was extremely reckless. I had to put away maybe $2,500, which covered me, holy shit, which covered me probably two months, a month and a half. And so it was like I have one month to basically start making this happen. And it was extremely reckless and I would not recommend anyone doing it that way. But I've always had a burn the ship's mentality with my studio business. And so I didn't give myself an opportunity to really fail. And so I took part-time jobs, I drove pizzas and things like that to make sure I could stay afloat until this thing actually took off. And that was around 2010 where it got to be where I didn't need the part-time job anymore to pay my bills.

Speaker 2 (07:47):

But there was a tragic incident that occurred in your life that took you away from recording or almost took you away from recording. Can you talk to us about that?

Speaker 3 (07:56):

Yes. So in 2007, summer of 2007 while still selling cars, I was recording part-time just on Sundays on my only day off. And when I say recording, I mean it was hobby demo stuff in my mom's bedroom at my parents' house.

Speaker 2 (08:16):

But you wanted to make it full time at that point?

Speaker 3 (08:19):

I had not decided that yet. I hadn't made that decision. It was just something I was enjoying doing and I was doing really well with my car job at that point. The decision to go full-time with the audio was really kind of a repercussion of the recession because of how little I started making from the car business. But in 2007 in that summer, I woke up and I had a loud ringing in my right ear, and it was very similar to that experience. You have the following day when you wake up after a loud concert or a show and you kind of have that stuffy kind of tinnitus and it kind of just rings. It was really similar to that, except there was something drastically different about it that it actually kind of hurt a little bit whenever I had a car kind of honk his horn near me on the way to work that day. And I noticed that was kind of when I was aware that it was different.

Speaker 2 (09:20):

So you were just hypersensitive?

Speaker 3 (09:23):

Yeah. Yeah. It was like sounds actually were causing pain in my right ear, and I didn't know why. I actually went to the bathroom and wadded up a piece of toilet paper that put in my ear. I didn't have any earplugs because I couldn't handle it. It was too annoying. And I ended up leaving work that day and going to an emergency clinic and they ran some tests and ended up sending me to an ENT the following day. And he kind of looked at me and said, this is kind of bad news either way, you either have a virus. He told me he ran the same similar test to what the emergency clinic did and said you either have a virus, which at this point if you're feeling pain from it, is causing significant damage to your hearing, which you may not hear the same ever again from that ear. Or there's a 2% chance that you have a benign brain tumor and

Speaker 2 (10:26):

So shitty or more shitty,

Speaker 3 (10:28):

Right. Yeah. There wasn't a light at the end of that tunnel. So what

Speaker 2 (10:33):

Did you do that day when you found that out?

Speaker 3 (10:36):

Well, I went for an MRI that day. He said, I want you to go right now and get an MRI. And he called and made that happen for me. And the creepy thing or the shitty thing we're allowed to say shitty. Right? The shitty thing about, yeah, say whatever you want. Okay. The shittiest part about this was that he said this was a Thursday or a Friday afternoon. I can't remember exactly, but I do remember he said, Monday, I want to see you first thing in the morning before I left. Well, that day I went, it was a Thursday. Yeah, I went that evening and I got the MRI and I knew something was wrong because I dunno if you've ever had an MRI, they kind of put this visor on your face that has a mirror on it so you don't feel claustrophobic. So

Speaker 2 (11:24):

They never gave me the visor. They just stuck me in there. They just stuck you in there. Yeah, these people, they gave me a Xanax though. I'm sure that probably

Speaker 3 (11:34):

Helped.

Speaker 2 (11:35):

Yeah. But the thing is they gave me the Xanax and then put me in there five minutes later so it didn't kick in until I was out of there. And then afterwards I just want to go to sleep. It was totally pointless and fucking stupid.

Speaker 3 (11:46):

That's awful. Oh yeah. I hear some people can't handle the MRI machine as well as others.

Speaker 2 (11:54):

It's uncomfortable as hell.

Speaker 3 (11:55):

Oh, it's extremely. It feels like you're in some kind of space Odyssey 2001 or something. It's making all these Star Wars sounds and stuff. It's intense. But I had this visor on, I could see in the mirror through this visor, the texts that were kind of doing this MRI pointing at the computer screen during the MRI when I was looking at that and I could see one motion for the others to come look at the screen. I knew that there was, I knew in that moment, I just absolutely knew. I was like, there's no reason why these texts.

