Dan Korneff: Developing Audio Software, The Paramore Riot Drums, and The “Genius/Idiot” Cycle

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host. Eyal Levi. This show is brought to you by URM Academy, the world's best education for rock and metal producers. You know us for nail the mix, but today I am here to tell you about Ultimate Drum Production, a brand new course that's going to completely transform the way you think about and record drums. You're going to be hearing a lot more about it in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, head over to ultimate drum production.com to learn more. Welcome to the URM podcast. I'm Eyal Levi Today. I've got the one and only Dan Korneff with me, he's a producer, mixer engineer who has worked on lots of bands that like Paramore Breaking Benjamin Papa Roach. I mean, list goes on and on and on. He's incredible. He's a genius, makes his own gear, and it doesn't just stop there.

(00:00:53):

As you'll hear in this episode, this is a guide that is always challenging himself and for people who are first starting out who get discouraged when maybe their mix isn't as good as they thought it would be, or clients don't react to their work the way they want or whatever it may be, I want you to pay attention to this episode and realize that even dudes at the very top of their game have their doubts. And so since it's true that people at the top of their game, at the beginning of their career all have their doubts, one of the big things that differentiates the people who make it further in the people who don't is in how they learn to deal with those doubts. And so I think that this episode will be good for any of you guys that have wanted to just throw in the towel out of disappointment or let down. It's not necessarily the best idea. Sometimes it is, but not necessarily. So I'll shut up now. We'll get into the podcast. Here goes Dan Korneff, welcome to the URM podcast. It's awesome to have you back because, well, first of all, we love you and your work, but you were the first guest we ever had on almost three years ago now.

Speaker 2 (00:02:08):

Wow, that's exciting.

Speaker 1 (00:02:12):

It's crazy that it's been that long and also time flies.

Speaker 2 (00:02:17):

It does. Yeah, it does. I can't believe it was three years ago.

Speaker 1 (00:02:21):

It was 2015.

Speaker 2 (00:02:22):

Holy mackerel.

Speaker 1 (00:02:24):

Yeah, we launched March of 2015, so we probably recorded it in February of 2015. Yep, yep. So amazing. Has a lot changed for you since then. I know that we haven't talked too much since then, so just wondering if you could give us an update as to what you've been up to, you built any new gear, anything amazing going on?

Speaker 2 (00:02:48):

I mean, as far as audio goes, everything's pretty much about the same. Nothing really changes here. I just keep making records, mixing records nonstop kind of thing. The one thing that has changed is I've spent a lot of time over the last year working on a couple of new venture ideas, and so it's taking a lot of time as far as the manpower needed, and I don't have a huge staff of people either. It's just me. So trying to create different things is a very, very difficult task.

Speaker 1 (00:03:27):

Is this something you can share with us what you're doing or is it all top secret? Okay,

Speaker 2 (00:03:31):

Cool. Yeah, no, absolutely. So first thing I put a lot of time into, which a lot of people know from seeing online is I love DIY audio stuff and I have a huge passion for that and learning electronics and stuff. So I started at a company a while ago called classic PCB, and the whole idea is getting classic circuits into people's hands, stuff that they can build on their own and enjoy doing. So that's the first thing I've been doing, and that takes a lot of time too, is designing the circuit boards, prototyping the circuit boards, making sure everything works, building revisions. You go through two or three pieces of revisions of the same piece of gear, and it gets to be pretty daunting when there's 12 or 13 different circuit boards you're working on. So that's the first thing I've been working on. And the second one is software design.

(00:04:28):

So a little ways back, I put out a little drum library called back to school with a company called Basic Drum Co. Yeah. And that was a lot of fun learning contact scripting and stuff like that. It was a lot of fun and it takes a lot of time and learning how to do the artwork and everything. And so I have a bunch of libraries that are about to come out, but again, it comes down to manpower and just being myself and just trying to learn new things. And these new libraries, I'd like to come out as virtual instruments instead of relying on another piece of software. So it's been a lot of learning of c plus plus and juice and all these other things that go into design. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (00:05:21):

So how do you balance that with making records? I mean, I know that for us over here at URM, it's basically none of us can really do that anymore. And I know that Joey's got JST and there's drum Forge as well, but I mean just URM alone is so intense that there's not much else you can really do. It's tough to do multiple things. How do you manage that? Because making records is a full-time thing. Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:05:57):

Full-time thing. So for me, it comes down to whatever my A DD is focusing on at that moment. So for the last week, and it also helps that my wife is a teacher, so I'm up at 6:00 AM every morning and I just stay up as long as it takes. So from six to eight, six to nine, I'm sitting there either designing a circuit board or designing software program and coding, whatever it may be. And then I walk the dog and I run into the studio and work with the band until midnight or 1:00 AM and then head home and try to jot down some ideas of this other shit. I've been thinking of other business plans and stuff, and then I go to bed and I get back up at six and start all over again. So basically I don't sleep that much.

Speaker 1 (00:06:47):

So five hours a night, I have always pulled five hours a night.

Speaker 2 (00:06:51):

I mean, I have for the past shit, probably 15 years, five or six hours. And yeah, that's basically what I run on. And then I take Sundays off and recharge and hang out with the wife.

Speaker 1 (00:07:06):

Did you always keep it that methodical or is that something that you've employed recently?

Speaker 2 (00:07:15):

Well, it hasn't always been the same. The schedule's been the same, although five years ago I had a studio that was 70 miles away from my house, so I spent a good three, three and a half hours each day commuting. So that took all of my time and I didn't have time to do anything other than make records. So about five years ago, I opened up a studio that's right around the corner from my house and that's really allowed me to do more.

