Zack Ohren: Composing for Nintendo 64, Studio Horror Stories, and Producing Death Metal

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by the 2017 URM Summit, a once in a lifetime chance to spend four days with the next generation of audio professionals and special guests, including Andrew Wade, Kane Churko, Billy Decker, fluff, Brian Hood, and many more. The inspiration, ideas and friendship you'll get here are the things that you'll look back on as inflection points in your life. Learn [email protected]. The URM podcast is also brought to you by heirloom microphones. Heirloom microphones are high-end condenser microphones with something that has never been seen in the microphone industry, a triangular membrane with our patented membranes and our tailored phase linear electronics. Your recording and live experience will never be the same heirloom. Our microphones will help you discover clarity. Go to E-H-R-L-U-N-D SE for more info, and now your hosts,

Speaker 2 (00:01:04):

Joel Wanasek And Eyal Levi. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. I'm Eyal Levi. With me is co-host Joel Wanasek. Joey Sturgis is on Vacation Living Life.

Speaker 3 (00:01:15):

I'm about to go do that. I can't wait.

Speaker 2 (00:01:17):

Yeah, I'll do that sometime. I don't know. It's been about a year and a half. I'm due, but I can't bring myself to do it yet, but I know that you guys won't give me shit when it's my turn.

Speaker 3 (00:01:27):

Yeah, go ahead. Take a long time because I'm going for two months.

Speaker 2 (00:01:30):

It's really kind of amazing to me how in certain societies that's totally cool. Swedish Society is totally cool to go on vacation for six weeks and here it's like you better be cool with two weeks loser.

Speaker 4 (00:01:46):

Well, yeah, it's paid too. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:01:49):

That's the most amazing part. By the way, since we're already talking, I'm just going to go ahead and introduce our guest. Zach oen, known for his amazing work with bands like All Shall Parish, blood Runs Black, Chelsea Gran Ian, brain, devil Suffocation, Fallujah, decre, birth, on and on and on. I've known about him for quite a while and you guys have requested him, so here we are. Alright, let's keep talking about vacation. Fuck recording Indeed. Yeah, but the thing is there, it's paid, but we are not going to keep getting paid.

Speaker 3 (00:02:19):

Yeah, I mean it's a trade off. Of course, if you take a bunch of vacation, your whole entire economy loses predictivity, but you have less quality of life in America. We just work ourselves to death. It is what it is. I married a Russian, so I've adopted a little bit of that mentality in terms of just taking vacation and trying to get away from work for at least a month every year because you need it. It's just so positive and healthy for creativity. Your brain, you're inspired and you're just much better person to be around, so I think it's a good thing to do.

Speaker 2 (00:02:49):

I completely agree. When I was recording bands, I made a point of taking vacations all the time, maybe four or five times a year

Speaker 3 (00:02:59):

During the session.

Speaker 2 (00:03:02):

Actually. I have done that, but I've done that not because I couldn't take it. I did that because it was planned before the session was planned and I let the band know about it. It wasn't like a five week vacation. It was like a weekend trip or something that I wasn't going to cancel over a bunch of losers. Yeah, I mean if you had a cruise booked, for instance, for a year, and then a record came in, it's like, well, what am I not going to take these four days that are already paid for or something?

Speaker 3 (00:03:36):

Obviously cancel vacation and just edit drums the whole time. It's a much better thing, especially if it's an extreme band. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:03:42):

What you got to do is get a drum editing system that you could just bring with you everywhere and never stop drum editing.

Speaker 2 (00:03:48):

Yeah, totally. Totally ruin your vacations.

Speaker 4 (00:03:51):

Exactly. So

Speaker 2 (00:03:52):

How much time off do you take? Do you work seven days a week?

Speaker 4 (00:03:55):

Me, that's a great, see, I would say that I have off time all the time these days. I'm on and off. I'm doing half my work out of my home studio these days, I'd say. But that said, I'm never actually on vacation at any point. It feels like, because there's always some lingering project I'm working on. I can't remember a time in my life where I wasn't actively working on something and that is good and bad for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:04:27):

Well, what's the definition of actively working on something? Does that mean that the project's just not done? What does it mean that there's stuff happening now, now, now go, go, go.

Speaker 4 (00:04:36):

Yeah. It means I have people waiting on things from me and they're just in a queue at all times and I'm never actually done, or I never actually have a clean slate and I could just be like, oh, I'm leaving. Nobody's expecting a mix or a master or anything from me that's never like that. Especially right now, I'm supposed to be editing drums for three different projects. I'm supposed to be finishing mixing. I'm supposed to reamp reaping as modia right now, and all these things are just, I don't actually have anything scheduled the next week and a half, but those are all scheduled, so to speak, and it's been like that the last few years, more and more less in studio with band, more work. That's just my own pace stuff. Well,

Speaker 3 (00:05:25):

Don't ever go on vacations act because Oh, I don't. As soon as you announce that you're going to go on vacation, everybody comes out of the woodwork. You'll get bands from four years ago. They'll be like, dude, can you get me some stems for this or that opportunity that came up and you're like, dude, if I even have the files, you're going to make me go dig through 20 different hard drives, which of course are unlabeled in poorly organized and thrown in some bin somewhere and some sort of storage and go find your project. Really? I have time to do that.

Speaker 4 (00:05:52):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:05:53):

Thank you.

Speaker 4 (00:05:54):

Yeah, that's kind of exactly what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (00:05:57):

So I mean, how do you keep your sanity? Do you have any sort of

Speaker 4 (00:06:01):

Oh, I don't. I'm crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:06:01):

Oh, okay. Alright, well, I'm out of my

Speaker 4 (00:06:03):

Mind.

Speaker 2 (00:06:04):

There you go. We'll fit

Speaker 4 (00:06:05):

Right in here.

Speaker 2 (00:06:05):

Did you take any days off per week?

Speaker 4 (00:06:07):

No. Though that said yes, there's times when I'm just, I'm not going to look at this, I'm not looking at anything today. Is

Speaker 2 (00:06:14):

It scheduled or is it just you get to that boil over point?

Speaker 4 (00:06:18):

No, it just happens. I've been finding myself more and more making sure one day a week, I know I'm just going to do terrible work if I'm just doing it. But the other thing I've been doing is I find waking up in the morning when it comes to doing some chore thing like drum editing. The best thing to do is write when I'm drinking morning coffee to just get right on that immediately and you feel like you get a lot done by noon and all of a sudden you've got work done and you can feel kind of like you have a day off, but you actually worked four hours already or something, that kind

Speaker 2 (00:06:52):

Thing. Joel lives that, but he goes at five in the morning, but that's the story of Joel's life. I agree though, anytime that I wake up early and hit it immediately, it makes my day better and I don't feel like a loser come around 5:00 PM when I just feel like crawling into a ball and not doing anything ever again.

