JASEN RAUCH: Joining Breaking Benjamin, the producer as a translator, and why work ethic beats talent

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,

Speaker 2 (00:00:28):

Eyal 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, miss 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.

(00:01:25):

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, so if that sounds like something that's up your alley, go to urm summit.com to find out more.

(00:02:22):

I really love this episode because it highlights something that I've always said, which is that you don't need to try to be a rock star in order to have an amazing career in the music industry. In reality, that's not even what I think people should go for. It's one of those things that if it happens, it happens. More likely the thing that will work is getting a bunch of different skills under your belt at a pro level and learning how to be just a really cool person that people want to hang out with and spend more time with. That's really what seems to work in my observation, and I know that that's being overly simplistic. That's why we have a whole podcast that's 90 minutes long going into just what that looks like in real life. But anyways, lemme tell you who's coming on. We've got Jasen Rauch.

(00:03:15):

He's a guitar player, songwriter and producer out of Tennessee. He's one of the current guitar players for Breaking Benjamin, a huge, huge rock band. He's been with them since 2014 and prior to that he was the guitar player for Red from 2004 to 2009. He's a songwriter for Razor and Tie records and has also worked production for many artists including KO's, Brian, head Welch, as well as Pillar, Kerry Roberts, Fireflight and just a bunch of others. He even has worked with Rob Graves in making the film score into the darkness so this guy can kind of do it all. He's been in the games since the early two thousands working his way up from the toilet cleaning intern to being a touring guitar player for one of the biggest bands in the world. There's a lot to learn from this guy, so sit back, grab a notepad, take some notes on this and enjoy. Cool. Well, Jasen Rauch, welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. Thank you for being here. How are you doing? Doing good, man. Thanks for having me. You were just saying that you're in a beautiful and amazing Akron today.

Speaker 3 (00:04:22):

Yeah, I sure am. Yeah, we're wrapping up a pretty long tour right now, and so today is our last day off. Tomorrow's the last show and typically we drive through the night just to spend the day off where we're playing and this happened to be in Akron, so yeah, we're all here hanging out. I'm in my hotel room.

Speaker 2 (00:04:39):

I'm sure you probably answered how the tour's going a million times already at this point, so I'm not going to ask you that.

Speaker 3 (00:04:45):

No, no, you're choice. Fine. Hass been going great. It has been going great, to be honest with you. It is probably been one of the best tours I've ever done at this point is the longest tour I've ever done. How long Hass it been? We're coming up just on nine weeks.

Speaker 2 (00:04:59):

Oh, that's pretty brutal. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:05:01):

Yeah, it's pretty long, but it has been one of the best great crowds. The bands are incredible. The crews get along great. That's always a big thing. Bands get along great, and so if it was going to be a tour this long, this is the one to do it on us, so I can't complain.

Speaker 2 (00:05:16):

Yeah, it's not so bad. At least it's not in a van. At least it's not in a van. Oh my gosh,

Speaker 3 (00:05:24):

Absolutely. Too old for that now.

Speaker 2 (00:05:27):

I mean that's its, I feel like it's good to cut your teeth in that and earn your dues doing that. It makes you appreciate things more. Absolutely puts hair on your chest, but there's a point where it's no longer. Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:05:43):

Absolutely. I think it does create character though. I mean there are success stories that happen overnight and more times than not the ones that stick around just because I think it still is a work ethic, some humility and appreciation of where you came from, and I think that extends beyond just being a touring musician or if you're a songwriter or an engineer producer or anything like that. I started before I was even in the band, started scrubbing toilets at studios in Nashville, like 2000, so even back then I saw the merit in being in the right place at the right time and putting in the work.

Speaker 2 (00:06:27):

Speaking of Nashville and where you come from, I wanted to get into that because you basically are a musical renaissance manner, the definition of what it means to be a professional musician. You're a songwriter, you've done work on film scores, production, like you just said, you did the studio internships, now you're touring guitar player, do a lot of different things and have worn lots of different hats. Was that always the idea?

Speaker 3 (00:06:59):

To be honest with you, no. I played an instrument as long as I can remember. I played guitar and drums started kind of about the same time as a kid, and I think I was the more or less the kind of shy, introverted kid that was more happy being melancholy and sticking it out my room and listening to records that I liked in the nineties growing up and stuff like that in late eighties, and it kind of went from there and I remember getting to a point in high school, I'm like, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. I getting all this pressure from everybody. Well, you got to do this, you got to do that, and I just didn't have anything I ever did other than music, and so I remember buying my first little four track, little fo tech four track that I had that I used to record on and do demos and bounce down and do all this other stuff. I thought it was just fascinating the whole process and then some of my heroes growing up on the engineering side, the production side, I remember getting everything I could material wise at the time. This was probably mid nineties trying

Speaker 2 (00:07:58):

Wasn't much out there.

Speaker 3 (00:07:59):

No, there wasn't Uhuh, so I mean at the time I was going to libraries and stuff and trying to watch documentaries on VH one if they were out there behind the music kind of thing. But all in all, I mean it was a huge learning experience and that got me into maybe I just want to be an engineer, maybe I want to record, and so I looked at a bunch of different educational programs for that. Ended up taking one late nineties, which one? I actually went to full sail and graduated in 2000.

Speaker 2 (00:08:29):

We've had some people who went to the OG full sail on before. Apparently it was a whole different vibe back then.

Speaker 3 (00:08:36):

You know what? Honestly, I have not been real connected with the school since then. Well,

Speaker 2 (00:08:41):

It's like this massive thing now.

Speaker 3 (00:08:43):

I can't imagine

Speaker 2 (00:08:44):

A whole section of Orlando. It's like a fucking theme park basically.

Speaker 3 (00:08:50):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (00:08:50):

It's huge.

Speaker 3 (00:08:51):

It's huge. It was big at the time and they were onto something for sure, and they're a marketing machine and they do great, and there's been some great people that have come out of there. My only gripe about some of the recording schools in general, it's not just full sail and some of the audio programs out there is I think it takes away the merit of what we started talking about, which is the work ethic and the realization that this is not going to be handed to you. It might open the door to get in. Some cool studios assist on some cool projects.

Speaker 2 (00:09:17):

It might

Speaker 3 (00:09:18):

Might,

Speaker 2 (00:09:19):

Right?

Speaker 3 (00:09:19):

Because those are limited slots and those slots are becoming fewer and fewer because of the industry. There's half the studios in Nashville that there were when I moved there in 2000. So it does diminish the importance of that aspect of it a little bit because it's not as out there. I think there's a lot of kids that I see that are getting out there and going, okay, well where's my job? Well, I should be able to do this. I have this wealth of knowledge and I understand what a compressor does, so I'm ready. And there's a lot more to it than that real world experience of dealing with clients or coworkers or peers that are a pain in the ass dealing with deadlines, micromanaging overnights and no sleep for no pay and all those things. Those are the things that are not talked about, and so you have to be able to navigate those kind of more simpler tactile life lessons with with the education that you had come out of it.

(00:10:16):

So I'm thankful for it, but it got me into doing that and got me into the studio stuff and I loved it. I mean, I worked myself to the bone and was kind of the last man standing in a lot of ways and in the right place at the right time when things started happening. But as far as being a touring musician, I never really wanted to be in a band. As ironic as that sounds, I'm not the big typical rockstar guy that people may assume I'm fine with just hanging out on a day off my own hotel room. I don't really need a lot of attention, all those kinds of things. So that was kind of a afterthought,

Speaker 2 (00:10:50):

Like

Speaker 3 (00:10:51):

A normal well-adjusted human

Speaker 2 (00:10:52):

Being.

Speaker 3 (00:10:53):

Yeah, exactly. I know

Speaker 2 (00:10:55):

Crazy

Speaker 3 (00:10:55):

Because a lot of people that tour, I've been touring on and off since 2006, 2005, and a lot of people that tour professionally, they just get stuck, so what age did you start touring? Well, that might be your maturity level because 15 years later you started touring at 21, you still might have the maturity level of a 21-year-old or something. You see that a

Speaker 2 (00:11:18):

Lot. That's so true.

Speaker 3 (00:11:19):

And so just being conscious of that, it's fucking brutal. It's horrible. It's horrible, and I think that's where the ego and the entitlement can come in, and I've seen that way too many times. And so I try to steer clear,

Speaker 2 (00:11:32):

Man. One of the things that made me want to stop was I would come back from a tour and I don't know, I was acting like a savage compared to the rest of normal. I'd get back and go out to dinner with people and forget that normal people don't say certain things that loud out in public. They don't act the way that is normal to act on tour.

Speaker 4 (00:11:57):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:11:59):

Once I got that initial shock of going back and realizing that being on tour was turning me into a savage

Speaker 3 (00:12:06):

And

Speaker 2 (00:12:06):

Everyone around me, the stuff that happens that's just okay is it's not really okay actually, and a lot of bad stuff is normalized, and I totally agree that people get stuck in a certain maturity level for a long time. That actually was one of the reasons I wanted out. It started to push 30 and it was starting to really stress me out.

