TIAGO CARVALHO: His sub-$1000 DIY studio, fixing mix translation, and working with major labels

Speaker 1 (00:01):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Mick DSP professional audio plugins. For over 15 years, Mick DSP has continued producing industry acclaimed and award-winning software titles. The podcast is also brought to you by Slate Digital, all the pro plugins. One more monthly price, and now your host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek, and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 3 (00:26):

Hey. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Joey Sturgis Forum podcast. I'm Joey Sturgis, and with me as always is Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi, and have you guys ever seen a mongoose?

(00:40):

Yeah. It's one of those strange animals that defies all logic basically.

Speaker 4 (00:46):

I saw it at the zoo once, I think.

Speaker 3 (00:48):

What do you mean? Do you own one or something? You got one in your house? No, I just wanted to start the show as a stupid question.

Speaker 4 (00:55):

Well, if we wanted to do that, we could have talked about mixing.

Speaker 3 (00:59):

I definitely have seen a mongoose. They're brutal. I used to have a mongoose bike.

Speaker 2 (01:04):

Do you remember mongoose bikes?

Speaker 4 (01:05):

Oh, that's a little bit different than an actual mongoose.

Speaker 2 (01:08):

Well, yeah. Obviously, I don't know if you can really even ride a mongoose. Is that like a thing?

Speaker 4 (01:13):

Well, you could if you were a small person.

Speaker 3 (01:16):

Well, okay, so in reality about Mongooses or Monge, how many of you guys have actually watched a video of it killing a cobra?

Speaker 4 (01:26):

I've seen that. Dude, you don't mess with a mongoose, it'll whoop your ass. Joey,

Speaker 3 (01:30):

Have you seen that? No, I'm looking this

Speaker 2 (01:32):

Up right now.

Speaker 4 (01:32):

Oh, it's awesome. There's all these cool insect videos and for example, I watched a rabbit school, a snake because it constricted its babies last week and it was the coolest thing, and all of a sudden I look up at the thing and it's like two hours later and all I've been doing is watching bug or animal fight videos. The

Speaker 3 (01:48):

Thing with a mongoose is that it's known for going after king cobra's snakes, and it will kill them. It's kind of amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:56):

Yeah, I'm watching it right now. It's like a six pound animal, but it can kill massive snakes and stuff

Speaker 3 (02:03):

That are highly venomous.

Speaker 4 (02:05):

Find the most badass thing possible, then fight it to the death and make a living doing it. That's pretty sweet.

Speaker 3 (02:10):

Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that the pay rate for Mongooses is one of the highest paid jobs in America.

Speaker 4 (02:18):

I wouldn't be surprised

Speaker 3 (02:20):

You were saying holy shit.

Speaker 2 (02:21):

Yeah, because watching it fight this cobra and the Cobra is trying to strike it and then it just jumps in the air and does a 360 hurling back flip or something, just amazing.

Speaker 3 (02:33):

Yeah, it's truly a superior little dude right

Speaker 2 (02:37):

There.

Speaker 4 (02:38):

The real question is can you do a 360 degree hurling back flip on your mongoose bike?

Speaker 2 (02:43):

Maybe that's why they named it the mongoose. I

Speaker 4 (02:45):

Had a Dino, but my buddy had a mongoose and he could never even get off the ramp, so I dunno.

Speaker 3 (02:50):

What is a mongoose bike? Is this something that you It's like a trick.

Speaker 4 (02:54):

Yeah, a trick bike from the nineties.

Speaker 3 (02:55):

Yeah, stuff I never did because I didn't want to hurt my hands. Oh, word.

Speaker 4 (03:00):

Well, we didn't really have friends either, but we used to watch kids play with them outside in the street while we sat by the window and calculated audio stuff.

Speaker 3 (03:09):

Wow, you're such a loser. Well, no, there was just this whole thing about I wanted to be a guitar player and if I did dumb shit like that, the likelihood of getting into an accident and ruining my hands was way higher than if I didn't do dumb shit like that. And the thing is, there's lots of people who when I was younger, would call me paranoid or a pussy or whatever for not getting involved in activities like that, but just about all of them at some point have broken some major bone in some stupid fucking accident.

Speaker 4 (03:42):

That's a great point. I had a friend Philip in look, we'll just say elementary, middle school, and he broke nine bones. It was one to two every year for a series of five years. We'd go out and play. He'd build the biggest bike ramp and he'd always have to jump off it. I'd be like, I'm not jumping off that shit. He'd be like, oh, don't be a pussy. And then he'd go and break his fricking kula or some bone. Is that even a bone? It sounds like a bone,

Speaker 2 (04:05):

Yeah.

Speaker 4 (04:06):

Pick a bone that sounds like it would hurt a lot to break, and he broke that and he broke it often. So

Speaker 3 (04:12):

The way I see it is if you value your appendages for something, don't get involved with things like that. Here's another perfect example. Kevin Talley, a drummer who actually, I mean, he's just this invincible dude since I've known him. He's just kind of always defied death, snowboarding, biking, all that kind of extreme stuff. But eventually on his dirt bike, he was on a sand dune, went over a cliff, he didn't realize it was a cliff, ruptured his lower intestine and had to be airlifted, almost died. Holy crap. Of course, since he's invincible, he's back to playing drums and suffocation and it's as though it never happened, but any lesser human being would be dead.