Speaker 3 (00:07:15):

That's actually a good strategy for weekends too, because I'll give you an example. I mean, Zach, are you married or anything like that?

Speaker 4 (00:07:21):

I am, yes.

Speaker 3 (00:07:22):

Alright, so on the weekends you're like, I got a ton of work to do. You're freaking out and if leaving Friday night, coming in and at Saturday morning all day, I'm thinking about it. So if I come in on Saturday morning and I just knock out a couple hours super early, usually that kind of sets up the day. So I get back at seven or eight in the morning and I'm finished for the entire day and I feel like I work, so I'm at ease and I got whatever I'm lingering, task finished, and then I can actually relax. So it's really weird. Sometimes I set up the weekend by working right away in the morning and then just getting it through and being finished with it.

Speaker 4 (00:07:56):

Yeah. I've set a dangerous precedent here where the recording desk that I had at the studio from 2002 to 2013 that I then moved out of that studio down the hall to a different studio, but my ex-partner just let me have that desk. So I've got a full actual setup at home now, which is a blessing and a curse. It means that at any moment I can be working, but on the side I have a nice setup.

Speaker 2 (00:08:28):

Yeah, I'm going to go with the curse side of that. Just having finished maybe a 15 year stretch of working from home, I can tell you

Speaker 4 (00:08:42):

What did you do? Finished?

Speaker 2 (00:08:43):

I moved out of the house.

Speaker 4 (00:08:47):

Gotcha.

Speaker 2 (00:08:48):

Yeah, so now I've got a situation where I've got a place that I don't, it's like a commercial space and I'm not even in the same city as it, so I come in to do work at specific times there and then the rest of the time, not even in the same city. And ever since I kind of started moving in that direction, my life got better. There's something about working from home, it's very, very hard to stay disciplined and it's also very hard when you live with somebody for them to understand that you have to stay disciplined to the normal world. Going to work is how you get work done to normal world. Home is not where work is done. So most people assume that if you're home you can just run this errand, help with this, do that, do that, all these things that will break your flow. So I just see tons of challenges in working from home. Plus I find it tough to get into that predator state of mind that I need to get into crush work when my bedroom is just down the hall

Speaker 3 (00:09:58):

Or the band is lingering in the kitchen. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (00:10:02):

Oh, I would never allow a band in my home. I mean, pretty much as a rule, that would be a whole different monster that I don't think I'd ever want to deal with.

Speaker 2 (00:10:11):

Well, yeah, they did live with me there is that the band's lodged at my place.

Speaker 4 (00:10:16):

Yeah, that's a thing that I've thought about in the past and every time I've done anything close to it, I felt like it was just we need that night off from each other on a long session in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (00:10:30):

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the band has never stayed with you before,

Speaker 4 (00:10:35):

More or less? Yes,

Speaker 2 (00:10:36):

More or less.

Speaker 4 (00:10:37):

I once rented an apartment out to a band, but that's a long story, but that did not go well.

Speaker 2 (00:10:43):

I was about to say, it sounds like an interesting story, care to

Speaker 4 (00:10:47):

Share. No, no, I don't. You don't have to say the name of the band. I think they'd know who they were. Oh, well. So it did not go

Speaker 3 (00:10:57):

Well. You didn't get a security deposit back basically. I probably should have.

Speaker 2 (00:11:00):

Yeah. Well, that's one thing I started doing actually, is I started taking security deposits from bands that were lodging at my place because some bands just fucked it up. I had one band caused a thousand dollars worth of damage.

Speaker 3 (00:11:15):

What did they break?

Speaker 2 (00:11:15):

They broke my Xbox 360. They broke a bunk bed, they broke a lot of shit.

Speaker 3 (00:11:22):

How did they break up that? What were they constantly perpetually drunk and stumbling and playing full contact like WWE in your bedroom.

Speaker 2 (00:11:34):

That's exactly right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:11:35):

This was a similar thing where they broke stuff and just seemingly had no regard for the fact this was actually someone's home. Not like a hotel room or something.

Speaker 2 (00:11:45):

They think that they're in one of those pantera home movies and that your home is their backstage and yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:11:55):

That's actually an amazing point now that I think about it because for many years I had a studio in a house and when the bands would come, it's just amazing how poorly raised some people are. They come in, they leave their trash all over the place, they break things, they drop things in places they don't belong. I'm like, well, if you took that and you moved that, why didn't you put it back? Did I say you should take my $3,000 custom guitar and just leave it upside down on the fucking floor in the other room on the concrete? I mean, are you retarded or should I hit you in the head with a hammer 15 times to increase your iq? I don't know. I don't understand. I had a kid, I had a kid one time take a whole clip of Airsoft bbs.

Speaker 5 (00:12:38):

No,

Speaker 3 (00:12:39):

And just shoot off 300 of them. I was sitting there all sudden her. I'm like, what the fuck? And I run outside and there's a kid popping his buddy with the Airsoft bbs all over the basement and I come out and I'm just screaming at him. I'm like, every bb I'm going to charge you $50 for every BB I find you better pick every single one of them up. And he was just like, I'm like, why did you do that? He's like, I don't know. Oh my God, I wanted to kill the kid. I almost threw the band right out.

Speaker 2 (00:13:04):

God, my life is so much better now. Holy shit. It's stories like that that make me realize what a great decision I've made. God. Yes. That brings me right back.

Speaker 3 (00:13:16):

I had a dude steal an SM 58 for me once and I obviously figured it out. I mean, I was just like, where's my mic? Even though I never used that microphone on anything. It was weird because I was just like my 50 eight's gone and I just noticed it immediately and I am like, guys it like, oh, I don't know. I turned out the singer took it and I called him and threatened to end his career and then I got my mic back.

Speaker 2 (00:13:36):

Did I ever tell you about the U 87 that was stolen from me?

Speaker 3 (00:13:38):

No, but that's pretty ballsy. Oh

Speaker 2 (00:13:40):

Yeah, it was ballsy. All right, so 2012 I got approached by these two producers who were talking a big game around town in Orlando who wanted to use my studio for their production company, and I figured why not? Can maybe make a few extra dollars and take some days off while still making money, right? Because the dream, so we had a really, really good system worked out, they seem cool, trustworthy, and I had to get a back surgery done, so I booked them. While I was getting that done, I knew that I wouldn't be able to work for a few days, a monster. I decided to work anyways the next day, but that's a different story. So anyways, I go and I get the surgery and then they have their session and then the next day I come back and I'm still kind of drugged out and I just went into my room and went to sleep. When I woke up, I had to get ready for my own drum session, like I said, because a monster robot. And so I started looking through the mics and I couldn't find a U 87, but at first when something's missing, it's like you don't automatically think it's missing. You think it's somewhere else.

