JESSE CANNON: Audio Career Mindset, Handling Difficult Feedback, Productivity Secrets

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Isotope. We craft innovative audio products that inspire and enable people to be creative. Visit isotope.com for more info. This episode is also brought to you by Sonar Works. Sonar Works is on a mission to ensure everybody hears music the way it was meant to be across all devices. Visit sonar works.com for more info. And now your host, Eyal

Speaker 2 (00:00:29):

Levi. Welcome to the URM podcast. I am Eyal Levi, and I just want to tell you that this show is brought to you by URM Academy, the world's best education for rock and metal producers. Every month on Nail the Mix, we bring you one of the world's best producers to mix a song from scratch, from artists like th God, Ms. Sugar Periphery The Day to Remember. Bring me the Horizon, eth many, many more, and we give you the raw multitrack so you can mix along. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, our collection of bite-sized mixing tutorials and Portfolio Builder, which are pro quality multi-tracks that are cleared for use in your portfolio. You can find out [email protected]. Also, I want to take a second to tell you about something I'm very, very excited about and it's the URM Summit. Once a year we hold an event where hundreds of producers from all over the world come together for four days of networking, workshops, seminars, and of course hanging out.

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This industry is all about relationships and think about it, what could you gain from getting to personally know your peers from all over the world who have the same goals as you, the same struggles as you, and who can not only help you with inspiration and motivation, but also with potential professional collaborations? I've seen a lot of professional collaborations come from the summit in the past, and speaking of networking and relationships, there's no other event where you'll get to learn from and hang out with some of the very best in the production business. I mean, you could go to something like Nam, but good luck getting more than five minutes with your hero at this. You actually will get to hang out, hang out, hang out, and just a few of this year's instructors are Andrew Wade Kipa, Lou Blasco, Taylor Larson, Billy Decker, Canan, Kevin Charco, Jesse Cannon, and more seriously, this is one of the best and most productive events you will ever go to.

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So if that sounds like something that's up your alley, go to urm summit.com to find out more. Every once in a while you have a guest that you don't need to do any prep for because you just know that they have their shit together as a podcaster. And if you've been listening to this podcast through the years, you know that Jesse Cannon has come on a few times and that he's definitely one of the best guests he always has just enlightening and wise and well thought out things to say about how to make life work as an entrepreneur and in the music business. Now, if you're not familiar with him, he's a recording engineer slash mastering engineer that's worked in various capacities on bands like The Cure Animal Collective, the Misfits, Dillinger Escape Plan, brand new Limp, Bizkit Man Overboard, no Effects, like The List goes on and on.

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But he's also a great author. He's written books such as Get More Fans, the DIY Guide to the New Music Business, which has gone on to be one of the most popular books on the music business as well as the book Processing Creativity, the tools, practices and habits used to make music you're happy with. He also hosts two podcasts off the record and Noise Creators, and he has a new one that we're going to talk about in this episode. I mean, this guy has done everything. He's super impressive. He's run businesses, written books, done the engineer thing. There's so much you can learn from him. And so I'm going to just quit talking and get to the episode. Let's do it. Okay, so lyrics, we were talking about how lyrics just look dumb when there's no music.

Speaker 3 (00:04:06):

Yeah. So I guess we started off is like you were talking about how you're not the biggest fan political lyrics. I actually really like them when they're done well, and I think it's just so incredibly rare. But what I was saying is there used to be a ARD where we were doing three to four sessions a day, and the lyrics sheet definitely gets left on the music stand when the vocalist comes to do it. And every one of 'em, no matter how good the lyrics were, they'd say, God, this is the dumbest thing I've ever read. So this girl I was dating at the time was like, you should just leave a WB Yates poem up on the music stand and see if somebody says it. And sure enough, everybody would say it when I would do. They're like, God, this is so dumb. It's like, yeah, I'm sure this is a lot more rudimentary than your pop punk song about how your girlfriend left you last summer and you're still not over it. Yeah, you're definitely the poet or

Speaker 2 (00:04:48):

A William Blake poem or

Speaker 3 (00:04:49):

Something

Speaker 2 (00:04:50):

Out there,

Speaker 3 (00:04:50):

But it's just the thing is that most lyrics look dumb unless you know the emotion that the music is brought to it.

Speaker 2 (00:04:55):

Yeah, well absolutely. So what a band I really, really have always really liked is Korn, not all their stuff, but they have a lot great songs over the years and they really throw down, and now, especially compared to bands half their age, it's kind of ridiculous, but their lyrics have always been so dumb, so elementary school level, but when he delivers them with that music, I don't know, it just works. If you were to write those out, man, they would be lower than sixth grade. They'd be like second grade.

Speaker 3 (00:05:35):

You're exactly right. And it's a very funny thing is that obviously, so the listeners may not know this, but I worked for Ross Robinson who produced those early records for a lot of years. Ross would always talk about this, that he knew the emotion would be so big. So when you hear those stories of Ross taking Jonathan to see his father for the first time in years and confront the molestation and all that stuff, and it's like he knew he had to get him in an emotional mindset that is just so intense so that this would actually work. And that's part of the thing, and I think that's the lesson for the listeners is you always got to make that game plan to see the bads weaknesses and go, how the hell am I going to compensate for? Because I think 80% to 90% of bads, you can find some way to compensate for what's bad with them if you're just creative enough.

Speaker 2 (00:06:22):

So that was a conscious thing on Ross Robinson's part that the lyrics are very elementary school. The way to overcome this is to pack so much emotion behind them that it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (00:06:36):

I'm intellectualizing a little. The thing I could always say is Ross is, he's one of the hardest persons to word his communication language, but when you learn it, he's the most profoundly intelligent human being ever. And Ross, what he would really say is that this is just his overall ethos. This is why he throws during the Cure record. He's launching music STAs 80 feet across the room and everything. He just cares about that emotion and doesn't really care, I shouldn't say, doesn't care about much else, but he knows that a guitar being in tune the drum, Toms being in key, the EQ being right, any of that stuff. And not to say he doesn't care about Tony. The guy has $20,000 Elam, two 50 wads and stuff like that, but he knows that all that matters is if there's feeling there and he lets that rule it more than I've gotten to be in the studio with hundreds of producers and he's better at doing that than anybody I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (00:07:30):

It's a lot harder to do than I think people realize because you do have to let things go that as an engineer and as someone that's getting paid to be critical and have everything meet a certain criteria, I guess at least on a technical level, I'm not saying that every single engineer is looking for shit to sound like the Necro phages record or dream theater, but still producers still getting paid to be critical, not allow mistakes through, not allow stuff to be less than pro or whatever the criteria is. And oftentimes when you hit these emotional highs, you are going to be sacrificing something on the technical end. I think more often than not, technique starts to go by the wayside once emotion starts to really take over. That kind of fits in with what people say about trying to perform things that require fine motor skills when a lot of adrenaline is pumping or

Speaker 4 (00:08:31):

Trying

Speaker 2 (00:08:31):

To think clearly when you have a very strong emotion, it kind of just almost makes sense that when if someone's emotion is running at that kind of level, that their technical ability is going to be diminished. I think that that's how people work. So you're going to be sacrificing something. And so to know where that line is drawn, how much sacrifice is okay, that's a lot harder than people realize, I think.

Speaker 3 (00:08:58):

Yeah, I mean a big thing I've been on with this is divergent stream concept. So I think you and I have talked about this a bunch, but so for the listeners, this is the idea that if you put your elbows together and your hands as far apart as you can, that's a divergence stream. And so just about everything has a divergent stream that the middle is kind of dropping out.

Speaker 2 (00:09:17):

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Have we talked about this before?

Speaker 3 (00:09:19):

I feel like you and I, the listeners don't realize that you and I are texting about juices all day and everything, so in movies, so it's like, I don't know, but okay, so here's the idea is that every behavior at every performer, you could be like, oh, PG metal guys, oh my God, they're the smart guys reading JRR Tolkien who practice their instruments all day, but they're also the incompetent people who are the dumbest people on earth who are just emotional and you have to know how to deal with those two poles. And there's not a lot of people usually in the center of those. They're very extreme things, and that's most, I think personality types and learning which one to deal with, with which technique. There's some people that are thinking too much and you have to get 'em out of your head. So a Ross Robinson thing with that would be kick him in the legs or putting his hand in front of their face as so that they wouldn't be able to think so much about getting it right.