Speaker 4 (04:59):

Well, I mean, if you're going to have a death metal accident, that would be the best way to do it. It

Speaker 2 (05:03):

Better be pretty death metal. Yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (05:05):

That's cred. I feel like that's just more street cred like dude, intestinal puncture, not even a problem.

Speaker 2 (05:12):

Well, speaking of intestinal punctures, what day is it

Speaker 5 (05:17):

Today?

Speaker 2 (05:18):

Well, today we're doing a mixed Crip Monday, and this one's going to be a little different. This is going to be a little bit more of a progress report on someone who's been subscribed to the show for a while and is doing a lot better now because of the

Speaker 3 (05:32):

Show, not just subscribed to the show, but he came to a bootcamp that we did in Florida in December of 2014, all the way from Portugal. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (05:42):

That's commitment right there. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (05:43):

And

Speaker 2 (05:44):

He's mixing. Is he recording as well? Do we know that?

Speaker 3 (05:48):

Oh yeah. He's doing it all. He's one of these guys who builds his own recording desks, builds his traps, builds the gear, buys the kits, builds the gear. I mean, he's doing it.

Speaker 4 (05:58):

That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (05:58):

Yeah, we just want to highlight this guy has improved leaps and bounds since he's entered our world, and hopefully we can make an example out of that and show you guys where he is at, check out what his most recent work sounds like and analyze it from that point of view.

Speaker 3 (06:17):

Yeah, and let me just also say that the first time I ever came into contact with this cat was right after my creative live mixing class at the end of 2014. I did a mixed GR for him and it was okay. I could tell he was talented, but since then it's just come leaps and bounds and so it's just always cool to see someone who actually has put in the work and got in way better and is making a full-time living off of this stuff. Doing what we said. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (06:47):

Someone actually listens to us. Come on. It's

Speaker 3 (06:50):

Weird. Go figure.

Speaker 4 (06:52):

I can't even get my kid to listen to me.

Speaker 3 (06:53):

Well, maybe we need to bring him on mixed CRI Monday.

Speaker 4 (06:57):

Well, not that one. He doesn't talk yet.

Speaker 3 (06:59):

Even better. So anyways, dude is Tiago Carvalho. I hope I pronounce his name and we are going to bring him into the call now.

Speaker 2 (07:08):

Hey, welcome to the show, Tiago. How you doing?

Speaker 3 (07:10):

Great. What time is it? Where are You're in Portugal, right?

Speaker 6 (07:13):

Yeah, in Portugal. It's 7:30 PM That

Speaker 3 (07:17):

Sounds so bad. Well, thanks for being with us. We were talking about earlier on how I've actually been in touch with you for a little while and you actually came to the bootcamp in Florida, which I thought was crazy awesome. Just considering that you had to actually fly over an ocean to come hang out with us and learn some recording. So

Speaker 4 (07:37):

What if he swam?

Speaker 6 (07:39):

Yeah, that would probably take me a little while, but it was just like a great opportunity that appeared. I was looking for something to educate myself further, and then I saw the bootcamp with Al teaching everything and Joey also coming along to a one day and showing how he does his stuff and everything. It was really cool. It was one of the greatest experiences I have ever had in a recording environment. That's awesome. That's cool.

Speaker 3 (08:07):

Yeah, glad to hear that. But I actually had talked to you before that I was saying that I had created one of your mixes right after the creative live mixing class, but the one that we're going to talk about today is way better than that. I mean, you've come a really, really long way, so thank

Speaker 6 (08:25):

You so much.

Speaker 3 (08:26):

No, it is just the truth. And you've also expanded your client base quite a bit, so want to talk a bit about that where you were a year ago versus where you are today in terms of your studio build, what kind of clients you're getting, things like that. What would you say is the number one difference in your working life?

Speaker 6 (08:46):

The biggest difference, at least for me was in the recording bootcamp was to see the standard. You know what I mean? The standard on which things are acceptable and which things are not. Example, I get a band coming in, they set up the drums in five minutes and so are we ready to record? That's

Speaker 4 (09:10):

The only way to do it.

Speaker 6 (09:12):

Yeah, that's with the beat up old skins and cracked symbols. Yeah, that's what I'm into. No, but to see the standard was the best information I could have. It was really important for me at least. That and all the stuff I saw in Creative Life from AAL using Quick Keys, that also was a major eye opening for me in list of work process and the speed of workflow. It was a really, really big difference.

Speaker 2 (09:40):

Let's talk a little bit more about the standard because I think while you can say that, and that sounds like a very simple thing, but

Speaker 6 (09:46):

It isn't it, it's a huge difference. I showing me this snare, well tuned proper mic placement, a good preamp and a proper level, and this is what you get. I was even talking to Al, I never got a snare song like this in my environment. Well now, and that's right. Now I know and I can apply it. I've been applying it. The recordings have been done. I haven't recorded many drums since then. I'll record two or three bands doing live drums, so I haven't been able to practice all of that stuff that I learned in the bootcamp, but every time I get a chance to try it out, different things I learn, I do it.

