RYAN “FLUFF” BRUCE: Quitting his corporate job, building an online brand, and overcoming social anxiety

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by STA Audio. Sta Audio creates zero compromise recording gear. That is light on the wallet only. The best components are used and each one goes through a rigorous testing process with one thing in mind, getting the best sound possible. Go to audio do com for more info. And now your hosts, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and

Speaker 2 (00:26):

Eyal Levi. Hey. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Joey Sturgis Forum podcast. And today with us, we have a great guest who I actually met for the first time at Namm. His name is Ryan Bruce, otherwise known as Fluff on YouTube. How you doing?

Speaker 3 (00:42):

What's going on, man?

Speaker 2 (00:43):

Thank you for joining us on the show today.

Speaker 3 (00:44):

Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:46):

And I'll just say, what's the, now I'm going to forget it. It's beards and something,

Speaker 3 (00:53):

What is it? Rift, beards and gear. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:55):

I love that. That's awesome. Roof,

Speaker 4 (00:56):

Spears and gear. That's manly.

Speaker 3 (01:00):

Well, when you're branding you want to get that catching title, so that seemed like the most appropriate and descriptive.

Speaker 2 (01:07):

Now that's something that we actually talk about because we have a lot of people who listen to this and I don't know if they really get the concept of branding.

Speaker 3 (01:18):

Oh, man.

Speaker 2 (01:18):

Or marketing.

Speaker 3 (01:20):

Right.

Speaker 2 (01:21):

Well, it's one

Speaker 4 (01:22):

Of those words that's just thrown around a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:24):

So what does it really mean? Anyway, but you have been fairly successful on YouTube and hopefully you can offer up a couple tips or some words of advice for people out there who are trying to do their own unique thing online.

Speaker 3 (01:42):

Yeah, uniformity I think is the key factor. Your username and your user handles all need to be the same across all platforms as much as possible. The Instagrams and the Twitters and the Facebooks and all that stuff. So when you're tagged in one thing and it gets pushed out to another, for example, the Instagram photo and they're also piping it out to Twitter, it's going to carry over to the same username. And I found this out the hard way when I think it was years and years ago, Zach Wild actually tagged me on something and the username was carried over to Twitter, but that wasn't my username anymore. I had changed it and I didn't get any traffic from it at all. Oh man. Yeah, I was like, oh man, I had the big epiphany there. So uniformity and choosing a correct name if that's what you want to do as far as branding a channel, you really got to decide what you want to do and then really, really just pound that concept and branding into the ground.

Speaker 2 (02:47):

Yeah, I think I've also noticed a lot of people who try to do too many things and they don't really focus on their, I would almost call it the motto or whatever,

Speaker 4 (02:57):

Like the core.

Speaker 2 (02:58):

Yeah, what is the core of what you do? And for me it's help people make great music and it's that simple. You got to get it defined and narrowed down to one sentence that only has five to eight words, and that's what everything you do goes back to that.

Speaker 3 (03:16):

Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (03:17):

I was going to say, would you agree with that? So

Speaker 3 (03:19):

Yes. Yeah, you can't spread yourself too thin, especially you can kind of change things up once you do have a larger audience or once you establish the audience, it's definitely much easier to slowly branch out. And I can only use myself as an example, but originally, believe it or not, the original motto for my stuff was less talk more gear. And I was really, really hardcore gear oriented and I went with that because I was really afraid to actually talk in front of the camera, believe it or not.

(03:54):

And I thought, oh, well I'm just going to tell everyone that I don't want to talk because I hate people that talk to the camera. And I kind of hid behind that for a few years and I did an FAQ in the hopes that it would lessen some of the questions I was getting at that time and people loved it even though I was terrible in front of the camera. So I just kind of dove into that. But I had already been around for several years when I started to branch out to do other stuff.

Speaker 4 (04:20):

So you just kind of filmed gear and talked about it but never appeared?

Speaker 3 (04:25):

No, I never talked about it. I did a strictly in the mix and then maybe for example, I mean at this time I was begging to have anything sent to me for the channel, so I would do an overdrive comparison and I would just simply do an in the mix. And then that was the video.

Speaker 4 (04:43):

Oh, okay. It

Speaker 3 (04:43):

Was real simple and the talking thing just kind of happened out of a necessity really. It is weird.

Speaker 4 (04:51):

Now you're comfortable with it though.

Speaker 3 (04:53):

You know what? It's helped me. I have a huge social anxiety, believe it or not, or I did at least for a long, long time. And the YouTube thing has really helped me kind of overcome that and that I'm not really, I'm afraid to be in the middle of a crowd anymore. I used to be.

Speaker 2 (05:08):

It's cool. It gives you the opportunity to practice. It's like

Speaker 3 (05:11):

It does,

Speaker 2 (05:12):

Even if there's no one there, you're just looking at a camera. You have the opportunity and a reason to actually speak. And I think the same thing was true for me coming up as a producer. Just having the opportunity to work on someone's song is what made me become good at working on someone's song. It wasn't like I just jumped in and was like, oh, I'm the best producer ever. It's like I probably was very horrible when I started. I don't want to remember those days, but just having the opportunity to try I think is important.