Speaker 1 (00:07:41):

So what would you do in those three and a half hours a day of commute? Dude,

Speaker 2 (00:07:47):

What really pisses me off is that looking back on it, I did that commute for eight years and I didn't do a single fucking thing. I could have learned another language, I could have read audio books, something, and I just spent most of my time on the BQE, just fucking cursing and punching my steering wheel and yelling at people. Yeah, I was really upset. I didn't do

Speaker 1 (00:08:12):

Anything. I guess the first year of nail the mix, I lived in Atlanta and we shot mainly in Florida, and this was when we really didn't have very many subscribers. And so I felt guilty about asking the company to buy me an airplane ticket. So I would just drive from Atlanta to Orlando every single time. And I mean, it's not a monster drive, but it's eight hours and if you do it two times or three times a month or four times, it gets crazy after a while. And I found that the only thing that kept me wanting to actually do it is that I would listen to books the whole time or podcasts or something. And that actually made me look forward to the drive. Now I fly to Orlando for those and it's a 50 minute flight, and I think I like that way better, but I do kind of miss the eight hours by myself being able to just listen to information nonstop.

Speaker 2 (00:09:17):

Right, right. Good for you, man. I'm glad you're able to do that.

Speaker 1 (00:09:20):

Well, not anymore now, I don't know. Can't

Speaker 2 (00:09:26):

You have seven more hours to yourself now?

Speaker 1 (00:09:28):

Yeah, I can't bring myself to do that anymore. I kind of think that was a moment in time and that's about it. So it sounds to me, and I think that this is pretty impressive, is that you're, sounds like you're learning every different aspect that goes into creating these products, whereas I know that some people like to just team up. If they don't know how to code it, they will find someone who knows how to code it, not always learn to code it themselves. What are your thoughts on doing all that stuff yourself? Is it just a product of your curiosity as a person, the way your brain BrainWorks or I'm just curious about what leads you to want to take on all the different tasks.

Speaker 2 (00:10:15):

For me, it's not necessarily about getting a product out or getting stuff out. It's about the learning. And if I can create something along the way that someone else would use, then that's awesome. But also running businesses like this, it's actually really good to know what goes on under the hood all the time. Absolutely. So that way you have a good idea of what someone else is doing, or when you make requests about your product, you can know if it's a realistic request or not, and then also have managed the project better along the way. So I'm not quite there yet, but you know exactly what that's about.

Speaker 1 (00:11:02):

Well, yeah, I have a perfect example. So we just did an event called the URM Summit last year where basically it was like four days with a bunch of speakers and subscribers and listeners came in from all over the world. It was super awesome. We all stayed at the same hotel and there was a lot of coordination involved and it's the kind of thing that you should probably hire a pro to do. But I just decided that for year one and probably year two, I'm going to handle that internally and take most of it upon myself and really learn what goes into this so that we can move on to having a planner maybe from years three and on. But I'll know exactly what goes into it so that I make sure that they're just going to amplify whatever we could have done. And I don't mean micromanage, but just so that we understand everything that the planner's trying to do or what the goals are or how it all works.

(00:12:12):

Because I've noticed, at least in my experience, for instance, if you're in a band and you hire a publicist and you don't really understand how the game works of getting publicity, you don't understand that a lot of articles, for instance, are written about people or artists who advertise in the magazine for instance. And so if you want to get on the cover, you want to have a feature, it helps to have a full page ad and it helps to build those types of financial relationships, things like that, that if you don't understand how it works, it's going to be hard for you to get the most out of your relationship with that publicist because it's almost like you've got them working with one hand tied behind their back. And I kind of feel like this is the same sort of thing. How can you help a coder achieve your vision for a plugin if you can't speak his language?

Speaker 2 (00:13:10):

Right.

Speaker 1 (00:13:11):

But I mean it, it's really, really time consuming to learn code. Have you always been interested in code and computers?

Speaker 2 (00:13:21):

I guess I have mean my mother was a programmer and her whole side of the family were programmers. So I grew up around computers and it makes a lot of sense to me, although I didn't dive into it as deep as they did, and I sort of regret it as my parents were learning programming that they would invite me to come down and just hang out in the computer room. And I never did. I was too busy throwing a stick around or something and I should have done it. I should have just sat down and saw, see what they were doing

Speaker 1 (00:13:52):

While Do you think that even so that it rubbed off somehow?

Speaker 2 (00:13:57):

Oh, I'm sure it did. I'm sure at some

Speaker 1 (00:14:00):

Point it did. Reason I'm asking is because I've heard about how you work from people who have worked with you that you're super, super precise about everything and no detail left untouched. And I know that lots of producers are like that and engineers are like that. But the way people described it made me think a lot more of people like my partner Joey, or this guy who actually edits these podcasts is a great engineering editor, John Douglas. Both those guys are computer people. And so the way that they approach computers and software, really you can tell in the way that they engineer and they're always really good at fixing computer problems and that helps stupid people like me. But you can just tell from the way that they organize their mind or their workflow when it comes to audio that the computer thing is rubbed off. So I'm wondering if it's in some way rubbed off on you in your opinion.

Speaker 2 (00:15:01):

I'm sure it has. Yeah, I think it has. And when you experience it or see things like that, you sort of learn the basics of troubleshooting and signal flow. Even in software, software, everything has some sort of flow. It goes from one thing to another, and just having the basic understanding of that I think is super helpful in anything that you're going to do, whether it be audio or computers or trying to start your car when it's broken.

Speaker 1 (00:15:29):

Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's interesting that you're making plugins, especially because you make the gear as well. And there's actually a piece of yours, an 1176 in the URM control room right now. Oh

Speaker 2 (00:15:45):

Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:15:46):

But yeah, it is really good. I know that a lot of guys that are very much into making analog gear and analog gear in general aren't too, I guess things are changing now, but they're not too thrilled with plugins, I guess. Not always at least. I'm wondering where your opinion on that lies and what's leading you to go into making digital audio products like plugins?