Speaker 3 (10:25):

I think that one of the hardest things for people who are coming up is just knowing how good is good enough was something because you have the records you listen to. That's one thing, but unless you're actually there in the room with the person making them, you don't really, really know

Speaker 6 (10:44):

What it took. For instance, with your way, you track drums, for instance, you like one or two days to set up, choose the right snare, the right toms the right cymbals, the right skins, the right beaters or whatever, all that stuff. It's the accumulation of subtleties you always talk about. It's the accumulation of small stuff that in the end makes the big picture like having a sweet kid all micd up and then the drummer sucks or the other way around, a great drummer but a crappy kid. I've had all of those experiences and now some of my clients, I'm starting to talk to them more about this and the important because at the end of the day it's their money. It's like one more or two extra days in the studio. It might not be in their budget and they're not willing to go the extra mile, but now I can explain to them more articulately that all of those things make a difference in the end results. It's like, oh, we'll fix it in the mix. They'll just put a sample or whatever. It's not like that, at least from what I saw in the boot cam, it's like shit going in, shit going out or gold coming in and platinum coming out. It's the same principle.

Speaker 3 (11:51):

Well, one of the hardest things when you're, you're first starting out is getting your clients to trust you. So if a client doesn't trust you yet and you say, well, your timeline for getting these results is unrealistic, we actually need a little bit more time to get it done. Someone who doesn't have a track record or is just starting might get resistance. The client might say, you're just trying to milk us for money, or the last time we recorded, we set up in one hour and did the whole album in three days. So why do we need to take the time and as you

Speaker 6 (12:24):

Exactly.

Speaker 3 (12:24):

Yeah, but if you actually understand why in your bones you really get it, it makes it that much easier for you to explain it.

Speaker 6 (12:31):

Yeah, and now it's what you said the other day, what are you pretending not to know when I didn't know that could fly, it could happen. I haven't changed my snare in the skin in three months. I say, okay, I'll do it, but now I see the standard and I can't. I just insist you have to get new skins. Everything has to be perfect tuned and at least the best of what we can do and to our knowledge, of course, I don't have a super big drum kits to lying around. I have just two, but even with those two, we can pick and choose like Bo snares, we can choose one or the other and try it out and the end result, they hear it when they trust me. The new clients I'm getting and recording stuff when I explain this to them and I say, I don't mind spending one or two extra days just to get the right tones and everything, and they see the difference and that's the most rewarding thing they trust and they hear the difference from previous recordings or whatever they had in the past.

Speaker 4 (13:26):

I feel like a really important takeaway too on that when communicating with clients is that if you're trying to get signed as a band, you're approaching investors and investors want to know if they're going to pour a bunch of money into you, what is it going to sound like and is it going to generate a return? So it's very important that the band understands and you communicate to them as the producer that they have to do a really awesome job because if they do a great job, they will look like a great professional band. If they do a crappy job and try to half-ass the recording, they will look like that to the investor and why would you invest in something that's going to fail? I mean, no one wants to fail and especially when you're playing with real money.

Speaker 2 (14:06):

Yeah. There's something that Andrew Wade said when he came on, which I really liked, and he was like, Hey, you know what? There's an assumption here that is getting lost in translation or somehow is not being made apparent, and that is we're all trying to do a good job here. The end goal of this is for everyone to create a great product so that we all benefit from it. My name's on it, your name's on it. I want to be good. You want it to be good. So even down to not even just an engineering thing, but even on a production level, it helps to have that sort of common understanding and that trust. It's

Speaker 3 (14:43):

Hard to get to that point though where there is that trust, but I think that definitely the more confidence an engineer can have, the easier it'll be for a band to trust them. Of course, their track record speaks volumes, but if you can articulate very, very well why it's important to take certain steps to get a better result, it's that much easier to convince them that you're right. Well,

Speaker 4 (15:07):

Confidence is everything too. As a producer, especially when you're working with a new client because people will come in and they're unsure, they've never worked with you. They may have heard of you and they've heard some of your work, but they have no idea what you're going to do with them, and if they walk in and you're super confident, super upbeat towards them, you're conveying a lot of energy and excitement and enthusiasm. They're going to pick up on that vibe right away and they're going to lock into it and it's going to be a much more positive session and they're going to be a lot more willing to listen to your ideas and to try them. As opposed, if you kind of come in with poor body language and posture and you're just like, Hey, what's up guys? And you kind of look down trodden, you got to come in with a little bit of spark and a little bit of spunk, for lack of a better word, but it does go a long way. You have to come in confident.

Speaker 6 (15:49):

Yeah, I'm actually quite friendly to all the people that come in my studio are never down or feeling blue or whatever. I actually try to be friendly with everybody. I also have accommodation here in the studio, so I also try to show them where everything is, the kitchen, how are the beds, how's everything laid out in the studio? Also,

Speaker 3 (16:11):

Let's talk about your actual studio a little bit because I remember when I posted in our private producers club for people to post pictures of their control rooms, it spans the range. Some people are in the bedroom, some people are in really, really nice rooms and everything in between.

Speaker 6 (16:31):

Yeah, widespread.

Speaker 3 (16:32):

Yeah. But the thing that's special about yours was that yours looks great and everything, but you built that yourself. Let's talk a little bit about that because a lot of people think that you can only have a great looking studio or all these things if you spend a ton of money

Speaker 6 (16:46):

RLX all the way.

Speaker 3 (16:48):

Yeah, right. Don't do that guys.

