JACQUIRE KING: Mixing in the box, the power of absolute polarity, and surviving the industry

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Ivans Guitars and Basses. Ivans strives to make high quality cutting edge musical instruments that any musician can afford and enjoy. Visit ivans.com for more info. And now your host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:00:21):

Welcome to the Joey Sturgis Forum podcast. Today we have a really special guest I want to introduce to you guys, Jacquire King. He is an amazing producer and engineer, three time Grammy winner. Is that correct?

Speaker 3 (00:00:33):

Yes, sir. Yeah, that

Speaker 2 (00:00:34):

Is quite the accomplishment and welcome to the show. Thank you for being on here.

Speaker 3 (00:00:38):

Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (00:00:40):

Also a multi-platinum selling producer. I just got to put that in there as well. Really hard to pull off these days.

Speaker 3 (00:00:47):

It is, yeah. I mean records, they don't sell like they used to. It's really all about exposure and licensing for the most part.

Speaker 4 (00:00:55):

Do you find that even with your really, really crazy basically history of 30 Grammy award nominations, the Grammys multi-platinum, that even for people at your level that the changes in the music industry are affecting your work flow or anything noticeable?

Speaker 3 (00:01:15):

Absolutely across the board. Every aspect, not from, I mean time is money, so it's like budgets are getting smaller. A lot of what I'm used to doing and what's expected of me is that we're going to record in big expensive studios, and so the cost of that stuff doesn't really change a whole lot, so it means you have to work smarter, you have to work faster, you got to kind of move around. You can't be in a big room for weeks on end, so I have to pay myself less sometimes because the guys that work for me, it's just like they make less money than I do and I'm not going to cut their pay. Can't shortchange the process. I've started mixing completely in the box because the technology has come up to the place where it's good enough to do it. It's really about the result and you should be having fun and the result should be gotten to without too much trouble otherwise it sort of takes the spirit of the whole process out of it.

Speaker 4 (00:02:12):

I was actually going to ask you about that, but you kind of answered it. I was going to ask you how you keep up with the turnaround time that's expected nowadays, but also working in a hybrid setup. I know you've got a lot of nice analog gear, but I've noticed that it's just harder and harder to keep up. Just like we were talking before we started recording that projects aren't really considered done until they're released. Timetables are really, really crazy and it's just harder than ever to do recalls and things like that, but I guess you're all in the box now with mixing.

Speaker 3 (00:02:47):

Yeah, I did that the end of last year partially because I feel like that there's other people, a lot of other people doing it and it sounds great. People are doing it successfully. Some of my peers are doing it, and you just have to, it's new tools. It's just you have to figure out how to make that work and turn it into a creative process and get a good emotional result that feels musical and that moves people. Does the mix and the box sound like the mix on the desk with all the analog gear? No, it sounds different because it's a different process, but it doesn't mean that it's less valuable. My real 1176 is they work a certain way and they sound a certain way and the ones in the box, some of them kind of do the same thing, but you have to learn how to use those in the way that they're useful.

(00:03:37):

Some tools, some emulations are great for using exactly the same way you'd use the analog piece, but then other times it's just sometimes I use emulations of things that I don't really actually like the analog piece because it's actually better as a plugin and vice versa. You just have to have the attitude that you're going to adapt and learn how to do it. I still use all my analog stuff to record and that's the important part. It's just like I really work hard to try to capture not only a sound that I want to have, but a performance. So really the mixing is a finishing part and it's really should be about balancing and the ability to go back and revise stuff. Sometimes. Lately I've even taken stuff to mastering and I won't send my stems to mastering. I know that people do that. I think that's crazy because

Speaker 4 (00:04:25):

Weird isn't it?

Speaker 3 (00:04:26):

It's insane, but if you've mixed in the box and something at mastering and there's like instead of fixing something at mastering maybe with a low end or you want to have the top end a little bit different, you just go back to the session and rebalance everything, reprint it all. I mean really it's a wonderful, I think it should be embraced. I think the

Speaker 4 (00:04:47):

Gripe

Speaker 3 (00:04:48):

About digital was yeah, whatever, 10, 20 years ago, it didn't really sound that good and plugins were kind of crappy a while ago, but the technology's changed. The equipment that we use, the converters and just all the things that have been associated with digital technology as we've been using it have been refined by the human ear to sort of be pleasing. And so there isn't analog and digital. It isn't one versus the other one being better than the other. They're just different and they're both really useful

Speaker 4 (00:05:21):

And I think you touched on something that for me has made all the difference in the world, which is if you approach it a whole different process and a whole different type of gear, basically you're going to get better results rather than trying to get your plugin 1176 to work. Exactly the real thing, A buddy of ours goes by UBK and makes some great plugins and great hardware pieces. He just made a distress emulation for his new plugin company called scifi, and his whole thing was to not really even try to make it exactly the real thing, but to just make it more what he kind of wishes a plugin version would do so that people wouldn't try to compare it to the real thing they would to, they would basically be forced to approach it. It's just a digital version that's kind of like it, but you have to approach it with a different mindset.

Speaker 3 (00:06:21):

That sounds great. Sounds really smart. Sounds like something I want to check out. Yeah, what do we all love? I mean, distress is probably the last great analog piece of compressor that's been like, I think the stressor is revolutionary and critical to recording as the 1176 was.

Speaker 2 (00:06:38):

Absolutely, totally.

Speaker 3 (00:06:39):

I mean, but what's so great about it? Well, what probably the two things, well, there's a few things, but the tack and release, how much variance you have in that, how fast you can get things to release and some of the detector circuit that you can high pass into it and that you can add in the harmonic distortion. I mean it's a really smart piece of gear and I think that's great that somebody has sort of taken that and used as inspiration for a plugin and not trying to copy it just but doing something. It's like, well, it's inspired by

Speaker 4 (00:07:15):

His take on what a stressor would be if he had invented it or whatever. And a lot of his gear is kind of like that and people love it. His other company is called Kush and if you're not familiar with it,

Speaker 3 (00:07:28):

Oh, I know that company. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 4 (00:07:29):

Yeah, they make great stuff. Yeah, scifi is something that I don't dunno if he started as a side business or just because it has a different mentality than Kush, but yeah, so he's doing some emulations with scifi.

Speaker 2 (00:07:43):

So I'm going to switch gears a little bit. I didn't know this before today, but apparently you're initial training was actually in recording workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio. Is that right?