Speaker 2 (00:16:19):

Well, I mean I'm sitting in front of racks and racks and racks of gear and an SSL console. I mean, I think that kind of tells you where my mind is as far as what I think about plugins. Not to say that I don't use them, I use my fair share of plugins, but I think that a analog stuff sounds better and until proven, so I'll keep doing it the old way until the new way sounds just as good if not better. And the idea behind the software stuff is that I think that when you deal with music all the time, you're dealing with a creative part of your brain. And sometimes it's fun to be able to create something that is a creative product, an art product, but it uses the other side of your brain, different kind of thinking, kind of like puzzle building and stuff like that.

(00:17:17):

And also at the same time, I look at it like, well, maybe I can think of something or a way to program something or a way to do something that no one's done before that maybe does sound a little more analog ish. There are a lot of companies that do great jobs at it. I mean, I'm not going to lie, I've used that gain reduction plugin here and there and the finality plugin is awesome and UAD does awesome stuff and it sounds really, really good. And if you don't have the real thing, those guys kind of help get through it. But at the same time, maybe there's something I can do that's a little bit different. And there are tons of people, there's obviously a wider audience for people that can afford a plugin compared to say a $5,000 compressor. So it is catering to a slightly different audience.

Speaker 1 (00:18:14):

Absolutely. And I think there's a lot to be said for being able to just get ideas down quickly.

Speaker 2 (00:18:21):

Sure.

Speaker 1 (00:18:23):

Speaking of the creativity, not just what goes into building something new and coming up with something other people haven't come up with, but there's something great about being able to, I guess you're writing or something, bring up a template that sounds pretty good. Everything's pretty much kind of dialed into a degree, at least for the meat and potatoes of what you're probably going to write and to not have to spend time worrying about setting that up every single time is quite awesome, I think.

Speaker 2 (00:19:00):

Oh,

Speaker 1 (00:19:00):

Absolutely. But then that brings up something we talked about last time, which is that, and I'm curious if you still have it set up this way. You told us that your board and your outboard, it basically is set up like a template in that stuff stays perma wired from certain outboard to certain channels, et cetera, et cetera, so that you don't have a huge turnaround time when recalling mixes or going from song to song for instance.

Speaker 2 (00:19:30):

Yeah, that is still correct. It's funny to say this, but being on an analog console with gear is as that a disadvantage as far as moving at the pace of what people need today. People expect you to be able to click a button and turn up a high hat a half DB and then export the session again. And in the analog world, I mean it's just not that simple. But a few years back, I did separate my recording and my mixing paths to sort of speed up the efficiency. So yeah, the console is always set for mix. I have dedicated channels for everything and I keep pumping the same audio, the same channels and very, very similar signal paths. And not to say that I don't experiment because about three months ago I switched up my setup as far as my routing on the console, life-changing for me completely changed up my sound. That made it a lot easier to work with. So it's like you keep to what you know and as time progresses you sort of update things and make the things that are lacking, you try to make 'em better.

Speaker 1 (00:20:41):

Can you talk a little bit about what you did change about the setup that made your life easier?

Speaker 2 (00:20:45):

Absolutely. Yeah. So I have an 8,000 series SSL, which gives me two stereo buses and four audio groups as well as tons of different direct buses and stuff like that. For the longest time I was using my stereo bus one for music, stereo bus two for vocals and printing them separately is two different sets of tracks and then bouncing them together. And that was my mix. And recently I thought about things that were lacking my mixes and sometimes I would tuck a drum stem up underneath my main mix to kind of open up everything. And I thought there's got to be a way to do it on my console so it's all in one. So I started using my four stereo groups on the console as four separate mix buses. So I have one set as my main mix bus, which I really smash up with two SSL bus compressors. And then I have a mix B, which is an uncompressed mixed bus that I'll tuck some other stuff up underneath there and maybe some symbols, maybe a drum or something like that to let those sit on top. And then another stereo bus for any sort of special effects like eight oh eights and reverse symbols and stuff like that. And then another stereo bus for all of my vocals.

Speaker 1 (00:22:07):

So a question about stereo bus is one and two. So like you said that on two sometimes you'll tuck in symbols and drum elements that you want to sit on top. Are those molted out? Are they also on one and then also on two, or will the symbols only be on two for instance?

Speaker 2 (00:22:29):

No, they're out. So I'll do my full mix on say mix a mix bus A.

Speaker 1 (00:22:35):

Okay, got it. And

Speaker 2 (00:22:36):

Then mix bus B, I'll use an A or something to send a little something extra or the small fader on my SSL to send a little extra of signal of the same signal to the uncompressed bus.

Speaker 1 (00:22:48):

Okay, and then vocals and then effects?

Speaker 2 (00:22:50):

Exactly. Yep. Okay. And then it all funnels out of one stereo output through my SSL compressor and then I print it back in on my computer.

Speaker 1 (00:22:59):

What led you to make this change?

Speaker 2 (00:23:01):

Well, I guess it was more of an efficiency thing where before I was having to print two stereo tracks at one time, so my mix bus was printed on its own track, my vocal bus was printed on a separate track and then I would use stems to kind of tuck up underneath. So just the idea of being able to keep it all into one file was a lot more attractive to me and it's achieving the same results.

Speaker 1 (00:23:27):

That makes a lot of sense. How often do you rework things like that to improve them?

Speaker 2 (00:23:33):

I'd say probably. I mean, it takes me until I get pissed off enough about doing what I'm doing currently. So maybe every two years or so I was like, God damn it, I hate doing this. I hate having to do this. There's got to be some way to do it better and I just take some time and do it.

Speaker 1 (00:23:50):

So when something is a pain point and it's become enough of a pain point that you can no longer take it, then go for it. I think that it's interesting that you said every two years because that's a pretty big operation and not quite that much elapsed time in between. It just goes to show I guess the level of evolution that you're always striving for. I think one thing that, a trap that a lot of, I'm just going to say people because it's not just engineers, it's musicians and just people in their lives will get to one plateau and kind of just stay there for a long, long time, maybe forever. So the first time that they start getting decent results or something, they'll just lock into that setup and that's that or kind of the same way that people who grew up listening to one style of music, they will not deviate from that in their lives. I just think it's very interesting that you keep on updating the setup, even though, I mean you've been making great records for a long time, so it's not like the setups before that didn't work. I mean that is very true. They obviously did work.