Speaker 3 (00:12:27):

Absolutely. Our tour manager actually now used to tour as well, and he was like, I can't do this. I want to be on the road. I want to tour, but I got to be on another side that is a little more regimented and scheduled and with more mature people, and so now he manages it. We call him our babysitter, but on a tour like this, I think we have in our camp 30 plus and so does a five finger death punch you we're co headlining with, so between the two bands, I mean we're pushing 70 crew and band members, so there's a lot to manage there and it takes that maturity to do that and you can ask hopefully any musician at a pretty successful level and if they're there, it's typically one of two things. They were just born with this unnatural gift, just these savants at their instruments, the ability to write, to connect with other people lyrically they can sing, they have the whole package, that kind of thing, but sometimes it comes into deficit in their personality. Maybe they're a little whiny or

Speaker 2 (00:13:27):

I would say it always

Speaker 3 (00:13:29):

Does. Oh, it's an amazing thing. And then there's the rest of us that maybe necessarily weren't born with that talent, but definitely put in the work and we're able to navigate over and over and over. Butch Walker, I've always been a fan of his, and one of the things that he always talks about is he was assigned in a eighties metal band, like a hair metal band, and it didn't do too well. He had one hit, wonder, didn't do great. Then he did his solo stuff, but it didn't do great. But now he's one of the biggest rider out there in the pop world and he just has this cool factor there. Everybody, he wants to work with him. He is doing Taylor Swift and Fallout Boy and all this other stuff and pink, and it's because he credits it to, I never got that big break that slungshot me. I had to work for it each time, and I even failed along the way and had to go, okay, he calls it rising like the stock market, you just keep going and going and going and going. It's more of a marathon than the sprint,

Speaker 2 (00:14:19):

And he is super talented too,

Speaker 3 (00:14:21):

Was very talented undeniably,

Speaker 2 (00:14:23):

But I think that that's more than norm actually. But those cases don't get as much attention as the phenoms, but I actually think the phenoms are the total minority.

Speaker 3 (00:14:35):

I think so too, but unfortunately, I think, and maybe I was that way when I was younger too, but I think I thought that was the mold that was the model like, oh man, if I just do this, little did I know in the process I was putting in my 10,000 hours of something and just slaving to the grind, trying to be that, but I was trying to capture at the time these people I thought just were naturally gifted. Come to find out, a lot of them weren't necessarily, maybe they would have a predisposition to be, they've got good ears or good sense of pitch or on the engineering side they can hear frequencies or they analyze things differently than some of us, but aside from that, they still put in their work I think. I don't mean to keep harping on that, but

Speaker 2 (00:15:18):

Well, I've known a lot of talented people over the years who have done great and remained on top, some who have done great and then fallen off some who are super talented and never got anywhere at all.

Speaker 3 (00:15:32):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:15:33):

Some who are mediocre talents, who got really far. I've seen all those different things and I actually think that for the super talented people, they're almost at a slight disadvantage because they're so talented that they're used to getting Yes,

Speaker 4 (00:15:50):

Yep,

Speaker 2 (00:15:50):

Absolutely. And they don't always work as hard, and I've seen that destroy some careers for some really genius people.

Speaker 3 (00:15:57):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:15:57):

They got in their own way because they believe their own press too much, and yes, they are great, but it's only going to take you so far. The thing that I've seen that works the best is either you have a hyper talent that's combined with a hyper work ethic, and then those people are just the unstoppable types.

Speaker 3 (00:16:15):

Those are the unstoppable ones. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:16:17):

They're so rare though. Or you get people with decent talent, but crazy work ethic and they do great too, but also crazy work ethic and a good personality.

Speaker 3 (00:16:27):

Absolutely. Well, the ability to work with others is one of the biggest things I know. Breaking Benjamin with our camp when it comes to crew guys, we're all older now. We're all pushing 40 if not over it, and if we got somebody out here that's working for us, that's partying way too much. I mean, if you like to have some drinks and do whatever, that's fine, but if they're using harder drugs, if they're missing bus calls, if they're cranky when they wake up, there's no room for that. It'll bring a whole camp down. That's not a good look for a 39-year-old. No, it'll bring a whole camp down. Somebody on stage left could piss somebody off on stage. Right now, the whole day is ruined because we'll let those people go in a second. There's just no room for that. I would rather hire a guy that has about 70% of the knowledge that he needs that we can get him the next 30 over the next six months. But he's just a great hang, a great guy, incredible work ethic, good to be around and tour as well over a guy who is just, he used to tech for Zach Wild and he's the rockstar tech, but he's just an asshole all day

Speaker 2 (00:17:33):

Long. That brings me back to something that you said earlier about the recording school, people who get out and have all this knowledge and then don't understand

(00:17:43):

How much they're going to have to do to prove themselves afterwards. I actually think that for people going for internships and looking to get in the door, they don't have to have as much knowledge as they would think because as someone who's hired lots of interns and stuff, I assume that they're not going to know as much as me or as much as the other producers who would come through my studio. I assume that I'm going to have to show them how shit's done. So what I'm really looking for is someone who's willing to go the distance. I mean, they got to have some decent background in audio, but I'm down to teach people from close to the beginning if I think that they're the right person. Oh,

Speaker 3 (00:18:21):

A hundred percent. And

Speaker 2 (00:18:22):

A perfect example is the guy who films all the URM stuff and who runs the tech for the live show. He was an audio intern for Andrew Wade and then became his assistant, and we decided to make him our camera guy and take on all those responsibilities before he even had held a camera in his life. He had zero background in it whatsoever, but he had proven himself as such a great asset to the team, and we just figured this guy can do it. We just have to help him, and if we give him this responsibility, I guarantee you he's going to take it upon himself to learn this really, really fast and we will train him and it'll be a great decision. And it's been a great decision. It's been over a year and he's completely taken over all of those responsibilities. He always does great. He comes with us everywhere we go, and he's fucking 22.

Speaker 3 (00:19:23):

Oh, that's great. That's great.

Speaker 2 (00:19:25):

But that's why I think I've seen this so many, well, not so many because it's not that many people who have all the right characteristics, but I think that who you are is a lot more important than what you know at first when you're trying to get in the door somewhere. People will train you if they think you're cool, they'll train you.

Speaker 3 (00:19:42):

Yep, absolutely. And I'll never forget that one of my first big sessions that I worked on, I got not because I was the standout intern at the time or whatever, that I had most knowledge, the most experience is because the producer who was doing the session at the time, I had brought in some drinks or something for the client and there was just a piece, like a gum wrapper that one of the guys had accidentally let slip off the producer desk, and I just reached over and picked it up and walked out. And he stopped me as I was walking out and he was like, you didn't have to do that. And I was like, oh, no, no, I do. I know that. I'm just trying to take care of you guys. Anything, lemme know. And that stuck out in his mind and he was like, why don't you hang out? Come check out what we're doing.

Speaker 2 (00:20:26):

Exactly right.

Speaker 3 (00:20:27):

Picking up a dumb rat. I just saw it as trash, you know what I mean? It wasn't like, Hey, do you guys mind if I sit it, do you mind if I do this? I actually know how to do this. Nothing. There was something that I still have walking around stage and everything like that that you're standing there talking to somebody and there's a cup on the floor, just pick it up, whatever. It's just that work ethic thing that gets noticed. It totally does.

Speaker 2 (00:20:50):

We've told this story a few times on the podcast, but it's the same exact thing. A friend of ours, Josh Newell, who's a great, great engineer out in la, he's done a lot of great stuff. He became Lincoln Parks engineer for 10 years and he had worked as a runner at NRG before that. That's how he met them. And the reason that they gave him a shot editing their drums and vocals was because he was the only runner that never fucked up their drink or food orders and always got them everything back quickly. A hundred percent. That's the reason they had nothing to do with his audio skills. Then they gave him the chance to prove himself, which he did, but if he hadn't taken the care to take their food orders seriously, he would've never had the chance to prove it.

Speaker 3 (00:21:38):

Sure, absolutely. That's so huge. And the riner thing is something that we deal with every day on the road. You come out to these shows, and last night we played in amphitheater somewhere, we're playing a show, so we're locked down, all our buses are there, trucks are there. We don't really have a method of getting things like cases of water and that sort of stuff. So you have runners and that's even that coming out of, again, an audio school. You look at that and go, are you freaking kidding me? I'm doing this. Why can't I do a recall? Why can't I do or set up recall for you? Which obviously in the box is a different thing now, but I remember having to recall large format consoles with SSLs and things like that and set 'em up for somebody that was coming in, but you're like, I want to be doing that shit.

(00:22:25):

I don't know why I'm running and getting coffee, but I mean, you have no business being on a console if you don't know how to get somebody's coffee order. And you'd be shocked at how many runners go out there. And for a while we used to get asked for Wild Turkey American honey, which is just this kind of like honey whiskey. I can't tell you how many runners came back with a bottle of honey made in America, and it's just like we were pretty specific. It was Wild Turkey, but you just don't know. You don't know. So all those things, those that attention detail I think is important, but it's also in people's DNA too. I love seeing people that are wired like that. We've had a couple interns out actually from Full Sail that have kind of come out and shadowed for a day for a tech or a systems tech, lighting tech, that kind of thing. I love seeing those kids and most of them are great. They work out pretty well.

Speaker 2 (00:23:19):

It's not about rock starring out either when you have a request and the request isn't granted, for instance, when I've had riders, I requested sugar-free Red Bull because in my experience, it's the only energy drink that doesn't make me sick to my stomach. The rest of them make me feel like shit and my stomach hurts and it's a terrible experience. And so if the runner didn't give a fuck and got Monster, it's like, it's alright, cool. You went and got drinks, I appreciate it, but you're not paying attention and so why would I trust you with something way more important? Something that actually people's jobs are on the line and they have a bunch of money invested in and we're talking about people's careers here and if this tanks, who knows what's going to happen with their career? Why would I trust you with something on that level if you can't fucking get me my sugar-free Red Bull?