Speaker 3 (05:44):

Do you ever hear anything of yours that's really old and do you ever cringe?

Speaker 2 (05:51):

I dunno, I don't cringe per se. There's definitely some stuff where I'm like, oh, why did I do that? But I am pretty proud of my body of work though, I would say overall

Speaker 3 (06:02):

As you should be. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:03):

Yeah. Overall I think it turned out pretty good. But I think for example, the snare sound on Dear love that Prada record.

Speaker 3 (06:13):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (06:13):

Yeah, that's not the greatest ever.

Speaker 3 (06:16):

I see a lot of my old stuff. I'm just like, what was I thinking? Seriously? I would love to ask myself, what were you thinking

Speaker 4 (06:23):

As if you're a whole different person?

Speaker 3 (06:26):

Or I hear something and remember, oh man, I thought I had it figured out then with my PC and Logitech speakers.

Speaker 2 (06:36):

So share with us a few things that you've been working on. I know you've mentioned a few times on your socials and stuff that you have a band and you guys are doing some band stuff. So tell us a little bit about some of that.

Speaker 3 (06:50):

Yeah, I formed a band called Rest Repose with my buddy Jared Dines, and we've only been around since July, 2015 I think. And we did a five song EP and I had some songs laying around from the YouTube thing, but they weren't fully fleshed out songs. So we took those ideas and kind of fully fleshed them out as a band and added first sections and stuff like that. And we put out an EP called The Sleep City EP in mid-December, and that did really well. And we are currently planning a top secret West Coast tour this summer in July in fact, and it's going to be our first tour and we also kind of tracked a live in the studio EP with a few extra songs that have been written after the ep, and we'll be mixing that shortly. I got to find time for that, but hopefully that'll coincide with the tour in July. So just been doing that a lot band thing and mixing and YouTube stuff.

Speaker 4 (07:56):

Have you seen any gear lately that blows your mind? Anything new that you feel is game changing in any way or just kind of answering the question about a problem that's been around for a while? I mean, kind of like when the Kemper came out or something.

Speaker 3 (08:16):

Yeah, it's really rare when something is as game changing as the Kemper. I think for me personally, a lot of stuff I get hit up a lot by pedal companies that always want to tell me they have the most revolutionary new overdrive or something like that, or pickups. I'm so over.

Speaker 4 (08:37):

You're over the most revolutionary overdrive pedal. Oh

Speaker 3 (08:40):

My God, I'm over overdrive. Pedals and

Speaker 4 (08:43):

Pickups. How many times have you tried the most revolutionary over dry pedal?

Speaker 3 (08:48):

Just out of curiosity? Several hundred times to be exact. That's cool

Speaker 4 (08:52):

To get it better every time,

Speaker 3 (08:53):

Every single time it becomes closer and closer to the, it's

Speaker 4 (08:56):

Like the light bulb.

Speaker 3 (08:58):

Yes, exactly. That's exactly it. Yep. That's just like the original tube screener that came out in 79,

Speaker 4 (09:05):

But better

Speaker 3 (09:05):

But but switches. It has more switches and that's always good. I'm really digging the mini stuff. I love where technology is at to allow no real sacrifice of tone and sound from a guitar player standpoint. For example, the mini heads, like the PV 65 0 5 mini head is, I mean, really properly blew me away.

Speaker 4 (09:28):

Tell me about those. I heard about those. We have these chat rooms for our subscribers and I didn't go to Nam and I haven't been up on the latest amps and they were talking about these mini heads the other day and I didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. So what are these? Just like the normal heads, just small,

Speaker 3 (09:48):

But the circuits specifically for the 65 0 5 mini is much much closer to the original 51 50 in that it's almost an uncontrollable amount of aggression and it has the mid-range bark of the 65 oh fives, but it has just this real nastiness that the original 51 50 has. And I actually just recently put out a video comparing in a mix all three of them together, a B and cing them, and it hangs with the old school 51 50 and it's $400. So

Speaker 4 (10:25):

When by small do you mean that it's physically smaller and it's less wattage?

Speaker 3 (10:31):

Yeah, it's powered with EL 80 fours, which normally cannot come up with the low end that a six L six can, but PV actually added a resonance control, which no other lunchbox to my knowledge has. And so it's very physically, oh, I would say it's about the size of a Kemper, probably a little smaller than a Kemper powered head, something like that. And it's really, really good. Really good.

Speaker 4 (10:58):

Can you power a cab with it?

Speaker 3 (10:59):

Oh, absolutely. You can jam with a band with a four 12 all day long it, it's 20 watts.

Speaker 4 (11:04):

Okay, I see. That kind of blows my mind a little bit.

Speaker 3 (11:08):

It's really good.

Speaker 4 (11:10):

That's a good response to items like the ax effects and the Kemper that are super portable I think.

Speaker 3 (11:17):

And starting the band thing again, I got it originally, but really the practicality of the Kempers and the AxEx is I do get it. I think about those every single time I am huffing a four 12 cab into the back of the van or something like that. But there's always sacrifice. There's always pros and cons to everything and I don't know man, I just like two amps.