Speaker 3 (00:07:53):

That's right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:07:54):

That's awesome. So can you speak a little bit about that and how much of a role has that really played into shaping your career?

Speaker 3 (00:08:01):

Well, I mean before I went there, I mean I was a hobbyist recording engineer. I guess I didn't even know I was a recording engineer. I kind of recorded to cassette just as a hobby since I was a kid.

Speaker 4 (00:08:13):

And when did you go there by the way?

Speaker 3 (00:08:16):

I went there in I believe in 1987,

Speaker 4 (00:08:20):

Long

Speaker 3 (00:08:20):

Time ago and I actually just visited there after I was with Joey in November out in LA. We were on a panel together on my way home to Nashville. I went there. I went back and visited the recording workshop because I've been talking to Jim Rosebrook, the director of the school, about coming and sort of visiting and speaking at the school and I went back and it's a small school. It's largely unchanged. I mean they've changed the technology since I was there obviously, but it's much the same. I mean before I went there I had never been in a real recording studio and I didn't really know what the process was like. It was pretty significant. I mean it is a very short program. I recommend it to people if they ask me where they should go to school. I don't think spending tens of thousands of dollars to go to

Speaker 2 (00:09:14):

For years,

Speaker 3 (00:09:15):

Years, it's such an on the job sort of thing. And it's so much about people skills too. I mean I honestly think that most people can learn to record. Everybody's got the capability in their computer to make an album if they just apply themself. So really you have to learn by experience In terms of the school, it's not very expensive. It's a very short program. I was there for seven weeks and it is sort of trial by fire. They just throw you in the deep end and you have to learn. I got out of there and I talked my way into an assistant engineer job and that's sort of kickstarted things. It sort of really opened the door for me.

Speaker 2 (00:09:53):

One of the things we talk about on here is there's different forms of education in this field of audio, and I personally think that and being self-motivated to sort of just figure it out, trial and error type of thing is one of the best ways to get good at doing this. And I just wanted to point out that that was a really important thing with you attending recording workshop and them giving you the opportunity to learn that way because you've got the more traditional sense of school full sail and others like that where I don't know if those are the best way to learn. I'm not trying to put those schools down or anything, but I just think that the way that I understand audio is kind of really my own thing that I've figured out by myself.

Speaker 4 (00:10:44):

Well, I think the length of the program has a lot to do with why it's a good way to go in my opinion, because basically it's like you just said, it gave you a jumpstart. It basically showed you what a pro environment is like and threw you in the deep end. And I mean that's basically all you really need from school in my opinion, is to learn what the standard is, familiarize yourself with the basics and then you're off any more than that. I feel you're just wasting time.

Speaker 3 (00:11:14):

Yeah, absolutely. And some of these programs where you go for these extended periods of time, folks are getting themselves so deep in debt that they get out of school and they're just so fatigued by the pursuit that's like something doesn't happen for them in the first year. They they've got to pay for this debt and they go a different direction. I think you're much better off learning from somebody else or going to the recording workshop that's a short program and kind of getting the basics and then spend the $10,000 on get yourself a Pro tools rig and a microphone and just start to figure it out and see if you can go help somebody else that knows what they're doing and sort of observe and learn from them. Really all it is is going to the recording workshop. I mean certainly I learned about signal flow and a lot of important things, but it was just that I was qualified enough to be in a studio and be able to help out and then learn and you just learn by doing, and like Joey said, it's just like you have to learn your own way because there's thousands of ways to make a record.

(00:12:20):

There's so many ways to put sounds together and make a combination. Now I think we'd all acknowledge that we great records, they all sort of have certain intrinsic qualities, but it doesn't necessarily mean that certain instruments have to function in the high frequency a certain way to have a certain type of excitement. There's lots of ways to think about that and put it together and sometimes space and the lack of instrumentation can be really exciting. It becomes focusing in on how to achieve doing something that people connect to emotionally because music is kind of a really spiritual thing and it's really about ideas and conveying ideas and creating theater really. So if

Speaker 2 (00:13:03):

You keep that in the forefront of your mind when you're making EQ decisions, for example, I think it makes you a better engineer or a better producer because we like to play hardball a little bit and call it the 80 20 rule, which is basically having this snare turned up 0.5 DB here and there as a mix note is kind of a waste of time because does that really convey the message any better or make the album more popular? Not really, no.

Speaker 5 (00:13:34):

Yeah, I kind of have a funny litmus test. I mean, obviously you can't take this verbatim, but apply the litmus that would my mom listen to this song? Would that mix note actually make her the song better? Yes or no? If not, it doesn't belong on the note.

Speaker 3 (00:13:49):

Right. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (00:13:50):

So now you've ended up here at the Blackbird. Are you at the Blackbird Studios right now?

Speaker 3 (00:13:56):

Yeah, I am actually. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:13:57):

That's awesome. So that's also a school, but also a studio that you mainly work out of, is that correct?

Speaker 3 (00:14:03):

That's true, yes. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:14:05):

So tell us a little bit more about how does that ever play a role? If you ever need an extra hand, do you grab a student? How does that work?

Speaker 3 (00:14:14):

No, no, I don't. I try to mean the sort of the policy here is because there's so many high profile artists and sessions here and you really want your privacy in the studio that the student body isn't supposed to interact with the clients. There's a building on the campus that is the learning lab, I guess we will call it, and then they book time just like everybody else in the rooms in the facility. So sometimes you kind of run into 'em in the hallways, but no, I try to, there's a lot of students and I don't interact with them often. Sometimes I will go and host a session for them or speak to them, but it's kind of a tricky business because I'm so accessible to here I could be to them. I try not to open that door too much because then I think I might be overwhelmed.

Speaker 4 (00:15:07):

Where do you get interns and assistant engineers from?

Speaker 3 (00:15:10):

Well, with me, the turnover, I mean I have gotten some interns from the academy, but it's a little bit more of a selective, I guess thing I would look to maybe the instructors or somebody for a recommendation if I needed somebody. A lot of times I get emails from people and I just go on a feeling. I've had people email me and I agree to meet them and have a conversation with 'em or a phone call. A lot of it has to do with, I mean the last person I hired was a friend of the family that moved here from Arizona. It just really depends because a lot of it for me is about people skills and just how it is to be around somebody. So there isn't really any particular method. I don't have a lot of turnover either. I try to keep a pretty consistent team. I think that that's helpful. I don't want to constantly be training somebody to help me, not really that much of a help. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (00:16:14):

Yeah. Well we definitely speak to what I feel to be the next generation of audio professionals on this show, so we definitely try to show them that there's a lot more to this than understanding how a compressor works and you just confirmed it right there. People skills being pleasant to be around in the studio because it's a creative environment. You don't want to have bad attitudes and things like that get in the way of the process.