(00:15:12):

I don't immediately go to someone took it or I thought that maybe it was behind another microphone, even though I could clearly see behind all the microphones, I still had to check

Speaker 3 (00:15:22):

I stole it. Sorry.

Speaker 2 (00:15:23):

Yeah, I know. I didn't know you yet though, so I couldn't blame you. So yeah, so not there. Looked all over U 87 is not there. I called those guys up and they told me they put it back and I was like, well look guys, I only have one U 87 and I only know this because I'm setting up for drums and I need both of them, so maybe you guys misplaced it. They came over, they overturned everything went under all the cushions and the couches, everything U 80 sevens were missing. And so I decided that I was going to be a dick because where else? I mean it had to be them, right? Them or their client.

Speaker 3 (00:16:05):

Yeah, of course

Speaker 2 (00:16:05):

It was. Okay, there's no other option. Where else would a U 87 just go? I don't lose microphones, I don't lose gear. I lose my wallet.

Speaker 3 (00:16:14):

Especially one that's $3,000.

Speaker 2 (00:16:15):

Yes, exactly. That didn't even belong to me. Belong to Jason Soff. I don't lose shit like that. I lose my car keys, I lose my wallet, but I do not lose $3,000 microphone, so I lose my sunglasses too. Those three things, sunglasses, keys, wallet, I will lose every single fucking day no matter what happens. I'll always lose those. That's good to know. Actually, just as Joey about when I stayed at his house, how I didn't find my keys for five days once. But anyways, yeah, so U 87, I called them back and they can't find it. They don't know what's going on. I said to them, I think your client probably took it. They're like, no, he's cool. He's cool. So I decided I was going to be a dick and I said, alright, well you guys paid me in full and all his guitars are here, so you tell him this, I'm going to keep the money and I'm going to keep all the data that's on my hard drives and I'm going to sell off his guitars within five days.

(00:17:17):

If I don't get my microphones back, I'm not going to sell them off to be a dick. I'm going to sell 'em off so I can then go buy another U 87 with that money. End of story and you don't get your money back or your files, so make a choice. So they went and they talked to 'em and lo and behold, the microphone showed up to my house one day later and what had happened was that he brought his mentor over who was some older gentleman. Yeah, I told them, no guests in the house, no extras, just your client. But he brought his mentor who was this older gentleman who started a production company and apparently he saw the U 87 and was just asking all about it, how much it's worth, what it's good for, and then he left and they didn't notice that he took it. So yeah, it came back only through me being a dick. I have had a D six stolen, which never came back, but that's my U 87 story, so moral of the story.

Speaker 3 (00:18:17):

That's crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:18:17):

Wow. Moral of the story is though, you know how it's really weird when you're missing something

Speaker 3 (00:18:22):

To

Speaker 2 (00:18:22):

Ask somebody because they immediately think that you think that they stole it.

Speaker 4 (00:18:27):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:18:27):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:18:27):

Totally.

Speaker 2 (00:18:27):

Just ask because even if they didn't steal it, maybe their friends stole it.

Speaker 3 (00:18:31):

Well, I think this is a good topic actually. This is something we haven't really talked about, but if you're going to have bands at your studio, I feel like this is a good chance to really talk about what are some good guidelines that we can put in place or should have in place or considerations to avoid situations like that.

Speaker 4 (00:18:49):

I can avoid your situation with the BB gun better and one because what I found, this is a thing I found just over the last few years because in 2013 serious,

(00:18:59):

Yeah, I'm being serious because I've noticed a huge change. I went from being in my studio, which is kind of like, well, was it still exists? It's just my ex-partner runs it entirely now himself, but we kept it pretty clean, but it wasn't exceptional. It wasn't the fanciest looking place and I feel like that made people treat it kind of like what you're saying. They're like, well, it's cool, I can just throw an airsoft BB around and no one will ever care. But what I've found recently, and I'd heard this, but it's so true, if you keep or you work in a studio that looks fancy and looks impeccably cleaned up, then everybody is intimidated into not messing anything up and it's like you end up doing less cleanup because people just don't want to disrespect it. It's weird. Well, it's not weird, but it makes sense.

Speaker 2 (00:19:55):

I think that's true 85% of the time.

Speaker 4 (00:19:57):

Yeah, yeah. There's definitely people that still just are terrible people

Speaker 2 (00:20:02):

Because my place is nice and always kept spotless and so yeah, 85% of the time the people see that and they treat it like a museum. If you treat it like a museum. Exactly.

Speaker 4 (00:20:15):

The museum thing, they

Speaker 2 (00:20:16):

Treat it like a museum. And also I feel like another thing that's important is to set the boundaries upfront. So say that they're being super messy and you hate it or disrespectful to your shit, but you're just a pushover and you don't say anything and you let that bottle up and piss you off and then three weeks into the session you explode and bitch 'em out. They're going to think you're a dick and they're not going to respect you and they're not going to know where it's coming from as opposed to if you handle it day one and just set the precedent with this is not allowed, then you have a good basis to work from as far as keeping your place together. That's just what I

Speaker 3 (00:20:57):

Noticed. Totally. Yeah, I totally agree.

Speaker 2 (00:20:59):

I actually have a printout that I would give them. It's laminated because you don't want fluids and beer all over it, so I laminated it. I made two copies, I put it on their beds and I also emailed it to their management and to every band member upfront. It's just the rules and I was pretty strict about certain things, like the door to the living room, kitchen area closes at 11:00 PM it reopens at 10:00 AM or 9:00 AM all these kinds of things, and like I said, 85% of the people were cool about it. We

Speaker 3 (00:21:40):

Violated the crap out of that when we were there. You're not

Speaker 2 (00:21:43):

A band.

Speaker 3 (00:21:45):

We were cutting drum samples while Al was sleeping.

Speaker 4 (00:21:48):

That could be the worst thing though. If it's like some friend or somebody, then somehow they start thinking rules don't apply to them and they'll be worse than clients. The

Speaker 2 (00:21:57):

Rules didn't apply to them. This was a drum Ford session where

Speaker 3 (00:22:01):

We also left that studio hopefully immaculate before we left.