Speaker 4 (11:44):

So you used to work at Boeing?

Speaker 3 (11:46):

I did, yeah.

Speaker 4 (11:46):

Yeah, I'm pointing that out because we've had a few guests on who have gone from having a real job in the real world career, even to abandoning that and then making something of themselves in this alternate reality. And you've done that, so I just want to talk about that a little, if you don't mind. Sure,

Speaker 3 (12:10):

Sure. How

Speaker 4 (12:10):

Long did you work at Boeing? What did you do there? That's like a real person job.

Speaker 3 (12:14):

Yeah, I was there for nine years. I was a fourth generation Boeing employee. A member of my family has worked at Boeing since World War ii, and I started out as a mechanic. I was an a c certified professional auto mechanic 10 years before I went to Boeing in 2007 and I got into the quality side and I ended up being kind of a, not higher up, but I had my own cubicle and I approved some fixes. I would approve the fixes for engineering and it was a cool job, paid a lot of money and the transition came, it was always kind of planned, but it was a little sudden I had just started divorce proceedings with my then wife and then three weeks after that I was fired from Boeing. It's

Speaker 4 (13:07):

Funny how it all kind of goes together.

Speaker 3 (13:09):

So in the span of about a month, I lost my wife, my job and my medical insurance, and that was in July of last year.

Speaker 4 (13:17):

So no other option but to work with YouTube,

Speaker 3 (13:20):

I had no other option and Airbus

Speaker 4 (13:22):

Wasn't hiring.

Speaker 3 (13:26):

I have, if this all goes south, maybe I'll go over to Airbus, I dunno. But I had a buddy who kind of worked his way into Microsoft and then was just recently hired over at Sony on the audio side of things for video games. He messaged me and he said, man, sometimes the universe just pushes you into the pool and it's up to you to swim. And I was like, oh my God. That's incredible.

Speaker 2 (13:52):

Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine about that today. I was like, he wants to sing in a rock band, but he's really good at singing at over EDM and it's kind of a weird thing that just no one ever expected.

Speaker 3 (14:06):

That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (14:07):

And he is like, yeah, my band mates get mad at me for doing it, but I love doing it and stuff. And I was like, well, you know what? Sometimes life gives you a pivot point. It's not something that you necessarily set out to do, but you end up being really good at it. And I've learned to just embrace it. I've been pretty decent at producing records, but I feel like I'm a little bit better at this other stuff with the education things and the plugins and all that, and I've just learned to go with the flow. It kind of sucks that I might not be producing the newest of Mice and Men Record or something like that right now. But at the same time, I've got a lot going for me in terms of this other side of the industry. So

Speaker 5 (14:49):

I've

Speaker 2 (14:50):

Learned to embrace that, and so I think understanding that part of life is very important for sure,

Speaker 3 (14:56):

And I don't think I did until that particular time period. It was extremely tough and at that point I was like, okay, well I'm going to go do this thing that brings me joy because nothing else can possibly be taken from me. And from that I knew obviously if it was easy, everyone would be doing it and I knew it would be kind of a difficult start to make that large of a transition. I'm a homeowner, I have a newer car, I have a couple of dogs and I have a 14-year-old daughter and I have a lot of responsibility that you still have to keep up in the air and balance,

Speaker 4 (15:35):

So you've got a real adult life.

Speaker 3 (15:37):

And I was the stereotypical married family guy, going to work nine to five coming home and then watching MythBusters until we fall asleep guy for a long, long time. And it wasn't until I had sleep apnea surgery in 2010 where I kind of had all this energy and I kind of basically woke up and that was the huge turning point that happened for my cousin

Speaker 2 (16:03):

As well. He had sleep apnea, then he got surgery and just 180 his whole fucking life.

Speaker 3 (16:12):

Yes, that's what happens and it's an amazing experience, but that was not who my then wife married. I changed, I changed drastically and she was pursuing and still is pursuing very high level corporate aviation stuff and travels the world and all this stuff and I was not the guy that she married at all.

Speaker 2 (16:37):

Yeah, so you embraced that pivot point though. I mean I did kind of had no option I guess in some way.

Speaker 3 (16:42):

No, I had no option. So I'm the brand manager and artist relations guy for a company called Two Notes audio engineering as well, and I kind of had that as kind of, okay, my mortgage is paid so I can at least go full tilt in this YouTube thing and this audio thing, and I do mixing jobs on the side and for some other YouTubers and at first, the first couple of months, oh man, I was barely even able to afford a loaf of bread, but I knew if I stuck it out it would just grow just because of the amount of time I was putting into it and it did. The Hail Mary worked.

Speaker 4 (17:18):

How long did it take before you were, I mean it's obviously still growing, but how long did it take before you were out of panic mode?

Speaker 3 (17:29):

Probably almost six months, honestly. It was December and

Speaker 4 (17:34):

That's after How many years of buildup though?

Speaker 3 (17:37):

Five.

