ALEX PRIETO: Studio Etiquette, Mixing Low End, and Managing Band Dynamics

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by two notes. Audio Engineering two notes is a leader in the market for load box cabinet and mic simulators garner the days of having ISO rooms or having to record an app at ear bleeding volumes to capture that magic tone. The torpedo live reload in studio allow you to crank your amp up as loud as you want, or record silently. Check out www com for more info. And now your host, Joey Sturgis and Eyal Levi.

(00:00:35):

Hey, hey, hey. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. Welcome back. Welcome. Thank you. Welcome. Yeah, thank you for continuing to be a loyal subscriber. We really appreciate that. However, we want to make sure that you're aware that we do also have a podcast on iTunes that anyone can listen to, not just subscribers, but any walk of life, anyone with an iPhone or a smartphone or whatever. In fact, you could just listen to our podcast on our website. So if you've got any friends that aren't quite subscribed yet and they're not signed up but you think that they should check this out, make sure to let them know about that. You could send them to URM Academy and once they go there, they can click right on podcast or you can just search for Unstoppable Recording Machine in the iTunes podcast list there and it'll pop right up on the search. We really appreciate that and hopefully we can spread the word and get more people involved because this would be nothing without a community and you guys are a great community, so we really appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (00:01:36):

The best.

Speaker 2 (00:01:37):

Today's show is going to be really cool. We have a special guest with us and I will allow Eyal to introduce him.

Speaker 3 (00:01:43):

Yes, so I've got my buddy Alex Preto here. You guys might have heard of him and if you haven't, I know that you've heard stuff he's worked on and you love him. You just don't know that you love him yet, but I'm going to tell you how you know that you love him. So basically he's been around the block a few times at this point. Started out in Boston who's mentored by legendary producer Susan Rogers, who's worked with Prince of All, no big deal. He moved to New York, so started working with David Beeth and Dan Eff. He's worked with bands like Pierce, the Veil De Wears, Prada, motionless and White Crown, the Empire. He's also a member of Exploding and Sound Records. Band Grass is Green and he does front of house for one of my favorite unknown bands, secret Chiefs three, which is one of my heroes'. Band Trace Bruins, the guitar player for Mr. Bungle. That's his one third of Bungle side project. They do crazy shit and I've loved them for 15 years, so that's cool. Fellow Berkeley attendee though. Did you drop out like I did?

Speaker 4 (00:02:53):

No, I suffered through it.

Speaker 3 (00:02:54):

You bastard,

Speaker 2 (00:02:56):

You're one of the few because we have had a few Berkeley, Berkeley dropouts on here before. I feel like that's kind of the cool thing to do. I don't know if I'm right or wrong about that, but it's like you go there and then you just drop out. That's what everyone does.

Speaker 3 (00:03:10):

There's not that many people who actually finish and then out of the people who finish, there's fewer people who actually develop a career. Most people with careers are like, fuck this place, but Alex is the exception.

Speaker 4 (00:03:21):

Yeah, I'm a dumb ass. No, I had so much skin in the game that I just had to see it through and there was a lot of technical education that I got there that I was fast tracked on. I walked out of there knowing I could walk into almost any studio, large format console, small format console, just like a writing room and figure it out. I mean, that was kind of the stuff that I think was worth it. That being said, could I have interned, which I did do during my time. I was working full, full-time, interning at a studio and going to college there, so that was pretty crucial. What the school doesn't teach you and I kind of don't expect them to is how to handle clients and that's really what I learned from interning and just being ridden real hard by a couple of great engineers in the Boston area.

Speaker 3 (00:04:13):

Can you describe what getting ridden real hard means in this context?

Speaker 4 (00:04:17):

Open to interpretation. First one there, last one to leave, making sure everything is clean, walking into a situation or with a client and knowing what everyone's drinking. Just the little detail stuff like that is so crucial as arbitrary and just asinine as it sounds. There was a place I was working at and they used to have these little black stones lining the hallways and I would clean them with a Windex and a paper towel twice a month and it was just kind of paying your dues I guess, and they would let every step, you kind of went further, a little more access a little bit more. Getting in with the clients and seeing how everything worked, I guess.

Speaker 3 (00:04:58):

I don't think it's acid nine. It's not acid nine at all. Our buddy Josh Newell, who's been on the podcast a bunch of times and who has also worked with some huge, huge acts and under some huge producers, he got his first massive break with Lincoln Park by getting the food orders. That's why they gave him a shot with editing some drums, I believe.

Speaker 4 (00:05:21):

Yeah, I mean it's the old adage, can I speak freely on here?

Speaker 3 (00:05:26):

Yeah, you can fucking speak fucking freelance.

Speaker 4 (00:05:28):

That's beautiful. Yeah, if you fuck up the coffee order, why would I even let you think about touching the session? There's thousands of dollars here, the studio's reputation, the artist's career, and you fucked up the coffee order. It's like, dude, it's day one. Shit, you can't do that. So

Speaker 2 (00:05:45):

I'm so glad you said that because I think people look at it the opposite way. An intern says, oh, the coffee order's not that important. What I really need to focus on is getting this computer thing. It's like, no, if you can't get the coffee order, you can't even touch the session

Speaker 4 (00:06:05):

And then you kind of work your way up. It was weird. The first studio interned at, I got kind of screwed there. They kind of made me chase my tail a little bit. It was six months in and Oh, you're the next guy in line when so-and-so goes to la. Three months later, oh, well it's you and this other guy. Three months later, oh, well you it's this other guy and another person. Until I was starting to bring my own clients into the studio one night I get a call saying, oh, your session's canceled. They didn't know my internship was that night. So I walk in there, see my client with one of the other engineers and then the response was, Hey man, that's the biz. I walked out that night, I was like 19 or 20 and from then on I was like, you know what?