Speaker 2 (00:22:06):

Well, I mean look, we had five days to do a ton of sampling and photos and videos and every single room in my place was being used and I understood the deal. That's completely different. I was in on the chaos. That's a totally different story. That's different than say five losers not throwing away their trash for four weeks and then piling up giant, like 13 or 18 gallon bags of trash, just one on top of the other, the other in the corner of the room developing a fucking BU infestation in my house to where I have to kick.

Speaker 3 (00:22:46):

That's actually happened too.

Speaker 2 (00:22:47):

Yeah, I know. To where I had to kick everybody out for five days. I need to fumigate the fucking place. That's different. It's very, very different.

Speaker 3 (00:22:57):

That baffles my mind. I mean it's shocking to me that some people live like that. Here's a story, not band related, but it's kind of funny. It's directly related. I haven't seen a band do this. I've never had a kitchen for them to use, but I'm sure this has happened to you guys where the band comes or I had a roommate I should say, not a band. I had a roommate in college and he never did dishes for three or four months and he would just pile up in the sink and there was two sinks. There was the water side and the dry side and we just put a sign on it that was just said Mike's kitchen. And then we put a couple of Tupperware containers in the ground where we stacked his dishes. He just never ever cleaned up after himself one time for the entire year. It was shocking

Speaker 2 (00:23:36):

For the entire year. Wow.

Speaker 3 (00:23:37):

Yeah, he never did dishes once and he just accumulated and accumulated and at one point in time I was just like, dude, why don't you just get paper plates? I mean at first it was funny. It was like what year was this? Oh god, it was maybe a sophomore in college or something like that.

Speaker 2 (00:23:53):

So 1982?

Speaker 3 (00:23:54):

No, 82. I was one then. No, it was maybe like 2000, 2001.

Speaker 2 (00:24:00):

God man. Yeah, college years. Holy shit. I was a dirty motherfucker too. The thing is, speaking of things that people can do nowadays, if you have clients and you care about the cleanliness of your place and you hate cleaning like me, I fucking need a place to be clean, but I hate cleaning. It's just such a waste of time. If you value your time, which in my opinion is more important than money, cleaning is just such a fucking waste unless it's like your zen or something. It's a service called Handy, handy.com. It's like Uber for cleaning. It's not that expensive for like a hundred bucks, 150 bucks. Get your place cleaned. I would suggest you're looking it up.

Speaker 4 (00:24:50):

Yeah, I just looked up too. I'm absolutely looking it up.

Speaker 2 (00:24:52):

Yeah, I don't know if it's available in every city, but they're not the only one. They used to be a company called Homejoy that did this, but they went out handy, put them out. But I think there's another big one or whatever, but so worth it once a week, come to the studio, fucking clean the shit out of it on a pro level and not have to worry about that stuff. I mean obviously you still need people to put trash in the trash can and flush it.

Speaker 3 (00:25:22):

It is hard. It's really difficult to do that.

Speaker 2 (00:25:24):

You know what, man? I feel like there's probably some psychological barrier. I don't understand. There has to be. So all right, so what else? How do you keep your clients in line, Zach? Besides that,

Speaker 4 (00:25:38):

I got to say, I was telling you how I moved late 2013. I went from owning my own place to, and now I just do all my sessions out of the studio, down the hall, which is Shark Bite Studios, which I love working there. And the burden on me is I need to make sure trash goes in the trash cans and that I put away all the cords and mics and basically leave the place how it was when I left. But there's also janitorial service there, so I no longer have to think about the deep clean stuff, which is actually incredibly nice.

(00:26:14):

The kind of stuff I was terrible at, I was terrible at. It's like, man, I don't think I vacuumed the studio in a couple months. And I have a partner and we are always kind of assuming the other guy might do something in both ways and probably both driving each other nuts with stuff we're leaving out or something like that. And it's easier when I'm in a place which is a studio that many engineers share. So there's just set rules and I have to follow the rules. Everything's got to be back where it belongs and it's not hard to do. And the trade-off is that I'm not doing deep clean or worrying about maintenance of the board and stuff like that. And I don't know, I thought it would be potentially hindering me, but instead it's been really nice because I'm not thinking as much about making sure my studio stays in working order and that kind of thing is no longer a concern of mine so much.

Speaker 3 (00:27:11):

Here's one that I adopted. I have a sign that I put on the door for anybody entering. I say, if you leave your shoes on past this point, I'm going to attack $50 onto your bill. You don't walk on my nice clean floor with your shoes. The only person that's allowed to do it is me. So I have slippers and then people can walk in and this is something I picked up from Russia. They take the subway and it's so gross when you have a city of 15 million people or whatever Moscow is, you got bums that sleep on the trains and stuff. So they come in and they change their clothes right away and they change into slippers in the house and they have clean house clothes. You're not sitting on the couch with the same clothes you sat on the subway with. So I think it's a good habit because people come in and they don't track dirt and snow, especially in the winter in Wisconsin. So we have all this snow and that road salt just destroys your laminate floors and it's such a pain in the ass to clean. It has a very special way of doing it. You have to make vinegar, water, you can't just go buy floor cleaner. And I just absolutely hate it, so it drives me nuts. But that's a really good one. Shoes off.

Speaker 2 (00:28:16):

You should get some prison jumpsuits that are always clean for your band clients to change into for clean studio clothes, just get a bunch of orange jumpsuits. I think that that would be great. I

Speaker 3 (00:28:29):

Mean it's like a prison anyways here.

Speaker 2 (00:28:32):

I mean the idea of clean studio clothes would probably go a long way with some of these people who have been sleeping in a van for months on their way to the studio.

Speaker 4 (00:28:43):

Have you guys run into that problem, by the way, where bands are sleeping in their van outside of your place and don't even mention that to you and then it causes trouble? Yes. That's always been fun.

Speaker 2 (00:28:54):

Absolutely. Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 4 (00:28:55):

You can't hate them for it.

Speaker 2 (00:28:57):

Well, yeah, I can.

Speaker 4 (00:28:58):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:28:59):

I can hate people for anything.

Speaker 4 (00:29:01):

True.

Speaker 2 (00:29:03):

That sounds my right. I did have one band once they came all the way from California to Florida in a band playing shows and they were on their quote tour with another band. That other band showed up with them. So I had a band I was recording for 14 days and a band that I wasn't recording there for 14 days, so I had to lay down the ground rule that the band I wasn't recording isn't even allowed in my place and their van is not allowed on property. They need to go stay at a Walmart. And they did. And this is because I had a band once a few months before that who came by in an RV that looked like the Breaking Bad rv. Well, and I say that because I actually think that they were selling meth, but because they had five extra people with them and three pit bulls and they were just some sketchy motherfuckers and they parked outside of my house and ended up having four cops around them and it got very, very tense and from that point on, I didn't let people just camp outside my house.