Speaker 4 (17:37):

Okay. See, most guys that we talk to who have made the transition say something similar. Maybe they were doing something for a year or two and then they quit their job or got fired or whatever. The transition point took place and then six to 18 months later, they were not in fear for their lives anymore.

Speaker 3 (18:04):

It's a weird frame of mind to be in on a daily basis where you wake up and you're like, oh my God, okay, I have to output for me, I have to output this many videos or do this many mixed gigs in order to pay the electric bill, and then I might have enough to buy a loaf of bread and a can of soup for the next two days, and that's where I was at. But you have to hurry up and be creative because you know what? If you don't go upstairs and you don't record that funny video or funny FAQ Monday, well then your living is done. So it's a really strange dichotomy and frame of mind to temporarily be in, but I think it was kind of necessary,

Speaker 4 (18:49):

Especially when you came from the corporate world.

Speaker 3 (18:52):

Every day you wake up going, oh my God, I should be stuck in traffic right now. I am really messing up my life. That's what your brain does. It's really weird.

Speaker 4 (19:02):

Was that a separate process to get over or are you still kind of

Speaker 3 (19:06):

Yeah, it was that and then that, if I'm honest, it completely derailed the grieving process for the divorce, which was a long time in coming nonetheless, but all of a sudden you have no time to sit there and just kind sit back and think about life and drink beer. You have to work. And I think it was only after that settled down where you could really start to evaluate yourself and your place in the world. For me personally anyway,

Speaker 2 (19:33):

I like that story. I mean, I think a lot of people, they feel like it's an uphill battle now, especially I guess in audio production and stuff. It's like everyone does everything. Every band has a guy that records and it's very saturated and competitive now. It wasn't like that when I started, so I do have a little bit of luck on my side, but what kind of advice do you think you could give just based on your experiences and stuff to people who feel that uphill battle? I mean, what is it do you think? What are a few things that got you through it?

Speaker 3 (20:13):

The love of it. It all starts with doing it for the love of it. Don't ever do anything and any of this, especially in the audio world and the music industry, don't ever do it for money or for fame or for large social media followings that will all come if you are simply passionate about what you are doing and love what you're doing on a day-to-day basis. A B, be prepared to do a massive ton of work for absolutely free for a long time. I get guys all the time that are writing me that want to be in a studio and like, oh, I graduated and I have this class and now I can be an engineer. And I'm like, well, it doesn't really work that way and you don't have to go to school now that's definitely going to help you on a technical level, but you have to have experience and you can't start charging for this kind of stuff unless you have the experience and you get that experience by doing it for free.

Speaker 4 (21:12):

I'd say it helps on a theoretical technical level,

Speaker 3 (21:15):

It does

Speaker 4 (21:16):

Not a real world technical level,

Speaker 3 (21:19):

No, but learning away around pro tools and learning how to hook up an outboard compressor or something like that, okay, fine. If that's what you want to go and spend your money on, who am I to say don't do that, but real world experience and really having a whole bunch of bad days to start having good days is necessary.

Speaker 4 (21:37):

And also learning what the 7% of pro tools that actually is important to know how to use means a lot more than learning a hundred percent of it and not knowing what to use and how.

Speaker 3 (21:52):

Right. Totally agree.

Speaker 4 (21:54):

So I see a lot of people spinning their wheels, but yeah, I think you're absolutely right that the practical experience side is in my opinion, everything

Speaker 3 (22:06):

It is. It is really everything and having the audio thing with the YouTube thing, all that allowed me to do is get more and more experience for free faster because you're obviously visible, so people are going to hit you up for this mix gig or can you amp these guitars or can I come over and track this or that for cheap? And so I think the first time I ever charged for a mix, I charged $30 for a song. Wow. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (22:41):

So that actually answers a question for a lot of our listeners. We have a lot of dudes who were wondering if they're too old or something like in their thirties or early forties or

Speaker 5 (22:56):

Something.

Speaker 4 (22:57):

Even late twenties. We have dudes who are asking if they're too old to do this, and it's like, no, not really. I mean, you're not 65, right? You're probably, I mean, so your story's a perfect example of, right.

Speaker 3 (23:15):

I'm 35, I turned 36 in November and I started doing this when I was 30, 29, 30. I just turned 30 I think, and five years ago I was literally trying to plug my guitar with a quarter inch to eighth inch adapter into my gateway pc.

Speaker 2 (23:35):

Yes,

Speaker 3 (23:37):

That was me.

Speaker 2 (23:38):

I started the same way

Speaker 4 (23:40):

I did that too.

Speaker 3 (23:42):

I think there's got to be a meme in here somewhere. I'm going to make one after we're done,

Speaker 4 (23:45):

Except I did it into a sound blaster 16, I don't know what

Speaker 3 (23:49):

Sound blaster for me.

Speaker 4 (23:51):

You had sound blaster

Speaker 3 (23:51):

Too, too. I had a sound blaster. Yeah, I did too,

Speaker 4 (23:53):

Guys. I did too.