Speaker 2 (00:25:09):

They did work. I've made a lot of records and a of lot of really good records a certain way, and sometimes you get tired of doing the same thing or at the same time maybe a lot of other people love that stuff that you did, but you think it's fucking dog shit and you want to make it better. So you should always be trying new things

Speaker 1 (00:25:36):

Always. I think that it's kind of interesting what you just said about how some people might praise you for something, but you think it's dog shit. I think it's just bad to listen to too many people's opinions, good or bad, because if you listen to them when they're praising you, then you should listen to them when they're trashing you because you shouldn't be selective about it. But I think they're both just as inaccurate. I don't think that anyone can really know how far you could push it but yourself and even if people think that something's great, if you know that you can make it even greater than why not? I mean, I know that it would drive me nuts to know that I could make something better and not just do it.

Speaker 2 (00:26:23):

Yeah. Oh no, absolutely. I mean, prime example is back in the day working, working on that Paramore record and putting the final touches on the mixes and sending it out and being really, really proud of it. And they post a video online, everything's great, and then you start looking at the comments and you're like, oh, these drums sound terrible. Everything sounds fake. It sounds like a one shot. All these dogging comments that they kept me up at night and it ended up people just time tells people loved that drum sound and how inaccurate some people's opinions may actually be. And it was from that moment on, I stopped reading YouTube comments and shit like that because first of all, they're always hurtful. There's never anything that's amazing. And if I do see a comment that's just like, oh, this is amazing. This is the best thing I've ever heard, then I start thinking, well, what the fuck does this guy go? This guy doesn't know shit. Maybe the song's terrible. He doesn't know exactly. So you go back and forth and eventually you just stop reading that shit.

Speaker 1 (00:27:37):

It's really not healthy to go looking at

Speaker 2 (00:27:40):

It. It's not. But at the same time, it's hate that that sort of drove me for a while to be better and even know people love the stuff I was doing. It could always be better. And listening to other influences and other things and trying to figure out, well, what actually is better? And trying to shape your stuff to be what you think is a better version of what you are. That's the part that's really tough is that everything is so subjective. You can make the record that you think is the most amazing thing ever, and sonically is superior to anything you've ever heard. And people listen to it and go, eh, it's okay. It's all right. So you never really know.

Speaker 1 (00:28:26):

And also along with that, you could make the record that you think is just in lots of different ways from songwriting to mix to production, everything. Every aspect is just the best thing you've ever done. And then it doesn't really sell at all and nobody cares. You can't really predict those things. The hate online is an interesting topic for me just because with what we do, there's always haters. Anytime that you sell education or digital products or anything like that, there's a built in hate crowd for that kind of stuff. And I've learned a lot from watching my partner Joey, and also watching how, for instance, someone like Steven Slate deals with it. He gets tons of brutality all the time and so does Joey. People are just shit talk him all day long on the internet, but they make great products and lots of people buy them and lots of people love them.

(00:29:39):

And the companies keep on growing. And I've noticed with when we get some of that hate online for whatever reason, that it doesn't actually affect the way that things are going. And so there's no reason to put myself in a bad mood over something that doesn't matter. We keep getting new students, they keep on learning how to be better, they're happy with it, and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to help people get better and we can't please everybody obviously. So I just find that for the most part, it's good to just ignore it because you're just accepting negativity into your life that really doesn't even affect the outcome of what you're working on.

Speaker 2 (00:30:22):

That's right. Unless they're writing your checks, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (00:30:26):

Yeah, exactly. And at the same time, if you believe the negative feedback too much, you can put yourself in a less than ideal mental state for doing good work.

Speaker 2 (00:30:39):

Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:30:41):

So I think it's just good to avoid that stuff, but you're absolutely right in that it sucks to see it. I don't care who you are, it sucks to see it and scene, even movie stars and politicians who are like 80,000, trillion times more known than any of us in audio, the amount of hate that they get, and they say they never read comments or reviews or any of that stuff because why do it?

Speaker 2 (00:31:12):

It's true. It's true. I mean, I'm my own worst enemy. I never think that anything I do is good. For instance, I was just out of work for almost two weeks with the flu, and I got back in on Monday yesterday I think, and my wife texted me, she's like, how's your first day back? I'm like, it fucking sucks. One second. I think I'm a genius The second, second, I'm a fucking idiot. This is the worst shit I've ever heard. And then I'm a genius again, and then I'm an idiot. I don't need someone shitty YouTube comments on top of that already. I can trash myself pretty well. I'm good at it. I don't someone

Speaker 1 (00:31:50):

Else's help. Help. You're the pro. Yeah. No one's going to outdo you with your own personal, I feel the exact same way. No one's going to hate me as much as I can do for myself. Pretty good at it. How do you deal with that? I'm actually curious about that because I don't know if you've noticed, I know that you're in our group and every once in a while you post, I don't know if you've noticed that every now and then someone will be like, how do you deal with thinking that you suck or I can't get over the fact that I think my work is terrible and I don't want to go on. There are posts like that and we try to tell people to just keep doing more work or go walk the dog or something. But that's a perfectly natural thing. And the best engineers I know all feel that way.

Speaker 2 (00:32:40):

Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:32:41):

How do you deal with the downs?

Speaker 2 (00:32:44):

Dude? The downs are tough, man, because it's not like this is a fucking game. This is how I support my family and this is what I do for a career. And when you think about how much you suck, it gets pretty dark and it gets rough. For me, I just look back at the projects I've done and at a certain point just have to be happy with what you're doing and not really caring about what anyone else says or everyone else is doing. Just live in the moment and make whatever you can do whatever you're working on currently, make it the best thing you've ever done.