Speaker 3 (00:16:46):

Absolutely. I mean, it's important certainly that someone understands, I mean, I want somebody that's going to be around to understand generally what a compressor does, but I'm not going to turn to them and say, Hey, can you set the compressor for me? It's like there's an engineer there, I'm going to do that. It's more about like, Hey, I mean this guitar pedal needs a battery or we need lyric sheets printed out, or Hey, can you get the lunch order together? A lot of silly things like that, but it's just like when you're an intern and you're around and you're helping with a process in small ways like that, it's not a small way. You're not on the front line. You're part of the support, but then the thing is you become part of the team and over time you're given more responsibility. It's like, Hey, can you take this session and make sure all the fades are good on this focal file because we need to consolidate this and send this to so-and-so.

(00:17:40):

It is like over time you get little jobs like that as you learn to trust somebody and you know that you can rely on them. So the benefit for that intern is watching the process happen and learning about the people skills and how people interact because it's really not that important in the beginning that you know how to EQ and compress something. You'll learn how to do that, and to me, it's all about people stuff. I mean, as a record producer and even as a mixer engineer, we're always trying to interpret someone's vision and trying to help them realize that that's not necessarily, that's a creative thing. You do it through technical means, but it's really about a creative conversation and sometimes the artist isn't going to tell you that they want 10 K turned up. They're going to say, it sounds dull or it's not very exciting, or I wish it was brighter or things like that. So you have to be able to communicate with people.

Speaker 4 (00:18:38):

I think you also said something that I think is important, and I know that I've experienced this with bad interns and I'm sure you have too, Joey, which is you mentioned the privacy issue that with high profile artists, the privacy is of utmost importance and I think that along with the people skills, a good intern needs to understand that whole game of how to not make a known artist feel weird or fanboyed or any of the above things that is going to ruin their vibe.

Speaker 3 (00:19:09):

Well, totally. I mean the studio should be a sacred place, and the thing is, even if it isn't a famous person or I mean soon to be famous or it doesn't matter, it's just like if you have a creative person, what you're trying to do is you're trying to create an opportunity for them and you're trying to create a place where they feel safe because nobody, I mean, how many times do we record a vocal and it's just one pass? It is just like where they have to figure it out sometimes and they have to sound bad, and making records is kind of a little bit of a slight of hand. It's a magic show and somebody's got to feel good and feel comfortable and uninhibited to be able to find their best, and if they feel like that there's bad vibes in the room or that someone else's vibe is making them sort of feel aware of their presence and not comfortable, then that's not going to work. I can't have that person around that. They totally endangered the whole process.

Speaker 2 (00:20:15):

You definitely want to have someone who's, for lack of a better term, blends in. I've definitely had situations where I think the artist performed differently based on who was around. They felt like they had to live up to their reputation or something like that, and that can be pretty weird experience, especially when you're the producer because now your job is to get this person out of the room or out of the building.

Speaker 3 (00:20:45):

Sometimes that could be a benefit like, well, I love and hate it when someone new comes into the studio and you're in the middle of working on something or you got a rough mix or it's like a track is like 75% done and you let them hear it or they hear it. You suddenly your own awareness, my own awareness of the way it sounds or what's going on with it changes because

(00:21:12):

I'm aware suddenly I'm thinking about what they're feeling or I'm vibing off of them. So it's a very interesting, there's a lot of social politics and just stuff that goes on in the studio that's really, really crazy, and you just have to have a can-do attitude. I mean, sometimes you have to play hardball and sometimes you have to challenge people and you have to have hard discussions. Sometimes you have to have arguments, but you always, if you want to be successful, you have to successful in arguing your point, you have to do it with respect. If you lose your shit and go nuclear on somebody, you're just not going to have a positive outcome. So you always have to be playing the game of keeping momentum and the spirits up even when things are tough.

Speaker 4 (00:22:02):

I think the whole cliche of the producer going nuclear on people, I think that's something that got dramatized in studio documentaries from past eras and nowadays that kind of stuff. It doesn't fly for musicians to act like rock stars from the seventies. It doesn't fly for managers to act like they're big time managers in the eighties, and it doesn't fly for producers to really act like Gordon Ramsey too much anymore. I don't think people have a lot less patience than they used to for that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:22:40):

Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about gear because you come from the school of analog and now you're embracing the school of digital and also melding the two together, but I'm curious about this. How often do you track on tape? Because I've never actually had the honor to do that?

Speaker 3 (00:23:00):

Well, I would say we probably still do it a couple times a year, but there it's really just about capturing mostly the basic tracks, which a lot of times are drums and basses, sometimes a guitar and occasionally some vocals will make it. It's really about, I mean, I like to try to record when I'm working with bands or just an artist where you have to bring session musicians in or not have to, but you get whatever. I try to record as a performance at least as a foundation, even if you only keep one element just because I feel like it informs the song making the record, but analog a lot of times they do it just because that's the experience the artist wants to have. I feel like at this point there's not really a specific advantage. I mean, the transient are different. When you record to analog, you get a little bit of a different sound.

(00:24:08):

It can be a little bit more pleasing in some ways, but I don't necessarily feel like it's better. Sometimes I choose it because I want the drums to have that softer transient feeling, or sometimes it's because the artists, that's the experience they want to have, but for me, I'm quite happy to just to go straight into the computer. I have, I don't know, maybe a year ago I bought a Burl mothership and I, it's a really great converter, so I enjoy that. I think the last record I made completely on tape in terms of recording process was the Dawes record that I did a few years ago. I did transfer once all the recording was done. I did transfer into Pro Tools and I mixed in a hybrid. I mixed from Pro tools in a hybrid situation. How

Speaker 5 (00:24:56):

Many ins and outs do you have on your mothership?

Speaker 3 (00:24:58):

It is 16 by 16.

Speaker 5 (00:25:01):

Oh, sweet. I'm running a 12 by 16 right now.

Speaker 3 (00:25:03):

They're fantastic. Sometimes I borrow or rent a card or two from a friend to expand it, but 16 by 16 is for my main inputs and outputs is enough for me. I also have on that rig, I have also an AVID IO that's 16 by 16, so it's a 32 input output pro tools rig, but it's like you kind of mix in stems or when I mix on my desk when I mix out to my desk, 16 outputs is plenty for me.