Speaker 3 (00:24:14):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:24:14):

And got Monster instead. It's not about the Red Bull, it's about the lack of attention to detail.

Speaker 3 (00:24:19):

It really is. And you know what, just based on what you said, that conversation, if you were having that with assistants or interns, a lot of times I've seen this punk rock mentality like, man, fuck off. I can't believe he's having me do this. Just different guys griping behind in the break room kind of thing. There's just no room for that because let's say that you were saying something ridiculous like go out there, give me seven pounds of yellow m and ms and pick 'em all out. That kind of thing. Like okay, maybe that's not necessary, but guess what? Do it. It's your job and if you think your boss is an asshole or the producer you're working for as an asshole or engineer or whatever, you're going to have to get over that too because I promise you it's not going to be the last dickhead that you work with.

(00:24:59):

I mean if you have an industry, you know what I mean? Definitely not. It's not you're just going to work for shitty people and work with shitty people. Your ability to navigate those is just as important sometimes too. I've seen it from a and r guys working on different albums from the writing and production side. Sometimes they're just, they're terrible. Like your job as a producer is to be an interface between the band and the label and deliver to label what the label wants while making the band happy and inspiring them and all those other things. So there's so many things that go with that.

Speaker 2 (00:25:29):

So quick question about something specific, because you just brought something up that we've been asked a lot. And so while you brought that up, I don't want to let this idea go. Okay. So being that being a producer is, or being any sort of professional in the music industry where you're not the star,

Speaker 4 (00:25:48):

Whether

Speaker 2 (00:25:48):

You're a hired guitar player or you're the producer or whatever, you're in the service industry basically.

Speaker 3 (00:25:55):

Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:25:56):

Helping other people's vision come to life, which is fine. That's what it is though. It's important to realize that that's what it is. So this scenario you just presented where if you are dealing with a signed band, your job is to make both the label happy and the band happy.

Speaker 4 (00:26:10):

And

Speaker 2 (00:26:10):

That's not always as easy as it sounds because they might have competing objectives. The label might want a single, whereas the band might want this to be their artsy record. Who knows? Absolutely. I mean, that's just one example. It could just be a disagreement about a single, it could be an a and r guide that's super hyper about song structure. He never made it as a songwriter, and so he's going to impose that songwriting vision. There's all kinds of different permutations of that, but at the end of the day, you have to get both parties aligned so that things can move forward. Do you have any strategy to approach that when both parties are not on the same page?

Speaker 3 (00:26:53):

From my experience, the thing that worked the best for me was really take the time to, I know it's kind of a psychological Jedi mind trick, but to learn who you're working for, for example, so a and r guys who, those are the guys that are signing bands, those are the guys that are hiring the producers as representative for the label. Those guys, just as you said, hypersensitive, hyper attentive to certain details that they think are going to separate their bands records from others. Our industry now, a lot of those guys are younger. I say kids, but they're late twenties, early thirties kind of thing, which used to not be the case because these labels are bringing in.

Speaker 2 (00:27:33):

It really didn't used to be the case. No,

Speaker 3 (00:27:34):

Not at all. And so what used to be a crotchety guy is now somebody who is the equivalent to first class at Full Sail but doesn't know shit how to deal with people. You see that a lot of times. So when I say learning about that person, I had somebody an a and r guy give me a couple of references for a song that he was looking for a specific slot, it was to be used in a film. And so he basically just sent me these references and I'm thinking to myself, if I even play this for the band, they're going to be like, we're not working with this guy. This is crazy. You seriously think you want to see this? And something I noticed in what he sent me is all of the courses that first course was down but had heavy percussion, like hand percussion, like shakers or tambourines, even if it was tucked.

Speaker 2 (00:28:22):

Wait, wait, so he made an edit of it or something?

Speaker 3 (00:28:25):

No, he was sending me these songs that it needs to sound like this, it needs to have this big thing.

Speaker 2 (00:28:30):

Oh, okay, okay, got it.

Speaker 3 (00:28:31):

And the common I thread that I got, because they didn't even have to do what the genre was working in, it was a rock album and he was sending me TPA songs and stuff like that, and I was working with a band that was pretty snobby about what they were doing and would not have reacted well to that. So I took a gamble and said, okay, I do acknowledge these couple elements that he's sing and I'm going to take a gamble and say that maybe that's what he's hearing and it's not the whatever. Maybe there's something here. And so we tried it, we did a demo one day and he's like, I don't know, try something. We just did a versa course. Alright, well lemme try one other thing. I'll send it back to you tonight, did it again and put that percussion in there and something registered with him.

(00:29:08):

He went, okay, I think you're getting a lot. He just couldn't articulate what he wanted, but I found that as everything he had ever mentioned to me, there was just such a strong percussion element. Turns out the guy used to be like, he used to march drum corps and was a pretty big drummer back in the day and that's kind of stuff he was listening to that he was connected to. Now that's not going to necessarily translate to sales, but that's going to get him excited. And he's the guy that's championing what I'm doing for the band and the same time I'm not making a pop song in the band's eyes, but I'm helping articulate what the label's looking for and selling no way to the band that they don't feel offended and robbed of their kind of creative endeavors because somebody's telling 'em what to do. That example for me worked out perfectly twice. And then if you can get in with an a and r guy, he'll hire you forever. Yes.

(00:29:57):

You keep doing good projects with them. I mean a and r guys love having their guys. You see it over and over again. And a lot of times in the rock world you get producers like Howard Benson or the Chris Lord. They made their way through there. They were always successful, but Pete Ambar Atlanta of records started hiring that team, which was managed all by the same manager at the time, but you had pods, you had Chavelles, you had Three Days Grace, you got shine downs. It's all coming from that same camp. And that really made Huba stank. It made some huge records in the early two thousands with that team and still to this day, he hires those guys for everything he does. And so I think it's about really learning and dissecting who you're working for and what works for them. Your personal taste aside, sometimes the band and the a and r guys. You just have to learn how to navigate what they're trying to articulate. What I always saw my job at was just like an interpreter. A band has a vision. The things they're saying may not have anything to do with how they want to get there. They just haven't unlocked that door yet. And the same thing on the a and r side. So if you can be a bridge between that, that's incredibly invaluable.

Speaker 2 (00:31:02):

Our second podcast episode ever is called Musical Translator, and it's exactly about that topic, but that's the main job you have as a producer is doing that. It's something interesting you said is that it might not translate to sales. And while that's true, I don't think it's your job necessarily. The sales can't be a hundred percent on the producer's shoulders. That's up to the entire team. But if you don't get the a and r guy excited, if he loses his heart on for the record, he's not going to go to the rest of the company. No, absolutely not. And get them excited. The product manager won't be excited, the marketing department won't be excited. All the other people who are required to make a record of success, if the a and r guy isn't the champion for it, they're not going to care. They have so many other things to deal with. So you have to make him happy. Whether or not his ideas are the ideas that are going to make it sell more, you've got to make him happy.

Speaker 3 (00:32:05):

Absolutely. I mean that really is, there's something to it. And especially now like we're saying with the music industry, the a and r guy may only be at that label a year, year and a half, two years if he doesn't create something. So he's under a lot of pressure just as you are. So if you can work together as a team and give him something to be excited about and then God willing it takes off or it has some success you're in. I mean that's what they want. That's the perfect scenario. But you're giving him all the tools he needs as an a r guy. Granted, you can't do this a hundred percent of the time. There are people out there that just because of the stress of the job, they're just not going to get it or they're not supposed to be in that position to begin with

Speaker 2 (00:32:43):

All this within reason

Speaker 3 (00:32:45):

A hundred percent. But yeah, that's huge. If you get them excited about it, those are the guys that are walking at the label walking down to the radio department saying, how are we doing guys? How are we doing this? Talking to Mark, sitting on market meetings, doing things that typical a and r guys wouldn't do because they want this project to succeed. And it's not just out of the necessity of my career going on, but they believe in it. I love these guys. This is a band I want to work with. These are my guys. In the same way with bands and different players and writers and teams like that that you work with a and r guys are the same way. They want to find their band and you want to be the guy to deliver that.

Speaker 2 (00:33:18):

Well, they probably have 10 to 20 other records to deal with.

Speaker 3 (00:33:23):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:33:23):

And deep down inside, obviously they want all of them to do great, but in reality, you only have X amount of time per day.

Speaker 3 (00:33:31):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:33:31):

So the ones that get him the most excited are going to be the ones that he pushes the most. It's just how the world works.

Speaker 3 (00:33:38):

It is. It absolutely is.

Speaker 2 (00:33:40):

Whatever's top of mind wins. It is. So if you don't take him seriously and don't at least try his ideas and bum him out, it's not that he's going to suddenly hate the project, but there will be some other project that is taking his ideas seriously and is making him feel like an important person that he's going to put more time into. And that's just reality.

Speaker 3 (00:34:06):

Yeah, no, it really is. And again, that comes down to how you interface with him or her as a client. Are they going to be involved in comments on mix sections, mixing sessions rather. And if that's the case, then you better become that guy's friend because you do not want to butt heads in that process. It's a nightmare. You're going to be at the end of the project, you're going to be at the end of your month, two months, three months, however long you've been working on an album, two weeks sometimes now you're probably going to be a little tired, a little fatigued. And if you don't have that rapport with him to where you have licenses to say, absolutely, let's try that, knowing it's the dumbest idea ever. Like, no, we don't need the high hat louder or whatever. The stupid thing is choosing your battles and not going in there and being like, dude, I'm not turning this high hat up. This is ridiculous. And at the end of the day, if that hi hat is another DB louder and he hears and feels better about himself again, is that going to affect sales of this album? And is that going to crush the dreams of this artist by doing so? I mean sometimes when he goes involved, yes, it does crush the dreams of the artist involved, but again, just navigating that and like you said, being a translator.