(00:33:29):

And sometimes that's hard because after, for me personally, when I finish a project, there's a good week of like, oh, this is amazing. This is the best thing I've ever done. This is life-changing material. And then a week later you listen back to it, you're like, oh, this is fucking dog shit. Why did I do that? Why did I do this? Why can't fucking hear shit? Maybe I should just quit. It happens to everybody. But you just kind of use that as motivation to get better. And what I've learned recently is when I'm really down, I find that I sort of look at things at a larger perspective of like, oh, I'm unhappy with this mix, or I'm unhappy with the way this song turned out. And learning how to break it down into little pieces like, okay, well don't you like about it? Oh, well, the symbols are hash or guitars are too low. And you sort of individualize all the issues and take it to heart and just kind of tweak a little bit here, tweak a little bit there, and then all of a sudden you're back to being a genius again. And when things get hard, just break it down.

Speaker 1 (00:34:43):

That's interesting. I definitely think that one of the things that works is to remind yourself that you are not your work. So even if you don't like that mix or whatever it is that you're working on and you think it sucks for whatever reason, that doesn't mean that you suck. And I know that since this is both kind of our livelihoods, but also an art is very, very hard to sometimes separate the personal side of it because art's a very personal thing. Obviously there's the science side to audio, but art, it's a mix of art and science. It's very, very hard to get rid of that personal side. But I mean that is what you have to do. You have to turn that part of your brain off and just pretend like it's somebody else's mix and just give yourself an honest mix grit and fix those things.

Speaker 2 (00:35:44):

Absolutely. Sometimes it's hard letting go of stuff. I found myself really getting depressed over a mix and realizing that I'm kind of afraid to let it go. You get really, really attached to something and you know that as soon as you finish this mix, that's it forever. That's it forever. Exactly. And learning to let go of that feeling and do your job and make it as great as you can make it and moving on. And I find that a lot, especially mixing the very first song of the record, setting everything up and tweaking everything the way that you want it and finishing the mix and then going, oh, it's not really exactly what I wanted. And I started thinking, well, what am I going to do? I'm going to sit here and sulk about it. No, you send it to the band. You start working on song two and maybe song two will come together in a different way and you go back and tweak song one to fix whatever issues you have. Maybe you nail it in song two, maybe you nail it in song three. And that's really helped me a lot of realizing that, well, this isn't the end, that's just song one. Obviously there's a lot more pressure when you're just mixing the singles of a record. That's always hard. You can't really get into a groove. You just kind of do your natural thing and hope that it works out. And most of the time it does. But just mixing singles is always difficult. I always prefer mixing records.

Speaker 1 (00:37:20):

That reminds me of something I learned while tracking drums all the time. Back at my old studio, it was mainly used as a drum room. So whether it was me tracking or me assisting, whatever the situation was or me renting it out to somebody, those were three things that happened almost year round at my place. And so lots of drum sessions and I started to notice that obviously some budgets are smaller than others and sometimes you can't take three days or five days to get tones. Sometimes you only have one day and it's not that couldn't get the tones done in one day. Of course we could. But if you get them done on day one and then track something morning of day two and then keep working on tones by the end of day two, it's going to be way better than it was on day one.

(00:38:17):

And then if you do that for one more day, what you have on day three will be better than day two or one. So if you had, and I notice that that happens, even if we had decided to stop working on drum tone, it just gets better over the first three days because you're still going to be moving mics and you're still going to be adjusting a few things. So even if you were like, okay, a drum tone, time is over, it still kind of is drum tone time. And so I just really started to understand that it's okay if you don't nail something on day one or on mix one or on song one that really you need to let things come together. So I mean, sometimes they come together from the beginning and that's great, but to expect that every time, it's almost like expecting luck to just present itself. And I've noticed that that's not great thinking. I think it's almost more realistic to expect that it's going to take 1, 2, 3, maybe four tracks before everything gels in a mix or in a drum session.

Speaker 2 (00:39:23):

That's right.

Speaker 1 (00:39:24):

And as soon as I started thinking about it that way, my drum production's got a lot better because I knew, okay, by the third night, things are going to be really fucking awesome, so I should try to get them to hold off as much as possible on pressuring me to start tracking. I dunno, it really helped. And so I would start carrying that over to mixes as well, not to kill myself over mix one not being perfect. It's probably going to get better on two and then especially on three.

Speaker 2 (00:39:56):

And on top of that, like I said, you're your worst own enemy, so what you think is garbage, you send it out and before you know it, the bands sending you texts like, dude, this is amazing. The best thing we've ever heard. And to you it's still dog shit. So keep that in mind too, that what you think is terrible might actually be okay, might be usable. And at the same time that like you said, the first thing you do might not be the greatest. Maybe you need a couple of days into it to figure it out.

Speaker 1 (00:40:28):

And there's a number of reasons for it. In the drum session example, it could just be that the drummer relaxes and just starts playing with better feel because relaxed, whatever the case may be. There's so many different factors that go into why something gets better that I just think that it is just good to beat yourself up less if at all possible. The other thing that just everything you've been saying gets me thinking about is when you have to let a project go, it sucks because being your own worst enemy, it's never perfect, no matter what, you'll always hear the mistakes. And that actually is true for products as well. I mean, no product is ever perfect, especially when you're dealing with digital products like information products or software. If you release a course, we released a course speed mixing last year and it did great, but now that it's been a while, I know exactly what it was missing and why it's not perfect. And when we release it again, it's going to have updates to include things that we missed. And we're releasing a drum course on Friday and it's super comprehensive. But I know for a fact that if we re-release it, we want to add updates. There's no way that we possibly covered everything. And with a plugin, there's no way that you can possibly account for every single situation that might come up. And so you will never have a perfect plugin, so you just have to learn to release things,

Speaker 2 (00:42:07):

Let it go and

Speaker 1 (00:42:07):

Let them go, or you'll never get anywhere.