Speaker 2 (23:55):

Something to that. Which

Speaker 4 (23:57):

Sound

Speaker 2 (23:57):

Blaster

Speaker 4 (23:58):

Did you

Speaker 3 (23:58):

Guys have? I don't remember.

Speaker 2 (24:00):

I had the EAS or EAX sound blaster thing.

Speaker 3 (24:05):

I don't remember what that

Speaker 2 (24:05):

Happened. I remember it was for video games mostly. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (24:08):

That's what mine was.

Speaker 2 (24:09):

It was,

Speaker 3 (24:10):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:11):

And my dad helped me make, he had a roll of cable, dude. Mine did too. He helped me make a really long cable that went from my bedroom all the way to the basement so that I could put a microphone down there. And so what I would do is I'd go all the way upstairs. It was a three floor thing, so I'd go all the way upstairs, hit record, then run all the way down into the basement and then play my drums with nothing else. I wasn't listening to anything. I was just listening to myself play the drums by myself. That's awesome. Then run back upstairs, hit stop, and then try to play guitar over top of it and make sense of what I played on the drums, and I would always play, I'd play 15 to 20 minutes of just all kinds of drum beats and things, and then just try to make a song out of it and I wasn't. That's amazing. Yeah. I had no structure to my approach.

Speaker 3 (25:06):

That's amazing. I essentially did the same thing with guitar. I actually originally tried to record at home back in 1995 ish, had a VHS tape from a band called Filter, and they had a VHS tape called The Phenomenology, and it was basically their tour of the short bus record, their first record, and they have these incredibly compact and mobile recording rigs, which consisted of two refrigerator sized racks of a DAP machines and all this stuff, and I thought, that is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I want to try that. And quickly discovered in 1995 that there was no real home recording option at all for a 15-year-old kid to Ford Anyway, and that was the first time I ever tried that, and I used to do the same thing. I would try to record stuff, so I would record with the microphone straight into the PC and then randomly give friends these awful tapes of just this noise. I don't know why I did that.

Speaker 2 (26:06):

No, that's great. I remember I would have people come over and we would make joke songs. That was always the perfect excuse to record. It was like if it turned out bad, it didn't matter.

Speaker 3 (26:20):

But if it turned out great, it was brilliant.

Speaker 2 (26:22):

Yes. And you would talk about it at school and all that. That's amazing. That's interesting to hear that a lot of us started in the same way, and I think the curiosity to experiment and find new sounds and new ways of getting sounds is an important role in this as well. I mean, otherwise, what interest level is there? It's not like you're going to build a massive amount of wealth out of it or anything like that. No.

Speaker 4 (26:54):

Well, the one difference is my dad didn't build me any cables. I don't think that he understood the concept of electricity and music working together for, I still think he struggles with that idea. So yeah, I got no help in that area. Damn it. But I do remember that back then I was definitely doing whatever I could to try to generate sounds and figure out how to make them happen. No tutorials, no help, nothing

Speaker 3 (27:24):

Flying blind.

Speaker 4 (27:25):

Yeah. I think about when I try to learn something now and literally I type it into Google or I download the manual to a piece of gear or something, right? If I want to remember something that a friend of mine does, I'll just look up something they did on video or what they said on a podcast we recorded or what they said on Creative Live or who knows any wide range of this shit that's available now, and I can learn it in five to 10 minutes and be on my way. Whereas back then it was literally flying blind, like you said. And I think that even though the information is out there now, the curiosity that it takes to get good when you're flying blind is equally as important. Now I feel like the people who harness that are the ones who are going to get ahead, especially now that it's so saturated and so easy. It's so easy to get at least mediocre now.

Speaker 3 (28:28):

That's absolutely right. The flying blind thing, when I chose to get back into the audio thing, I had a little bit of experience in video editing. I briefly lived in California and recorded a record in the Sound City facility back in 2005 with my old band and to pay for studio time. I professionally edited adult movies, and I figured

Speaker 4 (28:54):

That's an awesome job.

Speaker 3 (28:56):

It was pretty cool. I figured, well, it can't be that much different from video. It's just wave forms instead of video.

Speaker 4 (29:05):

Did you get to edit any of that super awesome porn music?

Speaker 3 (29:08):

Yeah, I was in charge of all that stuff. Yeah, absolutely. This is back in the days of the DV tapes, the mini DV tapes, and I worked for Red Light District who put out all the celebrity sex tapes and stuff. That's

Speaker 4 (29:21):

Who I worked for. You helped ruin lives.

Speaker 3 (29:24):

I did. I did one night. Awesome. I didn't edit it, but one night in Paris had just come out at the time and they were making huge amounts of money, and we would go over to David's house who owns Red Light and Leonardo DiCaprio would be playing basketball every Wednesday. It was bizarre. That is bizarre. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:45):

And you were working at Boeing at the same time?

Speaker 3 (29:47):

No, no. This is before Boeing. This is two

Speaker 4 (29:49):

Years before

Speaker 3 (29:50):

I started at Boeing.

Speaker 4 (29:51):

Okay.

Speaker 3 (29:51):

That was my original.

Speaker 4 (29:52):

Did you put that on your resume?