Speaker 5 (00:30:16):

Good call.

Speaker 2 (00:30:18):

Yeah, I'm leaving out part of the story that I don't want recorded about this. I don't want to find myself in a vat of acid somewhere south of the border. We'll avoid

Speaker 3 (00:30:29):

That. It would be pretty black metal.

Speaker 2 (00:30:30):

Yeah, well, black metal would be burning down a church not ending up melted. I don't want to melt. So let's talk about recording. Zach, you work on a ton of metal records.

Speaker 4 (00:30:43):

That

Speaker 6 (00:30:43):

Is true

Speaker 2 (00:30:44):

Safe to say that that's your favorite genre to work on or is it just something you found yourself?

Speaker 4 (00:30:48):

It is not safe to say it is something I found myself doing, which I mean it's funny. I am into metal and I have been basically since I was a young child, but in reality, honestly, some of my favorite things that I've done or that I work on are like ska recordings. I've done some orchestral stuff and I love just doing pop rock and pop punk stuff, but I'd say comprise is 10 to 15% of my work, and the other 85% is all usually metal, usually technical death metal stuff because that's where my name has made and I don't really advertise in any way, so I'm going to just keep getting clients word of mouth from the genre I'm in. But no, I mean honestly, yeah, it's you've worked on technical death metal projects, you realize they're 4,000 times more work. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:31:43):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:31:44):

Fuck yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:31:45):

Especially the drums. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:31:46):

I'm kind of the same way. I keep getting hired by metal bands, but I like metal and I've been a metalhead since I've been

Speaker 6 (00:31:52):

11

Speaker 3 (00:31:53):

Or 12 years old, but it's not like I listen to metal. I listen to pop music and rock music and things like that, and I enjoy doing metal, but I also enjoy doing EDM or pop or whatever. It's just as much as doing metal, but I keep getting hired by the metal bands. It's crazy. They just keep coming back and I'm like, a lot of them think of me as a metal dude. I'm like, no, I'm not a metal dude at all.

Speaker 4 (00:32:13):

Yeah, I'm more of a hard rock dude. I'm not as much into this really super intense metal stuff. I mean, I find myself really loving some of the records I've done, but there's plenty of them that I'm just like, well, I'm not into these vocals so much where I can't hear a single word people say, I'm not into stuff that's just blast beat, start to finish type stuff. So much so yet it is a large part of what I work on.

Speaker 2 (00:32:39):

So how did it happen? I mean, I know that metal is a genre that you can easily get typecast into because the scene, there's a lot of genres that are bigger, but I don't know of a genre that has a more connected fan base, and so in metal countries huge, but I doubt they have an underground like metal does. So I feel like with metal you do something that people like and then suddenly all the bands are talking because the bands are the fan base also. So

Speaker 4 (00:33:10):

That's the best point ever too because 90% of the people that listen to this kind of music are in a band themselves, I swear.

Speaker 2 (00:33:17):

Yeah. So the fans are your clients and they're spreading the word. Exactly. So how did it start though for you?

Speaker 4 (00:33:25):

Well, I mean for me, my origin story is pretty strange in that I was right from when I was about 12 years old, so we're talking roughly like 1993. I was getting into computers and music and this thing's called mods and I don't know if you know what those are.

Speaker 2 (00:33:43):

Wait, you experienced, so you remember the shift from Cock Rock to rock?

Speaker 4 (00:33:49):

Oh yeah, absolutely. Yes. Those

Speaker 2 (00:33:51):

Were glorious years. Okay, sorry, go on mods.

Speaker 4 (00:33:54):

Oh no, it's okay. So mods are they're least little sequencing files, modd it and FT files. They're basically like dos based. Actually they were originally Omega based, but I was on a dos pc. You have to make samples, sequence them and do whatever you can do with that. And it's not exactly like MIDI at all because it's all done in this strange, the closest thing I could describe to it would be a piano roll type thing, but it's all very weird. And so I was creating samples and putting together songs in the genre of rock and metal, which was pretty rare since everybody else is doing techno and electronic stuff. And that ended up bringing me, so some of the stuff I put out was primacy sounding stuff that I was doing and including

(00:34:43):

Including some cover songs. And as far as my playing goes, that was my biggest influence as 13-year-old me was learning how to play bass and guitar, learning them from Prius and Metallica songs, a lot of people of that age at that time, I got recruited out of nowhere because I was back, this is not on the internet as you know it today. This is on America Online and geocity bulletins, chat room type stuff, bulletin boards, literally call up BBS stuff that I was releasing all these songs. I had probably 40 or 50 shitty songs that Child Me was making that kept getting better and better as I was learning to record for real too, making my own guitar and snare drum samples and things and got recruited by Boss Games, which is a subsidiary of Midway Games and to do the soundtrack potentially for one of their upcoming games, twisted Edge snowboarding for Nintendo 64

Speaker 2 (00:35:47):

When you were 15 or something.

Speaker 4 (00:35:49):

So I'm like 15 at the time. Yeah, I was 15, almost 16 when this happened. So I was in sophomore year of high school and they pitted me up against 10 other guys and I had a totally different approach to it. What they wanted for the game is they wanted it to be Primus music. That was their goal was to get Primus, but at the time you couldn't just put real music into a Nintendo 64 game. There's only roughly 600 kilobytes that you can use for each song in a game. Those cartridges are so small memory wise and that kind of thing. So everybody else just approached it like you would approach Mickey electronic music and it sounded not real at all, and I was on the other hand just recording real bass and guitar samples and arranging it all into songs, and so I won that job out. Probably never would've if I ever admitted I was 15 and used that money that I made from that to start acquiring some recording equipment and start recording bands locally and that kind of thing. So that's kind of my weird origin story.

Speaker 2 (00:36:52):

Did you become the captain of the football team and get all the girls of that?

Speaker 4 (00:36:56):

Absolutely not. No. No. Nope. You can't imagine something much nerdier than being a music nerd that also is a computer nerd. Quickly getting into digital audio workstation stuff

Speaker 2 (00:37:08):

In 1994 or three.

Speaker 4 (00:37:11):

Yeah, well, yeah, no, yeah, that's about when I started and then this started becoming a thing and I only did those two Nintendo 64 games and then Nintendo 64 is not a thing anymore, and so that career was over quickly. Now they just use real music in games of course.

Speaker 2 (00:37:26):

Okay, so that's actually pretty fascinating.

Speaker 4 (00:37:29):

Very interesting.

Speaker 2 (00:37:30):

Yeah, I totally was not expecting to hear that.