Speaker 2 (00:35:08):

So you're saying that you started working the internship side of things in about 2000 and started touring off and on in about 2006. How did that lead to where you're at now? I know you joined the band in 2014, but how did all that progress? You said you didn't even want

Speaker 3 (00:35:27):

To really tour a hundred percent. So I was interning at the time, not getting paid, and I had some very cool experiences and incredible learning experiences there. It was a huge asset for me. It wasn't glamorous for every toilet I scrubbed. I would make sure that I stayed after a little bit and swept the control room and went over signal flow on the SSL, learned the monitor section really well. So I memorized it and the B room in case they asked me to, Hey, can you go dim those monitors for me? Whatever it is, familiarizing myself with those aspects. And there was a writer producer in there at the time, at least in one of the rooms that kind of just, we became friends. He realized in his mind, I could argue, but he said I wasn't an idiot. So he was like, man, we should do something together, because he saw me just playing guitar one time in one of the live rooms where an acoustic was left out, just late night sitting there.

(00:36:20):

He's like, you write it all. And that writing was something I had been really interested in and that was much more, I'm not a shredding guitar player by any means. I listen more to songs and structure. And that appealed to me more so than Bet you can't play this. Thankfully, it turned out to be more of a marketed skill. So that turned into, well, why don't you write something? Well, I had a part-time job working at the mall. Obviously I needed some income, lived with five other guys. Four of 'em were actually in a band together from Pennsylvania, kind of a no-name band at the time. And it's like, why don't we do something together? You guys want to write something because they wanted to get something recorded and they wanted whatever. And so I kind of started this personal quest to kind of write and do something.

(00:37:01):

It was the first thing I got asked to do something on my own. Ended up taking it to the producer there, Rob Graves, who I'm still friends with. And we worked together to this day and that ended up becoming the band Red. And we got signed and I toured there until 2010, wrote and did all those records with Rob. And then during the process of touring, we got put on tour with Breaking Benjamin and Breaking Benjamin at the time was with the exception of Ben or Singer was a different lineup. And I ended up coming off the road in 2010 just because I had been getting so much writing and production work that right at the time was just on the cusp of switching over from van and trailer into a bus, working through its finances as a young baby band, a young business. And so I made the decision to come home, had kids and work full-time writing and producing.

(00:37:50):

So I dove into that and during that period, the next four or five years, I got several calls from Ben saying, Hey, I'm going to start a new lineup and I'd like you to be involved because he and I had actually on those tours together, written three songs for a Breaking Benjamin album while I was still in Red and on tour. And he liked the way I worked. He liked some of the ideas I had, and he was a fan of Reds. And so we kind of struck up a friendship there. And coming out of that album cycle breaking Ben took a hiatus, called me several times about joining the band. I was like, at the time he was said, no, I don't really want to tour. I think I'm fine. I'm enjoying what I'm doing. And finally talked me into it. And I mean, that's kind of how things had progressed.

(00:38:32):

So from touring to getting a lot of work, riding with other bands, including Breaking Benjamin, some of it because of Breaking Benjamin, I was just too burned out, came home, started producing engineering, writing full time, and then the exact opposite happened where I got asked to come back out on the road. So I did that in 2018 here. Still doing kind of both, obviously a little more saturated on touring now, still writing, still doing some productions here and there, more placement things than full albums just because the amount of time that touring takes. But I mean, it was a full circle kind of thing. I still think I use every skill that I learned back in those days all the time. Sounds like it.

Speaker 2 (00:39:10):

So on the topic of writing, because sounds like writing is what's facilitated all of this good stuff

Speaker 3 (00:39:16):

For me for sure, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:39:17):

When you're asked to write for another act, do you find that they seek you out for your sound or are they wanting you to find their sound for them?

Speaker 3 (00:39:24):

I've had both. Again, I think learning who you're working with, if I can talk to somebody before I'm asked to write for 'em, that's the best case scenario.

Speaker 2 (00:39:32):

Do you ever not get to talk to them?

Speaker 3 (00:39:34):

Yeah, quite a bit. Especially on more high profile clients or artists, if they're not on the rock road, if they're more of a pop world or alternative world, something like that. Typically the axis there is a little more limited because I'm getting this thing called a song brief. So I'll get an email from a publisher or a label or an AR guy saying, we are now taking songs, we need an up. That's going to be a good song for summer that we want kids singing. We're taking songs for this artist for Kelly Clarkson or Magic Dragon or something, I don't know. And anything in there. Well, okay, you didn't define anything other than the tempo for me. So by saying you needed an up and he to be over a certain tempo. So if you have the ability to talk to Kelly Clarkson say, what would you like to do?

(00:40:20):

And get her behind it, man, you're halfway there now. You just have to create it, be able to follow through. But that kind of throwing darts at the wall, closing your eyes at the dartboard scene, if you can hit it thing, I mean that can be tiring too. So with the writing thing that was able to facilitate different things so I could learn that again, that same A and R guy loved good sounding drums. And I'm kind of a sound about some of that too. There are certain things I won't listen to because I hate the sound or the snare. It sounds so ridiculous, but I mean, I understand that's how I'm wired. I mean, I have learned to separate it and realize like, okay, I completely understand why this is the number one song right now, but man, that sucks. In my opinion. You have to be able to separate your self from those things you have to, but you still have those opinions. Red's a perfect example. When Red started, it was very much a third eye blind kind of pop rock radio kind of thing, and it ended up being pretty heavy.

Speaker 2 (00:41:14):

So when you're working with a brand new artist, let's say that you didn't get the memo, you actually talk to the person or you're actually working with the person. I think that's a much more likely scenario for the listeners of this podcast that they'll be helping a band they're producing with songwriting though, some of the people who listen are professional songwriters who do work for artists they've never even met. So when you're working with a brand new artist and you're right there with them, what are some of the first things that you do to get an idea of what's in their head and translating that, how do you start?

Speaker 3 (00:41:53):

Hopefully I've heard some of their demos, if nothing else prior to working together and have had the chance to kind of talk to 'em. And then one of the things I always ask is, what's your favorite thing about what you guys do? What do you value as an asset to your band? Is it your musicianship? Is it, I mean, sometimes you'll deal with a, maybe deal isn't the right word, but you'll encounter an artist and the guitar player, he is a shredder and there may not be a ton of room for that with what the a and r guy wants for radio and this and that, but I do know that's important to him. So now my mind switches over to creatively thinking, how can I incorporate what he does into making it accessible so that I can interface that? So I try to find out what their strengths are. For example, I've worked with artists that the singer was phenomenal, but couldn't write a melody to save his life, would go out of his range, didn't know the right keys, had no,

Speaker 2 (00:42:52):

Had no clue,

Speaker 3 (00:42:53):

Nothing when it came to harmonies, didn't realize the importance of that, but he was phenomenal. Just his voice made him stand out. So there was something there. How do I navigate that? So just find out what you're working with, what the strengths are and the assets there, and apply that into what the end goal is. So being in Breaking Benjamin, a lot of that is rock radio. It's got to be accessible. We play with five Finger Death Punch every night now, and those dudes are heavy as hell. They're a lot heavier than we are. But those same guys that are out there drinking beer, going to NASCAR games or NASCAR races and in the Mosh pit or whatever are also with their girlfriends singing at the top of their lungs, breath by Breaking Benjamin, which is just a pop song with rock guitars in it. How do you connect to that same person, that same audience? How do you make a Slip nut fan by a rock radio record? And so finding what that band is good at, finding what their weaknesses are, maybe removing and or if you can't improve those weaknesses, sometimes you just have to get rid of it. I think that's always been my approach, is try to trim whatever fat might be hindering a band and try to capitalize on what got them signed or is getting them attention in the first place.

Speaker 2 (00:44:05):

Do you ever get bands that have a little bit of resistance towards working with an outside writer?

Speaker 3 (00:44:10):

Of course. Yeah. I'll be the first to say, writing is not for everyone. I could give you just as many instances of labels bringing in writers or producers, bringing in writers that should not have and completely homogenized what the project was. You see that a lot of times if a band member leaves and they happen to be one of the core writers, and so it needs to be made up on the next album to bring in some writers to try and compensate for that.

Speaker 2 (00:44:34):

Yeah, things can get weird.

Speaker 3 (00:44:36):

Oh, a hundred percent. But I think the resilience, it's one of two things typically. Sometimes it's a little bit of ego and entitlement, which sometimes it's justified. I totally get that. But finding a prince out there that can engineer, produce, record, write, sing, everything. It is just so few far in between. And I think it's a matter of kind of being able to communicate. You can't alienate your artist, you just can't. You'll lose 'em. And they're just going to half-ass what they do. It's going to be bad for them. It's going to be bad for you. But at the same time, understanding the dynamic of the band, sometimes you'll have the quote writer of the band. He doesn't want to work with anybody else but is not quite getting over the edge of seeing where he needs to go. He's just not staying in between certain lines or certain lanes. If you want to scream more, maybe there's a place for that. But how do we do that? You look at asking Alexandria guys I know pretty well and look at their older albums. They're in a different lane now.

Speaker 2 (00:45:40):

Totally different lane now.