Speaker 3 (29:54):

I did not put that on my resume, and I don't really often talk about that part because especially well on the channel, at least because my little nephew even watches my stuff and I get letters from really young people, so I'm

Speaker 4 (30:10):

Always careful our audience will forgive you.

Speaker 3 (30:11):

That's cool. Okay. This is the boys club, so we can

Speaker 4 (30:15):

Basically, yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:16):

Yeah. This is Vegas, so I figured it would be similar to that. So when I started, I spent a solid year and a half, two years on Reaper, just kind of wood shedding, and I had no idea plugins even existed. I thought to get these plugins that people were talking about, you had to get Pro tools. That's how naive I was. And I just used all the stock plugins in Reaper to the best I could for years before ever buying a plugin, which sounds hilarious now, but I had no idea.

Speaker 4 (30:48):

No, that sounds smart, unintentionally. I wish a lot of people did that. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (30:54):

That's what I was going to say. A lot of people, they fixate on one thing that they don't have. Oh, if I had just that ozone plugin, my mixes would sound better.

Speaker 3 (31:09):

Nope. Nope.

Speaker 2 (31:10):

That that's one of the things that we teach is like you don't need a bunch of very expensive plugins to get this done.

Speaker 3 (31:18):

Nope. You only need JST plugins only.

Speaker 4 (31:21):

Now, I will say this one thing though, one disclaimer, because I feel like people misunderstand this. We always say that ears before gear and stuff, and it's 99% of the time true. But I did a mixed crit for somebody yesterday where they're trying to do a metal song and they were using the logic stock guitar sims and the Logic stock drum instrument and then pitch shifting a bass down.

Speaker 3 (31:51):

Oh,

Speaker 4 (31:51):

And yeah, so in that case, you're probably not going to get the result you're looking for almost no matter what you do, unless you get really, really, really creative. I guess really

Speaker 2 (32:04):

At a certain level though, it's about tools, right? It's about you can't really, I mean, I'm sure you could figure out how to use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail, but if you tried to build a whole house that way, it would just suck.

Speaker 3 (32:18):

That is a great analogy, by the way.

Speaker 4 (32:20):

Well, I mean, I showed him some how he can totally change his complete approach to this for under a hundred bucks. So I mean, it's definitely not fixating on ozone, which is a thousand dollars plugin, and thinking that that's what's going to make the difference. I'm just talking about some very basic tools. I mean, kind of like the same way that if you want to record a Guitar amp, you don't have to go buy a Bogner ecstasy to be able to record guitars. Well, you can get a 51 50. Just don't mic up a crate and think it's going to sound good.

Speaker 3 (32:56):

And you do need an interface.

Speaker 4 (32:58):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (32:59):

Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:59):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (33:01):

I had to laugh when it was, several people on the Facebook group are asking, okay, I don't have a hundred dollars for a Reamp box, but will this work? I'm like, no, you have to have a reamp box. Impedance is important, kids. Well, I just want to go straight out of the speaker out of my interface. I'm like, no, that will not work.

Speaker 2 (33:22):

Yeah, you got to have the right tools, at least.

Speaker 3 (33:26):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (33:27):

And I think you got to spend a little bit of money you could get by

Speaker 3 (33:31):

A little bit. Goes a really long way though.

Speaker 2 (33:33):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (33:34):

For sure.

Speaker 4 (33:34):

Well, that's why we make these videos and we do these episodes about smart ways to spend your money because while there is a minimum investment to this all, you need to have a computer that's going to be able to run the tracks. You need to have a DAW. You could get a cheap DAW, but you need a DAW, at least one that can perform tempo changes. And so don't be getting Mixcraft or something, or don't try to do this on GarageBand Reaper. I mean, Reaper can do that, right? Oh,

Speaker 5 (34:07):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (34:08):

Yeah, of course. Yeah. That's what I'm saying is I know that some people make fun of Reaper, but Reaper's perfectly okay.

Speaker 3 (34:14):

Oh man. Yes it is.

Speaker 4 (34:16):

There's nothing wrong with it. I just make fun of the skins. But no, there's nothing actually wrong with Reaper and it's perfectly fine.

Speaker 5 (34:26):

There

Speaker 4 (34:26):

Is a minimum investment to all this, but it's really not that much if you think about it. But whenever people ask for a solution like that, how can I reamp and I give them the solution and they don't want to hear the solution? That reminds me of this Sean Connery quote that I'm not going to repeat, but I'll show it to you later. I'll just say that. He says, and you tell it to them again and they don't want to hear it again. I just kind of feel like you kind of give them the noose to hang themselves with because they'll figure it out. If they try to reamp out of the line out into the end of the Guitar Amp

Speaker 3 (35:08):

Or

Speaker 4 (35:08):

Something like that, they're going to figure it out real fast that it's not going to work. Right. It's going to sound like total shit.

Speaker 3 (35:14):

Yes, it will.

Speaker 4 (35:15):

So sometimes I feel like you can only push the right idea on people for so long until they actually go and try it and see why you've been saying this the whole time. It's the same thing with room acoustics, things like that, not mixing in headphones, those kinds of things.