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But then there's the other people, they need a real lot of concentration and that actually makes them good. And then you have to get everybody out of the control room and stop having there be a TV on because one guy wants to watch the fucking sports game and everything. And learning which part of the divergent stream usually, and seeing people as real poles, I think in a lot of personalities is really helpful for figuring out a course of action because odds are the center easy, medium answer is usually not going to get you a lot of results.

Speaker 2 (00:10:36):

Yeah, probably not. And I think you're totally right with this, but let me give you one other example of something that I've come across that I thought was interesting. So we were just talking about Muse, that dorky Prague band. Exactly. No, I actually really love them or did for a long time

Speaker 3 (00:10:54):

Some great records.

Speaker 2 (00:10:55):

Yeah, I kind of stopped paying attention around 2009 or 10, that era from 2005 to 2009, they were on fire

(00:11:05):

And I was really into them and did everything I could to find out more about them. They spoke to me on many levels because that classical background that they had matched mine and then also the way that they could orchestrate weird arrangements. I just kind of felt like they were coming from a really similar place as me musically. He had all the same influences, the piano pieces he would start playing. A lot of my friends didn't recognize where they came from, but I knew what pieces he was lifting that shit from. One time they ripped off something from an obscure video game soundtrack, one of the only video game soundtracks that as a kid I went and found in a weird store. Which one I don't even remember anymore. We're talking 10 years ago. But the point is that I was really into this band.

(00:11:51):

They spoke to me, and so I managed to talk a friend of mine who had worked with their producer to send me some of their stems. Oh wow. Back in 2008 before the stems thing was a thing. And so I got stems for super massive black hole and stuff from that album, a really big album. And this is a band that's very technically proficient and intellectually advanced, but their emotional moments are fucking sloppy. There was a lot of slop when he was playing his guitar solos and he'd get to those crazy moments where he's just going insane. It was actually pretty fucking sloppy. And I just thought that that was very interesting that a band that's regarded as so musically adept, technically proficient, but who are also emotional as fuck, and their delivery also would get sloppy in those moments. It doesn't matter who you are. The moment that that emotion starts coming out, your skills will go down the drain.

Speaker 3 (00:12:51):

I think that's dead on. And one of the other things I really appreciate about them back then, they have some of the best behind the scenes making of record videos on YouTube.

Speaker 2 (00:12:59):

Oh yeah, they're great

Speaker 3 (00:13:00):

Because they're in the types of studios where there's seven recording advice. I remember at one point they were in the hot tub and the recording hand claps. There's just such good stuff there that if you're listening to this, you're like, oh, I want to learn more creative things I can do and stuff like that. And see this band and you love this band, they probably have three hours you can watch of them recording. It's incredible.

Speaker 2 (00:13:21):

They made records. Look, I remember watching those in the studio videos because dude, I hated in the studio videos because I would watch metal bands doing them and there'd always be this guy who thought he was a comedian, but he really was just not funny. They'd all crack jokes, but they're not comedians. It's not, okay, don't do this. You just look stupid and just really badly shot stuff and just watching people record badly, do a click track. And it was just the worst videos you can imagine. And these muse videos, yeah, they're doing the hand claps in the hot tub. They have multiple percussion sets. They're like going on location to weird places. It's like the way that you heard about great records being made back in the day. Those stories that we heard that made us be excited about great records, that's what they were doing. And I thought that that was very inspiring. It was like, wow, there is a band that's actually holding the torch for greatness in recording then that's actually kind of rare.

Speaker 3 (00:14:28):

I'm a hundred percent with you. One of the things I will be talking about a little at the URM summit is two of the ideas that we just talked about. One of which is the thing we were talking about with Ross snowing, that these lyrics are a little rudimentary, that you have to find a way no matter what, and that most bands, you can figure out a plan if you're creative enough to make this record work. You just have to have a lot of tools in your, but the other thing, they're one of the few bands. The promise of daws was that we were going to get all these bands like the Flaming Lips and Muse that used every instrument on earth, and you'd have these gigantic orchestrations and you'd have all these things and that every band was going to be using everything. And that promise has been total bullshit because emotion is key, and motion is not always using just a million different instruments.

(00:15:13):

They don't all go well together. And I think that one of the things people don't realize about getting feedback and projects is what projects are a lot of time is just a lot of limitations and tell you what colors you have to paint with and where the wides are. And then they get mad. And this is what I'm going to talk about at the sub is that when somebody gives them a limitation that they don't like, and I'm going to talk a lot about how you take direction from your clients or the record label as well and make it work with something you're going to be happy with as well and how you have to see those limits.

Speaker 2 (00:15:47):

So kind of avoiding that situation where let's just say a mixer loves the mix up until he starts to deal with mix notes and then feels like the band or the label ruined everything. I loved it until I had to start doing their feedback and now it's not my record anymore. I've heard that so many times from people they divorce themselves from the record. I mean, they don't divorce themselves, they quit. But yeah, they mentally divorce. They mentally they check out.

Speaker 3 (00:16:22):

And a lot of what I'm going to talk about is one, why that's toxic to your career and getting further gigs. Two, why that's toxic to your creative output. And three, I'm lucky enough that 2000 records and about to be 20 years, I learned those lessons after making those mistakes and now see very clear answers on how you don't let that fuck your life up

Speaker 2 (00:16:42):

Dude, and it will fuck your life up. The guys that I've seen go down that path. Okay, now everybody goes down that path a little. I think

(00:16:51):

Part of your growth. Yeah, it's natural. It's natural to have those feelings, but you have to evolve past them. They will take you down. The guys that I've seen succumb to them and not evolve past them are without fail. They're all guys who at one point were at the top of the genre and top of their game and just like the dudes of the moment and they fell off. But the thing is they didn't just fall off in the way that will happen naturally when the trend you're a part of Simers Down, that happens to a lot of people, but then they keep doing a lot of great work. It's not like suddenly they're homeless or something or have to go get a job at Starbucks. They keep working. Maybe they're not the person of the moment anymore, but they've made a great career with great relationships and they keep getting work. In this case, these people that I know who let the negativity consume them, and specifically when it came to dealing with client feedback, man, these guys really messed their careers up because that toxicity starts to spread into everything. It spreads into the quality of your work. It spreads into your ability to communicate with your clients. It spreads into what you carry into your personal life. And then the thing is, once you start poisoning those three aspects, they then start to have snowball effects, which in turn poison those three aspects even further,

Speaker 3 (00:18:12):

What you're saying is dead on. And the other thing I want to impress is I'm even going use a lot of psychological backing from things. I read so many books researching my last book on creativity, and then my girlfriend being a psychologist in grad school right now, it's like all I see is these things. And what you were just saying is even further backed up with psychologies, which is that when you start pointing the finger outwards instead of inwards, it inevitably alienates people around you in all parts of your life, whether it's your friendships, your relationships, your family, anything. The common thing they see with people that they say are high functioning people who aren't crippled and always ruining relationships with people is that they've lured to point the finger inward, take it and have an argument inside their head where they can hear the other person's side and imagine it.

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So for example, you hear the bad say, you know, just made this Hi-Fi mix that sounds beautiful. This happens to me all the time. I'm like, oh my God, everything I've abed against, I fucking killed it. Fuck everything. They're like, yeah, it sounds too good. I want it more raw. And I go, these fucking losers, they just listen to shitty local bands. Fuck them. I know they're just listening to that shit, local band that recorded with a microphone up their ass want to fucking focus, right? Scarlet, fuck these motherfuckers. And I get all bad, and then I go, bands that aren't popular yet usually make a raw record that works a little bit more for them, and then they do the polished record. Maybe the next record will be polished. Let me get some decapitate and a Kramer tape and start bringing this down to their level and try to find a way where I can still make it a little bit more raw, but sound cool and interesting and meet them on the ground. And then all of a sudden we've made a cool sounding record that elevates them to that next level. And sometimes I don't get the second record. They do so well, but know what? It gets me a lot more clients, man,

Speaker 2 (00:19:59):

That reaction is so dead on because I had to see it in other people. So these people that I'm thinking about specifically, I had to see them do it to where I then started seeing myself do it and to where I could really put the brakes on because I didn't realize that I did it. And I guess I didn't realize what it looked like from the outside when I saw other people do it, but these notes would come in about these things that clients wanted, and yeah, there would be things like that or there would be things like that they couldn't quite articulate into engineering terms. And why would you get mad at a client for not being able to articulate in an engineering term? They're not an engineer, that's why they're coming to you.