Speaker 3 (00:45:41):

Danny's still screaming, they're still doing some double kick stuff, but man, they found a way to kind of focus in and go, okay, we do a lot of metal stuff in the uk, but that's a harder and harder scene here in the us. Let's get some radio and get some. And they're great at it. They really are. There's a band that's adapted. There's other bands like th that adapt from one thing to another and kind of find their way. Even look at a band like Incubus that back in the day, I mean they were just borderline like rap rock. There was obviously a lot of singing, but now they're more of an alternative band that's going to play Coachella. So you see those things happen in a band's lifetimes. But I think that, again, the best example of that would be no outside rider per your specific question.

(00:46:23):

But look at Slipknot. You go from a self-titled or Iowa, and they got the following, but they kept it up. And then I remember that a few albums ago, Dave Fortman had produced that album and Psychosocial came out and it did really well. And then they had a song called Snuff Come Out that went to radio and it was just a ballad. And that song sold another half a million albums. That album went platinum because of that one song. So the ability to adapt and the ability to see the importance of the song, I think is your sell. More so than you need a writer. Totally agree with you there. Hey

Speaker 2 (00:46:56):

Everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast than you should know, that's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration and information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you're remember, you already know how amazing it is. At the beginning of the month, nail the Mix members, get the raw multitracks to a new song by artists like Bringeth Horizon, gosh, asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song on the album and takes your questions live on air. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics as well as Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for your use in your portfolio.

(00:47:55):

So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those who really want to step up the game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhanced, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like game staging, mastering low end and so forth. It's over 40 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed. Intense members also get access to one-on-one office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes on a live video stream, fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills and your audio career, head over to URM academy.com to find out more. So switching gears a little, something that we talk about a lot on here is the concept of work-life balance. And you're probably one of the best examples of that is you play in a hugely popular band, but you also have a big and beautiful family at home and you do all this studio and writing stuff and all this stuff that we've been talking about. What are some of the ways that you've found to try and keep everyone happy and not lose your mind?

Speaker 3 (00:49:15):

Well realize that you're not going to keep everybody happy first and foremost. It takes time. I think for me it's about, I tell my wife, we have five kids. It's about navigating seasons. So right now I'm gone for nine weeks. She's a single mother at home who works and basically because I'm not there, so she's still working, she's still doing her thing, babysitters and nannies and family helping out when they can, but that's incredibly hard on her. But honey, this is a season I'm going to be home. We you've got a break coming up after this. And then I'm going to take what I have there and I got offered to work on another project, something that I'm super close to and I just don't have the time. I had to learn to be able to say no, I can't. I just can't, Matt, maybe I can write with you guys, but I can't do the whole thing again. I mean, you're talking about 12, 14 hour days for a month straight. I don't have that kind of thing. I need to go home and I need to refresh to recharge.

Speaker 2 (00:50:14):

Now, do you think that this saying no thing is advisable when you're early on in your career though? Is that something that a luxury you can afford now because of where you're at? Or is it something that people should be doing at the beginning? And I'm curious to your opinion on that because I think they definitely should not do that at the beginning.

Speaker 3 (00:50:33):

No, no, no. I agree with you. I think some of the projects I learned the most on were the ones I was most reluctant to do. So it's not necessarily a matter of, am I super into this or whatever. You probably have some sort of skillset that you can bring to the table. It's a matter of finding what that is. As far as saying no to projects, I think the scariest thing there is there's 42 guys behind you waiting for the same opportunity.

Speaker 2 (00:51:00):

Yes, and

Speaker 3 (00:51:01):

If you don't show, I mean this industry is hard. It's incredibly long hours. If you're in the studio, if you're touring, you're gone all the time. If you're writing, even if you're only writing four or five hours a day with somebody else as a creative person, you're not turning that off. You're in a movie theater, right, and shit down on napkins and your wife's slapping you going, can you just shut it down for one minute? It's an all encompassing thing.

Speaker 2 (00:51:24):

I still haven't figured that one out.

Speaker 3 (00:51:26):

Yeah, no, you can't. And I've read a lot of books about that and gotten to understand that process a little bit more, but saying no could be a bad thing early on because you just might miss that moment and you might not get another one. There are plenty of stories out there of guys that have risen to the top and are some leaders in the field of what they do, and they got their start because the engineer was sick that day.

Speaker 2 (00:51:55):

Oh, yes. That's a very classic story actually.

Speaker 3 (00:51:59):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:51:59):

Absolutely. The engineer got sick and someone else got the gig

Speaker 3 (00:52:03):

And they clicked with the artist and they're Lincoln Park Sky. But I will say at the same time, once you get some momentum a couple years under your belt, learning to say no, and it is a skill that later on can be very valuable. Now, again, I would not say that at the beginning of your career, but as you learn, there are things that come up when you start getting asked and hired to work on more projects that maybe you're just not the right guy. Sometimes taking that job could be bad for you. I know a producer buddy of mine got passed on a project that it was actually a pretty big project. He knew that he was not going to be able to bring out what this band wanted, had written with him in the past, didn't feel he had any synergy with him, and knew that it just wasn't going to be good, even though it was a great opportunity. He just felt at the time, it's like, man, if this is so big that if I do mess it up, I might be done. Another example just may be, obviously balancing family is difficult, but you got wife and kids to take care of learning to balance things so that you don't burn yourself out because I've been there too. I've had years in the production world where I was at the studio at least eight hours. That would be a small day from the second week of January until Halloween, no days off.

(00:53:20):

You got to learn to kind of pace yourself a little bit there too. I know engineers that refuse to work more than eight hours to refresh their ears to, they feel like it keeps their mood up and keeps 'em sharp and creative. And then there's guys like me that are probably more workhorses that just don't get that and don't balance that well, and they're like, yeah, no, no, you're right. Keep going, keep going, keep going. Again, saying no, I've had those times where you work on something for 12 hours, you're exhausted, show up the next morning, you're like, this is bullshit. I just completely wasted the day if I would've walked away from it. Got some clarity.

Speaker 2 (00:53:52):

Yeah, you can get done in 15 minutes what you couldn't do in five hours.

Speaker 3 (00:53:56):

Yeah, absolutely. So that's a later thing. I think it's a later skill, but more specifically to what you're saying, I think in the beginning that you got to be very careful with saying no, especially when it comes down to family and girlfriends. Oh, we need you to do this. We need you to. You don't understand. You don't understand, and you as an engineer or a musician or a writer or a producer starting out, how bad do you want it? You've been dating this chick for six months, what's the worst thing that can happen? Well, you're going to never get hired again because it was your anniversary and you need to go pick up flowers or That sound incredibly harsh here. I know, but you have to put a weight and a value to what you're doing, and it is very, very important because we are in an industry where this isn't an office job. You're only as good as potentially your next project, your new star. So you have to keep your A game going. You have to stay sharp and you have to keep committed to reinvention. Keep yourself motivated. I was listening to your podcast with Misha last night on the bus. Actually, we were all geeking out about it a little bit.

Speaker 2 (00:54:58):

That was a good one.

Speaker 3 (00:54:58):

Yeah, it was because I always think he has great things to say, but he was talking about his motivation and what got him into it, how he's getting more back into classical things because you're right, you just get yourself burned out. But he's brilliant because he goes, well, I'm going to switch modes and do this thing. Moral kestrel arrangements, more music theory based things that might not translate to the masses, but for me, this is going to energize me over the next year so that my next album that I do with periphery or whoever is going to be better than ever because I have the creative juice and the recharge to do it.

Speaker 2 (00:55:28):

Yeah, he is absolutely someone I admire very much. He is figured out how to make this whole game work in a unique but very powerful way.

Speaker 3 (00:55:37):

Yeah, and he's a great businessman too. He gets it.

Speaker 2 (00:55:40):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:55:41):

That's a big thing. We always call it the get it card. Some people just have that.

Speaker 2 (00:55:45):

Yeah, it's true. I do think that that's part of how you're wired. It's very, and I know this because I've tried to get other people, I don't try this anymore, but I've tried to get other people to be that way because I wanted them to improve their lives,

(00:56:05):

Whether it's like a girlfriend or a band member or someone in a band, I'm recording. Just along the way, you meet people that have this potential in them and you want them to be able to do better and to realize that the things that you achieve are totally, maybe not the same things, but things like that are possible for them if they would just focus and follow through and execute. But it's almost like talking to a brick wall, and it's not because they're bad people or anything like that, but I do think that there's a certain amount of this that is pre-wired, like your disposition for just jumping into a trench that's hard to teach that mentality,

Speaker 3 (00:56:50):

And that's where a lot of the recording schools either they're brilliant. No, that's something that's not feasibly taught for them, and it's a waste of resource. I don't know, but that's something that they don't typically dive into and capitalize on. I know a and r guys that their biggest albums, there's one producer in particular I'm thinking of out in LA that did one of the corn albums, and he is known as, he's done some phenomenal stuff even back in the nineties and two thousands. He's known for like, you know what? He's going to do your biggest album of your career, but you'll never want to work with him again.

(00:57:28):

So he's done that multiple times, but he does not have a lot of repeat clients. I don't even know what he's doing now, but a and r guys were like, Nope, the guy's that one, but I'm not going down that road. Again, regardless of the outcome, they just don't want anything to do with it. It's taxing. It's expensive. They're not getting stuff handed in on deadlines. That's like the carnal sin for a and r guys is having to push a deadline, and so all that stuff is really, really important. Some people just need, you have that or you don't.