Speaker 6 (16:50):

No, actually I've always been involved in doing DIY stuff. It's always been a fascination for me knowing how stuff works and knowing how to build stuff. First of all, my studio was a really small one room where I had two rooms in one. One was the control room and one was the tracking room. Then over the years, the rooms that were next to mine became available and I expanded getting a new tracking room. It was just like the room right next to me. Then I got a kitchen. Then I got another room where I built bedrooms and a living room and the accommodations. Accommodations, yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:25):

Yeah. So you did it piece by piece.

Speaker 6 (17:26):

Yeah, it was a natural growth. Then when I was two or three years in the studio, it was just like the most horrifying thing was my mixes weren't translating well, the silent grade in the studio, but then as soon as I took them out, put it on an iPod or took them to my car, it sounded like crap. And then I thought, maybe it's the monitors, maybe it's this, maybe it's that, and then I thought maybe I should just treat my room. And then I looked up how to treat your room. I called a friend of mine who was actually, my teacher is an acoustics expert, so I brought him in and we did a couple of tests during one or two days, and he gave me a blueprint of, okay, you need to do this, this, and this. So I got to work, ordered all the wood I would need for the construction, and then started putting it piece by piece

Speaker 3 (18:09):

And the cost of doing that

Speaker 6 (18:11):

Fraction, fraction, it was like everything. I did the walls, I did clouds, and it was all under 500 euros, really cheap and just takes a little bit of time and if you have a friend or two that can help you, it really speeds up the process.

Speaker 3 (18:26):

So guys listening, that's about 500 euros, maybe about $750. Look in the private producers club and search for my post, asking for people to post pictures of their control rooms and look at Tiago stuff. It looks amazing, and realize that that was less than 750 bucks. And also realize that when you see people's rooms covered in shitty orex and solutions like that, they paid way more than 750 bucks.

Speaker 4 (18:56):

Alright, so when I got my first studio in the basement, the first thing that went out is I didn't even get Oral X. I got foam by mail.com. I mean Oral X is what it is, but I mean this is a whole nother level of bullshit and I spent a thousand bucks. I bought so much foam that I turned my room into, I don't know, everything sounded kind of like inside of Darth Vader's mask, star Wars style. It was a really weird feeling and I had to get rid of half the foam I bought, and then after two or three years of having that crap, I finally bought some GIK stuff and I just switched out the base traps and I was like, holy shit, why didn't I do this before? And I felt like an idiot

Speaker 6 (19:37):

Because

Speaker 4 (19:37):

I listened to some fool on gear slots of course, saying that, oh yeah, just go get some orex. And I'm like, oh, cool. Well here's a cheaper so I'll just do that. But it's really important to do it correctly and to build correct traps and they don't have to be necessarily expensive. You could save yourself a thousand dollars unlike me and not waste your time and not feel stupid, and also two or three years of your life of putting out really crappy mixes because you can't hear so do it right

Speaker 3 (20:03):

If building is not the way you want to go. In my experience in research at GIK acoustics is the least expensive, highest quality maker of the acoustic traps. I don't know anybody else that's at that price point that makes them quite as good, but still

Speaker 4 (20:21):

I have tons of it

Speaker 3 (20:22):

And I have a lot of GIK stuff, but you're still going to be price wise way above then of you build it yourself.

Speaker 6 (20:30):

Yeah, it's a really smart investment and it's not that hard really. It's just like wood, a couple of screws, some fabric rock wall, and you're good to go. It's not rocket science

Speaker 3 (20:41):

And it made all the difference in the world.

Speaker 6 (20:43):

It completely made all the difference. My speakers sounded like another pair of speakers. I was working with him for a year and a half right now I have two sets of speakers, the Yamahas hs eights and the Ns tens.

Speaker 4 (20:56):

Do not tell Bobcat that joke will never get old. Sorry.

Speaker 6 (21:00):

Don't worry. He's not

Speaker 2 (21:01):

Listening.

Speaker 4 (21:02):

We love Bob. Dude, he's great.

Speaker 2 (21:03):

Got a question for you. How much time would you estimate you've spent on your room? I think there's a lot of people who don't know. They need to spend a lot of time on the room. And then second of all, I think there's a lot of people who will listen to that suggestion, spend maybe an hour or two and then be like, okay, I did it. I put time into my room. There's people like Jason Soff out there who redo their room every year and it takes a whole one or two months to even do it,

Speaker 3 (21:30):

Right? Yeah, but that's the other extreme because he's already out of that room that you saw last year that room's no longer. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (21:38):

You don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole, but that's what I'm saying is I'm curious how much time do you estimate you've spent on the room? Because I do think that people listening to this might not know that you've spent longer than assumed.

Speaker 6 (21:51):

It wasn't that long. Really the first two years when I switched from the other room to this control room, it was like about two years of doing crappy mixes basically. And after that it took me about 10 days. It's only 10 days because I was doing it all by myself,

Speaker 3 (22:08):

But that proves the point. That's 10 days, not one hour,

Speaker 6 (22:11):

10 days. And I was doing everything myself, sourcing out everything, going out and buying rock wall, finding the right fabric, getting the right dimensions of the wood that I needed, all that stuff. It was under 10 days,

Speaker 3 (22:25):

But I guess that's exactly Joey's point. Some guys might spend

Speaker 6 (22:28):

An hour and no, that won't cut it.