Speaker 2 (12:37):

You weren't supposed to see that though, right?

Speaker 3 (12:39):

I don't think so. No. But they did give me a freaking visor with a mirror on it, so I had a very clear view of everything that was going on in their office when that was happening to their knowledge or not, I don't know, but that was when I knew,

Speaker 2 (12:55):

I don't think you were supposed to see that.

Speaker 3 (12:56):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (12:58):

I dunno. I think they're supposed to talk to you with their game face on, not show you the holy shit. That reminds me of when I got swine flu and almost died.

Speaker 3 (13:07):

Holy shit.

Speaker 2 (13:09):

It was before swine flu testing was I guess accurate. And so they didn't know what I had in the hospital and they were trying to keep their game face on. But one of my best friends father worked with the head doctor that was treating me just by chance. And he told me that the doctor was telling him that in the doctor's words, we don't know what the fuck is wrong with him, but obviously they didn't say it like that to me.

Speaker 3 (13:43):

Jesus.

Speaker 2 (13:44):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (13:44):

That was,

Speaker 2 (13:45):

They're not supposed to say that.

Speaker 3 (13:46):

Yeah, yeah, no. When they came out, I asked the guy point blank, I said, did you guys see something? I kind of saw something going on and he looked a little rattled and he said, Hey, your doctor's going to go over everything with you. And that's what you're saying, that's the game face answer. We're not allowed to say anything. But man, that swine flu thing was right around the time that I was still trying to make ends meet. I was delivery driving when everyone had sanitizer bottles everywhere and that it was like an outbreak. That was what? 2009?

Speaker 2 (14:24):

Oh nine?

Speaker 3 (14:24):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:25):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (14:25):

I remember that. Wow. I didn't know that happened to you.

Speaker 2 (14:28):

Oh yeah. It definitely happened. And that's why it's funny when I see people or saw people who said it was a conspiracy, it's like, yeah, right.

Speaker 3 (14:38):

Conspiracy

Speaker 2 (14:39):

My fucking ass.

Speaker 3 (14:40):

I saw that too. Yeah. I had never met anyone personally or spoken to anyone personally that actually had that. I did hear that conspiracy. I don't really buy into those kinds of things usually, but Well, some of 'em I do. That's another podcast. Right. But yeah, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (14:56):

Yeah, it was definitely real. Alright, so go on. So at that point you're scared

Speaker 3 (15:03):

Or

Speaker 2 (15:03):

Worried or something?

Speaker 3 (15:04):

Yeah, it's a combination of disappointment and anxiety. I wouldn't say I was really scared. The guy did a pretty good job of prepping me for the situation. I knew I was going to be screwed. And pretty much when I saw those people pointing at that screen, and I kind of knew in my intuition what was going to be told to me. I've kind of started mentally preparing. And it was confirmed because Friday morning, the day after I got a call from the NT and he said, Hey, can you come by my office this afternoon? And I said, oh, weren't we supposed to meet on Monday? And he goes, I'd rather see you this afternoon. So I said, oh, yeah. And I was like, okay, well I know if there was a slight question, there's no question now. So I showed up and he said, took my dad with me.

(16:01):

And he said, there's no easy way for me to really say this, but unfortunately you fall into that 2% that I told you about and you have a benign tumor. And he told me pretty straightforward. He's like, it's benign. There's no cancer. He's like, these are, as far as brain tumors are concerned, this is the best kind to have. It's very, for these kinds of people that do these procedures, I mean it's not ultra common, but it's not uncommon and it's relatively simple for them. And you'll, you'll be back in commission in a few months and you're going to lose your hearing, that's the bad part, and you're going to have to have your hearing nerve removed. And he kind of explained that process to me and what went into it and where they made the incision and how it worked. And so I was pretty well aware of everything before I went into the actual surgery.

Speaker 2 (17:03):

What was the process?