Speaker 4 (00:25:37):

When you track drums, how many inputs are you usually running?

Speaker 3 (00:25:43):

For me as an engineer, I'm somewhere between 12 and 20. I like to try to print as few tracks as possible with drums and use as few microphones as possible. Sometimes I have a lot of inputs just so I have options, so it's easy to, I might have four or five room mics up and I might combine a couple of them, or I might just choose one or two of them and not use necessarily the same exact room setup for every song on drums. I try to keep it minimal, but it just depends. Now the engineer that works for me a lot, Lowell, he cuts more tracks than I would cut, but I'm fine with that because we ended up making choices down the road. He would prefer, his preference is to kind of record more than you actually use. I kind of like to make the decisions before I even hit record and not have things to think about or just make the decision and move on.

Speaker 2 (00:26:35):

Yeah, we've touched on that a little bit and tried to, because I notice a lot of guys on our forums and stuff, they'll have this analysis paralysis where there's just way too many buttons and knobs that they can tweak all the way through the entire process, and they never get anything done, so I always try to impart on people that you should commit and just if you commit your drum compression and you find out that you hate it four days later, well, you're going to learn a lesson from that. Exactly.

Speaker 5 (00:27:08):

I mean, it happens all the time when you mix too. I mean, just take the current thing we're doing here. We have a service where we mix a song live called Nail the Mix, and we have an alternative rock song and everybody in the forums is like, oh, well, how come the Toms are printed stereo, and it's just like, who cares? Just mix the song. Yeah, totally. Grab EQ and go, come on.

Speaker 3 (00:27:27):

Yeah, I mean, hey, it's like when I've made Rock Records on 16 track when it was just analog. I might have three Tom mics and two overhead mics, but I'd print, I'd print all five to two tracks. I'd make the blend. I might put a little bit of light gating on the Toms and just balance it and go. I did a remix recently for somebody's song. It's a popular song that I've heard on the radio, not it sort of has a RetroSound to it, but when I got the files to do the remix, the drums were on one track, the drums were in mono. Now granted it was a simple part, but it's like that was it. That was what they recorded for the drums. They just mixed it all to mono and went with it and it's pretty great.

Speaker 4 (00:28:12):

That's awesome. Everything like overheads rooms, kicks, snare, everything on one mono track.

Speaker 3 (00:28:19):

It was on one track. Nice. They printed it the way they wanted it to sound, and I applaud them for that.

Speaker 5 (00:28:23):

That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (00:28:24):

Yeah, I mean, the thing is, look, if I got really stuck with it, what could I do? I could put in some kick and snare samples. I could put in some symbol wash if I needed it. I could put in Toms, I could add sim if that was something I needed to do. I know that if you make a mistake, you can fix it with eq. It's just like that's how you learn. Just like Joey said, you make that mistake once and it's like, well, okay, you learn from it. You're not going to learn by just giving yourself tons of options, unlimited choice. You're actually not going to get to a great result because you're spending too much time caught up in all these decisions instead of just being creative.

Speaker 5 (00:29:05):

You really have to begin with the end in mind and kind of know what you're getting into before you mix a track or produce a track and leaving infinite amount of decisions downstream for somebody else to decide isn't really conducive to the end product or creating something that's an emotional work of art that somebody's going to want to connect with.

Speaker 3 (00:29:22):

Absolutely. I mean, you guys all agree that as you become better mixers, you become better recording engineers. I know that's true for me.

Speaker 4 (00:29:29):

Oh, totally. Yes, a hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (00:29:31):

Yeah, so just take that. The decisions you end up making in a mix, well, where you turn microphones off, somebody sends you something, and I've been sent tracks where they have stereo overheads and they haven't spaced them really well and the drums kit sounds lopsided in it or whatever. It's just like, I just picked the one that sounds the best and put it in the middle, and so from that I've learned that a lot of times when I'm recording, it's just like I put one great overhead over the middle of the drum kit and then I mic the high hat, maybe I'll mic the ride symbol and then those spot miced symbols, high hats are my stereo image and I just have one solid overhead picture of the drum kit and that makes me happy.

Speaker 2 (00:30:19):

That's really cool, and I think this is something that's important for our audience to understand is that you can talk about all these advanced miking techniques and you can talk about parallel compression all day long, but can you hear what the drummer's playing? That's all that really matters, right?

Speaker 3 (00:30:36):

100%.

Speaker 2 (00:30:38):

Let's talk a little bit about your mixing workflow and how you handle recalls because in the analog realm, that used to be a big deal and I think a lot of guys switching the hybrid or even going completely in the box are starting to really benefit from that because it makes the workflow a lot more simple. Do you encounter anything? I know maybe a project that I would work on, maybe the most advanced thing that I would get asked to do is to maybe turn all the vocals up and maybe do an instrumental version, but I can imagine something like a Kings of Leon record. You might have to print base up, base down, vocals up, vocals down. Maybe they want 10 different versions of a song for some reason. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 3 (00:31:27):

Well, I'll answer the last question first on that stuff. I'm not someone that prints a lot of versions on the king stuff. It's like I would print a final mix. I would send them in my mixed reference. They might have a couple tweaks and then I'd print it, call it final, and then if there was a revision that wanted to come back after the final mix and I kind of recall the mix and do an alternate version, I don't really print a lot of base up, base down all the kind of variations. I do vocal versions, vocal up, vocal down, so five, 10 years ago, you just have to do, you just have to do recall notes. On the Kings of Leon record, I was mixing in a hybrid situation, and that's probably what I should probably talk about the most is sort of how I've mixed in the hybrid situation because now like I've said, I'm mixing all in the box and that's not very interesting to talk about because we all know that you just open the file back up and there it is.

(00:32:29):

What I learned over time in mixing is that even when I was mixing an all analog, you end up using your analog gear in very similar ways. It's like my 1176 when I'm using it on a vocal, I probably use it pretty much with the same settings every time. I might have to adjust the input or output, but the style of compression and those choices or kind of similar. And then when you get to using that stuff in a hybrid situation, after the fact in the computer, I can manage how much level I'm putting into the compressor, so I don't necessarily have to adjust the input. So what I got into doing is I would spend probably a couple days starting a record mixing. I'd spend a lot of time on the first song to figure out what my template was and get all my analog gear set up kind of the way that I felt like it was going to work, and to be honest, I wasn't changing stuff a lot.