Speaker 2 (00:57:56):

Yeah. So speaking of say you do have it or you have it and you're trying to develop it and balance a bunch of things, do you have any tips that you've learned that have helped you use your time as efficiently as possible in order to at least attempt to make everyone happy, even knowing that you can't, but just to be able to at least do your best to not waste time on things, give everything the amount of time it needs, but not more?

Speaker 3 (00:58:26):

That's actually a really good question. I think maybe it's a different approach from producing and engineering or producing and writing and engineering. From the engineering side, I will check out what the best of them and I go down the rabbit hole of YouTube videos and try out different gears and go into different conventions and things like that. I love that stuff. I love new gear. I'm always changing my live gear, my stuff in the studio. It's my nerdy side that's easy to fulfill and easy to nerd out about because it's kind of a hobby for people. That information is there. If you want to learn about the detector circuit and the new generation of the stressors, that information is out there and you can go down their rabbit hole all day, but that may not get you any more jobs when it comes to production and writing.

(00:59:14):

Again, dealing with your artists and dealing with what it's about. I think finding their thing, for me, it's a simple exercise of, this is going to sound cheesy, but if I'm a bodybuilder and I'm going in and I got this massive upper body and I'm starting to work with these guys that do nothing but deadlifts and squats stuff, I'm probably going to have to change my approach and I'm probably going to have to put in some extra time at the gym and do some squats to familiarize yourself of what that feels like, what the struggle is, what the technique is, all those kinds of things. To me, writing and creating is a muscle. The more that you do that, the deeper down you can dive in yourself and get some of those great ideas, some of those sorts of things. So when it comes dealing with an artist, I've had opportunities where writing lyrics, for example, one band, the singer is very articulate. He's got a very vast vocabulary. He has an amazing way of putting things into a lyric and making it sound beautiful, but has no clue on how to write a lyric that will sing well. It's ending lines with, because I can't, it probably isn't the best idea. Let's either throw that tea away or let's come up with another way to say this.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):

So he is a great technical talent, but not much of a creative talent,

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):

And so preparing for that project sat down with a bunch of pop records, max Martin records, even old Desmond Child records of the eighties, like these big songwriters, and looked at what they did and tried to find a lyric that they wrote. We've got to hold on to what we got from Bon Jovi or whatever. Well, that's an incredibly easy lyric that everyone walks away with and understands, but this guy wanted to say, I'll never let go, even though these things suffocate me or whatever it is. How do I make that lyric with that guy? So I spent a lot of time prior to the project dissecting these other writers' lyrics and how they said the same thing This guy is saying, how can I translate them? You know what, that's great. You're right. Suffocating is a great word, but maybe we're not at the right format for that.

(01:01:15):

So let's look at some other words to that, identifying how I can help him. So that was a process there. I've had other times where working with a band on the more technical side from the engineer side of the brain, they loved like old classic Marshalls and Class A Amps and old Les Pauls, and they were not the EMG band with a bunch of high gain and gates and things like that. It was much more natural. So that wasn't in my wheelhouse at the time. So I spent a bunch of time out there researching what albums they liked, what gear those guys used, how they engineered it, what pickups were they using. If I know that guitar player, which that's an asset that I have of some things, maybe I can reach out, ask 'em about what their favorite stuff to play is, what's their right hand as a guitar player, that affects your tone more than anything.

(01:02:01):

Sometimes you do anything different on this when you record this and sometimes you find some amazing little gems that these players that everybody looks up to have turn in your pick sideways, Hey, try that. That's how he got that sound kind of thing. Just immersing yourself, I think in constantly being a student and studying what you're trying to achieve. If you're writing lyrics, read, watch television and movies, but from a different perspective, if you're a songwriter, listen, what connects you to certain things. Right now in the pop world, a lot of there actually is some guitar. It's usually like a tele on the neck pickup that's kind of verb out. But imagine dragons and all that sort of stuff. It's out there. There is guitar there. How do I make that work? If you are an engineer and I don't have every plugin, how do I make what I have work for this? Or the opposite, which is what you see more than not now is I have every plugin, but I don't know how to use 'em. How do I minimize myself and tie my hands to learn this to be the best for this project?

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):

That's a great answer, and here's why. Lots of times when you talk about efficiency, we put out a whole course called speed mixing. It was all about efficiency, and we definitely cover a ton of tactics and strategy, but in putting that together, definitely studied a lot of other people's efficiency systems and blogs and articles, podcasts just

Speaker 4 (01:03:21):

Really

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):

Looked around to make sure that it was going to be awesome. And one thing that I found is that the big, I guess the fatal flaw with these efficiency systems is that they focus too much on tactics. And tactics are great, but if you're just using tactics without a strategy and an overall vision, you're just taking action. And that alone is not going to solve any problems. So what you're saying here to-do lists and

Speaker 4 (01:03:51):

Setting

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):

Timers and all that shit, cool, but really knowing who it is that you're working with, figuring out what the weaknesses are, how you're going to address those weaknesses, and what it is you need to actually come to the table with for a project, and being totally prepared with all of that in advance. Like for instance, with that vocalist, you're talking about getting ready to help with his creativity and lyrical flaw is going to keep you guys from going in these endless demoralizing circles while you're recording

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):

And they're exhausting. That'll tax the project or kill it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):

Exactly. We'll tax the project, it will kill it, and it'll extend your working time to as if you walk in prepared for that scenario, you're going to be able to throw out ideas a lot faster that he's going to be able to connect with a lot faster and the sessions will go faster and you'll have more time to do your thing. And then you can add actual efficiency tactics to that to speed it up even more. But none of those tactics would even make a difference if you walked in unprepared.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):

That's the big thing is walking in prepared. I think.

Speaker 3 (01:04:57):

Yeah, that's the preparation aspect of it. And if you're producing, I mean most of your major moves and decision-makings from my experience comes when you're not with the band. It's when you're listening playback in your car on the way home. It's when you're in bed night with your notepad trying to come up with how to solve a problem, that thing doesn't stop, and so you become a student of what you're doing. And that's I think the aspect that just, you can't afford to lose that you can have all the tips and tricks in your repertoire, and that does help per what you were saying. I worked with a band that I knew going into it, the bass player just sucked. I have a limited finite, finite amount of time. I had to adjust my workflow to kind of put that in last and have a specific plan for approaching that.

(01:05:42):

So that didn't slow down the process that nobody got their feelings hurt because they weren't asking to be played on something, which happens sometimes, or I'm not spending an inordinate amount of time trying to teach familiarize, rewrite, anything like that. Just knowing those things that going into it, being prepared, that's where your techniques come in. Okay, I'm going to track base this way using this technique. We're going to track it slower tempos punch little bits at a time. I'm going to get a lot of single notes outside of the track kiss. I need to punch something for tuning or whatever. You know that you're going to have to do that. So you set up accordingly. You're so right to-do lists and timers for what you're saying. Those are important aspects of it too, but that's more of a methodology rather than a practice.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):

It's purely tactical, and I mean, tactics are what tactics are this thing you do in real life, like right there in the moment to get through. They are the things, the actions you take, but without having a direction for those actions, they're just actions. And they may or may not help. I mean, if you might luck out and take all the right actions, you might have no strategy and luck out because maybe you have great instincts or if something magical happened and you just made all the right moves for that, but you can't rely on magic. You can't rely on lightning striking every single time you work on a project.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):

Absolutely not. I worked with Don Gilmore on one of the corn albums. I did some writing and some production on that with him. He had done hybrid e theory and Meteora for Lincoln Park, and he had done massive, massive albums. And his whole thing was, I learned a lot from working with him. I'm obviously picking his brain, take him out to lunch if I can. Those kinds of things. And I remember him saying that one of the biggest surprises of becoming a producer was when I was a kid, I'd listen to music and go, wouldn't it be cool if we did this at that part? Instead of this? I was like, I'm going to be the ideas guy. I want to come up with ideas. I want to be the guy that I feel great when the band says, I would've never thought of that.

(01:07:46):

That's a coolest thing I ever did, and I know that I created that and it goes out there. But he said, the adverse ended up being true in the fact that I'm more reactionary. That's where my success has come. So it's not me coming to the table and saying, Hey guys, this is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to execute it. It's me working with that band, studying that band so that when I know they ask this, I react this way the same way like a fighter would do. I've got the strongest left hook in the world, but if I can't land it, it's useless. I have to react to what my opponent is doing. If you're working with a client and they want to try something that's heavier than they would typically do, okay, well, I've done heavy. I know how to do that. I'm reacting to that. Let's take this approach. If they want to do something left to center, how do I reel that back in? It's reactionary, and that's huge. That's where your toolbox and your tips and tricks and everything come in handy. But more times than not, you're not setting up these sessions and doing all these cool little things just off the bat because you just need to have things in your toolbox to react, to accomplish with the artist wants. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):

I mean, maybe some of it will go like that. Totally improvise.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):

Oh, yeah. And it's great when it does. It really is.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):

And the thing I have noticed though, is the more prep I do for something, the more those moments happen.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):

Absolutely. Oh, that's a great point.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):

Yeah. So you're setting by doing the right amount of prep and immersion before you do the work with the client. You are setting the stage for those magical moments to take place, and if they don't take place, then you have all this preparation to make it through in a great way anyways.