Speaker 3 (17:05):

So the process is basically after the anesthesia, they put one of these halo devices on you in case, so your body cannot move or your head can't move while they're doing it. And they have a person called a neurotologist, which is a neurotologist is somebody that is their job is to just drill into your skull. They're trained to just literally cut into cranium. And then the neurologist is the person that actually goes in and starts messing with the brain. And so there's a team, there's the anesthesiologist, the neurotologist, and there's the neurologist. And so where they came in on my end was pretty much if you touch the back of your cranium behind your right ear, there's a little bone you can feel like where the back of your skull is behind your ear, and that's where they drill the hole and that gives them a clear line of sight to your brainstem and your hearing nerve.

(18:07):

And so they do it with a combination of microscopes and a little, it's basically like a scraping device where they have to go through and literally scrape the tumor off of your brainstem. And unfortunately for in my situation, the tumor had grown into my hearing nerve, so preserving the hearing nerve already with this type of procedures, like a less than 1% chance. And so it was, for me, it's already in there growing into it, so there was no chance of saving it. They just had to literally cut the line. There's literally no line connecting my ear to my brain on the right side.

Speaker 2 (18:54):

Got it. Now, quick question about that procedure. I've heard that for brain surgery people are awake or often awake. I don't know if that's true or not, that's just what I've heard. Were you awake for this?

Speaker 3 (19:10):

Absolutely not. No. I was as knocked out as knocked out can be. I woke up with bandages all over my skull. They actually had placed a large plastic dome like ring over the ear and the skull in that area. And then I had my whole head wrapped in bandages, some kind of mummy or something. And that was how I woke up. And it stayed like that. And it stayed like that for about a week and a half to two weeks. And I spent a solid week in the ICU or it's like a neurological ICU where they have people that kind of help. After a few days they help you get up and walk you with walkers because your equilibrium's all jacked up, your world's spinning. You actually have to learn how to maneuver again without that portion of your equilibrium. And

Speaker 2 (20:13):

So sounds like a fairly traumatic procedure. What was it like leading up to it?

Speaker 3 (20:20):

It was all super fast. I was still selling cars. And when I came back and I told them the news, they were all, my coworkers and colleagues were extremely sympathetic. They actually started taking care of me.

Speaker 2 (20:35):

Was that the next day basically?

Speaker 3 (20:37):

Yeah. Yeah. And the surgery date I had was like 10 days after, so it was, or two weeks after. It was real, real quick. And in that two weeks I was getting all my stuff situated to not be at work. They told me I was probably going to be out for about six months was what they told me because partially it was the whole walking thing, the recovering thing. But then also my face, they told me I was going to have pretty much a, if not a permanent Bell's palsy type situation, that it would be lingering for a while. And I dunno, are you familiar with Bell's Palsy? Kind of?

Speaker 2 (21:18):

No.

Speaker 3 (21:19):

That's like if you ever see somebody that has a stroke and half their face doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (21:23):

Yes. Okay. I'm familiar.

Speaker 3 (21:25):

It was that with the brain situation. It's not called Bill palsy because it's not activated by stroke, but it looks the same. It's like,

Speaker 2 (21:34):

So basically you have a frozen half of this face

Speaker 3 (21:36):

Basically drooping. Yeah. So drooping, eyes watering and yeah, it, it's bad. So I had that for a good while and that didn't go away for about six months, like they said. And still, I only have, if you look at pictures of me or videos when I talk I look normal, but it isn't a hundred percent. I can't smile all the way on that side. Most people can't tell unless I make real exaggerated faces. But it's still not a hundred percent and it's been over 10 years. But that was the situation. But the guys at work were really great to me. They took care of me and started kind of hooking me up, so to speak. So I had some cash in the bank to get me through that six months of not working and did

Speaker 2 (22:21):

Oh wow. That's cool.

Speaker 3 (22:22):

Yeah, it was really neat the way that they did that. Sometimes there's deals come in that really don't go to anyone, they're just, they're considered house deals, if you will. And they were kind of putting 'em in my name to help me out, things like that, just to put some extra cash in my pocket. So that was really kind of them, and I always appreciated that. And I ended up getting back to work in about half the time they told me I was back to work by mid-December instead of the projected February-ish timeframe. I was just so bored at home that I wanted to get back into it. And shortly thereafter, I got a call from a friend and I don't know if he was unaware of everything that had happened or if he just didn't think anything of it, but he said, Hey, are you still recording?