(00:33:32):

You're kind of almost at that point optimizing the recording to hit the analog gear a certain way, and this is kind of a technique that like Chris Lord Algae or Michael Brower, a lot of these guys, it's what they're doing. It's just like I might change the level, the return level of my parallel compression. You're not doing drastic things, so once you get all the analog gear set up and the hybrid situation, then as you go through each song, all the adjustment is really in the computer and all the automation is in the computer. If you need to do automation post processing, then I would use an analog insert for my vocal chain because of course you don't want to automate into your compressor. I would use an analog insert and just I got over the idea that, oh, I'm converting it multiple times. It's like, well, who cares?

(00:34:23):

This is what I need to do. Just use a good converter and set it up. And then you can mix each song with basically the same template, analog template with a gear, and then you're just able to open the sessions and adjust things from there over time. Does the mix sound a little bit different because the analog stuff is changing, the values of things change and the gain drifts and all that kind of stuff, but it's close enough that for years that's how I worked. And then more recently, maybe two, three years ago, I started printing stems of stuff for a long time. I resisted stems. I kind of felt like if I'm printing stems, then I'm giving the label my intellectual property. They're always asking for stems. It's like they can basically take my stems and recreate the mix and they don't have to call me or pay me to do a recall.

(00:35:19):

So for a long time I was basically like, no, I'm not giving you stems. But then I realized, okay, stop being stubborn about this because if I print stems, then it's a much easier recall for me. And I realized because I had one main rig that I did all my mixing on that I couldn't do recall. I couldn't do a recall for somebody else if I was in the middle of making a mix for somebody because all the gear was set up different. So print the stems and then once I have the stems printed, I can pull it up on a different, I can pull it up on a native rig or my laptop and make the volume adjustments there. The tricky thing, the thing that I really had to work out about printing the stems and having it sound like my final mix is like, well, okay, so how do I deal with the mix bus compression? And so what I started using was a compressor that had a key input, a side chain input, and I would print an uncompressed mix that I would then feed to the side chain of the compressor.

Speaker 2 (00:36:26):

So it's always the same.

Speaker 3 (00:36:27):

So every track as I'm printing the base, the base stem is getting the same compression that would be happening for the mix. So every stem has the same compression going on to it, and so then when you kind of put it all together, I mean honestly it's so close, it's very usable, so that'll maybe that'll help somebody out there that really wants to learn and be in that hybrid analog environment. Is there anything else maybe could elaborate that?

Speaker 2 (00:37:00):

I mean a lot of that stuff that you just touched on, I never even thought about. Of course I'm not a big hybrid guy, but I think that's some really interesting ideas there, especially the key input.

Speaker 4 (00:37:12):

Yeah, that actually makes perfect sense. It's such a simple idea. I can't believe I've never thought of that before, but that solves the problem right there that,

Speaker 3 (00:37:22):

Well, honestly, it took me a long time to figure it out and then how to adjust the gain because the side chain input on my compressor, it's a mono input, and so figuring out what gain adjustments I needed to make, and actually when I got to the newest version of Pro Tools where, and part of it had to do with the pan law and the old version I was using because it used to be 2.5 and now it's three. I could just turn the mix down. Now I can just turn the mix down three DB summit to mono and send it to the side chain input and it's exactly the same.

Speaker 2 (00:38:00):

Pan law is really important. I think a lot of new guys overlook that as well.

Speaker 3 (00:38:05):

That makes me think of something that's just like, it's very important for us to know what things do technically, but never ever assume that because you have technical know-how or the way something should work, don't just assume that it's working that way. Listen, test it, and even if it is working correctly and it doesn't sound the way you think, it should make it sound the way you think it should not just be frustrated or accept it because of it's some technical thing. In the end, we have to forget all this technology stuff and just use our ears and work that way. Well,

Speaker 4 (00:38:50):

The thing is this gear is made by people and the descriptions of what the gear is supposed to do is they're also written by people. They're all written by people. They're all fallible and not completely accurate. So I tell people this all the time, don't, for instance, a great example is with a drum sampler software program like Superior Drummer or something. Don't just trust that it's going to spit everything out in phase all the samples out in phase with each other. Don't just trust that it's going to do that because you paid a lot of money for this. You need to go and check once you print everything. Don't just trust the machine. Totally.

Speaker 3 (00:39:30):

A hundred percent. And you know what the thing is phase on drums, it's a 50 50 proposition, and the thing is half the samples that you work with out of a sampler or whatever drum library, half of them, you got to check the phase. Just because it's a sample doesn't mean, doesn't mean the polarity is correct.

Speaker 2 (00:39:52):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:39:52):

And then there's another thing which I think I talk about too much, but I think everybody should consider what I call absolute polarity. It's just like sounds pushing the speaker as opposed to pulling the speaker. We all know the difference between if you've got two mics and if their phase is not in agreement, if it's like the polarities opposite, there's a serious canceling effect. But

(00:40:18):

If you just have one microphone on a source, is the interpretation of what the microphone doing? Is it articulating the speaker the right way? Is it pushing the speaker? Because if the kick drum, it's like if you're only listening to the kick drum, let's say if it's pulling the speaker, that's not the way it's supposed to work, and it sounds different than if it's pushing the speaker. And I think that that's something that people overlook and they need to, that's an engineering skill. It's like the phase switch is also a sonic choice. It's not just to make two things agree. It's a choice. That's something that I think everybody should spend because for me, for years, it wasn't until Richard Dodd said something to me about 10 or 15 years ago that it's a light bulb went off in my head and I was like, oh, I need to check this out. And it has been huge for me.

Speaker 4 (00:41:06):

So basically just finding the sweet spot for every microphone in relation to every source, it makes just as much difference as whether you're flipping the phase or not. You're

Speaker 2 (00:41:18):

Changing how it plays back in the room, which easy, I think it's funny. It's easy to forget that you're basically trying to make a, how can I word it? They played the music and now you're capturing it so that somebody else can play it back. It's really a very simple concept, but you're right.

Speaker 3 (00:41:41):

Well, I mean we're either creating for the first time, if you've recorded something direct and you using a plugin amplifier, you're creating what the listener here is. The first time it's been an acoustic event, but a lot of times if you're micing something, you're capturing an acoustic event and then you're representing it. And to me, there's three elements that we have in recording. There are the transducers and that includes the microphones and the speakers. There's the amplifiers and the way we manage sound, and that includes, and I would include passive circuits in that too, but eq, compression gain, all that stuff is basically it's amplifier. You're modifying current, and then you have the storage medium. Those are the only three elements there are in recording, and so you have to understand, the big thing to really understand is the transducers on how they work on the capture side and how they work on the reproduce side. I think that's something that should be thought about and considered more than it is.