Speaker 3 (01:09:23):

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I will say that I think in heavier music working those albums, there's not as much time. No, definitely not. That's a genre that loves to shit out albums, man. It is Just so quick, the turnarounds.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):

That's a good way to put it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):

And it's unfortunate because I think more time pre-production is an amazing thing that time you spend before you actually start recording the master recording, working with the band and rehearsals, going back and forth with demos, conference calls, if you're not in the same state, spending time on that research phase and trial and error phase, getting those bugs and kinks out of the way prior to that pre-production phase is pretty invaluable. And a lot of times, every music, there's just no room for that. You got some songs cool, come in. Anything from I'll record your songs to I'll completely reshape them and now it sounds like a stock metal record or anything in between. That's a much more challenging thing for some of the things that we're talking about, but still applies. Absolutely. Well,

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):

The thing is that there are ways around it. So maybe the pre-pro, there's not the budget to do the pre-pro in the studio, but I know that in 99% of metal bands these days, there's one guy that owns a DAW.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):

Oh, of course

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):

There is the one guy or two even in every single band. So there's no excuse for them not to make their own pre-pro. And I know a lot of producers who do these quick metal records, but who do a great job at them who demand that stuff, they won't start the record unless they get Yeah, if they don't get the pre-pro version of the record, the record's not starting. That's one of the requirements.

Speaker 3 (01:10:57):

That's smart. That's brilliant.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):

Yeah. I mean, if you're not going to do the pre-pro together, that doesn't mean that it's not to be done. It should still be done

Speaker 4 (01:11:06):

Somehow,

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):

And there's plenty of work that can get done over Skype if there's just pre-pro versions of an album. So I think that that's one of the ways to get around it, especially because yeah, I mean, it has to be a pretty big band to be able to allot a week or two for pre-production. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:11:28):

For sure. And technology is an immense asset with that kind of stuff. Having something a DAW that an artist is working on or they're making their own demos, I think that's empowering. I think that that's motivating. And if you can find the guy in the band that's doing that, champion him become his asset and his biggest ally.

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):

Absolutely. That's huge. And I mean, they're out there. There's a lot of them out there.

Speaker 3 (01:11:52):

You can typically look at any band and Oh, that's this guy in the band. Oh, the hardheaded one probably doesn't have a lot to offer, but thinks he does. That's this guy, the quiet creative guy who might be the brains that's this guy, the one with the ego, that's this guy that's like, there's these different kind of little micro chasms of people in bands, and you almost always see 'em. I mean, perfect example of that. If you've ever seen that documentary that some kind of monster with Metallica, you can watch a Metallica guy and go, oh, that's Sean, or that's Ben, or that's key. You can pick that out in a band. Those personalities are there. So you find that writer, you find the guy, and like you're saying, you don't have pre-production, but you have the opportunity to champion him and he steps up because most of the time those guys will.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):

Yeah, they totally will. So speaking of people and bands, so you're playing in a band at high level, you are, it's an understatement to say that everyone has to have their game face on at all times. In your opinion, what are some of the character attributes that make great band members that lead to effective rehearsals? Recording sessions, shows the whole deal.

Speaker 3 (01:12:54):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've got one dude who just doesn't like being on time, whatever it is in his DNA. He just, it's not there. Okay, well that's fine. Well, now we're just going to adjust our approach. If you're talking about we don't really, it sounds horrible, but we don't really have rehearsals too much anymore. Being at the expectation that we all consider ourselves professionals in the fact that, dude, if I don't show up and I'm not ready, then I'm not doing my job. And so let's get into soundcheck. Let's go through the song one or two times, and that's about what we'll do. We're not going to be sitting on stage teaching each other's parts, going over stuff, trying to remember what that last course was that time's going to be spent before we got there. And that eliminates having to put the pressure on the clock of like, damnit, he's going to be 15 minutes late. We only have 30 or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):

So again, preparation.

Speaker 3 (01:13:38):

Of course, we have guys that are super intellectual and love doing interviews, very articulate and very well read, and I think a good interviewer can see that in an interviewee so that if I'm doing a radio interview, my job is to promote certain things you just get good at, kind of take on over the interview for that radio station or for that. I've got 90 seconds with this guy on air and he wants to talk about his favorite Super Soaker, what my job is to talk about the album socially engineering, so that we do that. So yeah, those different personalities, I think they all work because my opinion this is they're not stepping on top of each other. A lot of times they do things that aggravate each other, whatever, but everybody has their own lane, and if they can establish that and champion themselves in their own lane, like, okay, maybe I'm not the best writer, well then I won't do that, but I'm actually a really good businessman. There's a lot of things that need to be happening right now while they're doing this. And sometimes that's a hard built swallow for some band members, but that's equally as important.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):

That's actually the same thing I noticed when working with some higher level bands. The thing that set them apart was that everybody knew their role and were at peace. Yeah, they were at peace with it. Some roles were more publicly visible than others, but all their roles were important and they just understood. So there's like say a guy that's not the best player, so he doesn't play too much on the record, but he's the coolest guy in the band who knows everybody in all the other bands that take this band on tour.

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):

That's such a thing. That's a huge thing. Yeah, you have those guys out there that are just people collectors. I mean, they'll talk to anyone. They have the gift of talk, so they can go out there and bands will get tours because everyone wants to hang out with them. The other one, that same guy sometimes will be able to diffuse and keep morale up. Sometimes that's an asset too. If you've got somebody who's difficult to work with, but their best friend is out there and is the one guy in their life that can kind of communicate with them, but he's not the best base player or best guitar player, sometimes there's a trade off there, then okay, well then let's get you to the level that we need to get you at. But you don't need to go anywhere. We need you here to keep this thing going. So yeah, those guys are incredibly important.

Speaker 2 (01:15:57):

So it sounds like a good balance of all those things and making sure that people understand their roles and are comfortable with them,

Speaker 3 (01:16:05):

Understand their roles. But regardless, I mean, I think the most important thing is that we all respect each other in the way that we treat this as a profession and not just, it's more than just being in a band you had mentioned never really being able to turn it off. That's part of something you have to take it seriously. In the same way a professional athlete in the NBA, if he doesn't work out for one summer or whatever during the off season, it's going to show next year. You have to keep it up.

Speaker 2 (01:16:30):

It really will show too in public and in a very ugly way

Speaker 3 (01:16:36):

And typically at a pretty big cost. You get something out there in the press that goes viral, it goes the wrong way. I mean, how many careers has that ended?

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):

It's sheer brutality. It's brutal. There's millions of musicians out there that are basically chomping at the bit to move into a larger band or shit, a band that's working at all and maybe a few hundred actual job openings for these slots

Speaker 4 (01:17:04):

For sure.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):

Can you give any advice on how someone could take themselves from bedroom producer to bigger producer or bedroom musician to playing on big stages and huge crowds?

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):

A hundred percent. I think what I've learned is the quickest way to get between two points is a straight line problem is it's probably not going to be how you get there. So for example, me being in bands and me being successful as a writer is what enables me to get my foot in the door to engineer and produce, which is what I initially wanted to do. So there comes a certain amount of respect that I try to work for with newer relationships in the industry, whether it be peers or other bands or gatekeepers on the other side, on the label side to try and nourish show's relationships, try to keep that stuff going. But knowing that right now I might not be producing the next corn album, but what am I going to be doing now while I'm touring that may be able to invest in the opportunity so that four years from now when we take a break or whatever, I am equipped, I've kept my relationships up and I'm ready to pursue those kinds of things.

(01:18:19):

So even though writing and touring takes me out of the studio, which is one of the things I love most, it's not lost. I'm still keeping my stuff with me, all my gear with me, everything like that. I tour with it all. And I think it's just one of those things that whether even if you're not doing exactly what you're doing and you feeling like this is getting me nowhere, this is not getting me where I want it is, what can you learn from this and how can you keep plugging it in? And again, if I anticipate working on some more albums here over the next couple of years, so with that coming up, how do I start refining myself now to be ready for that when the time comes? If I just sit around and wait and go, oh, cool, we got six months off, I guess I can pick up an album or two and haven't done anything.

(01:18:58):

I will be so stressed out. It's probably not going to be the best, be doing a disservice to everybody involved. I have to see that and know even though I'm not working towards that right now, I still need to. So getting in a band or being a part of a successful act, I think starts with realizing, yes, if you're a guitar player and a writer, you got to be good at both of those things, but there's other things that you need to do in the process and how can you get into those? Well, my visibility is down. Okay, well, mine was too. I wasn't necessarily looking to be in a band, but no one was kicking down my door to be a guitar player in a band. But working in studios and doing that put me around a ton of bands. So I got connected and met writers, I met producers, I met engineers, I met artists, I met session guys.

(01:19:47):

Those guys were important too. Those are a huge part of my influence streaming as well. But I surrounded myself in that. Even though I wasn't actively pursuing being in a band, I was able to get that pipeline because I put myself in the right situations and knew I need to develop this skill. I need to do this if I ever want to do that or want to get there. I did the same thing when I came off the road for a little while to go back in the studio world. I'm touring and don't have accessibility to that now, but I need to get in the box more. I need to get my chop school on all the nitty gritty tasks on quick keys, on setting up sessions, on just stuff like that. I've been in pro tools for a long freaking time, but there's always something new to learn.

(01:20:29):

You can always streamline, you can always whatever. How do you keep that stuff going? So you just have to prepare yourself constantly. And if you're not pursuing that straight line, like I said, it's not the end of the world. You have to still look at that as an asset, and it may take you 10, 15 years to get to, I'm 38 here and I've worked a long, long time. It's easy to get discouraged, it's easy, it's whatever. But you have to keep that forward trajectory regardless of what you're doing. If you're an intern, if you're an engineer, if you work at Guitar Center, keep doing what you do. Put yourself in a situation that you're surrounding yourself with people so that maybe those opportunities are going to come. Maybe it's working in the local rock scene at the local bars and clubs and stuff like that, or working security somewhere.