(23:12):

And I said, no, man. I mean, I just had this brain surgery and I'm deaf in my right ear, so I am probably not going to be of much use for that. And he said, oh, okay. And then I thought for a second I kind of felt like, wait, why I not give it a shot and just see, I mean, I can hear, obviously, I am still out here talking to people and working and I told 'em, you know what man? I'm going to give it a shot. And so I did. And that was the start of me understanding that I am not useless as far as recording is concerned, and I can still do this.

Speaker 2 (23:54):

How long from the point that you woke up with no hearing on one side, how long was the elapsed time between that and when you got that phone call?

Speaker 3 (24:06):

I want to say if I had to estimate six months.

Speaker 2 (24:11):

So for six months you thought that your audio career was over?

Speaker 3 (24:16):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had my monitors set up, but they had started collecting dust and I was using my computer strictly for a OL instant messenger.

Speaker 2 (24:28):

How did you feel about that? I mean, you still had the monitors up there so you could look at them every day like a reminder, which probably kind of sucked.

Speaker 3 (24:36):

Yeah, it did. I think at that point I had began accepting that before I had the surgery. And so I say accepting that in quotes because it ended up being that I didn't accept it, but I had started to tell myself, tolerating it, yeah, okay, I just need to accept that and I'm going to be selling cars for the rest of my life and I'm going to be fine. But I honestly was so preoccupied with everything that I kind of just didn't think about it. Maybe it was a mental, I was protecting myself from feeling feelings about it by just suppressing it, but I didn't dwell on it. And I think that's a common thing for me though. If I'm hurt by something or if I'm feeling down about something, I tend to not give it a lot of attention. I just think I try to be positive a lot. And I wasn't sulking or anything like that, or I wasn't letting it kill me or anything. But I will say you that I did have a sense of satisfaction and a sense of pride when I did the recording.

Speaker 2 (25:57):

You mean before or after? Well, I'm sure, but still in that time period before you started recording, I want to hear more about what you mean by keeping positive because I imagine most people would not be able to keep positive in that. I mean, most people that I know, and I don't mean the achievers, let's say everybody else, they tend to have hardships that are way less than that, keep them down because they dwell on things and they respond to adversity in the wrong way with something as major as losing your hearing for an audio engineer that's kind of losing an arm for a guitar player or something like that. And we know from history that musicians have been able to lose a limb and then keep playing their instruments, but that takes an enormous amount of positivity, I think, and self belief in oneself. Can you talk more about the positivity aspect

Speaker 3 (27:03):

As far as remaining positive and all of that? Yeah, as far as your analogy with a guitar player losing a limb or something like that, I never, never really looked at it that way. I know it sounds kind of weird that I didn't feel like an overwhelming defeat by it initially, but it was a situation where I said, I can still hear the face. My face was something I was a little more concerned about is because people physically, I was paranoid that people would look at me and think of me as being physically disabled. And I was able to remain pretty positive throughout the whole experience. And I never let it really get me down. And after I did my first recording, I really felt like I was able to do this. The only time it really bothered me was when I put headphones on and I knew there was 50% of the information that I'm not getting. And so I would switch to mono and I would be able to understand for reference everything that was going on, but I just had to always understand that I wasn't getting a true representation of what everyone else is going to be getting, if that makes any sense.

Speaker 2 (28:34):

Okay. So when you told your friend that you were deaf in one side, don't you think that most people looking for an engineer to be like, oh man, sorry to hear that. I guess we're going to have to find a different engineer.