Speaker 2 (00:42:48):

I definitely agree with you on the pushing thing and getting everyone on board to do polarity properly. I think that's definitely heavily ignored. I'm probably guilty of doing it myself.

Speaker 5 (00:43:02):

It's a common trend though. Everybody likes to skip over all the basics and fundamentals, which are actually the most important stuff to master, and they like to go grab all the super advanced techniques. It makes you feel better. Yeah, I'm doing this really advanced processing thing, but they screw up the polarity.

Speaker 3 (00:43:16):

Absolutely. You know what, if I'm having trouble EQing something because I hear something and I know how I want to EQ it, if I go and I start trying to EQ it and I'm not really getting the result I think I should, the first thing I do is then I go check the polarity because almost a hundred percent of the time when I have that sensation of I can't EQ this properly or the compressor's not reacting to it properly, it's because the polarity's wrong.

Speaker 2 (00:43:39):

Very interesting. Excellent tip. Love that. Joel, do you want to do this rapid fire section? Yeah,

Speaker 5 (00:43:44):

Absolutely. So Jaqui, we're going to go through a bunch of different instruments and processes and you can feel free to chime in with whatever you're comfortable sharing. So if you have some secret sauce or something that you think is off limits, feel free to omit it. But I'm just going to rapid fire off a bunch of stuff and feel free to tell us what you like and don't like on it.

Speaker 4 (00:44:03):

Yeah, just whatever comes to mind. Sounds good.

Speaker 5 (00:44:05):

Alright, so what, Mike and Pree for kick drum.

Speaker 2 (00:44:08):

This is all in the realm of American Rock, like an American Rock record, for example.

Speaker 3 (00:44:13):

Sure. Probably my favorite is a D 12 Neve 10 81, but then I mean, gosh, 4 21, re 20 D one 12 a FE 47, there's tons. Another thing is almost every good dynamic vocal microphone works good for kick and snare.

Speaker 2 (00:44:34):

Have you ever tried an SM seven on a kick drum?

Speaker 3 (00:44:36):

I have. I have.

Speaker 2 (00:44:37):

It's awesome, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (00:44:38):

Yeah, I mean you have to really find the sweet spot to get the low end, but yeah, I mean you don't have to EQ any articulation in,

Speaker 5 (00:44:46):

I like the beater side SM seven. It's really a cool sound.

Speaker 3 (00:44:51):

Absolutely. I love putting a mic on the batter side.

Speaker 5 (00:44:53):

Alright, so what microphone and pre for electric base using a base amp?

Speaker 3 (00:44:58):

Using a base amp? Yeah. Here I'm going to say neves again, like 10 70 threes. My favorite base amp mic is a U 47, so I realize it's not everybody has access to a U 47, but like a good tube mic that has a really fat response and that actually you're going to drive. I mean a base amp is loud, so it's going to actually start to overload the microphone. I love putting distortion on base, so it's just getting a little bit of extra hair and fuzz on the tube. Mic is great. My favorite bass tracking compressors are the old DBX one sixties with the VU meters and I think the universal audio emulations of those are pretty good.

Speaker 5 (00:45:39):

Sorry, which microphone for electric distorted guitar?

Speaker 3 (00:45:43):

Yeah, 57 if you I have access to a U 67, a Norman U 67. I like that.

Speaker 2 (00:45:50):

Ever use ribbons?

Speaker 3 (00:45:51):

Yep. I was just going to say the Roar 1 21 is a pretty good choice and there's an inexpensive mic called the fat head. I think that's what it's called. It's that's another good choice. Audio Technica makes some ribbons that can take a lot of sound pressure level that are good. Yeah, I really do like ribbon mics also. The buyer one 60 is a great ribbon mic for guitar.

Speaker 2 (00:46:13):

Do you ever find yourself doing an on axis dynamic and then an off axis ribbon mic or is there any special sort of miking techniques that you've discovered over the years that you're particularly fond of?

Speaker 3 (00:46:28):

Not especially. I like to mic if you've got multiple speakers in a cabinet or an amp, I like to put different microphones on them. The most important thing is you get them the same distance from the cones and I don't put the microphones right up on the speakers. I give a little bit of space just to let it breathe and the low end develop and so that you're not so specifically focused on a very small part of the speaker

(00:47:00):

To back it up just a little bit to get a little bit of life and space around the sound. I think the thing that people don't consider is that if you've got an amp in a booth, if you just put it up against the wall or in a corner, especially if it's an open back cabinet, you've got sound that's kind of flying out the back and hitting the wall and then coming back through the front of the speaker. And that's hitting the microphone too, so you're getting standing waves and cancellation. So the same importance that you put on placing where you put the drum kit in the room. I always even amplifiers in an ISO booth, I always just try and find the best spot. Sometimes I just pick 'em up and turn 'em around, move 'em around until I feel like that the sound is the clearest because then you're kind of in a good spot where you're not going to get frequencies building up or canceling in the microphones.

Speaker 4 (00:47:52):

Yeah, that makes sense. It makes a huge, huge difference. I think a lot of people, especially in heavier genres, don't understand how it would make a difference when you have a cabinet that's blaring loud and a microphone that's right up against it, how can it possibly make a difference? How is it picking up anything but just the signal that's coming right in from the speaker, but it makes a big difference how treated the room is and where you put it in the room. Absolutely. Well,

Speaker 3 (00:48:21):

Totally. I mean the thing is because it's all about low end, low ends, the hardest thing to get right in a recording and a mix and if you've got, this is what I think about is if you've got the microphone diaphragm in a place where there's a lot of low frequency building up, what's that low frequency going to be doing to the diaphragm and the microphone? It's going to be holding. Its still. So it's going to be, it's not only are you getting a weird frequency interaction that the microphone has to sort of interpret, but it's also you're going to get this sound pressure level and this compression sort of thing, acoustic thing happening that's going to be working against the diaphragm of the microphone. If the diaphragm of the microphone is being slowed down by low frequencies, then it's not going to be as compliant to the high frequencies.