Speaker 3 (35:35):

I was that guy.

Speaker 4 (35:37):

Lots of people are that guy. I just did a mix grip for somebody who mixed one of our nail, the mixed songs, all in earbuds, and I could tell that he had some talent, but the mix was obviously completely imbalanced, and it took a few minutes, but we deduced it. Well, I deduced that he was using earbuds apple earbuds.

Speaker 3 (35:58):

Oh, man.

Speaker 4 (36:00):

I don't mean sure in your monitors. I mean,

Speaker 3 (36:02):

I was going to say

Speaker 4 (36:03):

The kind that come with your phone, and it's like, well, on some level I wonder why someone would even submit a mix that was mixed that way. But on the other hand, maybe what they need is to mix it like that and realize and then get the feedback or realize that it's just not going to work that way. And then after that, try it with monitors and be like, oh,

Speaker 3 (36:29):

Okay, yeah, that was me. I'm so stubborn. I have to figure it out for myself. It's really always really hard for me. Not necessarily now, but when I was first starting out, I was hellbent on just doing it the hard way. I don't know why

Speaker 2 (36:47):

It was. I like that though. I think sometimes that attitude puts you in the right state of mind to really accomplish these things. And I think we're a little bit cut from that same thing because we take an approach, similar approach where it's like, oh, we need to learn how advertising works. So here we go. Let's dive in.

Speaker 3 (37:12):

Just learn, roll up your sleeves and get dirty.

Speaker 2 (37:15):

Yeah, love that.

Speaker 3 (37:16):

Yeah, I live by it.

Speaker 4 (37:18):

I'm going to try to make a part of a living off of a podcast. Cool. Let, let's do it.

Speaker 2 (37:27):

Yeah.

Speaker 4 (37:29):

That's awesome. Yeah, it's the same kind of mentality. The way I've seen my career, even though I've had various pivot points, is that everything I've ever made money off of has been completely unrealistic and something where you just have to throw yourself in and there's no real rule book for it. No. Yeah, there's no real rule book for what we're doing online or for production or for being in a band or anything like that. But I've known enough people over the years who have done very well with all of the above to know that while there isn't a rule book, there's some shared traits, I guess,

(38:11):

Or characteristics between the people who make it work. And I think that one of those shared characteristics as people vary wildly in their character and personalities and all that. But one thing that I've noticed between just about every single person who's ever done well at this is that curiosity and the stubbornness of not letting anything really get in their way when they want to do something. So on a very small level, if they want to learn how to reamp, they're going to learn how to reamp whether or not they have a reamp box there or not. If that leads them to buying a reamp box, it will, but they're going to figure it out either way.

Speaker 3 (38:54):

Yes, they will. Right? Yeah. That was me. I mean, hell, I sacrificed my marriage for all this stuff. So if you lock into something, just do it. And it's okay if you tell people, no, I'm going to do it my way. Thanks. You'll be back.

Speaker 4 (39:13):

I've noticed in romantic comedies, they'll flip that script sometimes where it's encouraged to maybe give up what it is you want to do for a marriage or something. And I feel like that doesn't work in real world.

Speaker 3 (39:28):

No,

Speaker 4 (39:29):

It leads to misery.

Speaker 3 (39:31):

It does lead to misery. It really does. And man, yeah, I was miserable for a really long time.

Speaker 4 (39:39):

You don't seem miserable now.

Speaker 3 (39:40):

Oh, no. The irony is I'm now doing what me and my now ex-wife used to always fantasize about me doing while we were still married. It's so weird how everything flipped over the course of just a couple of weeks, and I suddenly didn't have my 10 year very nice paying job with VIP or a 401k and paid medical insurance to this. And it happens fast. It happens real

Speaker 4 (40:12):

Fast. Well, one other characteristic I've seen with people who tend to make this work is that they have to make it work. Whether that's real or just perceived meaning it's real. If you think that's real, it's real. Because if you think that's real, then you're going to fuck up the other things in your life you could be doing for this. If you think that you have to make this work, then you're going to subconsciously sabotage everything else anyways. So whether it's real or not, I guess whether it's real or perceived, I think it's real, if that makes sense. Everyone I've known who's made this work doesn't really see another option.

Speaker 3 (40:57):

That's absolutely right.

Speaker 4 (40:58):

Which is why I think it's important also to maintain that flexibility that this sounds kind of contradictory, right? No other option, but maintain flexibility. But that flexibility that we were talking about earlier about being open to pivot points, I think is super important while also seeing feeling that there's no other option besides I guess this general line of work going to make it happen no matter what, whether it's

Speaker 3 (41:26):

Doing

Speaker 4 (41:27):

This job or that job or that job going to make it happen.

Speaker 3 (41:30):

Yeah. The perfect example being the plugin thing with the JST stuff. I mean, wow, you guys have really, that has grown into a proper thing, and yeah,

Speaker 2 (41:41):

Thanks.

Speaker 3 (41:42):

That was Bravo. Bravo, man.