Speaker 3 (28:51):

That's kind of been like, that's kind of been a lingering theme for me over the last 10 years. And that's one reason why I felt it was kind of time to speak up about it is because I don't tell anyone this information. It's not important because what's important is how the recording sound. And if they did not like the way my recording sound, that's a different story. But if they like it, then it shouldn't matter to them how I'm getting it there, whether it's with one ear or two. But my buddy, thankfully, was only looking for a lo-fi kind of thing, a demo. And at the time, with a hundred dollars personas interface and these a hundred dollars set of Audix Tom live, Tom mics I had or whatever, all I could make was a lo-fi sound. Anyway, so he wasn't super concerned, and I think I was charging him 10 bucks an hour or something like that, and it was a good friend of mine, so I don't think it really bothered him. I think he kind of was excited by it to see me doing it again. But when I went into the professional realm where I'm doing this for full time, I just don't let, it doesn't come up. People just come in and they're excited to see me and they're excited to work with me

Speaker 2 (30:20):

And they have no idea

Speaker 3 (30:21):

And they have no idea. And I've had clients, some clients for six or seven years, and it just never came up. And when I tell them, they're like, wow, how are you able to do this? And I'm like, I mean, I don't know. Same way anyone else is. I got all my chops after the fact, so I don't know another way.

Speaker 2 (30:45):

So between when you did that first recording and then you went, made it sound like it was the next day, but I'm sure it wasn't the next day, how much time elapsed and what did you have to do to work up that confidence or how long did it take until you would've considered yourself a

Speaker 3 (31:04):

Well, I mean, there are times even today where I'm like, yeah, I'm getting paid to do this, but am I really a professional? Well,

Speaker 2 (31:13):

I'm sure everybody I know feels that way at some time.

Speaker 3 (31:17):

Yeah. So that was about February of February or March of 2008 I would say. I did that first recording and I left my position at the dealership in November of oh eight. The recession happened, we started feeling the effects of it around May or that summer, may, June. And I had given it several months, and I had pretty much, the writing was on the wall, this isn't going to change. I had a great mentor that I met while working at the dealership, and he kind of started planting these entrepreneurial seeds and giving me books to read. And that's when I really said, I think I'm going to just do this. And so there was about, I would say six months elapsed. But when I decided to do this again, I'll reiterate from earlier, it was extremely reckless because there are guys that are in their first month of URM that are putting up mixes that would obliterate anything I was trying to do in that timeframe.

(32:24):

I mean, it was horrifyingly bad when I go back and listen to it. And I would say it took me from the moment that I went and decided to do this professionally, I creatively and skill-wise crashed and burned for about four or five months where I was just staying up till endless hours of the night, reading articles, practicing, pulling up old things I had recorded, and trying to sculpt them in different ways and playing around with compressors and EQs and literally just trying to find, okay, what is the standard for this stuff? Because I didn't know the same questions I see people asking now is the same stuff I was asking, except there wasn't a forum to ask it, does the EQ come before or after the compressor? Is there a right or wrong way to do this? Is there a right or wrong way to do that? Or, oh, more than four DB of EQ is wrong, is not wrong, or it's just so much information and my source material was awful. And so she's like, it really took me about six months to really get to a point to where I felt like, okay, this isn't the worst thing in the world now.

Speaker 2 (33:30):

And it didn't bother you that you couldn't hear in one ear. You were just going to do it.

Speaker 3 (33:35):

That's right.

Speaker 2 (33:35):

Awesome. I mean, did you have to think about that at all or was it just like, no question, I'm just going to do it.

Speaker 3 (33:42):

Yeah, fuck

Speaker 2 (33:43):

It. Fuck it. I know it seems crazy, but fuck it.

Speaker 3 (33:48):

I did say Fuck it. Yeah, but it just never seemed crazy. It didn't.

Speaker 2 (33:54):

Or how about this? Lemme rephrase. It might seem crazy to other people. Fuck it.

Speaker 3 (33:59):

Yeah, and that was probably more or less the case, and that's when I kind of consciously decided I wasn't going to bring it up.

Speaker 2 (34:07):

It seems a little crazy to me to, not that you did it, but more that you had the balls to do it. I don't think most people would've, I think most people would've just accepted defeat.

Speaker 3 (34:20):

I appreciate that. Yeah. I think that goes back to my mentorship, the books I was reading at the time and my mentality, like I mentioned, it's kind of like burn the ships. There isn't an option for me outside of this. I've always kept that mentality like, this is it. This is what I'm going to do. And so the ear thing to me just, it never was a thing for me, made it. I never allowed it to be a thing.

Speaker 2 (34:51):

So let's talk about the technical compensation. So you said that some things to mono. How do you get your balances right between left and how do you know, what do you use as a gauge? How did you figure this out?