(00:49:07):

And these are things to consider. It's the same thing of polarity that I'm talking about in your speakers. If you've got too much subsonic low frequency, that's not part of what you want to hear in the mix or that you're even hearing. The thing is, if the speaker is having to try to recreate 10 cycles while it's also trying to recreate 10,000 cycles, well it's got to do both. And to be able to do the 10 cycles, it's got to move slow. And so it's not going to be able to move as fast for the 10,000 cycles. You need to get to know your speakers, you need to make sure your speakers are in the right spot because all these things are things to think about and this is supposed to be rapid fire and I'm talking on and on and on. No, it's great.

Speaker 2 (00:49:52):

No, this is good because it's nice to know why you do that.

Speaker 3 (00:49:57):

Hit me with something else.

Speaker 5 (00:49:58):

Okay. Which chain would you run a gritty male vocalist through?

Speaker 3 (00:50:02):

Gritty male. Vocal through?

Speaker 5 (00:50:03):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:50:05):

As a record chain,

Speaker 5 (00:50:06):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:50:07):

Probably I'd probably go with my SM seven and an API or something that had some articulation. And then just really, vocals are so tricky. Sometimes if I go to a new studio where I've never been before and I don't really know the microphone locker that well, one of the first things I want to do is I want to have the vocalist sing on all the mics that I think I might possibly want to use for them and find the best possible mic for the voice. And then once I find the microphone, shoot out a bunch of microphone pres, and then once I have a recording of the voice with the microphone and pre that I want, then I'll audition all the compressors because the voice is the hardest thing to capture and sometimes the least likely thought of a microphone might be the best. So I want to make sure that I haven't actually put that microphone on my overhead or something. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:50:59):

Okay. What about, which microphones would you prefer for drum overheads in any mid-size room?

Speaker 3 (00:51:05):

Mid-size, size room four fourteens, Kohls, U 60 sevens, something like that. I'm not really a big fan of small diaphragm microphones as overheads because I mean, they're great if you want to just capture a symbol sound, but I want to capture the low frequency and the body of the kit as well. And sometimes using a Kohl's microphone, because it's a figure eight pattern, you're going to get a little bit of ambiance coming back on the backside of the mic. And then you can play with the proximity it is to the kit and how much ambiance you're getting.

Speaker 2 (00:51:42):

And would you compress those microphones or what's your compression take on those

Speaker 3 (00:51:50):

A little bit. I like to overheads. I usually give a little bit of 1176 style compression too, just really not like, so it's sitting on the sound the whole time, but if the Toms or the snare drum gets kind of just knocked back into down just a little bit, a couple DB or two just to kind of glue the sound together a little bit. Nothing very aggressive. The place that I use aggressive compression on drums is room mics. I try not to compress or overdo it too much on my close mics. It's really about tuning the drums well and getting a good placement snare drum. I compress through a distress and sometimes that'll get three or four DB of compression.

Speaker 5 (00:52:32):

Speaking of room mics, do you have a favorite set or several sets of room mics that you prefer?

Speaker 3 (00:52:37):

It depends on the room. I always love having ribbon mics. I like the a EAR 80 fours Kohl's mics. I like to put ribbon mics low to the ground, try to keep 'em away from symbols and down where the low end is. But I like to walk around a room and sort of find the spot where the room sort of really accentuates the snare drum nicely. And where I find that spot, I kind of make a judgment call, well, does it feel bright enough? And if it's not bright enough, then I'll use a bright microphone like a C 12 or a four 14. Or if it's like this is a good spot for the snare drum, but it's a little bit bright, then I might use a dynamic mic or a ribbon mic there. And then I find a spot for the kick drum and I kind of do it that way. I'm not a big stereo room mic guy. I like a lot of things in mono because I mix in stereo and recording with fewer microphones to give me so I don't get into spatial and phase issues is sort of my preference.

Speaker 2 (00:53:36):

That's really smart. Oddball question, how do you handle an organ?

Speaker 3 (00:53:39):

I what kind of organ?

Speaker 5 (00:53:44):

Can't answer a question with a question. No kidding.

Speaker 3 (00:53:47):

If it's a B three with a Leslie cabinet, I'll usually just mic the top. Usually the low frequency stuff is loud enough on the bottom, and unless you're making a record where the B three is like a feature instrument, you don't really need that low frequency stuff. You're really just looking for the tonal quality and the left and right image of the cabinet doing its thing. And then other than that, it just sort of depends a lot. Sometimes I'll put, if it's an old kind of key organ, like a keyboard, a farfisa, I'll put it through some pedals in an amp. I put witz through amps. I like to put things through amps. I mean I put amps in front of drums too. I'll put microphones, I'll put a microphone in the kick and send it through a guitar amp and then mic the guitar amp and sometimes put a tube screamer on it and roll all the high end off. So I get this really beefy, fuzzy kick drum that I can blend in with the real thing instead of kind of blowing it up after the fact. Because then I also kind of want that distorted, rude sound in the room too to kind of become part of the texture of the ambience.

Speaker 5 (00:54:54):

Sweet. That's pretty cool. Okay, and last but not least, do you have a favorite analog two bus chain to mix into?

Speaker 3 (00:55:03):

Yeah. I mean, a lot of times what I'll do is I have a EC eq, which is similar to A GML eq, and then I'll put that into my gymnastic obsidian compressor, which is like an SSL copy. But I've used NEV 2250 fours. Sometimes if I'm going to put EQ on a mix, which I always do, I want at least three or four bands where I feel like I have good frequency selections and I can either make the top and the high and low frequencies either shelf or peak, and I always EQ into my compression. But the thing I would suggest for everybody that's using an analog mix bus chain is balance your mix before you plug anything else in. If have whatever EQs you have available in the room and compressors, don't commit them until you make a balance of your mix and listen to it and kind of see what it needs.

(00:55:59):

Don't rely on the mix bus compression to do your mix for you, balance it and get a good mix. Use the compressor to glue your mix together and then once you have a balance EQ to take care of the things that are intrinsic in the recording because all recordings and records, some things are really focused in the low frequency. Some things are focused in the high frequency or mid frequency, and then as people have been recording stuff, if they've done a good job, it'll all hang together with the personality that it's supposed to have. And then you can get in there and if you're dealing with a record that's very mid rangey and everything is kind of glued together in the mid range, well then you kind of put a little smile face on it and you find the EQ in the room that will help you do that the best, and then the compressor that will help you glue things together. And then, so I always sort of start my mixes by balancing it, addressing what kind of overall EQ I want to do to the mix, to kind of give it some shape so that I'm not in there doing the same EQ on every individual element to give me that end equation. Then you can specialty eq, the elements within the mix to sort of fit into what your template is.