Speaker 4 (00:20:45):

But

Speaker 2 (00:20:45):

Engineers get mad about that, which is the dumbest thing to get mad about. So they would get mad about things like that and get mad about the requests and think that they're idiots and they're so stupid and all this stuff. And it's like, wait a second. Why are they stupid for wanting what they want? This isn't even about stupid or smart. They're just telling you what they want taste-wise artistically, you're taking it to such a level that it doesn't exist on turning it into something that it isn't. They're just telling you what more or less salt on the dish with or without butter. That's what they're telling you that fucking listen to them. It's not that big of a deal. It really isn't. Just make them happy. And I don't know, once I started to see what it looked like, I realized it's really ugly. It's really unappealing, it's toxic, it's repulsive. And no wonder people stopped coming to these guys. No wonder I would too.

Speaker 3 (00:21:40):

Yeah, and it is true. There's one thing, a concept I often talk about is good faith and bad faith arguments that to use a political thing that's very obvious to everybody in the world these days is you'll hear somebody from the NRA say something and they're clearly saying this because the NRA is paid by gun companies. They want to sell more guns. They don't care about anything except selling more guns. And then you hear somebody else on another side say something because they make campaign funding off of it. What you need to decipher sometimes is a good faith and a bad faith argument. But what I would argue is the majority of the time a musician is arguing, they just want to be happy with what they want to hear now is sometimes what they want to hear, just their guitar louder. They want to be happy because hearing themselves loud makes them happy.

(00:22:24):

1010%, picking out the good faith and the bad faith argument is really crucial. And then being kind to the person when they're arguing in good faith that they're just trying to be happy and giving them that. But when they're doing the bad faith of also pointing out like, buddy, come on. Let's be honest here. That fucking guitar is pretty fucking loud. Listen to four of your favorite records. Your guitars are as loud or just as loud and reasoning with them, but so many people don't think about how to communicate with it. And so what I argument is, is if you can't communicate to get your way, it's probably your fucking fault that the record's not going your way.

Speaker 2 (00:22:57):

So there once on, I'm not going to say if I say what record it is, people are going to know who I'm talking about. So on a record I was involved with that had a lot of great lead guitar playing and a few guests, and it was just like a guitar spectacle of a record. And the guy who took over as the producer mixer guy from the band, he played a guest solo too. He was pretty good, and his solo was the loudest thing on the entire record. It was louder than any vocals. It was louder than any other solos. It was the loudest fucking thing on the record. So I remember that the band would bring it up and he would argue, he would argue we'd get mad and argue and argue and argue. That was a bad faith, ego-based argument for sure. It was objectively the loudest thing on the record. It was like you had your level for solos and lead vocals that was like, yeah, they're kind of popping, but they're good. And then this song comes on and it's good, it's good, and then bam solo. It's like, what is going on here? It was so fucking loud that it started messing with the mastering compressors and really in all kinds of weird pumping and ducking happening with the music tracks, it was obscene. And so I've seen very extreme versions of that. I have definitely seen quite a few musicians I guess have weird motives that are not for the better of the project, but most of the time I think it's just people wanting to be happy with their art.

Speaker 3 (00:24:42):

And there's a weird thing too. I remember I talked to some producer and he's like, well, I have a rule that no one in the band can comment on their own parts. I'm like, see, this goes back to the divergent streams thing is there's a problem with that is that there's some guys who hear every detail and part of what makes a thing, there's drummers. If there's one thing I'm good at producing, it's like I know drum parts. I'm very good with that stuff. And there is some guys that astound me. They're like, oh, let's ride the splashes a little and we'll cut off their decays. And I'm like, holy shit. I didn't realize ride on a splash, decay down a little bit here or there in between the notes can really give some clarity to the splash. I fucking hate splash symbols and I hate three 11, so I never realized that. And then you all of a sudden learn something by letting that guy comment on his parts. You can't just shut it down. But you do have to give people perspective on whether they're arguing in good faith or bad faith,

Speaker 2 (00:25:33):

Good faith, bad faith, or this might fit into both categories, but it's almost a category, all of its own stuff that takes a long time and doesn't make one bit of difference.

Speaker 1 (00:25:44):

Yes,

Speaker 2 (00:25:45):

And I'm not sure, I think that that has elements of both at times.

Speaker 3 (00:25:50):

My argument for that, and this is going to be a whole nother subject, is that all in budgets are bad things is just that when it comes down to people arguing for things that take forever, it dismotivates it. You know what I think about all the time is I do a lot of ghost writing articles for people. And so a very common pace structure is you get paid by the word. So when you get paid by the word writing, UR makes you a dollar more than writing your and being bloviating. And

Speaker 2 (00:26:24):

It also makes you sound like Robocop.

Speaker 3 (00:26:26):

Yeah, this is true. But then writing more words about things when people really just want to read a minimum of words with an idea communicated clearly, it doesn't get you a good result as the person paying me to do the thing, but saying, Hey, we would eat around this many words and we pay you this much money to do it if the research takes longer and by the hour, dah, dah, dah, dah. And you have a good faith system with that, and they see that some things are really easy to research, just kind of taking somebody else's content and reshaping it into a new context. Whereas if I have to do hours of research on, a lot of what I write too is white papers on strategies different musicians are using to promote themselves, and then I give that to the client and doing that and then giving back a thing by the hour works. It's the same thing with music is one of the best things about the hourly rate, as long as it's not the person taking a million texts and setting memes back all day is if your engineer is really working all those hours each day, is that there is a huge, huge motivation that if you really find things that are going to be details that really work well, then you're paying for it and you've been motivated by that, but then you also be dismotivated to go, maybe I don't need to go down that

Speaker 2 (00:27:41):

Road. Yeah, absolutely. I'm not sure how I feel about hourly. I see why it works for some people, my memory of working hourly was having managers say, shit, we don't pay you to take a piss.

Speaker 3 (00:27:57):

Yes. That's the bad faith argument there.

Speaker 2 (00:28:00):

Yeah. Yeah. And me saying never again.

Speaker 3 (00:28:03):

Yes. I think that that's the issue is that there needs to be fairness in what somebody is paying for. I regularly with my hourly clients, the ones I have on that, it's like that thing if I go on a long story where I'm like, oh, maybe you guys could tell me I'm writing this book on this. What do you feel about this? I go, alright, 30 minutes of that was me being a dickhead.

Speaker 2 (00:28:23):

Yes, fair enough.

Speaker 3 (00:28:25):

I think it's that thing is that you need that trusting relationship, and that doesn't always work with managers. Something we always should also say for the whistles who are experiences and stuff is managers pride themselves on bullying us and saying to their clients, I got them down on price for this and it makes us want to kill ourselves. We worked really hard and then they boil us down so they don't see the inverse of the relationship.

Speaker 2 (00:28:47):

I mean, that is their job. It sucks. And I'm saying that knowing fully well that I know some managers out there who are friends with both of us who are some of the best people I've ever met, minority or whatever.

Speaker 3 (00:29:01):

That's the thing is not everybody does that and some of the people who are doing it, I mean it's a good thing to get the best rate for your client. Pinching some of those pennies really brings home a thing at the end of the day. But there's also some of those things where it's not very in good faith yet again that it's like this person sat here, I busted my ass. I put in tons of pre-production time. I go on my way to work, I'm listening to the songs and listening to other records, trying to get ideas of what niche we'll find for you that will work for you, like Kiss my Ass that you're going to be mad that for 10 minutes I talked to the vet about the dog in a fucking 80 hour week.