Speaker 3 (35:10):

So what I've done at all, pretty much anytime I possibly can, I'll record my guitars through the same, my rhythm guitars, through the same exact chain. Nowadays I try to use the same player. That's just a given though. You always want the better guy to try to do the rhythms if you can get them to, but I will always try to cut the guitars. So if I'm using a 51 50, right? And I have it running through an API pre with a 57, I'm going to not mess with the gain input gain or the output gain of the API unit or the volume of the head while I'm doing left to right rhythms. I want to make sure that I'm keeping them the same. In a situation where maybe we want to use an Uber shawl on the right side or something like that, or maybe something that a band brings, then I'll make sure that I'm looking at the meters per se to make sure that the left side to an eyeball sense looks very close to the right side.

(36:17):

And then what I'll do is sometimes I will look at them where they're peaking and then I'll mono them and I'll make sure that they're feeling the same. And I've never had anyone come back to me and say, the right side of your mix is louder than the left. It's never happened to me. That tells me that I've done a decent job of crossing my T's and dotting my, i's to make sure that things are very balanced in that sense. And when it comes to panning, sometimes I'll want to pan delays or I'll pan reverbs or something, or I'll pan a vocal to where the delay shoots from left to or things like that. Then it's not even really about what I'm hearing, it's about me kind of drawing it, understanding that the listener is going to interpret it the way that I'm drawing it, and even though I don't necessarily perceive it that way, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (37:17):

So you kind of have developed an understanding for what you think they're perceiving. And obviously it's pretty accurate if you've never had someone say one side seems louder than the other, or the mix feels lopsided or anything like that. And I've heard, man, I've gotten, we get like 500 plus mixes a month here at Nail the Mix. I've heard guys with two functioning ears who present lopsided mixes every month.

Speaker 3 (37:50):

Yeah, I think saying a lot. Yeah, I think it's worked to my advantage. It's funny because I have two other guys that work here out of the studio with me that help me out with different things. And it's funny because I use a Black Lion Modded oh oh three, I got their top end mod, and that's what I use as my interface in my home studio that I mix on. And the output, the monitor output started to fail. And I'm the guy that actually noticed that the right side was more quiet than the left side.

(38:35):

I made a joke to the guys about it. I was like, how do you guys with the two ears not realize that the right side's significantly more quiet than the left side? And I don't even hear in that side. But I think what happened was through my natural checks, the way that I checked things, especially when I'm panning high hats and rides, which I tend to mix these days drummer perspective, and I have the high hat on my left monitor. So when I'm doing my ride, it's like I'm looking for that ping to be in a certain spot and I wasn't, I was like, why is the ride 12 DB louder than the high hat in order for me to get the right vibe that I'm looking for? And then that's when I started looking into it and realizing, well, the right side is significantly more quiet than the left side, and I ended up isolating it to be an output problem on the interface and had to send it back. But yeah, it is funny that you said that because it seems almost like what would be considered a curse has kind of become a useful tool. And I feel like I am pretty good at finding those wly frequencies and pretty quick more so that has to do with y'all's classes than anything. I mean the year training aspect of it, but I can pick 'em out real quick and know which ones are going to work in the mix and which ones I need to dip out. So I dunno, I've made it work.

Speaker 2 (40:03):

It sounds kind of like how when you're mixing without a sub and you're just supposed to understand what the base roll off is on your monitors. So for instance, everything from 60 and below on these monitors is going to sound like 60 B quieter than it really is or whatever. And you start to learn your speakers and you learn how to compensate for them. And so you know that what you're hearing right there isn't the way it translates out into the world in the low end. Sounds like a similar thing for your hearing where you should be hearing the ride, for instance.

Speaker 3 (40:51):

Right? Yes, absolutely. Like I mentioned before, most of all my chops when I was kind of learning the ropes with all this stuff in the beginning has all come after the fact. So all of my ear training that I've developed over the last decade is all pertinent to one ear. And all the music I listen to now is all, I'm all hearing it. I'm hearing it the same way you are or anyone is. It's just only through one side. So I am still interpreting the same picture. So when it comes time for me to paint my own picture, I'm painting the same picture, just doing it with what I have, if that makes any sense. Got it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:40):

Except for with headphones that fucks you up.