Speaker 3 (22:30):

Yeah, go online, find one of those room calculator graphs, see where they think the primary reflection points are, throw some stuff on the walls and think that they're done with it and not understand why their mixes still don't translate. You

Speaker 4 (22:44):

Might as well just buy Oral

Speaker 6 (22:45):

X.

Speaker 3 (22:46):

Yeah, exactly. I mean

Speaker 6 (22:47):

That was also a different learning curve. I was always fear things in one way and then I started hearing another way, but that way that I was listening also started to translate much better outside of my room. The goal, I don't want people to coming in, oh, it sounds super sweet. Then I put it on a car or a laptop or whatever and it doesn't sound anywhere near or no base. That was one of the biggest problems I had was like I could feel like a shit ton of bass and it was like awesome. This mix slams and then I put it on anywhere else and it sounded dull thin, like nothing. And it was all because of the room. The room was exciting. The low went so much that I thought it was really good, but it wasn't quite enough. And so after that I started putting back my mixes when I put the new setup and then I saw these mixes are thin, really, really thin. And then I started redoing the mixes, take out my car, and then it was like these sound like much more what I was hearing in my control room, and that's the whole point of doing room treatment.

Speaker 4 (23:50):

That's awesome. So speaking of mixes, do we want to jump into this and listen to this mix or what?

Speaker 6 (23:55):

Yeah. Yep, let's do it. Okay. The band's name is the Medusa Smile and the song is called Tainted.

Speaker 3 (24:01):

Hey guys, Al here, and I just want to take a moment to talk to you about this month on Nail the Mix. If you're already a subscriber, thank you so much. We appreciate the hell out of you. But if you're not and you want to seriously up your mixing game, then you might want to consider Nail the Mix. This month we have a guest mixer, Mr. Kane Chiko, and he will be mixing Face Everything and Rise by Papa Roach. And when you subscribe, you get the multi-tracks that he recorded and produced, you download them, you can enter a mix competition with prizes by Mc DSP. You get an Emerald Pack version six, that's like a $1,600 software package, plus the winner also gets one year of everything bundle from Slate. So really, really good prize package for our mixed competition winners. We've also got a second place package that rules and yeah, if you join Nail the Mix, you also get bonus access to our exclusive community, which is other audio professionals and aspiring professionals just like you who just dork out on this stuff all day and night and love spreading knowledge. It's troll free. And so whether you nobe or experienced, it's a great place to just come talk about the thing we all share, which is a love for audio. So once again, if you haven't subscribed to Nail the Mix yet, this might be a great month to try. You get to learn how Cane Chiko mixed the number one single face everything and Rise by Papa Roach. Just go to nail the mix.com/papa Roach, that's nail the mix.com/papa Roach.

Speaker 2 (29:29):

Okay, first of all, awesome. I like the song and we'll talk about what can be better about it, but I think the main point of this is to showcase that you've made a big improvement, huge improvement, and it's really, yeah,

Speaker 4 (29:42):

This is a really good mix. It sounds

Speaker 2 (29:43):

Good. Yeah, it is hard to find anything wrong with it in the first place. So let's start there.

Speaker 3 (29:48):

The way I like to think about these things is forget I'm doing a crit. What if I just came across this on YouTube or something or a friend of mine was like, check out this band. If I heard this mix, I wouldn't think about the mix. I would be listening to the song and that to me right there is a really big thing. If the mix is bad, that'll be the first thing I key in on.

Speaker 4 (30:10):

Well, I'll start with the brutality then. Okay, so the only thing I really had on this, and I listened to this mix several times and I tried to deconstruct it because this is a mixed crit show, but again, like I said, Tiago, I really like it and I think you really did an awesome job with this. So I'm splitting Harris here. We're talking about one or 2%. We're not talking about major surgery or anything like that. So I think that the top end of the whole mix and maybe it's mostly predominantly guitars and cys, I'm not quite sure a hundred percent, but I feel like it's a tad on the harsh slash bright side and it's not like too much, but it's just a little bit and I feel like, again, I know we talk about notching out little frequencies, but I feel like there's just a couple of accumulated resonances up there that just need a narrow cue cut maybe even in the master and it would do wonders for the mix. It's just a little bit tricking my ear, at least in my room on my monitors. And that's basically the only thing, major thing other than a few preferential things, but I mean in terms of balance and stuff like that and low end, I felt very good about it.

Speaker 6 (31:13):

Actually this was the one I felt was the weakest song, so this was the song that gave me more trouble mixing. I have the other songs of this band that I think personally sounded better, but since you guys are creating, this is the one I had most trouble on, getting the right amount of balance because there was so many stuff happening at the same time in several points of the song at one 18 or something. It's like after that lead that has a Tom fill double bass guitar's doing one thing lead guitar and the vocal is just screaming and trying to get all of those elements balanced in that point of the song and other points was the thing I struggled most.

Speaker 3 (31:53):

Well, I actually think that what Joel said fixing that would help bring all those other things into balance a lot more.

Speaker 4 (32:01):

Well, it definitely does need a little bit of EQ on the guitars and symbols or maybe one or the other. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but there's one or two frequencies up there that I isolated with my ears or if I had an EQ and I was mastering it, I would've snapped them. And I feel like that little bit of tweaking, it would give it the sauce where you'd be like, oh, that sounds great, as opposed to that sounds really good.