Speaker 2 (00:29:35):

Yeah, absolutely. So with this whole good faith, bad faith argument scenario or scenarios that we're talking about, that really makes me think of something that I've noticed get argued a lot these days back and forth. I've seen a lot of people say that context doesn't matter with the things that people say or do. And I think context matters,

Speaker 1 (00:30:01):

Context

Speaker 2 (00:30:01):

Fucking matters. Context is everything in my opinion

(00:30:07):

Because actions or words, the context is what gives things meaning and all the way to if you kill somebody, the context is what determines whether you're going to get the death penalty, life imprisoned or a manslaughter charge and out or walk free. Or walk free. Exactly. Context is everything in my opinion. And so when it comes to these arguments, whether it's getting a better rate for the client or turn the snare up here, or there could be any number of reasons for it, and some of them could be good, some of them could be bad, but the context in which that snare getting louder exists I think is what determines whether it should be brought up or not. Can you hear it in relation to everything else? Is the character of the snare one of the most driving things in that song and is it getting lost here or whatever? Or is the drummer just trying to overtake everything and he plays a bunch of inflections on the snare that really don't make any difference and he's the only person who cares and he wants to make sure that you hear every single little thing.

Speaker 3 (00:31:16):

Yes. The PTSD is getting real.

Speaker 2 (00:31:18):

I know. It's definitely real. So I want to take a second to talk about a few things that I want to hear a little bit about what you've been up to. I know that I know you're, you're always evolving in your career and you're a renaissance man. You're always doing new things and different things, and so this is third time on the podcast, I believe.

Speaker 3 (00:31:44):

Yes. Both.

Speaker 2 (00:31:45):

Other times we were talking about different books Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:31:47):

That you

Speaker 2 (00:31:47):

Had read. And so I know that you have new stuff going on now, so let's talk about it.

Speaker 3 (00:31:52):

I guess the first big thing is, so what is out in trailer form right now is for the last year I've been working at Atlantic Records making audio documentaries and developing different podcasts for bands. So if you think of it this way, what Atlantic has started to do is they've been going pretty hard on that. They want to start making podcast content around their artists. So what I am hired to do is my first podcast for them, of the ones I've been making a bunch of them, this is the first one that's coming out as a season called Inside the Album, which you can subscribe to now and any of them, it's up there, there's a trailer and you can hit subscribe. But what I've done is Atlantic literally said to me, let's take that VH one classic albums type format where we go really in depth, just like the thing we were talking about with Muse, how they made these amazing documentaries. But I went so far in depth on the creative process and got the most honest answers of how each of these records gets made. And I made these 60 minute documentaries on, I've done about 15 of them so far, and the first eight are about to go up. We're like all different artists. Vance Joy onto nothing, nowhere onto the grandson, to the Mean Girls original cast recording the new Jason Raz record.

Speaker 2 (00:33:10):

Are you talking to the actual people who did them? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:33:13):

So if you think of it this way, first I start with an artist interview, then I talked to the producer, then I talked to the other musicians, then I talked to the a and r, and we all talk about the real, real things. Damn, son. That sounds great. Yeah, honest to God, it's the saddest thing for me is I've been like, when I listened back to these, I'm like, man, this is some of the things I'm most proud I've ever done in my life. And I was a 17-year-old kid who would be like, if I ever work at a fucking major label, I want my fucking past self to get in a fucking time machine. Stab him in the fucking throat.

Speaker 2 (00:33:43):

Maybe your past self didn't have any good context in which to view major labels.

Speaker 3 (00:33:48):

That's exactly right. Now that I've seen it from the inside, and you could give me all the, oh, you're drinking the Kool-Aid stuff, but they've been so,

Speaker 2 (00:33:57):

Sounds like they're drinking the Kool-Aid.

Speaker 3 (00:33:59):

Yeah, and they've honestly been so cool about letting me have free reign. I don't have to send to artists for approval. Sometimes I write somebody, I say, Hey, is it the spring EP or Spring ep? That's about as far as they've ever edited me is just get the fucking title of the record for Christ's sakes because it was printed four different ways. I'm like, which one is it? But that is literally as far as they've edited me and I've gotten, it's like the thing of, we talk about how there's shame for ghost writers in rap and things like that. I get into all of that and what our Atlantic does to make great records, and it's really, really been insanely lately. I'm 20 years into making 2000 some odd records. The fact that I learned this much in this last year is insane. Seeing what really goes on these high scales of huge budgets and even on down to really developing artists. Two of the different artists I've had on this don't have eight songs that exist in the world and talking about how they get developed and how they get promoted and all these things, I'm talking to their marketing person about how they see the band and what they're doing behind the scenes and all these things. So it, it's really, really incredible. I'm really psyched to start seeing the world's reactions. It's really, the trailer's been up for about five days in the first episode. She'll probably be up by the time this comes out.

Speaker 2 (00:35:17):

Where can I find the trailer? We're going to put it in the show notes

Speaker 3 (00:35:20):

Atlantic podcast.com or if you just look up Atlantic Records inside the album. And then they also have me developing, I mean, I already have done a ton of other podcast stuff for them, but all of this goes along with artist launches and things like that. So I'm not able to talk about those ones yet, but there's so many more cool things they've been letting me do there that have just been totally amazing over the last year.

Speaker 2 (00:35:44):

So I want to divert for a second away from what you're doing and just talk about how you're getting it done. Not like you stopped working in the studio and you just said you're ghost writing for a bunch of people, and I know you've got the website too, noise creators. I know of some other stuff you're doing with some people I'm involved with, and then it sounds like Atlantic, it's keeping you pretty damn busy and you've got a girlfriend.

Speaker 3 (00:36:14):

Yes. That keeps me busy.

Speaker 2 (00:36:16):

And you have time to watch movies too. You've been working on film projects.

Speaker 3 (00:36:21):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:36:22):

I pay attention when we text. So how, yeah, I want to know, are you good at time management or what the fuck?

Speaker 3 (00:36:33):

I am good at time management. I think there's another thing too of that if you get rid of a lot of the bullshit in your life. So here's another big thing I'm going through that you and I have discussed a little, is I have to move my recording studio that's been in the same place for 13 years and on 60 days notice and into a new space that I found on about 10 days notice. And to call this brutal, while this is all going on is the understate of the day. We were just talking about watching movies and working movies. That's all been hit pause on for now. I've had no life for the past month and I still have another month of this to go and I have to file my taxes. I've learned a lot of things. I think a great example is you can pay, if you're super busy, there is always some college student who needs an extra a hundred dollars or $60 a week to just answer some emails for you. There's a program called Text Expander where every time I find myself writing the same email over and over again, I copy that email in and then I find a thing and I just hit that there's canned responses in Gmail, which is very similar.

Speaker 2 (00:37:37):

Yes. I use those a lot, especially when I'm telling people how we do the podcast. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:37:43):

Yeah. I remember you had a great one for the initial podcast we did. It's really is getting that down. I master a dozen to 25 records a week, and a lot of that is

Speaker 2 (00:37:56):

Wait a dozen to 25 records a week.

Speaker 3 (00:37:59):

When I say a record, it could be a three song EP to an lp.

Speaker 2 (00:38:02):

Okay. But projects

Speaker 3 (00:38:03):

Some sort of sort of release.

Speaker 2 (00:38:06):

So it could be 30 to 50 or 70 songs.

Speaker 3 (00:38:09):

Yeah, I mean honestly, we're taping this the day after the three day week that ends the summer, which I always call hell week because that's when everybody has set a deadline to be done with their project. So this morning I woke up to 20 records I have to do this week in addition to getting podcasts done, moving a fucking studio and a bajillion other things.

Speaker 2 (00:38:30):

No thanks for coming on.

Speaker 3 (00:38:31):

Well, I was looking forward to this. This is the nice break for about the hell and truth be told, I'm bouncing two records down on another computer while we do this. So I think there's a lot of things. It's even just the thing of, so I have one of those garbage can Mac Pros and then I have an office at home. I do a lot of, while I'm doing other things, I do all the listening work at one time and then I do all my bounces at one time. I do all my checking bounces at a different time where I have to listen back to this and make sure it's right. Thinking about how you work smart, not work hard is a lot of it. And then a lot of it is too is like that David Allen getting things done. Thing of, I don't put anything on my to-do list that takes under five minutes.