Speaker 2 (00:42:11):

Yep, yep. Let it go and see what happens. Obviously do due diligence and try to make it as good as you can, but let it go. See what happens and adjust afterwards.

Speaker 1 (00:42:25):

If you're like most producers, you're dialing drum sounds the old fashioned way by trial and error, swapping out drums, heads and mics until you finally find something that works oftentimes for several exhausting and tedious days. Sound familiar? Right? I know I have spent up to a week getting drum sounds in the past before I knew some of this stuff. So guess what? It doesn't have to be so painful. Ultimate drum production is our brand new course that teaches you the scientific method for dialing in the perfect drum sound on the very first try. Exactly the first try, not the hundredth try. It explains in extreme detail the sonic character of every single component of drum sound with exhaustive profiles of every kind of drumhead shell, material bearing edge and hoop, as well as ridiculously detailed tutorials on mic selection, placement and room choice editing and mixing. And we understand drum tone at such a fundamental insanely deep level is having a set of tone legos that you can use to easily build the sound you hear in your head. You don't need to guess and check, you just assemble the building blocks however you want. This course is only going to be around for a couple more weeks before we close it for at least a year. To find out more and get access, just head on over to ultimate drum production.com and we'll see you in class.

(00:43:49):

Did you ever have, I guess maybe earlier in your career, did you ever have an aversion to sending off the first mix?

Speaker 2 (00:43:58):

Not so much. I mean, I was a lot more cocky when I was younger. I didn't know shit when I was younger. It's just like, yeah, this is the best thing in the fucking world. Have at it. No one's going to have comments. And then as you get older, you start figuring out, well, wow, I'm not that good. I'm good, but I'm not that good.

Speaker 1 (00:44:18):

That's funny. That makes a lot of sense. I guess I was just never that cocky. I was always afraid to send them off and I had to train myself to do it, to get comfortable with it.

Speaker 2 (00:44:32):

Yeah, I mean, well, you get exposed. It's like

Speaker 1 (00:44:35):

You're

Speaker 2 (00:44:35):

Putting all your cards out, everyone's seeing exactly what you have. And it does get scary putting it out. But eventually you just, when you're young, you're cocky, you don't give a shit, you just fucking do it. And then people start barking back and eventually you start getting cautious about what you do or more aware of what you do. And then it is kind of like a bell curve. And then you get to the other side of the bell curve where you know that what you do is pretty good and you just stop giving a fuck and you just fucking send it out and see what some idiot says about their bass guitar or their fucking kick drum tone or whatever. Just wait for the comments to roll in.

Speaker 1 (00:45:15):

Yeah, for sure. So we've come to that point in the episode where I would like to ask you some questions that some of our subscribers asked for you.

Speaker 2 (00:45:25):

They would be good questions.

Speaker 1 (00:45:27):

Some of them are, I'm going to skip the bad ones or anything that we kind of already covered. No bad ones. Give 'em to me anyway. We'll only ask the bad ones. How about that? I want to start with this one. It kind of goes back to one of the old podcasts that we did, and it's from Patrick Graf and here goes in an earlier podcast you said use Widener in parallel but filtered it to only affect a specific frequency range on guitars. Could you elaborate on why you use them this way and any tips on making it work? I've never been successful using a widener this way. And then he also said, it's also been a while since I was into that podcast, so I may have missed something.

Speaker 2 (00:46:10):

Well, everyone mix is different. Everyone's mix is different. And for me, I always find, let's say with, I mean I only use Widener on guitars. I love to hear guitars that sound like they're outside of the speaker. It's not that hard to do with high end and mid range. You crank it up and it makes the guitars sound wider, but it's always the lower mids that seem like they get centralized. They're always in the center somehow. And with Widener, I end up sending them to a channel, I think I said this last time, send the Widener to a channel and boost a lot of lower mids, a lot of 800 and

Speaker 1 (00:46:55):

Sort

Speaker 2 (00:46:55):

Of that area and tuck that up underneath. So your high end and mid range from the original tracks are boosted a little bit. It makes them sound a little wider. And then you tuck up this ultra wide, 800 hertz underneath those guitars and it really makes the whole track. Both tracks sound like they're way wider than speakers. I'm not really sure what else I can add to that, but

Speaker 1 (00:47:21):

I'd be curious to see what he was doing because I know lots of people tried it and thought it was miraculous just based on the last podcast. So here's one from Chris Bowman. Hey Dan. In conversations you've talked about doing things differently in your studio, I'm sure you have some tried and true methods of capturing exactly what you're looking for sound-wise. Have there been any times in your career that something totally unconventional or downright accidental made it onto a record of yours

Speaker 2 (00:47:51):

All the time? You're always trying something new, something different, or at least I try to. For instance, a lot of people were using this little kick sub thing to get some sort of low end on the kick drum. And for me it was just always the wrong frequency and I kind of just reversed engineered what the stuff was doing. And I found through some research that back in the day, a lot of people would use PAs like subs for PAs as microphones wired, they're just wired in reverse. So for me, a lot of times I'll stick a sub in front of my kick drum and I'll plug that into a di and record it. And it just seems to be like the right frequency for a kick drum. As far as things accidental on a Breaking Benjamin record, we need a lo-fi sounding vocal. There was an empty paper towel roll sitting in the booth and I told Ben to pick it up and talk through it and it sounded like a lo-fi phase kind of vocal.