Speaker 2 (00:57:13):

That's like the top down mixing message. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:57:15):

Exactly. I guess, yeah, I mean,

Speaker 2 (00:57:17):

That's really cool. Yeah, I think that's a really good way to work, especially in a hybrid scenario, just my opinion.

Speaker 3 (00:57:25):

Definitely. And sometimes I use two eq. Sometimes I'll use an EQ that's really good for opening up the high end and then maybe some APIs. If I want a pretty decent boost in the top end around 12 K, then I don't mind bumping it up having the two DB of boost. Then it's just you got to play around. You got to figure out with what the tools you have available, how can they best serve you. I think it's a bad idea to always assume that you just set everything up the same way every time, and then that's the way it should be. You should learn how everything is useful and then apply it as needed.

Speaker 2 (00:58:11):

I think we're about to add a questions here, but I wanted to ask you one final thing unless the other guys have anything to ask.

Speaker 4 (00:58:17):

I think we've pretty much covered it. These answers have been great, by the way. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (00:58:23):

Oh, you're welcome. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (00:58:25):

What kind of advice would you give someone in 2016 who wants to be where you are?

Speaker 3 (00:58:31):

Well, I love what I do, so first of all, you have to love this because it takes a very long time. I mean, have I achieved many of my goals and dreams? Yes. I'm very thankful. I've been doing this a really long time and you have to stay. I've had to stay passionate and work hard. I mean, there are many times at points in my career where things weren't going well and I wasn't as successful as I am now, and I felt like quitting. I just had to decide that I was just going to keep showing up and keep working. It's not really work, but I was just going to keep applying myself and sticking to it and just sort of like self-examination like, well, why am I doing this? I'm doing this because I love this, not because I want to make a lot of money, so you have to have that attitude.

(00:59:20):

There aren't a lot of jobs out there for people starting out. There aren't a lot of studios where you can go get an internship and work your way up through the ranks to be the chief engineer. That stuff doesn't really exist so much anymore. There's a lot of small studios, a lot of do it yourselfers, buy a little bit of gear, get familiar with it, get good with it, be useful, be willing to record any kind of music. Anything that you can do that gets you in a studio or around music or musicians. I tell people in Nashville, because this is like a songwriter's town. If there's a young songwriter nobody knows about and you like their music, well go help 'em make their demos because that's you learning to produce. That's an easy situation for you to kind of get into and you to grow with somebody, and if you help them record a great song as a demo and they get a record deal, well, you may not get to go long for the ride, but you'll gain confidence and experience and people might look to you in the future to do things with.

(01:00:26):

You really just have to be a self-starter. I don't really know any other way. I mean, that's what I did. Nobody gave me a job. I just had to go and find bands and find work, and I did a lot of live sound too, and the thing is, you can't ever feel like that you know it all or that you've done it all. I'm constantly trying to learn new techniques and kind of keep up with technology and listen to new music and just be open. You just be open to be a co-creator with people. That's the best I can tell you.

Speaker 4 (01:00:59):

That's

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):

Awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:01:00):

I'm curious, how did you overcome those harder times? Could you go a little bit deeper into that? Because I think that that's the main I thing that trips people up is when they have years of a dry spell, for instance, things like that. I mean, it is kind of what separates the men from the boys, but I mean there's specific mechanisms that I think successful people have to that helps 'em get through that stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):

When I couldn't make enough money to support myself by working in music, I went and painted houses because I could go paint houses for three weeks and then if I got a gig, then I could just tell 'em. It's like, Hey, I'm not going to be here. It's like I did a low paying job where I had flexibility to bounce in and out because I really needed to put the focus on being able to be available to do what it is that I really wanted to do, and I couldn't buy a house till I was in my thirties because I spent all my money on gear. I slept on a mattress on the floor until I was, I don't know, 32 years old because I wasn't willing or didn't need to spend the money to have a real bed.

(01:02:19):

I wanted to have a pair of microphones or a compressor. I've put a lot of emphasis on having the tools and being valuable, being valuable as a person, as a creative person, but then also having equipment. This is such a do it yourself world, and it's a cottage industry world. If you don't have a microphone and a laptop and a way to record and mix, then how are you going to help people? How are you going to help yourself? You just have to make those sacrifices and you just have to stick to it, and I mean, I know that that doesn't mean that everybody's going to get to where they want to be and they're going to fulfill their dreams. It takes a lot of luck and you got to do it over and over again. The first mix I did on a record that went platinum, it didn't seal the deal for the rest of my career.

(01:03:09):

It opened a door for me. I had to go into that. I had to go through that door and do a good job again and keep working hard because of my success. I'm not entitled to anything. I don't feel entitled. I have to show up every day and work really hard and be motivated and a good person to be around. You got to be somebody that people want to be around because if you're kind of a jerk, then you're just leaving yourself out of a lot of opportunities and I really don't know. You just got to want it and not give up on it, and even if you don't get everything you desired out of it, make sure that's what you want to do because it's your journey. It's becomes your life, and that's really, you got to want it for your life.

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):

You definitely can't accomplish anything in this field with half measures, so you got to go all in or not at all. I kind of feel like,

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):

Yeah, and you can't have any regrets if it doesn't. It's like me sitting here now, it's just like I'm very pleased with the way things have gone, but if you asked me this question at some point over the last 28 years, I might've had a two or three year spell where I was very, very bummed and despondent and Is this ever going to turn around? Is this ever going to pay off? And I just, it's like, I didn't ever have a plan B.

Speaker 4 (01:04:31):

I feel like that's one of the most common threads I've heard from successful musicians and producers and engineers is they do it because they have to, and there's no thought of a plan B. It's just it is what it is. You're going to make it work for better or for worse.

Speaker 3 (01:04:48):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):

Well, thank you so much for being on this show and sharing your time with us. I think some of the stuff that you've said here has been eyeopening in a lot of different fronts, technical and how these kids are really going to take their career to the next level, and thank you for sharing that with us.

Speaker 3 (01:05:08):

Oh, my pleasure. It's an honor to be able to do this with you guys.

Speaker 4 (01:05:12):

Yeah, man. Thanks so much for coming on. It's been great talking to you. Yeah,

Speaker 5 (01:05:16):

Absolutely. We appreciate your time. Thanks,

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):

Yaki.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):

I appreciate you guys too.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):

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