(00:39:09):

I just start doing the things I double time my social media. So what I try to do, I obviously eat dinner with my girlfriend a good amount, but I try to do one meal a day where I do my entire hour of social media and I do that while I eat and I read that. I read any articles I wanted to read, and I do all that just during my, I call it my hour of peace. I like to be alone a lot, but I don't read social media the rest of the day. Most of the time

Speaker 2 (00:39:37):

I am jealous. I need to get better about that. I feel like I'm in a weird spot with that.

Speaker 3 (00:39:42):

Well, you need to be on.

Speaker 2 (00:39:44):

Yeah. Our community exists on Facebook and I think part of our success is that community thriving and being always active. And part of that involves me being active on it, but God, I need to figure out a way to limit it.

Speaker 3 (00:40:00):

And it's really hard because it's really satisfying. I mean, what's nice about what you and I do is we do a lot of work where we help people out and boy, it feels good when you're doing all that work to hear nice things about it. It feels fucking great. It does. But then also it's time to get that work done.

Speaker 2 (00:40:15):

Yeah. It's not going to get itself done

Speaker 3 (00:40:17):

In full transparency. One of the other things I do is I have a list above my desk that makes me look like a psychopath. I just had a friend who lived on the futon in my office for three weeks while he did an internship and he'd look at this list above it and he'd be like, dude, you are a fucking psychopath. So what it is is all the things I'm failing at in life, I've had some of those too. I make myself stare at everything. I'm fucking up the lack of, I was really terrible with my exercise, to be honest with you. So part of this moving the studio thing is my landlords were threatening to sue me for $20,000 because to give the story to the listeners I have for nine months now, had a studio I can barely work at during workout because they decided to rehab the entire building.

(00:41:04):

I'm in a very big building and they've been doing construction around me to the point that electricity fades so the audio doesn't work on down to just hammering that you could never record during on down to even just putting the workers' lunch break below my control room, which is pretty soundproofed. But then they did something where they knocked down the roof and everything. I'm part of it, so you could hear every conversation that I'm doing vocals in my control room and they start imitating the singer and then you get so insecure you can't sing. Wow. Yeah. And so to say, I had a perfectly stable studio for 13 years and then with no notice, that's gets come on. So I try to say, I'm not paying rent until you resolve this. My landlords don't even email me about not paying rent. We have two interactions in 10 months.

(00:41:50):

And then they're like, well, we're going to sue you. Then I'm like, you told me we were going to discuss a amount and what compensation would be, and then you didn't write me back for a hundred days when I would be texting you what's going on? So I've had this crazy upheaval of a thing and the kind of lesson I learned of this is there's also this thing of document all your failures and also take really, really, really seriously. When somebody starts doing you wrong, look that in the eye. It's very easy at first to go, oh God, I have to put this happening. I got to focus on this record some of these things. You got to really look in the eye and I look at the eye. And then another thing, what really saved me in this honestly was a record producer skill. New Jersey is a one party consent state, which means you can record things without another person's consent.

Speaker 2 (00:42:38):

Oh yes.

Speaker 3 (00:42:38):

And so I learned this. My girlfriend got very badly bullied in a hospital recently to the point people were blackmailing her. And then I was like, just turn on your voice recorder on your iPhone. And then we had everything we needed to get these people caught. So I did the same to my landlords and now there's no lawsuit. But to say I wasn't sleeping, highly stressed and overly drinking. Absolutely. And that goes on the list is like, you drink too much. Look at this. I mean, another big thing I'm very big on is I have reminders of my iPhone that go off on the hours every day of things I'm supposed to do. Have you done your second exercise the day before lunch? 9:00 PM You should have eaten dinner by now. I am terrible at eating dinner before 9:00 PM There's so many tools that you can use that may make you look like a psychopath to other people, but you can always just put initials in it and then as long as you know what it means.

Speaker 2 (00:43:27):

I think that this is great. Okay, so when you're talking, I want to get a little bit more into looking things in the eye. So when you're talking about your own failures on that list, okay, let's take exercise for example, because exercise is something you have to do. It's something that you can only fix not doing exercise by doing exercise. So on that list, is it a plan to do exercise, like daily exercise? Or is it you're fucking up at exercise? What does it say?

Speaker 3 (00:43:55):

I'm going to read it to you. It literally just says you need to break the skinny fat thing and work on your chest. I'm one of those people, it's like I bike ride 12 miles a day. I have no fat on my arms, no fat on my legs, but I have a gut on my stomach because I drink beer and I don't do anything to work on my chest. And now I need to do that because I'm just tired of looking at myself looking this way and I feel bad for my girlfriend. And it's one of those things I eat really well. But there is this thing that you get when you're 40 years old that if you don't work out of your chest sometimes that's just not going to do it. I have, don't get drunk. So you're motivated the next day. To be honest with you, last week I was drinking a little excessively. This was the last week of the summer and I was having a few too many drinks and then I was, the next day I was groggy at work and now I'm a little behind on work and I had to work through the weekend because of it. I don't want to work through the fucking weekend.

Speaker 2 (00:44:43):

Oh, I want to see what this list looks like physically. I want to,

Speaker 3 (00:44:48):

We're not sharing that with anybody else, but you'll get a text.

Speaker 2 (00:44:51):

No, yeah, no, I won't share it. No, for my own sake, because I'm trying to improve myself as a person too. A lot. And the thing is that once you start going down that path

Speaker 3 (00:45:05):

Of

Speaker 2 (00:45:06):

When you get serious about wanting to be better, it can get really ugly. You really have to, you got to be honest with yourself. And once you start in one place, that honesty thing, then it trickles to other parts of your life. And before you know it, you've got a lot to work on. And it's not easy and it's not pretty. And it's just interesting to me to see people who are doing a similar thing, who are confronting their demons proactively, how they go about doing it in a way that's constructive and not self demeaning or unmotivating. There's a lot of ways that you can approach your less desirable traits and just make yourself feel like shit and not want to work because you beat yourself up over it too much. I think there's an art and a skill to be able to confront these things in a way where you still want to fix them.

Speaker 3 (00:46:06):

And this goes back to the divergent street thing. Some people are already hard on themselves enough. I'm not. I'm a pretty self-congratulatory person, so you got to teach me about that. I'm not, yes, I think we've actually had this before. It's like, but there was a thing when I was younger, when I was starting out and when I was really making waves in my career and starting to get records on MTV all the time and things like that, I had a saying from Alan Douches, our friend Alan would beat me down with the saying results, not reasons. When I worked for Alan for years, when I would not get somebody right, he'd just say results, not reasons. I don't want to hear a fucking excuse. Get it fucking right. And that could be for those who don't know Alan, Alan is the cheer for his nicest, most supportive man.

(00:46:54):

And it doesn't sound that way from this, but he had a really, but he had a great point. It's like when you listen to a record, you don't get to make excuses and tell people context. They don't care that you didn't have money. You don't care that the band didn't rehearse. They want to hear something good, figure it the fuck out. And that result's not reason. It's trickled everywhere. But to say that when I had that on my desk where I mixed that every bad was doing an imitation of my voice saying that over and over again, still to this day I'll run into people to book results without reasons and imitate me. It's almost 20 years later.

Speaker 2 (00:47:28):

That kind of stuff would happen to me too. But you know, whatever works. I think whatever gets you through the day really, whatever you have to tell yourself in order to do your best work. One of the things actually that I have found was self-improvement. The hardest, it's not so hard anymore, but I'm saying this more for people that are a little younger and might be the beginning of their path to trying to improve themselves is that the people around you will make fun of you for it.

Speaker 3 (00:47:57):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:47:58):

And there's no way around that because, and I think that it's because there's a few things happening. First of all, self-improvement, a lot of it, the way that it's packaged when it comes in a product form is really cheesy. And so there's a stigma that comes with it of legitimately cheesy shit. So that's one. Two, a lot of people who create self-help products or scammers, so there's that stigma too. So if you're telling people that you're trying to do this stuff, you're already fighting this stigma that you're joining a cult or becoming a cheese ball or some weird shit. And so that's one side of it is the stigma. Then the other side of it is that people's favorite topic is themselves

(00:48:54):

And they don't like to hear that you are trying to fix something that they potentially had to fix. For instance, I've been vegetarian for 25 years and I'm talking about it now, but I don't talk about it to other people unless it comes up. I'm bringing this up of the context all context, but I don't care what other people eat. I don't give a fuck. I never have. And it's a totally personal thing. I don't have political reasons for it. I don't associate with vegetarian movements. I don't give a shit. But if I'm at a restaurant at a steakhouse or something and I'll go to steakhouse, I don't care. And I don't care if people order fucking bloody steak around, I don't care. But if I'm in that scenario and I just order some side dishes or whatever, the only thing on the menu, I'm totally fine.