(00:49:03):

And we ended up recording it and putting it on a record. Don't be afraid to experiment with stuff. And for kids, now that I think about it, it's a lot different experience for them. A lot of these kids and a lot of people that are listening to this podcast are limited by their resources. They're still learning. They have a computer and they're plugging stuff in and right into their interfaces and they're relying on plugins and stuff like that. Give 'em their sounds. But don't be afraid to pick up a mic plugging into your interface and stick it in a weird spot. For another instance, for a record, I had a drum set in a room and next to it was a piano. And I noticed when the drummer was playing that there were some cool reverb kind of harmonics coming off of the piano and I ended up miking up the piano and that ended up being like the reverb for the drum set. All sorts of weird sonic things happen all the time and just keep your mind open and kind of try to capture them if we can.

Speaker 1 (00:50:17):

I actually tried that piano trick once with Matt Brown, the drum tech. We tried that when we did a monument session for Creative Live, we actually micd up the inside of the piano. It didn't work for that, but I can totally see how it would work in certain situations. Obviously not every situation's the same, but yeah, we definitely tried that. It was awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:50:42):

With Ben, like monuments, there's a lot of articulation and precision going on. Maybe for a slower band, more of a rock vibe, that would've worked well.

Speaker 1 (00:50:53):

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think that was the problem actually. Here's a question from Donald s spec. Could I get any details on the can discs you've worked on? That would be amazing. Oh shit. Specifically how you deal with the interplay between the bass and the other instruments in the mix. Mike from Kria doesn't just copy the guitar line in most bass players. How do you get the guitars in those mixes to be full? So without that constant low end support?

Speaker 2 (00:51:21):

Wow. I mean that's old school. Yeah. Made a record called What Doesn't Kill You. And that was my first introduction to sort of math metal, jazz metal and where everything was very, very precise. First of all, the bass player Mike was, I mean he's just amazing. He plays with his fingers very, very precise, very, very articulate. And the engineer who recorded the bass is my good friend Wayne Davis. I mean he's just a sonic genius. And I put him in a room with the bass player and he captured all the stuff, which was amazing. Now on guitar wise, you kind of have to scoop out, you have to make space for everything. And this may come as a surprise, but we used a lot of single coil pickups for those guitars. Makes sense. A lot of telecaster on it. So a lot more mid rangey kind of guitars an that left a lot of space for the bass. And I think that may have been the combo that you hear that you enjoy.

Speaker 1 (00:52:39):

Okay. That sounds actually like it makes a lot of sense. I've had some experience with using single coils on heavy records and it's surprising what you can get out of them. I think people need to not write them off as an option. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:52:53):

Yeah, they're amazing, especially for heavy stuff. I mean, don't be afraid to take a tele and jam it into a high gain amp. Obviously it's single coil, you're going to get some buzz, you're going to get some noise. And that record was especially difficult. I was in Manhattan, so it was picking up 30 different radio stations, but you kind of figure it out and you turn your guitar to a certain way, you move it around the room until you get the least amount of buzz and noise and you go for it.

Speaker 1 (00:53:20):

Great answer. So Alec Gara, I'm sorry if I messed up your name, dude. He said you talked about a few years ago that you were going to release a drum sample pack from the album Riot by Paramore. Do you ever plan on releasing these samples?

Speaker 2 (00:53:37):

Yes, yes. So yeah, years ago, 2007, 2008 ish, somewhere around there. After the session was done, I recorded samples of that full kit and I've been holding onto them by the skin of my teeth. And I did plan on releasing them. I still do plan on releasing them and I'm currently designing the virtual instrument for those plugins or for that library. And again, it just comes down to the amount of free time that I have and also making a product that's worth releasing, making something that someone will be excited to use and that looks amazing. So my graphical interface is done. It looks exactly like the SSLI used to record it and now figuring out the programming behind adding in other effects and stuff like that. I use the SPX 90 on the snare drum a lot. It was a big part of that sound.

(00:54:43):

And also the RMX 16, A lot of these things externally had a big part of the sound that I want to be able to recreate instead of just recording a sample of the snare drum going through the, that you can blend in with the sound that's already there. I want to be able to create the option for you to be able to tweak that plugin, to tweak the reverb, to tweak all this different stuff. And it just takes a long time. So in short, yes, absolutely plan on releasing it. Graphics are done, libraries been recorded for 10 years, whatever it is, it just comes down to the time that I can put aside to program the proper plugin for you guys.

Speaker 1 (00:55:26):

I'm sure that lots and lots of people will be very, very excited when that time comes. I'm sure they will. Here's one from Danny S actually, he's got a few questions. So what books or sources would you suggest for someone interested in starting to build audio gear and wanting to learn what's going on with modifying circuits instead of using all-in-one kits? And also, and this is my personal favorite question, when will you be doing a nail the mix session?

Speaker 2 (00:55:52):

Okay, I love these questions. Alright, question one. I spent a lot of time with this guy's name's Ernie Fordo and he used to work for SSL back in the day and he would come and tech my console years ago. And by hanging out with him I picked up a lot of stuff. But he said, you know what? I learned a lot of stuff by reading a book called The Art of Electronics and the Art of Electronics. I absolutely recommend to anyone that wants to get into any sort of electronic stuff, DIY stuff. It's written by two guys from Harvard and it's not super dry, super boring stuff. They're hippies and they explain electronics in a certain way that I understood. And also they would say, look, here's all the math behind it. You don't need to know this, this, this, but you absolutely need to pay attention to this right here. So yeah, art of electronics, you got to read it and understand it. And they start from the very, very beginning, what is electricity? And they move on to different circuits. And just by looking at pictures, you can pick up like, okay, well alright, well this is the Line Amp from 1176. I see the Darlington transistor pair. I see this, I see that. So yeah, read that book and it'll help you.

Speaker 1 (00:57:17):

Oh, so just on question number one, so that book is not audio specific, it's just electronics specific.

Speaker 2 (00:57:24):

It's just, look, if you're going to get into electronics, it is all 100% math. That's all you need to know is math. And that book will tell you everything you need to know about math. And if you're not good at math, then you need to learn. Maybe electronics isn't for you, but if you want it to be for you, you can learn.