Speaker 2 (41:45):

Thank you very much. Never. It was one of those things I never set out to make it. It was a hobby slash side business, but now it legitimately pays for my bills, and

Speaker 3 (42:00):

That's incredible.

Speaker 2 (42:02):

And I think discovering, I've been on this path, and I think it kind of started somewhere around when we started this podcast, which is where I really figured out what I'm here to do, what my point purpose is, I guess on earth, is to help people with music. And so once that locked in and made sense with everything that I'd ever done, plus all the things that I was planning to do, I was like, ah, Eureka, it all makes sense. And so yeah, I've been very fortunate that it's actually working, and I'm very grateful to be able to help people in so many different ways, and this is one of them. And bringing people like you on the show and sort of exposing your story and building some advice off of that, I think you're helping us do that. And you're doing the same thing for others.

Speaker 3 (42:58):

That's all I wanted to do too. I set out to just educate and help people. It's all related, man.

Speaker 2 (43:05):

It really is so great to have you on here. Thanks, man. Thanks for spending some time with us. And I guess if you want people to find you online, which isn't very hard, but where would you want to point people if they wanted to find you online?

Speaker 3 (43:21):

They can just go to YouTube and search Fluff and they'll find the channel or everything of mine is Rifs and Beards username and the address on Facebook slash and beards YouTube. They don't allow you to change it. So that's still Fluff 1 9 1, but I wish I would've chosen a different channel name.

Speaker 2 (43:44):

That's great, man. And the band name is Rest, what

Speaker 3 (43:48):

Is it? Yeah, rest Repose with a comma.

Speaker 2 (43:50):

Got it. Rest Repose. You guys can search that on Facebook and find that very easily.

Speaker 3 (43:54):

Very easily.

Speaker 2 (43:56):

Yeah. So thanks a lot, man, and congrats on everything that you have going for you. And also, I just want to mention you guys listening here, check out the two notes stuff, really awesome stuff that they're making over there. They've got some cab simulators that I was checking out at Nam. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, just real quick?

Speaker 3 (44:14):

Yeah. The cab simulators and basically start with a single rack version of called the Torpedo Live. It's the torpedo series, and there's also Torpedo Studio and growing in popularity. It's a hardware version of an impulse loader digital impulse loader, and you can hook your tube amp up directly into it and then go right out to the front of the house with no cabinet needed. Gera has been touring with our stuff for years, so if you've seen Gera Live in the last two years, you've heard two notes. It's been pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (44:41):

And they sound great. You've heard only two notes coming out,

Speaker 3 (44:45):

But they're two good notes. They're very good notes along with the Harmonic, raking.

Speaker 4 (44:51):

Yeah, RA's notes are awesome.

Speaker 3 (44:53):

Yes, they are.

Speaker 4 (44:54):

Maybe you could describe for people how that's useful also in a recording setting.

Speaker 3 (44:58):

I use it, man. I use it probably too much. I haven't micd the cab in quite a while, but for example, with the Torpedo studio, you can sit and you can hook it up via USB to your computer and you can move around the virtual mics on your cabinet, and I can be amping right into the head and in real time just kind of move the mic around or mics around and get a tone in the mix, reamp it, give it a pass, and then see what's going on and then quickly change it. And I can do that silently. So if you're in an apartment or a place where volume is an issue, it's definitely the way to go.

Speaker 4 (45:33):

Can you enter in your own irs?

Speaker 3 (45:36):

Yes, you can can load third party IRS waves into it all day long,

Speaker 4 (45:40):

And that's actually really, really amazing.

Speaker 3 (45:46):

I used this stuff before I started working for them, and that's kind of how I got to work with them or work for them, is I checked out a torpedo live and did a capture of a very old rare Marshall Cab that Fastback Studios has up in Shoreline as one of their cabinet models that you can use and just kind of grew from there. Really wonderful people at two notes.

Speaker 4 (46:08):

That sounds like a great evolution on what I used to use. I used to have a polymer back in. I used to tour with one like 10 years ago, and sound guys loved me because they didn't have to mic my shit, but I still had real amps.

Speaker 3 (46:28):

And

Speaker 4 (46:28):

Then I guess people also started using ISO cabs, but those never really sounded right.

Speaker 3 (46:33):

I agree. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (46:33):

So yeah, this is such a great evolution.

Speaker 3 (46:36):

Yeah, I think going back to your original question, yeah, the two note stuff has also completely blown me away. Two notes has only been around for about five years or so at most, so we're still a small little company.

Speaker 4 (46:49):

Yeah. But great reputation.

Speaker 3 (46:52):

Thank you.

Speaker 4 (46:52):

Yeah, everything I've heard about it is great. And I know from, I guess using cab simulators back in the day, how useful they can be, so I just figured that by now they're so much better than what I was using.

Speaker 3 (47:09):

Oh man. And we also have a plugin version of just the cab part where you can add up to four cabs at once. It's called The Wall Sound, that's free to download from the website, and I think it comes with five cabs. Thanks again, man. Dude, thank you so much. We'll be talking to you shortly. Sorry man. The

Speaker 1 (47:27):

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