Speaker 3 (00:37:32):

Oh really?

Speaker 2 (00:37:34):

Yeah. No, seriously. That's one of the more unique stories we've heard from a guest so far I have to say. So what happened next? Were you bummed or were you like, yeah, whatever. Cool onto the next thing.

Speaker 4 (00:37:49):

I'd say the entire time from when I was 15 to 19, I was one of those 24 hours a day playing recording, playing three instruments too. I was into guitar originally and then I started playing bass bands and then I started playing drums and bands and I was in 10 bands recording all sorts of stuff. It just became this huge band and recording horror around everywhere, just doing everything and slowly morphing into that. But yeah, I was definitely bummed to not get hired again after the first two games. I thought I did a good job on the first game and then I got hired for the next one, but I thought I did a terrible job in retrospect on the second game, they wanted it to be ZZ Top that time and that was, I mean, I ended up just making some horrible generic cock rock that didn't sound, I mean, I listened back to that and I'm just like, I'm not proud of this at all, but I'm super proud of the first recording.

Speaker 2 (00:38:47):

I want to hear those songs.

Speaker 4 (00:38:48):

You can on YouTube for sure, and they're available on the internet.

Speaker 2 (00:38:54):

Do you mind if we put them on this for people to hear?

Speaker 4 (00:38:56):

If you disclaimer that I made them over 20 years ago,

Speaker 2 (00:38:59):

You just gave the best disclaimer ever. You were like 14 years old.

Speaker 4 (00:39:03):

I'm not even going to tell you the name of the second game, but yeah, I'm totally fine with you putting the Twisted Edge. It's called Twisted Edge snowboarding. You can see the music to it. Unfortunately it doesn't work in any of those N 64 emulators. It's like one of those games that's not compatible, so only someone with a real N 64 can get the music off of it.

Speaker 2 (00:41:59):

All right, well I just wanted people to hear it. I think it's badass

Speaker 6 (00:42:03):

And

Speaker 2 (00:42:04):

I remember how hard it was to do stuff back then and anybody doing anything in music technology in that era, in my opinion as a hero, let alone a young teenager,

Speaker 4 (00:42:15):

I think it was easier because I was a young teenager, frankly.

Speaker 2 (00:42:17):

Okay, fair enough.

Speaker 4 (00:42:18):

Because I didn't have any old school recording preconceptions. This was all it was to me. I thought that's what making music was all I ever knew other than I used to be into my little role in Ford Track or whatever that I had that I'd make a million tracks by just bouncing four to two over and over and over again. But past that, I wasn't really, I didn't have any previous recording going on other than this.

Speaker 2 (00:42:48):

Fair enough. We've talked about this before, but I feel like that's also the same type of thing that has created certain drummers like Alex Inger for instance. I dunno if you're familiar with him, but he's godly and I think that there's a generation of drummers who are beyond what you could have ever imagined a drummer could do 10 years ago or 20 years ago. And it's because when they were young and growing up and in their formative years, they listened to these bands that had totally edited drums and sequenced in kicks and all this, and they didn't know that it was fake. So they just learned to play that way. They had no clue, they had no frame of reference. They didn't know that that shit was assembled in the studio or anything. They

Speaker 4 (00:43:39):

Just assumed they need to become that good.

Speaker 2 (00:43:42):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:43:42):

Those are the best,

Speaker 2 (00:43:43):

And by doing that, they raise the bar.

Speaker 4 (00:43:45):

I like that.

Speaker 2 (00:43:47):

So how did it move from this jack of all trades type situation to being the extreme metal dude?

Speaker 4 (00:43:56):

Oh, well, okay, so I'd say then my later teenage years when I start professionally recording bands and charging and all that stuff, the number one thing I was doing at first was definitely ska and punk ska stuff. That was the big third wave ska time at the time, but some of that was ska metal type stuff. That was a big thing back then. Not so much anymore, but that slowly morphed into getting a few full metal bands and I was in a metal band at the time along with some of these other bands and finally recorded a few, and I'd say one of the first bands that really launched me getting some metal attention was that band Animosity, which I still work with that drummer too, Naveen, and it's just like that band. Then some people would hear that. And then I'd say one of the next groups that I record that was well known, that was in that metal genre was All Shall Parish. And this is all in the early two thousands and once you start doing a couple records, then other people start coming out of the woodwork to come record with you because that's what happens. And then it just blossomed.

Speaker 2 (00:45:03):

So speeding of All Shall parish, you've got a quote here from Eddie about you. He said, let me put it to you like this, that dude Zach Orrin gets us. We've worked with him and when you have familiarity it's just really easy to give your best. That's a really nice quote. I don't think you could get a better quote from an artist. So I guess what I'm wondering is how do you personally go about reaching artists that you work with and what steps do you take to better understand them and facilitate trust?

Speaker 4 (00:45:35):

I think it's honestly, and everybody will confirm this about me, is that I absolutely completely to a fault have no filter with bands and that I never ever sugarcoat anything. I'm entirely too honest to them, and I have nothing wrong with telling Eddie. I'm like, Eddie, that was fucking terrible. You could do so much better and that kind of thing. It's not in my DNA to baby somebody through a situation and you don't have to be mean when you're doing that too. It's like you just have to be realistic and helpful and then what that does is it facilitates trust, like you just said. Then Eddie knows when I tell 'em something's good, I'm not full of shit, I'm not going to tell 'em. It's good if it's not good. And a lot of people don't believe they're engineer because engineers are just trying to get through the day and be like, okay, yeah, that's good. No problem. Yeah, we got it.

Speaker 3 (00:46:34):

I think when you come in with a really brutal comment, it helps to make it with a smile on your face so they know that there's a pinch of there's no malice there. You're not actually, you're like, that was absolute fucking dog shit. Do it again or get the fuck out. You do it with a smile and then they laugh and then they do it better because they know you're going to kill. Yeah, and it's

Speaker 4 (00:46:54):

That kind of thing where I'd say it seems like a dangerous thing and I would say there's a 2% of clients that I've just rubbed completely the wrong way by being myself, but everybody else for the most part seems to get that that's who I am and that's why to come to be not. Why to avoid me is because I'm going to actually get the job done and do it without just loading them up with their ego and telling them everything's great when it's not always great. And you got to sometimes just work through things and they trust that I'm trying to make it as good as possible.