(00:49:53):

But when people figure out, they'll start asking me why I didn't order a steak or something. And I'll tell you, if you ask, then they'll start telling me why they're not vegetarian. I didn't ask, I didn't ask, I don't care. It's fine. But they'll start to get guilty. Or if you stopped drinking or something, I know from friends of mine who have had drinking issues, who have stopped drinking, they've told me about this. They'll be at dinner with somebody who wants to have a glass of wine and they don't care if the other person has a glass of wine. But the other person will start justifying why they want the glass of wine. It's just like, dude have the fucking glass of wine. Who cares? But that's the other side of it. So you're fighting a stigma and then also you're, you're going to trigger people's insecurities about it. So just so you know, when you get started down the path of self-improvement, you're going to be dealing with a lot of bullshit from oftentimes the people closest to you. You got to do it anyways. As you get older, you're going to care less and less.

Speaker 3 (00:51:01):

I learned a really good thing. I was out with a friend who's literally never even tried alcohol type person, and they made a really good point. If there's a thing that you can learn and it's like you're kind of hitting all of these things without it being, the actual rules of it is like one, when somebody tells you they don't do something that's normal in society, it's usually the most boring thing for them to talk about. And you can just move on and don't need to say why you did and they don't need to say why they did move on and then two, exactly what you said when they say you could learn something from everybody, the best thing to do to talk to somebody is just go, so what have you been excited about lately? What have you been learning lately? What's been interesting that's going on with you lately?

(00:51:37):

If you ask those four questions, instead of talking about it for the fucking hundredth time, why somebody doesn't eat fucking meat or somebody doesn't drink, it's the same fucking answer almost every time. Have you heard it five times? Fucking move on. Do you not know this? It's like, who cares? Talk about something else. There's a million things to talk about that you'll get way smarter if you just ask the right questions when you're a record producer, as everybody who's listen to this podcast try to be, you're in the business of meeting strangers and becoming their friend very fast. That is very fast. Literally your business. The best way to do that is what are you excited about? What do you do it for? Will? What are you thinking about doing for Will? What are you excited to do aside from this? A question I ask in my podcast a lot of times', like, what's the thing outside of audio that you're really good at that not many people know about? That shit is so much more interesting than, oh, you're black. Tell me about that. What are you odd when I hear people say shit like this, there's no need to get into these normalized cultural stigmas and hear more about this, that the person's probably explained to you 60 times when you could talk about something that'll be interesting to both of you.

Speaker 2 (00:52:36):

Man, I love hearing about the real lives of the people that I've recorded because you meet

(00:52:42):

Some fascinating people. You end up finding out that someone is an infectious disease researcher or was in special forces and did all kinds of crazy shit, or you never know. Once I had cartel members at my house, oh wow. It was kind of scary, but at the same time, and I didn't want to ever repeat it and I was very happy when they left, but I can't say it wasn't interesting. It was very fascinating and you develop a rapport very, very quickly when you can get personal and you can show an interest in the people that you're working with. I mean, even on the most basic levels, when you're going to look for a job or an internship the same way that you have to, well, you don't have to, but you really should know who you're applying with. You should do your research and if you're going to a certain studio, you should know their history. You should know what types of bands work there, who's worked there, what their deal is. If you're going to go intern at NRG, you should know the history of NRG. They'll like that.

Speaker 1 (00:53:44):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:53:45):

They take pride in being NRG. So if you go in not knowing the history of NRG and a bunch of other potential interns do know the history of NRG, they're already going to talk to those guys instead. But it's the same thing, but just on a more personal level, when you're trying to establish a relationship that's going to create good work, the more rapport, the more quickly you can get, the better. And what's better, like I said, than talking about people's favorite topic, which is them.

Speaker 3 (00:54:16):

What I think that was also interesting is my favorite quote from the creativity book I wrote is this Arthur Schopenhauer quote, which is Chance favors the connected mind. And what that means is

Speaker 2 (00:54:27):

It's true

Speaker 3 (00:54:30):

Good ideas, especially in the arts, all come from you happen to see two things and put them together and be like, oh, if I do this and this and that chance increases when you get people to talk about their passions and the things they're hearing that not everybody understands and okay, sure, you're going to get failures with a couple people, but the majority of the people you encounter are going to have something really interesting to say and then nevermind. You can also, if you see they're interested in what you're interested, they know a lot about it. That's an avenue to go down for the entire session and honestly people like who are interested in them and that's more of a chance of you getting that next record is, I know it's been said on this podcast a million times because I've heard it said a million times is it's not always how good a job you did on the record, it's how much they like being in a room with you.

Speaker 2 (00:55:20):

Absolutely. We're working on, we're finishing up our course career builder right now. I think by the time that this podcast comes out, career builder will be in launch mode. So we're launching on the eighth and then it's going to be on sale till the 20th. But I'm finishing up some of my sections. I just did a really long one on my three sections were booking, and it's more about the technical side of booking, but then networking

(00:55:56):

And internships and I mean my networking section is an hour long. The internship section is like three hours long. I've got to cut it down. But the one thing that I kept coming back to, and this is based on a lot of research and just all my experience, the one thing that I really kept coming back to and just thinking about in my own life is that the thing that's really helped me network well is that I can find almost anybody interesting for some reason, and it doesn't matter if on paper I think their job is boring or I think that they're not that smart or something like that. I can find a way to be fascinated by them and to get them to really talk about what they're into and then they're no longer boring. And I mean, I have found ways to find a fast food job that someone else did. Fascinating all the way to an airline pilot or you never know who you're going to be talking to, but there's something you can key in on. I feel like always, or almost always, there's something you can key in on and relate with. There's something about what everybody does that is at least a little bit unique I think, that you can find and you have to find those things in order to be able to connect with people quickly.

Speaker 3 (00:57:21):

It's totally true, and it's a funny thing is like you say, the fast food thing. So one of the other things I do, it's pretty rare I do this, but I was doing it a lot for a while, is I did a lot of installing sound systems in restaurants, which also for all of you out there who understand audio, lemme tell you this in your town, since you're probably not going to do it in Brooklyn where I live and it's fine, I'm not going anywhere else. Putting Sonos systems into walls and setting up the internet is the easiest way to make money in the entire world. They will pay you far too much money to do it. So if you need a side hustle, take it from me. But watching how efficient some kitchens are and seeing the way they do work has totally affected how I have my assistants do some of the work.

Speaker 2 (00:57:58):

Yeah, it's like a fucking factory.

Speaker 3 (00:58:01):

And literally I did a consult on a new business from the guy who does Shake Shack, just seeing some of the little things they were doing to build the place and watching the construction that's going on my building now, it's fucking chaos. Every day they just do a different thing and there's no order to it. Watching that they know every layer that when one person finishes this part of the wall, dah, dah, dah, it goes down the line. I was like watching the way this shared thing is, and then all of a sudden I figured out a new way to do the file sharing that we have just a separate Dropbox that's staying current during the session. Things like that inspire your efficiency and how fast you get done things. I know you guys did a lot on that speed mixing thing. It's like there's always ways to find that new stuff that gets you better, and this is how you find that inspiration is going on in the world and trying to find what you can apply in field theory to your thing.

Speaker 2 (00:58:52):

Fucking absolutely. The fast food thing is a great example, man, because that's like a job that people talk shit about and that frankly nobody really wants to do that job. That's not a career destination most people's minds. So that's why I'm saying even in that, the efficiency is what I find fascinating about it, exactly what we were talking about, but there's always something.

Speaker 3 (00:59:19):

So what we touched on a little bit too is I've been slowly starting to do a little bit more film work just because recorded a pop punk record 300,000 times, I don't need to do it again.