(01:21:11):

Surround yourself with those people just in that world, and then you better have your ass ready when somebody comes knocking on the door. That's the other half. That would be my biggest advice is there is no easy answer that I tell you, well, you do this and you'll get it. It's the same as if you go to this school, you're not necessarily becoming an engineer, but how do you prepare yourself to where one, I need to be in an environment where if they need an engineer, I'm there and I need to have my ass ready. So if you can accomplish those two things, you keep your head up, you work good with people, a good work ethic, I think that your time will come to those people. I really do. And maybe it's not how you thought it would, but it'll come.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):

I mean, not how you thought it would thing is something that people just have to accept. It is very, very rare for things to happen exactly the way someone thought it would.

Speaker 3 (01:22:00):

Absolutely. And the flexibility to realize that is pretty important too, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:22:03):

Yeah, absolutely. So I've got some questions here from our listeners for you that I'd like to ask before we wrap because they have some good ones. So here's one from Stacy Meyer, which is, Hey, Jasen. I'm a huge fan of the production on Love and Death record. How intensive was the process for getting the tones on this album, be it the drums, guitars, anything? They're all wonderful,

Speaker 3 (01:22:23):

First of all, thank you. That's one of the projects that I'm most proud of. I think you can probably attest to this. You do a multitude of albums, but there's something that clicks inside of you. As a creative, you're going, I feel right for this. I'm ready. This is the one I can put my A game on. And you just have this thing in you that motivated your 12 hour days become 14 hour days, you're just pushing on this. And that was the project for me. And tones was a big part of that. I had felt head being from Corn, has worked with some of the best engineers and the best producers out there and had some of the most successful albums in metal of all time. And so how do I take that and translate it into something that that fan base would want to hear, but also can apply something that maybe they haven't heard?

(01:23:11):

And my thing was on the production elements, corn is a very live band. They do not do their albums where they sit down and chop things up and overanalyze. If you go back and look at the early corn albums, they're terrible. I mean, they weren't even on a click because they couldn't play to a click. Sometimes they were just too high to even do certain things. It was part of what that is, but it gave this raw, organic sound and everybody loved it. But you know, go back with an analytical mind and go, God, that sounds terrible. The snare is distorted, that vocal is flat. They rushed that entrance. But those things we hear now and at the time we're like, this is awesome. So how do you take that and apply it in something else? And when it came to doing tones, recording drums or guitars, I spent a lot of time there because not to say that they didn't in the past, but what would a riff rock record like a corn would do?

(01:23:59):

What would it sound like if it went under that knife where everything was executed great? You got good players, which a band had really good players, good tones, and you made it sound really good. Some of my favorite albums are not the best sounding albums. I wanted to answer the question of like, okay, if I can bring them material up to where it needs to be, what would it be like if it sounded really good? And so we spent a lot of time doing guitars. Made. Again, my research with that, talking with Ted and talking to other guys that had worked on the corn albums. They're not trip double stacking and doing quad passes of guitars. There's a left guitar and a right guitar. Sometimes there's an overdub, but even on those early albums, if there's an overdub that just means a monkey on the left is playing it by himself.

(01:24:44):

And there's one guy playing the room that was part of their element. So I tried to keep that. So I spent about a day coming up with tones for what would be the right side and tones would be the left side. And I tied my hand and said, this is it. If we're doing overdubs, I would double. And that was it for drums. We brought in a friend of mine in Nashville, a lot of cool resources there and some super creative engineers. We were able to create some really cool things as we captured the drums. We worked with Ben Gross on mixing who's phenomenal, and he's a drummer as well. And so he has this way of making samples feel very natural in my opinion. Some records are better than others, but a lot of that's based on the client. But I wanted natural sounding things.

(01:25:25):

I wanted to give him something that like, you know what? I didn't use a snare stamp on this. It sounded great. Give him those kinds of things. So we spent time there, rented snare drums, tried different rooms, printing kind of crazy things from drum tracking distortions and things like that to tape and lots of different stuff. And so all that came together. Those were those cool things you were talking about where the practices and the techniques, the little hacks, the tips and tricks that you get to pull 'em all out. But I knew I had something that was there. We spent the time to do it, and I love how that album came out.

Speaker 2 (01:25:56):

It's great. So here's one from Rodney Outba. Dude, bro, thank you for being here. It's great seeing my all time favorite bands, getting that extra sweet sauce that you add from a fanboy. It's a huge difference. What was the recording process like for these last two albums when it comes to standards of quality? The last two Breaking Benjamin album, soon have this step up our game feel and has hit after hit. Thanks again for doing this and hope to see you at a URM event soon.

Speaker 3 (01:26:22):

Absolutely. Yeah. So it is a little bit different of a recording process Prior to this, I think as far as the band interface, it was a little more fractured. So at the time it was engineer in room C doing bass in this room. It was guitar player doing over dubs over here. Ben's in live rooms,

Speaker 2 (01:26:39):

So like a factory?

Speaker 3 (01:26:40):

Yes, and people coming in and out. They probably wouldn't even see each other for a week or so. Ben is very proficient at writing and demoing, and nine times out of 10 what we demo all the way down to the harmonies, he spends just as much time on harmonies as he does the melody. They're all demoed and we're just recutting. So the process now is we put way more effort in collectively, beforehand on our demos, on that sort of thing. And then when we do have to be fragmented with our recording, which we have to be sometimes, I did a lot of mine at my place in Nashville, Ben's based out of New Jersey. All of us are in different states. And then I was in Wisconsin part-time too, and so I'd do some up there, do it remotely at different places. There was still a connection there because of the time we spent prior to it. So maybe the cohesive aspect that they're talking about that comes from that, hopefully a little bit more like internal glue, just even on a personal level because a lot of times that can translate. But there was also a lot more, I will say, there's a lot more freedom now being spread around to,

Speaker 4 (01:27:42):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:27:43):

Oh, okay, cool. Give me three totally separate base takes and we'll look at some different parts, come see what you come up with, that kind of stuff. I think that really adds to it too. But yeah, I hope that answers question. They were made pretty different.

Speaker 2 (01:27:56):

I feel like the common theme in this podcast episode is just do more preparation.

Speaker 3 (01:28:03):

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Speaker 2 (01:28:04):

That seems like the common theme. So here's one from Robert Dewey Atkins in the song torn into where did the idea of filtering the guitars, where it goes from dark to brighter sound, where did that idea come from? I think it was genius.

Speaker 3 (01:28:17):

Yeah. Honestly, that was Ben. I think a lot of that has to, maybe he wouldn't even necessarily be able to put his finger on it in the way that you're asking, but I know from knowing him and writing with him for so many years that one of his favorite aspects, and he's absolutely right is transitions. So if you've got a great verse and a great chorus, sometimes getting to that chorus is just as important because you want it to rise and you want it to realize so good. You need to interface those two sections. And we spend a lot of times doing that, making sure the drum fill is right, making sure there's a ramp somewhere in a guitar part. Do we need to add another tone? Or whatever those saying. Some of that comes down to mix two, but specifically what you're talking about was how do we really kind of suck life out of something and bring it back?

(01:29:04):

So you look at, if you want something to be heavy, a lot of times the way to make it heavy is putting something light next to it. Something bright is defined by something, how dark something else is, and so that dynamic contrast, it's exactly what that is. It's more of literally ramping something up and hoping to get some energy out of it, knowing that it's going to be mastered and squash and all this other stuff. We don't have a lot of dynamic range anymore. I think that's kind of where it came from. That was just one of those tools in the arsenal of how can we kind of pull back a little bit before we hit this section. Great.

Speaker 2 (01:29:36):

Well, Jasen, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast. Thank you for being so open with your answers, and it's been great. We'd love to have you on again in the future.

Speaker 3 (01:29:46):

Thanks

Speaker 2 (01:29:47):

For being here.

Speaker 3 (01:29:47):

Yeah, I'm honored. Yeah. And again, I'm a huge fan of what you guys do in the community as a whole. I think we need stuff like this. I

Speaker 2 (01:29:56):

Appreciate you saying that.

Speaker 3 (01:29:57):

I was talking to Joey as well about it. These resources weren't there when we were coming up, and to have them now I think is incredibly invaluable. And so each engineer and producer or songwriter, whoever's out there, band member, whoever's out there, I encourage you to find your thing and find the resources that help you become better at it and fill those holes that you don't quite have yet using stuff like this. It's incredibly invaluable,

Speaker 2 (01:30:19):

Man. It's true. That's one of the big goals with this, was to create something that we wished had existed when we were coming up as producers and musicians. This is the kind of thing that

Speaker 4 (01:30:34):

Absolutely

Speaker 2 (01:30:34):

We would've traded a family member for back then.

Speaker 3 (01:30:38):

Could you imagine? And that doesn't stop. I am fortunate enough to have some success at different levels, but I can't stop learning. And so even for me, this is still a huge asset and still other minds, we don't do a lot of very heavy metal kind of stuff, but it doesn't matter. There's still so many principles there that apply to like, oh my gosh, that's a killer. I wouldn't have done it that way, but I can try that on this. And it solves a problem I've been trying to work on for years, those kinds of things. So it's great. Well,

Speaker 2 (01:31:06):

Thank you very much. Have a great rest of your day.

Speaker 1 (01:31:08):

Hey, likewise. 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 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.