Speaker 3 (00:47:31):

I also find that what really helps is when you tell them that you're doing it because you care. Guys, listen, I'm really hard on you because I want you to be better. I want you to blah, blah, blah, and you're not paying me to bullshit you. I'm here to make you a better band and make the best damn version of your vision that we can possibly make. And I feel like that really resonates with a lot of clients. Again, like you said, there's always a couple of straggler bands that just don't get it and don't respond well to any sort of pressure, but most people do. Most people want to please you and come in and really show you that they can hang and they're going to be good. So totally with you on that.

Speaker 4 (00:48:06):

Yeah, I think what it also is conducive to is repeat clients that second recording, and I mean, I just look at most the recordings I've done, usually the best recordings I've done with bands is their second or third record with me because at that point we're in a thing where I'm almost essentially like an extension of them where I understand them uniquely. It takes sometimes a feeling out process with a band that can take a first recording you do with them, which is why it's not a bad idea if you're a band to come record a two song demo with an engineer you're thinking of working on your full length win with, because then when it comes time to do a full album, you guys already kind of have your feeling out process done, and it really helps a lot.

Speaker 2 (00:48:50):

And for your sake too, I mean I think that you've got to mean look to the listeners. Here's a disclaimer. I realize that a lot of you guys are not at the point in your career where you can turn work away, but at some point in time if you want to get known, you're going to have to be selective or more selective about who you work with and not take bands that aren't a good fit for you. So I mean obviously this is more slanted towards the band because ultimately they're hiring you, but still I think it's important for you as a producer to be able to hang out with the band for a song or two and see, can I do a good job with these guys? Can I handle being around them? Do I understand what they're trying to do?

Speaker 3 (00:49:39):

Yeah, you have to develop a rapport with them and that doesn't come instantly. You kind of have to get 'em to know them and figure out who's the key influencer in the band, who actually has the talent, who's the idiot in the band that has a big opinion on everything but literally has no idea what they're talking about. And then once you figured out what the different members' rules are and how they interact and what the band power dynamic is, you can successfully manipulate that to the advantage of the record like, Hey, go play video games and fuck off. We record guitars because you know what? Flusters the guitar player, when the bass player's in the room, they want to kill each other and it's going to be much better for the guitar player and he's going to do a much better job if he doesn't have that stress and that pressure and the guys in the band will never say that to each other, it'll be conflict.

(00:50:21):

But you as a producer can kind of come in and be the hard ass, and the only way you can do that stuff and use the strategies to get a better product and really bring the band to the best they are, I should say can possibly be is by being able to read them and really just building that trust and rapport that, Hey guys, I need some time to do this with so-and-so in the bank. You guys piss off and go smoke a cigarette and play video games. And they say, yeah, dude, cool. They trust you.

Speaker 4 (00:50:43):

That's so true what you're saying right now. It's like also sometimes bands, once they get to know me when someone's out the room, they'll ask me to be the bad guy and I hate that. They'll be like, Hey, can you tell I'm making up a fictional name here, Robert, that I should just play all the guitar tracks? And I'm like, I'd rather you tell him that. I totally agree with you, but I start getting that reputation as someone who can say something like that to a band and it can be a dangerous thing, but generally it's not like that and it works out pretty well. But you're right, it's important to see the strength and weaknesses of a band the first time around. So that second time around who you're going to need to focus on most of the time.

Speaker 2 (00:51:30):

I've been looking at the in studio pictures that bands post from working with you, and I see a ton of really awesome analog gear. Do you work hybrid or in the box ever? Are you all analog or do you see any value to in the box or what's your normal workflow?

Speaker 4 (00:51:48):

I'm very in the box in the mixing sense for the most part. What I try to do, and I've been, I'd say this is actually even before I was in Shark Bite, which is beautiful place with all sorts of gear, but I really just use a few pieces in there. I use the board 100% of the time now as my preamps and EQs and we've got some nice naive and Chandler and some other preamps and EQs and things. But I find honestly that first off, that Trident is nice for everything. There's nothing I don't like on it, and the consistency is more valuable than me messing around with other stuff. And the only other pieces I really use are the compressors. I like using those vintage db xs for snare and kick and drums, and I like using the 1176 s for all sorts of things.

(00:52:40):

And I like using the LA two A for bass type things like a bass guitar or something of that sort. And past that, I'm doing most of my work in the box. I'm not one of those guys who really finds a big value in using the reel to reel. I don't really find much value in using summing mixing and that kind of stuff because for that little bit that you might of quality, I might extract out of doing something like that. Giving away the versatility to change it later is a big, big detractor for me. I like the ability to just open a mix on my computer and be able to tweak something on it. And you can't do that if you're doing analog summing and keeping it all on the board or something.

Speaker 2 (00:53:24):

Yeah, so you're all about workflow.

Speaker 4 (00:53:25):

Yeah, I mean people will certainly tell you about me that I just work at this kind of insane speed at times, especially earlier in my career. My thing was cranking out albums in two days and that kind of thing and getting it all done fast. Now I'm the last 10 years or so I've calmed that down a little and tried to get more focus into just making really good products, but still, I don't want something that's going to just take up a ton of my time and probably my attention that's permanent and unfixable. I like to be able to just get in there and like you said, workflow is so important to me to be able to just jump around from what I'm doing if I need to.

Speaker 3 (00:54:08):

I want to just reiterate that I think it's really important that working fast is very key when you're doing any sort of extreme genre because the amount of editing, for example, that you have to do on a death metal record versus a butt rock record is insanely, it's 10 to a hundred x

Speaker 4 (00:54:27):

Greater.

Speaker 3 (00:54:28):

So what you can do to make up for that and in terms of budgetary constraints and things like that is really work on developing your speed, getting your key commands down, really developing a systematic workflow and organization system that's going to allow you to work faster, edit faster, and you can kind of make up for, as we would say, lost time because those records, they just require a lot more attention to detail in that area.

Speaker 2 (00:54:52):

And just for those of you listening, if you're new to the podcast or new just to URM or nail the mix or whatever and have never seen one of my creative lives or anything like that, just some pro tips, go check out a program called Quick Keys. If you're in Pro Tools, you're going to have to hunt for it because unfortunately, the developer died and so it hasn't been updated in a while, but look up Quick Keys and also program called Batch Commander by Slate. Programs like cubase, you can do all kinds of cool macros and complex key commands with, but for those of you guys in Pro Tools, you're kind of limited. So look up programs like that. Just

Speaker 3 (00:55:31):

Switch to cubase and quit fucking around. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:55:34):

I was about to say the number one thing you got to do is just stop using slow tools. That's not a great way to make music quickly.

Speaker 2 (00:55:41):

Well, I just switched to cubase, but I'm good with Pro Tools.