(00:59:32):

So I got some film gear. My girlfriend and I have been working on making a movie. We wrote a script. We're going to do this when our schedules permit. And so I bought all the things. It's not very expensive to get into film sound. It's really like, to be honest with you, your overhead mics are often with the same type of mics they use for close micing, indoors, a shotgun mic, drones for outdoors. And then really, if you have the power, you can be taking your converters and your laptop to do it. It's probably better to have a field recorder, like a sound devices or a Zoom, but it's a pretty minimal investment. And that's another thing you can do as a side hustle. But what I learned, I bought one of these road, I'm going to get the letters wrong, but it's like NGH four shotgun mics.

(01:00:14):

Dude, that thing in the drum room sounds fucking incredible. And I had seen over the years, I can remember John and yellow using a shotgun mic one time. I walked to the studio 20 years ago, I'm like, whatever, I don't need to try that. I don't see anybody else doing it. I'm like, what the fuck was I doing the last 20 years when I had this fucking knowledge and I didn't try this? It sounds fucking insane, and it's truly given my drum sound, new life like that in 1176. And it's like all of a sudden you have this whole new excitement that just really concentrates the kick of the snare and doesn't take up much of the symbols. It's like, why the hell isn't everybody doing this?

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):

I have a similar story actually, when Jason s Club's assistant, Ron was studying film a lot when I first got to Aha and he was telling me about the parabolic mics that they use in football games.

Speaker 3 (01:01:03):

Yes,

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):

Very. Some were. Yeah. And so he created, he made one because they're really, really expensive.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):

The

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):

Good ones, we weren't going to get one. So he rigged something together with a ride symbol and a microphone to create a poor man's pair of ic. And it was so fascinating and inspiring and it sounded really cool. And it was just a new way to, new way to capture things. And it was all based on the stuff that he was learning through studying how to film stuff. It just added a new cool thing to try.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):

That's right. Yeah. And that's the thing is God, it's like there's so many things. I realized that when I was researching my creativity book, you're like, oh, I'm starting to know everything in this. It's like when I started that creativity book, I thought I knew so much by the time I got done. I'm like, wow. The year and a half before I learned all that stuff about creativity, I knew fucking nothing. And I'd been doing this for 17 years at that point. It's like I literally knew nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):

Let's take a second to talk about the summit. I know we touched on it for a second earlier, but I just want to talk about it some more because you're going to be there, which I'm very, very excited about. It's about goddamn time. I really wanted you to be at the first one, but we just ran out of space and we're out of space at this one too. But I booked you, you're the first person I booked because I didn't want to have you not come to this one. But for people wondering what the summit is is URM now throws this annual event where producers, engineers, audio people from all over the world come together for a weekend. They hang out, they network, and then they learn in a series of presentations from our speakers. So for instance, this year we've got Jesse Cannon coming, Taylor Larson, Kurt Lou Blasco, who's manages Zach Wilde plays bass for Ozzy Osborne, Mike Maori's coming.

(01:03:00):

Andrew Wade is going to be there. Kane and Kevin Chico are going to be there. Billy Decker, Mike Legian is going to be there, Bob Rochelle, it's a pretty damn good lineup of speakers. And about 120 250 URM students will be there as well from all over the world. We're talking Australia, Norway, Finland, Mexico, Canada, the us, Germany, uk, all over the world. What I always try to tell people is there's a reason for why business people fly to have meetings and when the most important meetings take place, they take place in person. And there's a reason for why the best internships are going to happen in person and not online. And there's just a reason for why when things are important, they happen in the real world. And that's because that's the best way to connect with people, and that's the only way that you could really get to know people.

(01:03:57):

And in an industry like this, which is so relationship driven, your network is going to basically determine what comes of your career. And I can't really think of a better way for an up and coming engineer to meet their peers because they could go to Nam. But the problem with Nam is, well, first of all, a lot of them can't get into it. But second of all, in Nam, if you're trying to meet your heroes, well, your hero is going to be surrounded by like 500 to a thousand other people that want their time. Not just that your heroes are also going to be hanging out with their friends, and it's not exactly a place to really, if you're an up and comer to network with higher level people, you're not going to really get their time of day. For instance, when Blasco was my manager, he was my manager, I talked, I had a lot of projects with him, and when I saw him at Nam, I'd get 30 seconds of his time and we talked almost every day back then.

(01:04:57):

It's just not the best environment for that. The thing with this is everyone who's going has invested in the ticket and a flight. So they've already qualified themselves as super serious. It's not that many people, it's like 150 people tops, and you're not going to get to hang out with these people any place else. When else are you going to get to hang out with people who are going through the same struggles as you, but live halfway across the world, so many of them at the same time? And when else would you get the chance to hang out with so many of these speakers and people who have made it happen, like the Billy Deckers of the world, the Blasco of the world, the C Chicos of the world? When else are you going to get to hang out with them for an entire weekend where you can see them at the bar and just go up to them, or you can see that they're having breakfast and walk up and sit down and just chill with them and become friends? Where else can that happen? I don't know of any place else. So it's a really, really special thing. I don't know if I've done the best job of articulating how cool it is, but you should just go to URM summit.com, watch the video that we put together and come hang out with us November 9th through 12th. Alright, now that I've rambled about it for a little bit, well,

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):

What I'll say is my career would be nowhere without the ability to do that. And truthfully, for me working at West, west Side, all the best producers were coming in and a lot of reason I got good gigs was like I got to be close to people like that. And then I think I was like 20, 23 and I was sober. I might add, I started organizing a producer drinks night in New York and that did I still this day, the only reason I landed at the studio, I landed it in a week and I have a new studio that's going to argue would be better than my last one is those drinks. I did that in 2002. I want say, and I would have a drink tonight. I would drink bitters and soda. No one knew. Being around other people, getting the ideas and building that network and being on people's radar and knowing when they're things. I think of now my buddy Brian, who works for me and co-produces records with me. I was mastering a ton of stuff for him and then he was like, I'm really looking to do something. Came up for a weekend and hung out. I was like, you know what? We happen to be looking for another engineer. You're already hired if you want it.

(01:07:16):

The in-person time gets you opportunities.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):

Absolutely. I can think. So there's this one guy who came into the summit last year. His name's John McLucas. He's one of our most high achieving students. So he moved himself to LA and slept in the floor of his tiny ass studio for a year or something. And while he was building up his client base to the point where now he, now he has a place of his own to live, and he just hired an assistant. Guess where he met his assistant? It's someone he met at the summit.

Speaker 3 (01:07:52):

Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):

But they didn't agree to work together at the summit. They just hung out. And so they just hung out and months and months later, he needed help with something and that guy was available and that guy offered to help him on something that he didn't even really know how to do. I think it was vocal editing. He just decided to just give it a shot for him. He did a really good job and they hit it off even further. And now that guy just moved or is moving. Steven Ward's his name, he's moving to LA or moved to LA and they have a whole thing going on. And there's a bunch of stories like that of people who hit it off and are now partnered in real life. There's just a bunch of them or people are saying that now they are in touch with say Billy Decker

(01:08:46):

Or something. They can just hit him up whenever and get advice from him. People who went to the summit for instance, I know that they would be going through Vegas or through Nashville and would just hit up one of the instructors we had at the summit last year, like Billy Decker, Kane Chico, and now they can go to the studio and hang out for a day and network with them. And now these high level producers are in their friend circle. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to become Billy Decker's assistant or anything like that, but it just means that they have one more person in their corner who might introduce them to the right person down the road. You never know.

Speaker 3 (01:09:23):

And sometimes even it's just knowing that person, getting the answer on a quick thing is sometimes the most invaluable thing. Honestly, it's so funny. Stuart Richardson, who was in the Lost Profits, is a great producer down in Florida. It's like him and I casually started hitting it off because he read my book and we had a mutual friend in Jeffrey Lee from Thursday, and it's funny now is him and I are bouncing things off each other all the time, and he's so good. I hear his mixes, I get inspired to redo my mixes and it's like the funny thing. And then we did a record together last year where he came up and used my street. He had to work in New York, and these relationships are what blossoms and they usually blossom from little things over a lot of years, and you have to be really long sighted about that. But

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):

One thing I said in my networking section of the CareerBuilder course is that networking is something that occurs in the short term, but plays out in the long term.