Speaker 6 (32:22):

It would fit better. Yeah, so

Speaker 4 (32:23):

It's really subtle. It's definitely not like a major issue. I mean, anything else you guys have that you guys thought?

Speaker 2 (32:30):

Yeah, for me, the only thing that I really wanted to harp on you for was the vocals fit in with everything, and that's not always a bad thing, but I think being on the cutting edge of modern production and modern mixing sound, the idea is to incorporate other genres that have taken the craft itself further. So in my opinion, I kind of believe that pop music and more polished type stuff has taken modern production to a whole new level. And so slowly over time when let's say pop music takes a giant leap forward, it takes about five to 10 years before that applies to metal and rock and other more grungy genres. So my feeling towards this song in particular was that the vocals are still living in the past sound wise or sonic wise. And what I mean by that is I think they should be more upfront and it's not just a volume thing. I think it's kind of a trendy EQ thing that just isn't quite happening there. And I expected to out of hearing everything, the way you've got the kick sounding, the snare, you've got the guitars, it does sound like it's trying to kind of compete, but then the vocals just blend in a little too much. I thought that the vocals could have been a little bit more upfront, have a little bit more high n dq, and I just want to make a guess. I could be wrong, so I'll eat my words, but I feel like you used an SM seven B for the vocals.

Speaker 6 (34:04):

Actually, I can't remember.

Speaker 4 (34:06):

I

Speaker 6 (34:06):

Was waiting for the drum roll. It was either the SM seven or the U 87, I'm really not sure, but also the screamer vocalist screams like a vampire, and so that doesn't quite help a lot to, I know what you mean about his voice was just so present in that frequency range. I just tried to blend it in as much as I could. I know what you mean Joey, and it wasn't like a pretty frequency with his specifical voice just because of the way he screams like,

Speaker 5 (34:37):

Nah.

Speaker 2 (34:39):

There's also the issue when someone screams like that you want to add some presence and then as soon as you do, you start to hear this weird, almost like a raspy white noise type of thing that you can't get rid of. So you can't always do it, and it can be challenging if you are very determined to do it, even though that's what happens when you try. You can go in and do a whole bunch of automation or use a weird combination of transient designers and stuff. I did a lot of automation on this song

Speaker 6 (35:08):

And

Speaker 2 (35:08):

That's good and that's showing progress, but that was my only concern was just the vocals are a little bit not competitive in terms of what they sound like.

Speaker 4 (35:17):

I got one more.

Speaker 2 (35:18):

Okay,

Speaker 4 (35:18):

This is really a preferential thing, but I wish there was just a little bit more 200 in your snare, a little bit more whack in the bottom end just a little bit because the mix was really heavy and it was really slamming the kick drum and the bass and the guitars were super powerful and the snare was almost

Speaker 6 (35:35):

There. Almost there.

Speaker 4 (35:36):

Yeah, it was so damn close and I feel like a DB or two at 200, maybe three or a little bit of harmonic excitement in that area would be that's it would just have that bottom where it would really lock.

Speaker 6 (35:48):

Only wished I had the DFX side when I missed this. I'm using it all the time, but back then I'm using it now on almost everything. I just love it. The ethics side is my new best friend.

Speaker 4 (36:00):

That's awesome. It does a really good job of getting that 200 because sometimes you can't get it with eq, but that extra harmonic content down there, especially on vintage mode.

Speaker 6 (36:08):

Yeah, just like a little nudge and makes a it and it's like it's a huge difference. Not huge, it's eight to 80, but it gives it that little hump in the mix, in the mix context. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (36:20):

The other thing that I think we could touch on is what you've done and what would be nice is to point those out specifically so that the people listening to this song can also get their own understanding of what the standard is.

Speaker 3 (36:35):

One thing that I want to say then on that topic is if we want to just take it apart a little bit, one of the things that I think you did very well is how your kick levels change in accordance to how fast the material is going because that's super important. That's one of the main things that I get people messing up when I'm doing these crits and I didn't at any moment feel like the kicks were either too soft or too loud. They felt just right. They were number one anchoring and number two, driving the song exactly how they needed to.

Speaker 4 (37:12):

I also really liked how they locked with the bass and the low end of the guitars. Like I said, the mix had a lot of energy to me and a really good aggression for the type of style it is. And when I hit play, I immediately just started kind of nodding my head as opposed to being sitting there with my hand on my chin thinking and analyzing and ripping apart the mix. So that was a good sign. I felt like I caught the energy of the mix right away. So you really, I feel like nailed that balance right there, which is I consider the backbone of any mix. Very, very important.

Speaker 3 (37:41):

So then let's talk about that. Let's talk about, first of all, what did you do with the kick, what kind of automations and then what did you do to marry it to the low end of the bass and guitar?

Speaker 6 (37:52):

Well, first of all, the hardest thing for me ever since I started recording was getting a concise and tight and clean low end, and that goes back to also proper room treatment. It falls back to that because all these years, the thing that bothered me the most was hearing all these mixes from different engineers and what Joel usually says that expensive low end when you just feel it, and that's the hardest thing for me to battle in any mix.

Speaker 4 (38:21):

Well, let me interject a quick comment and say that I think is not only a question, but the question pretty much with any mix. I mean that is the primary indicator of an awesome mix before the vocals come in. At least to me it's when you've got the low end nailed, you've got it nailed and the whole thing just moves and grooves and that's what really conveys energy in a song.