Speaker 3 (00:55:47):

Hey, you know what? Help me let jump in since we're talking about key commands. I'll tell you guys, I switched all my importing and exporting functions to key commands, and I never did that before for some stupid reason. But just simple things like file importing and loading up tracks and different variations of importing different things that I use and that has saved so much damn time. This is something I did a month or two ago and wow, holy crap. It's amazing. It's like when you do something like that and you actually sit down and figure out a certain specific key command or build a macro or whatever to do a specific task that do a lot, it's insane because you sit back and you're like, why the hell didn't I do that before? It's just mind blowing.

Speaker 2 (00:56:26):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:56:26):

Well,

Speaker 2 (00:56:27):

I agree. By the way, I feel like pro Tools being the industry standard thing is now old news. It was 10 years ago, but now you can be in any daw. However, if you do use Pro Tools, you should get Quick Keys or Batch Commander because it will change your life completely. But I did switch to Cubase recently just because the workflows is better. One last question I have for you.

Speaker 4 (00:56:56):

Have

Speaker 2 (00:56:56):

You worked with a bunch of bands like in relation, decrepit Birth Brain di, the

Speaker 4 (00:57:00):

Brain Drill Brain,

Speaker 2 (00:57:01):

Not Brain di.

Speaker 4 (00:57:02):

I'm working on Brain DI's mixed today by the way. That's what I'm doing today. They got a new record coming out. Oh,

Speaker 2 (00:57:07):

Awesome. I'm sure that it is brutal. Those bands are pretty raw, super aggressive, punishing, brutal. Can I say brutal any more times metal? What's your take on the new wave of metal acts that are a much more polished approach as opposed to that? Well,

Speaker 4 (00:57:27):

I mean I work with that kind of stuff too, and for one it's a lot easier to work on because a lot of what's happening, wait,

Speaker 2 (00:57:33):

Which one is easier to work on? I'd

Speaker 4 (00:57:34):

Say the more polished, more like I almost said new metal and that's not at all what I meant, but you know what I mean. Like 2016

Speaker 2 (00:57:43):

N-E-W-N-E-W

Speaker 4 (00:57:44):

Metal. I mean it's a lot easier to work on because there's a lot more focus, not quite as much extreme speed, but I dunno, I find it very easy to work on compared to trying to do these crazy intense death metal projects. And part of that is also you can't make anybody happy when it comes to the intense death metal stuff because some people always get mad that it's too polished and then other people will get mad that it's not polished enough. And then other people, the opinions on there are so varied, whereas I think you can just make a great, I'll call it pop metal record and you don't get those kind of complaints even when it just comes to mastering or something. Like I did that last volumes record, just the master on it and that I found that mastering that was million times easier than mastering one of these fast intense tech death things because there's so much more open space that I can actually make big bass in it and do that kind of stuff with it. And you can't do that so much when it comes to dealing with superintendent stuff. You got to think about headroom and all these kind of things and it becomes a big mess if you're not careful.

Speaker 2 (00:59:04):

I think moral of the story for people listening is that don't be a pure, it's just do what's right for the projects you're working with. I just think it's interesting. You're known for a lot of this aggressive super, I'm going to say brutal against stuff that's really raw, but you also work on a ton of other stuff and polish stuff as well, and you don't seem to have an issue with it. A lot of the listeners or people in bands tend to be pretty polarized and feel like it's an us versus them or Polish versus raw kind of battle. And it's not, especially as an engineer producer, you just need to do what's right for your clients.

Speaker 4 (00:59:41):

I'll say this, I am compared to, I think most engineers out there these days, I'm very, very Antifa stuff for the most part, unless it's necessary. I use a lot of fake kick drum, I would say on records, but 99% of what you hear from me has all the original real drums on it. I don't have this nice drum room just to record guys in and then sample, replace every last thing in it. That's not my style. And I always think it's funny too, sometimes people think that we're like using superior drummer or something on recordings and maybe 0.5% of what I've ever put out has fake drums on it. So that bugs me in using, I'm just not into these digital amps just yet. I've never found something I thought actually sounded particularly great. There's lots that sounds good. You could get an ax effect sounding really good, but you can't get it sounding great in my opinion yet compared to just getting the amp micd up and doing it really well and those kind of things. That's where I'm purist still. I guess other than that, just anything to make it sound good is fine with me. I

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):

Think it just depends on the player and

(01:00:53):

What they're used to. And I've seen, I tend to agree with you, but at the same time, for instance, I just did a recording with this band Monuments and they're a great band, great players, one of the only bands in that genre that actually can do it. And the thing is, their guitar player, John Brown, who's amazing, has some of the best tone in his hands out of anybody I've ever met. He's a pod guy and he makes tones on his line six that you can't believe are tones. And we tried using two amps in this session just because as an experiment and it just didn't feel right for them or sound right. And then we went back to Sims and it sounded great. And I've typically been more of a purist like you in that regard, but I've started to feel like as much as I love the real thing, I feel like we have a generation of musicians now who grew up with fake amps and so that's what they're good at making sound. That's

Speaker 4 (01:02:00):

Definitely a thing too, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):

Yeah. But the opposite is also true. Guys that are really, really good at playing on a 51 50 and making that sound good, their field tends to get messed up when they play Sims, like the latency and all the different, just the differences will throw them off. And that getting a good guitar tone has a lot to do with how it's played. And so the way that the gear responds to the player is a huge part of it. So if they're not used to using a sim, that might throw them off. But by that same token, if they're not used to a tube amp, that will also throw them off. In my experience,

Speaker 4 (01:02:37):

And I'll say I'm not against these digital things one bit. Sometimes they're the best tool you can use. One of my favorite guitar tones I ever did was on this band Saving Grace, which is a hardcore band on facedown records. I used a ax effects as the pedals essentially into this, and we thought it sounded way better, and I mean way better than using any of the real pedals we had you can do. It's kind of that thing you're talking about where you can get unreal feels that real pedals can't do. And in this case, I'm talking about the tube screamer models that are in ax effects and the gate models. You can just get this incredibly tight tone that you don't necessarily get. It's really mainly just the cab emulation that I find to be inadequate, like the cabin mic. I love the heads and all of the versatility though in those things, they're amazing and you can really play almost unreal, tight on a pod. Those are, I still remember playing pods and just how fun it would be. It felt like cheating on guitar at times kind

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):

Of was. So Zach, thank you so much for coming. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:03:46):

No problem

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):

On. We've got to wrap this up now. I had a great time talking to you and would love to have you on in the future. You're a great guest and your origin story was totally unexpected. Really cool to hear.

Speaker 4 (01:03:57):

Well, good to know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):

So yeah, thanks for listening guys, and we'll talk to you soon. The Unstoppable

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):

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