Speaker 3 (01:10:19):

That's a thousand percent dead on.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):

I totally believe it. A lot of these relationships that I made, here's an example, Gus G, former guitar player for Ozzy Osborne.

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):

Me and Jason Soff mixed a Firewind record for him in 2012, and that was when he was Ozzy's guitar player. So it was a big deal for us. It was actually my only gold record. It was a Sweden gold, but it's my only plaque. So that aside, yeah, I have a little loser wall, one little plaque on it. But anyways, I met him in 2007 just by chance because Steve Joe from Century Media wanted to confront a RV driver who was ripping bands off. And this RV driver had ripped doth off my band in 2007 and had also ripped off. But what I mean by ripped off is stole a bunch of money and stranded them kind of thing, like thousands of dollars. And so Steve Joe's, now he works for Prosthetic, but he's one of those a and r guys that actually is a good person who cares. And he got sick of his bands getting screwed. He hit me up one day and he's like, Hey, that guy that screwed you guys with that rv, he's going to be in Atlanta today. Gus G and Fire Wind are in Atlanta today. I'm flying. I'm landing in a few hours. Will you come confront him with me and I'll get you your money back?

(01:11:52):

It's like, okay, so this is for my first time meeting Steve and Gus g and stuff, and we met in a parking lot. It was so, and walked up to this guy's rv. It was totally like one of those to catch a predator type shows. This guy was so weird. Anyways, we got our money back, but that's how I met Gus and we didn't agree to work together right then and there or anything. But from that point on, we emailed every once in a while or would send messages back and forth on Facebook, whatever it was, casual, bumped into each other at Nam, said hello. Five years later though, when I was working with Jason and Gus G had leveled up in his life significantly as lead guitar player for Ozzy. I got an email asking if Jason and I wanted to mix the new Fire Wind records. Fuck yes, five years.

(01:12:58):

Like I said, it occurs in the short term right then and there. You got to do, you have to not smell bad and not be a punisher and be cool in the short term, but you can't expect anything out of it. Think about, you can't try to predict what's going to happen and you can't expect anything out of the interaction other than just making a friend because who knows what's going to happen five years down the line. Most of my fruitful partnerships, relationships, friendships, career wise are things that are relationships that started like that and then eventually years later became something. So Finn Finn who our director of marketing, I met him in 2009 at the Revolver Awards. He came with the metal Sucks guys. He was writing for Metal Sucks. A Sergeant DI was writing for Metal Sucks. And so we all met up there and we got a bite to eat before that and me and him exchanged five words.

(01:13:59):

But from that point on, since I knew him, if I saw an article he wrote for Metal Sucks that I've always thought he was a brilliant writer. So every once in a while he'd write something that I keyed in on. I'd write to him and be like, Hey, I see that you thought of this and this, but you've thought of that. We'd chat a little bit That years later turned into him offering me a gig at Creative Live years later. That led to him being our director of marketing and really helping URM turn into a powerhouse. This shit takes time.

Speaker 3 (01:14:34):

Yeah, it's a funny thing is that you guys ended up being a reciprocal thing of then you guys offered him a position he works for you now, and Finn and I, for instance, the audience doesn't know it as an even crazier story is in 1997, Finn was,

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):

Okay, so you're one of those people that he talks about that he's known for 20 years.

Speaker 3 (01:14:55):

Maybe you don't know this. This is the funniest story. My best friend who is now a political science professor who's a really big conservative writer, my childhood best friend who was a punk kid and him and Finn were pen pals and Finn came and hung out with us one weekend. We grew up in a town, Finn lived in for a little while. Amazing. So I beat Finn Save as you like 10 minutes. But then what happens? Let's fast forward

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):

In 1997,

Speaker 3 (01:15:22):

I think it could be 98.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):

Whoa. Still.

Speaker 3 (01:15:26):

Yeah, it's insane. So the point being, then I do this thing, this is probably helpful for the audience, you could do this for your band, is I find similar people to me. So there's this guy, Steve Renny, who was doing a music business thing at the time, and I searched podcasts he was on and I listened to all of them to see if I should pitch these people. For me being on it, I just put out a book in the music business. So I listened and I'm like, oh, this guy seems cool that's doing this podcast. I'm like, I'm going to write him right now. Two in the morning, I get an email back, let's talk tomorrow. Sure, sounds good. Finn and I talk and I'm like, dude, your name is so familiar. And then we figure it out that we had hung out before that.

(01:16:05):

And then same thing, creative Lives strategy, been really good friends ever since, always helping each other out. And that's 20 years down the line. And also just, I always tell this people too is that one email, I mean, creative live checks are very nice. You do think it's done a very nice thing for my career, and it was one email and also a great friendship from somebody I learned a lot from and really like because I just went, you know what? Let's give it a shot. Let's write to this person and see what happens. And it took a while for our friendship to develop and it was just like one of those things obviously accelerated what we realized, oh, we come from the exact same place. But yeah, it's those type of things and you never know when that is. I didn't remember. I couldn't even place his name. I'm like, it just sounds a little familiar.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):

It's interesting, man. Yeah, he became one of my closest friends in the world and also one of my most lucrative business relationships on with multiple projects over the years. And those creative live checks are nice and it's just been, it's like the perfect example of what we're talking about is that that's the best scenario is where you become a legitimate friend, like a real life friend where you can talk about real personal shit like a real friend,

(01:17:17):

Where also you have this business relationship that's actually lucrative and awesome too. You do awesome work together and everyone makes money and then you're really actually friends. I mean, I think that's the goal of working in the music industry, I think is to be able to make shit happen with your friends. Finn actually made a video about it that he just released or he talks about this, but I've said it forever that one of the things that I think is cool about this line of work for all its problems, one of the things that's cool is that you get to make money with your best friends. That's kind of a really cool thing. But these friendships, they only happen if you put yourself in a situation where you can make those initial contacts. And so

Speaker 4 (01:18:04):

For

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):

Guys starting out in the middle of Latvia, there's a guy coming from Latvia, where's he going to meet people other than coming to something like the South.

Speaker 3 (01:18:16):

Yeah. What's really funny thing is I'm doing a record in Portugal next year, and it's totally one of those things too. It's like this is a guy I met because he came and hung out with a friend of a friend and then hilariously bad sends me five studios to do it. One of the other studios was better, but I'm like, I know this guy's reliable. I hung out with him. I heard his philosophies on equipment, philosophies on life. I'm like, I'm never going to know these other guys' philosophies on life. Let's do this record here, even though I would love to use that R-C-A-B-A six A compressor at the other place. Who fucking cares? This guy's got a great vibe. Let's go. It's more important. Anyways, yes,

Speaker 2 (01:18:51):

With that, I got to run and so I want to thank you for coming on.

Speaker 3 (01:18:57):

Always My pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:18:58):

Always a pleasure having you on. And I just think it's, I didn't prep for this podcast, some podcasts. Well, I prepped for your last one by reading your book

Speaker 4 (01:19:08):

Because

Speaker 2 (01:19:08):

We were talking about a book you just put out. I wasn't going to fake that one, but with this one I didn't prep at all. I mean, we talk quite a bit via text, so I knew what was going on with you, but it's really cool with you specifically that we can have great podcasts that last an hour and a half or two hours and all we have to do is show up.

Speaker 3 (01:19:32):

Yes. Love that,

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):

Man.

Speaker 3 (01:19:34):

That's cool. As somebody who did 120 interviews for documentaries of the last year, not having to do research before one of these, that's a fucking blast.

Speaker 2 (01:19:42):

Yeah, it's nice. However, look, if you do put out another book and we're talking about it, I will read the book.

Speaker 3 (01:19:49):

Nice. Nice. I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:51):

No problem. Alright, man. Well, you have a great rest of your day.

Speaker 3 (01:19:53):

Yes, you too, man. Have a good one. It was great talking to you.

Speaker 1 (01:19:55):

Likewise. Take it easy. This episode of the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is brought to you by Isotope. We craft innovative audio products that inspire and enable people to be creative. Visit isotope.com for more info. This episode is also brought to you by Sonar Works. Sonar Works is on a mission to ensure everybody hears music the way it was meant to be across all devices. Visit Sonar works.com for more info to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit URM Academy and subscribe today.