Speaker 6 (38:44):

And that's like a lot of trial and error with this project in particular because this the first project I did after coming from the bootcamp, so I spent a lot of time messing around with stuff that I learned and picked up and even tricks or whatever. It wasn't like I came back from the bootcamp and it was like, now I'm a magic wizard. No, it's not like that. It took me at least six months. I went in December last year. I haven't actually had a chance to try everything that I learned. It's not just I go to the bootcamp and now I'm a recording hero. It takes a lot of time to assimilate all the information and working it into my workflow or the way I'm used to doing things. That's

Speaker 3 (39:28):

Why we have the follow-ups. That's

Speaker 6 (39:29):

Super important. So starting off with the drums, I use the drum forge

Speaker 4 (39:34):

Stop making us feel good with,

Speaker 6 (39:36):

Yeah, with the kick six, I use this one blended in with the infamous kick 10.

Speaker 4 (39:43):

That's awesome. And

Speaker 6 (39:44):

Then I use some A P IQs, some SSL AQ from waves C four just to compress or keep the low end not wobbly, and then a JST clip and the automation for the high pass goes in one of these aqs in the middle just like before the C four. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:05):

Excellent. What about the bass guitar? The

Speaker 6 (40:06):

Bass guitar was tracked with a DI through my Avalon and it's split like low end and grit. Actually one of Joey's presets the hell raiser, so it sounds awesome. Yeah. Yeah, and it sounded great. I didn't have to tweak a lot of it. It was just a matter of finding the predominant frequency in the low end of the kick and notching it out on the bass and doing the other way around where I felt the bass had more energy and dipping that in the kick. Awesome.

Speaker 4 (40:38):

What did you use on guitars?

Speaker 6 (40:39):

Guitars? I used the platform than a whole lot of other stuff, like I used Wave Sander to bring up the mids a little bit. One thing I did, and I don't know if you guys use this a lot, but I tried to use a mid side queue on the guitars. I dunno if you guys ever used this or try to use this.

Speaker 4 (40:58):

I've never done it other than in mastering. I should also add, I

Speaker 6 (41:00):

Was just trying to mess with it and sounded good, so was like a fab filter, pro Q in MS mode and just trying to sweep around some of those frequencies in the vocal range from, let me see, one K to three and a half notching out a little bit of in the middle of the guitars so it doesn't clash with the vocals as much, but just a tiny bit like one, two and a half db. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:25):

And where did you high pass the guitars? At

Speaker 6 (41:26):

83.

Speaker 3 (41:27):

Okay. Let's talk about whatever else you did on the low end and the low mids of the guitar to get that to work with. The bass

Speaker 6 (41:35):

On the guitar also uses C four, nothing much there. Trying to find the right frequency. It's around, I think it was like drop A, but I might be wrong.

Speaker 2 (41:44):

Okay, that's a big deal. Drop A versus drop D, you can have completely different settings. Yeah,

Speaker 6 (41:50):

Exactly, exactly. But I try to find where the guitar pump was coming and tam it a little bit and then I use the waves SSL EQ to low cut, then boost it up a little bit again, and then I use ozone to bring some back, some of the excitement. Then after that, a linear multi-band aq and after that L one

Speaker 4 (42:15):

Now we're talking L one. Hell yeah,

Speaker 6 (42:17):

L one on everything.

Speaker 4 (42:17):

That's right. He gets it. I love L one. I actually use it on more things than I should. If you look at my mixes, one thing you'll always see is L one everywhere, so while I joke about it, I actually do use it.

Speaker 2 (42:32):

Yeah, it's good for gain staging too. I mean

Speaker 4 (42:34):

It really is.

Speaker 2 (42:36):

The joke is that you would just cut the peaks off of everything so that your mix doesn't have any life. That's what the joke is about. But in reality, what you're using it for is to remove all the headroom from any of the tracks or just to gain stage between plugins after plugins into groups, out of groups. It's a great volume knob.

Speaker 4 (42:56):

I just like to put eight of them in a series and just max it out with the most amount of reduction possible and the highest output, and then that's just on every channel. That's it.

Speaker 6 (43:07):

Instant master.

Speaker 4 (43:08):

Yeah, mix done

Speaker 6 (43:09):

Album over

Speaker 4 (43:11):

400 L, ones a mix. It's a great plugin. I mean it just works. It sounds good. You can't deny L one.

Speaker 3 (43:18):

Yeah. Okay. Here's one thing. Did you do the mastering on it? Yes,

Speaker 6 (43:23):

I did also. Okay.

Speaker 3 (43:24):

Did you guys notice that there was a little bit of clipping, especially when guitars would play by themselves? Some,

Speaker 2 (43:32):

Yeah, so I was actually, thanks for reminding me because I had two things. I had the vocals and I also was wanting to talk about the mastering.

Speaker 4 (43:41):

Hey, I heard that on that new slayer.

Speaker 2 (43:43):

Now we've just determined that you use, what did you use for mastering? Again, let's go through your mastering chain real quick.