Speaker 3 (41:42):

Yeah, I can't do that. Yeah. Okay. Sense. I can't do that. Yeah, I mean, I do just, I hear people all the time. I check low end on headphones. So in the last year I've started trying that just to try and see if I can feel the base and then I'll reference with the headphones just to say, okay, well the other thing, Colin Richardson stuff feels like this with headphones on, and I need to make mine feel like that with headphones on. Even if I'm only hearing the left side, I have a mono button that I'll use from time to time with the headphones, but that's a really rare thing, and it's only for a few seconds because it messes with my head.

Speaker 2 (42:20):

Got it. So what are some of your goals for the future?

Speaker 3 (42:24):

Well, right now I have a few goals. My main one is to continue to get better. I really am super driven. I really want to be,

Speaker 2 (42:37):

Get better at audio,

Speaker 3 (42:39):

Get better at audio, yes, get better as a mixer, get better as a guy that's recording and getting better at source tones. That's always the goal. The second is financial related. I want to continue to raise my rates and continue to get the rates I'm asking for and increase our bottom line and improve our gear and keep reinvesting in the studio. And I would say that's it. I mean, outside of that, I'm hoping to build another house in the near future and things like that. And I have a wife and a son and just continue to provide for them.

Speaker 2 (43:16):

So just onwards and upwards.

Speaker 3 (43:18):

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (43:19):

Awesome. Well, Clifton, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really hope that people who feel down on themselves take a lot from this and realize that it's really what you make of it. Most times, 99 out of a hundred times. It's all in how you choose to respond to the hardship that makes the difference.

Speaker 3 (43:43):

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and I just got to say, I absolutely adore what y'all are doing. Thank you. It's game changing in so many ways. I mean, I remember the first time I saw the ad for periphery, I had never for, don't judge me. I had never listened to Periphery, but I knew that they were very popular and I knew that they were playing kind of,

Speaker 2 (44:10):

I hadn't heard them either, so it's okay.

Speaker 3 (44:13):

Are you joking or are you being serious

Speaker 2 (44:14):

Too? No, I'm a hundred percent serious. And I knew Misha through the internet. We had emailed and I knew who they were, obviously, how can you not know? But I think I heard something in 2006 maybe when DOS tried to audition their old vocalist, Casey, and he turned us down, but that's about it.

Speaker 3 (44:38):

So I knew that it was really popular with a lot of the guys that came in. I'd see the shirts and things like that. So I said, I get to get the tracks from the session and I get to watch the guy who mixed it, mix it. And then my question was, well, how good does that mix sound? So I heard the song and I was like, okay, this is going to be cool. And I didn't know if it was a one-time thing or not, and I looked into it and it's like, every month this happens. And so I was like, oh, this is crazy. So yeah, I joined and I've never unsubscribed and I don't plan to ever, it's too good. I don't get to compete every month, but I do watch every month's mix, live mix. And if I can't catch it live, I'll watch three replay in my own time. But to anyone that's even remotely considering joining Neda Mix or the URM family, it's almost foolish to not, and I say that as I'm a raving fan. I just love what y'all do so much and the way that it's set up. I appreciate that and it's great, and other guys are doing a good job too. But y'all's feels to me y'all are the Nike of recording education. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (45:54):

I really appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (45:55):

Yeah, no problem.

Speaker 2 (45:57):

We were just trying to give people what we didn't have when we were learning.

Speaker 3 (46:02):

Amen.

Speaker 2 (46:03):

Would've killed for that back in 2004 or five.

Speaker 3 (46:07):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, siphoning through Gear Sluts was never my most favorite thing to do, nor was being patronized on the freaking Andy Sneak forum. So yeah, it's amazing that I can get education without the Dicks.

Speaker 2 (46:26):

Yeah, yeah. Dick free. Yes. Forever, dick free. Well, Clifton, thank you very much. Alright,

Speaker 3 (46:32):

Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (46:33):

The Unstoppable Recording Machine 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]. To get in touch with the URM podcast, visit urm.com/podcast and subscribe today.