Speaker 1 (00:57:47):

It's not for me. Yeah, I go to people like you or Joey for stuff that requires heavy math, not me. Better you guys than me is the way I see it. Absolutely. So question two.

Speaker 2 (00:58:04):

So question two, what was question two?

Speaker 1 (00:58:06):

When are you coming on now? The mix?

Speaker 2 (00:58:07):

Oh my god, I've been wanting to do it for the longest time. And the issue I'm finding is one, it is always hard to find time to set aside for audio education. It takes a lot of time to be able to teach someone to do something right and to show them what you do. There's always that fear of like, well, I'm kind of laying all my cards out here. I'm showing everyone exactly what I do and that's how I feed my family, which is tough. And the other problem is I'm having trouble finding the right project to do it on. I'm sure there are tons of projects Breaking Bin and Paramark Pierce the veil that people would love to do. But I always kind of see it as a higher thing of what's the best, if I was going to do this, what's the best learning project to do? And I feel like if I did nail the mix, which I, I'm totally open to, I feel like it would have to be a combo thing. It would have to be nail the recording, plus nail the mix, plus this is the track that goes in your portfolio builder and just trying to find the right project to do that is very difficult for me. I'm not sure what that should be.

Speaker 1 (00:59:30):

Well now that I know what it would take to make you do it, I can come up with a solution for all those things and that's great. The thing that I will say though about the laying all the cards on the table thing is that no matter what you put in an education session, you can't show people your ears or your brain. So I feel like if it really worked that way, then every single one of our students would sound exactly like Joey or, I mean Joey hasn't done one in a while. I'm just saying that as an example. But it hasn't been the case at all. So it, I feel like there's a level of expertise and just understanding of audio that is unique to you and that no one will ever be able to get no matter what, how to do. And that's kind of my argument for why it's not giving away the farm because you can't give them you. And that's the most important part of any mix, in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):

That's very true. And if I was a kid and I was going to learn, the way that I learned is that I in interned that a bunch of different studios and I became chief engineer at a big studio and I was able to watch a bunch of different producers work. And if I was going to do it, I would want them to learn the cross pollination effect of how one person influences another person, influences another person. And being able to see a bunch of different people trying to figure that out is also a thing for me of maybe if I was going to do something that where I'm teaching something is trying to figure out how to teach someone how I learned, whatever that means,

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):

I do think that real life is the best way for sure. Absolutely. Definitely. If I look back at my own history, the times where I had someone way better than me to learn from were the times that I had the most progress. Hands down. Absolutely. And they made a massive, massive difference. So here's one from Zalin ro, and I'm sorry if I got your name wrong. What albums have you had a hand in writing? Vocal arrangements or rearrangement or vocal melodies, yada yada, whatever. And what was that process like for you?

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):

I feel like part of that process in every record that I do, when you are sitting in that producer chair, it's ultimately your responsibility to guide this band through their whole recording process. I can't think of a time where I haven't suggested a vocal melody or come up with a bunch of vocal harmonies or arrangements or guitar parts. I think that just comes with the job. I'm not sure what the rest of that question was, but it happens all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):

Yeah, I think the stuff, my interpretation of his question just sounds like stuff that producers do normally. I mean, aren't you supposed to help them realize the best version of the song possible? Absolutely. Then there is that fine line between what counts as production and what counts as writing. But I still think that no matter what, it's your job to help the song shine.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):

Whatever it takes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):

That's right. And so basically it comes down to, yeah, all the time. If someone's singing something you don't like, you fucking say something about it. If you have a better idea, you put it out. You're there to guide the band.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):

Yeah, exactly. And here is our final question. It's from Sean O'Shaughnessy and he is wondering what's a sound or tone that you've been seeking to recreate that has alluded you

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):

To recreate

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):

That? Yeah, I am not sure what he meant meant by recreate. I'm going to rephrase his question. Alright, this is the rephrased version. What's a sound of tone or tone that you've been seeking to create that has alluded you?

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):

Wow. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I kind of go for it when I do it, although obviously there are a ton of influences when you hear something that you're just like, wow, that's fucking dope. I never thought of that. If it comes down to that, there are tons and tons of things. There are, dude, any vocal harmony from Queen. If you can fit that into anything you're doing, you're golden. It's 30 years old, whatever. But if you can emulate that, you are golden. I agree. I hear a lot of creative bands out there minus the bear, do tons and tons of awesome guitar effects. People that really understand their instrument and they experiment with different things. Those are the things that I look for and that I try to emulate when I'm working on projects. Anything like that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):

I totally agree about the queen harmonies. They're unbelievable. The best. So Dan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been awesome catching up and having you on again. And hopefully we don't take three years before the next one.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):

Well look, I'll tell you what the next nail the mix I want to mix along, give me the session. I want to do a mix and throw it up there and see what people think. Dude,

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):

Have you heard the song we're doing this month, the Carnival Track? No. What are you doing dude? It's fucking amazing. It's maybe one of the best engineered songs we've ever had. It's, oh shit, Forrester, ve Australian Producer Mixer is the guy and the band is an Australian band called Carnival that, I dunno if you've heard of them or not. They're really big in Australia and they're very well known in the periphery scene, but they don't sound anything like that. It's weird that scene loves that band, but the band sounds more like tool and Radiohead in a modern kind of way. They're really, really good. I'll send you that. It's phenomenal. Do

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):

It. I mean, are the mixed polls closed? Can I enter in this contest? What can I do here? There's still time. Okay, well send me the tracks. There's still time. I want everybody to hear what I do. I'll,

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):

I'll send you those right away. They're really, really good. I love the drums. Hell stellar. So yeah, I'll send you some of those to you right now. Fuck yeah. Cool.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):

Alright, I'm mixing. I'm back to mixing now.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):

Shit. Awesome. Well thanks for coming on, man.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):

Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed this. To get in touch with the URM podcast, visit urm.com/podcast and subscribe today.