Speaker 6 (43:49):

First of all, I do a heavy mixed bus like you showed on the bootcamp with A SSL comp. Then I did a max base just a little bit on the 88 hertz, just like real subtle at minus 16 db, then linear and into ozone. This is the mix print. Then I moved to a different session to do the master. So one of the things I noticed after the mix was done, after I bounced it and I came back to it a couple of days and one of the things I was concerned was the low end wasn't as tight as I thought. So I printed the mix back through some Neve preamps and it just came to life and I was really glad with that result. After that, the linear phase, acute, just not out some frequencies and again, linear and then to the L one hardware compressor. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:55):

Okay, so the hardware compressor, I am not going to be able to comment on that, but I can say that when you're using ozone, depending on which algorithm you're using for limiting, it is possible to get clipping to occur. And a lot of people think that clipping can occur when it's just an overload of too many sounds or too much volume. So anyone that's out there who might be doing this similar chain as you, they might think as long as I don't overload this or I don't have too much volume, I'm not going to clip. That's not always true. The algorithm itself can clip based on what kind of content is coming through it, and that can come from doing the harmonic excitement in the wrong way, or having your algorithm can have a clipping point too. So one way that you can get around this is to do some automation on your master fader, and if you have your ozone plugin instantiated on insert number seven and eight on cubase, that actually puts it before. If you have ozone on insert six, then your fader is after ozone, and if you have it, your ozone on insert seven, then your fader is before ozone. So it's kind of like

Speaker 6 (46:05):

The volume automation goes before ozone. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:07):

So then you can use the master fader to automate down on sections where you're hearing a little bit of clipping, especially when a guitar is playing by itself and that solves that problem and you don't really have to do a whole lot of work. The other solution to fixing it is a lot more work. It requires a lot more automation and a lot more different settings in ozone and stuff. So I would just recommend doing it the simple way where you can just change the input volume to the ozone.

Speaker 4 (46:35):

I used to master a lot using FGX, and one of the things you had to do, there was a setting in there called ITP, and every time you had a guitar spot, if you were hitting a really high volume, for example, like minus seven RMS and FGX, which is a lot louder than it seems like an ozone to get to that range, to me it seems like it's like minus three or four RMS. I'm not sure how that works or what the technical reason is, but that's what apparent volume seems to be the equivalent between the two programs. And you'd have to automate on the guitars down the ITP to a smoother setting, and then as soon as the band kicked in, you'd go back or else you'd get distortion on guitars

Speaker 6 (47:11):

Like going from zero to full on. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (47:13):

That's

Speaker 6 (47:14):

Literally

Speaker 3 (47:14):

All I've got for this song.

Speaker 2 (47:17):

Hey, good job on this. Again, thanks for coming on the show, and it's so awesome to see progression. And for any of you out there listening, I think you can make the same progression. Just apply yourself, listen to the shows, do what we say an experiment, I promise we know what we're talking about.

Speaker 3 (47:32):

And what would be kind of cool is once this show goes live, Tiago, if you want to maybe post one of your mixes from a year ago in the Private Producers Club forum compared to this so that people can just see how far you've come. That would be great.

Speaker 6 (47:51):

That would be sick. Actually, one of the latest, earliest mixes I have was the one I sent you after the bootcamp, and it was actually mastered by Joey. So you can see the difference of it's not a master that made a difference, but the mixing that made a difference. So I'll be more than happy to post it. I also like to post other stuff because I'm working now on less metal stuff. I'm working on more pop stuff, and it's also because of the gradual increase in the quality of the work, so that also is not sticking to metal exclusively or one genre exclusively. So also the bootcamp allowed me to extend to other genres that are more rewarding, so to speak, than metal, because we all know there's no money in metal.

Speaker 3 (48:37):

But wait, real quick before we wrap it up. One thing, if you don't want to talk about the Sony thing in detail, that's fine, but maybe talk for a couple minutes about just some of the career opportunities that have started coming your way lately because they're pretty legit and I think that maybe they'll inspire some of the guys in the group.

Speaker 6 (48:57):

Yeah, sure. It started off because of the producer that I usually work with in the studio. He's also a really good producer, and that helps me a lot because I don't usually produce, I just mainly engineer. I only produce when something's really, really, really, really bad. Like music without a single chorus or the transitions are all fucked up and like 20 BPM changes. I try to steer the band in a better direction and working with that producer, he also got better opportunities and he started bringing his work so that I could work with him. So I think that's what all aspiring engineers or whoever's in this likes or aims for working with big companies, big projects, and it's also a lot of responsibility and lots of stuff. I wasn't used to being able to, one thing was I got married two months ago, and as soon as I got off a 16 hour flight, I had to come to the studio and make something to deliver to go to master. It was like the craziest thing I ever want to experience. Again, 18 hour flight straight into the studio, work for 10 hours to have something to send off to mastering, and that's because of all the responsibilities that come working with the labels and stuff. That was a really big thing for me at least.

Speaker 3 (50:15):

But you're there, so that's great. Most people aspire to be able to get to that point. Yeah, my mom will be proud.

Speaker 4 (50:21):

Yeah. Well, congratulations, Tiago, and thank you so much for coming on. It's been awesome having you on, and it's really awesome and inspiring for us even to watch you guys grow, and you've done an awesome job, and thank you.

Speaker 6 (50:33):

Thank you guys. You guys are the shining light in the audio production.

Speaker 4 (50:36):

Appreciate that.

Speaker 6 (50:37):

Thanks, man. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (50:39):

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