(00:06:44):

Fuck this. I'm just going to go get my own clients, and that actually is what steamrolled everything. What got me in with Scott Riling who had done Ballout Boy and Butch Walker stuff was like he kind of pulled a client that was working there. Long story short, but yeah, I was like, fuck this. I'm never going to look to anybody for all my work ever again, and that's kind of worked out. Even working with Dan, it was always like, Hey man, I'm going to pay you. It's not going to be great, but your responsibility and the deal I'm going to make is when you're not working on my shit. Get your own work. And that worked out beautifully.

Speaker 3 (00:07:19):

Well, you know that some guys don't let their underlings get their own work. No, I'm serious. Some guys have to sign deals that if they're working under so-and-so, they're not allowed to book their own stuff

Speaker 4 (00:07:34):

And that guy also gets a bit of their publishing. I'm sure we're talking about the same guy. I have a very close friend who spent some time with him and hopefully he keeps you busy enough and pay you well enough for That's cool. But Joey, you're an example of that, of self-sustaining business. I'm going to go out and get my own shit and screw everybody else. Screw tradition. Yeah, and I think there's also something to be said about that too is I was a little weird spending all this time learning the technical side, the engineering side and how to handle clients, and it seems like a lot of that stuff is kind of fading by a little bit. So I don't know, it's kind of like the Wild West Post Napster right now,

Speaker 3 (00:08:20):

But don't you think that all your technical info from Berkeley made a big deal considering who you've worked with, like Dan working on a board and maintaining the old studio kind of workflow, didn't that make a big difference where a guy who maybe is completely and in the box wouldn't be able to hang with Dan?

Speaker 4 (00:08:42):

Absolutely. I was able to walk in house aloud day one, and I wasn't expecting them to even let me touch the SSL, but I could run it. I can get the automation going, I can get things moving around. That being said, you can't go in there and push the assistant out of the way and be like, fuck you dude. What are you doing? You got to sit in the corner, be quiet and learn as much as you can. But yeah, it definitely was an advantage. They would ask questions or give you a little tests and try to trip you up or whatever. If you catch it, you're in the good graces. I think it was kind of funny though, Cato Con who did the pretty reckless and all, I think he's a and r at Razor and Tie now, so congrats to him. He didn't actually start talking to me until I took Scotch tape and cleaned his pedal boards with scotch tape and got all the lint off.

Speaker 3 (00:09:32):

But you know what though, back to what you originally said about it not being asinine, I think that doing that kind of stuff, getting the drink orders, it shows that you're mindful and paying attention of other people's needs.

Speaker 4 (00:09:47):

We deal with these bands that you got these kids that are 19 that are thrown into this public spotlight and they're very vulnerable. You know what I mean? And they're very insecure. They really don't know. I didn't know what the hell I was doing at 19, let alone having to go play in front of thousands of people and deal with business and taxes and all the crap that comes with being in a band now and let alone you have four, six weeks to write a record because most bands don't even have the time to spend months and write stuff. You're on the road and then you go, okay, you've got six weeks to go make the record. We've all been there. It's like, well, we've got five songs, we're just going to write the other five in the studio, and you got to make sure that their needs are attended and they're okay and they're in a good mental mindset to be creative and be comfortable and I think just paying attention to their Coke or what they drink and you can pay attention to other things like, oh, the bass player just broke up with his girlfriend or they were in talks about kicking him out.

(00:10:51):

It's just overhearing all these little details of conversation and you know what to say, what not to say, how to keep him in the moment, when to push everyone out of the room and just work with that person. Or maybe any person needs the seven dudes in the band in the room at the same time, but you don't know that unless you pay attention to the dudes and what the conversations are.

Speaker 3 (00:11:11):

Less talking, more listening

Speaker 4 (00:11:13):

And just being a wallflower. I think that's super important. I think you get better results out of people that way too, is just listening, just not waiting for your turn to talk.

Speaker 3 (00:11:24):

I think you can do that in any walk of life. Just listen. I think it's one of the secrets to life is just listen to people more. They'll pretty much always tell you what they need out of you in order to be happy with your interactions. Joey, I'm curious on the topic of internships and getting clients, did you ever even consider getting an internship or were you just like, fuck it, I'm fucking wild Westing this shit?

Speaker 2 (00:11:55):

Well, the thing that's so interesting about my story is that I really just kind of rolled into it. It just started with one band and then that turned into two and then that turned into three and then to six and then to 12. And so by the time I could even think about like, oh, how should I approach this as a career? I already had customers and I know that's not going to be the same story for a lot of people, so I don't know how much advice I have to give other than just the one thing that I did every single time was made sure that the people were happy. I was always like, do you like this guitar tone? Do you like the sound of this kick drum? And if they were willing to be honest with me and be like, no, I think it could be better, I would sit there and work on it until it was better. So I don't know if that's probably the best advice I have is just make sure everyone was always happy because then I knew that after they leave there they would have nothing but good things to say about me.

Speaker 3 (00:12:54):

I think there's also little things you can do that don't require any intense psychological work when you're making a band happy, and this is something that guys at the very bottom can do when they're first getting people into their basement studio or whatever. This doesn't take having a long line of bands that you've already broken or anything like that. Just little things go a long way. For instance, having a fridge and stocking it with a few different drinks like water and a few energy drinks and some cokes or something will cost you 10 bucks. Bands appreciate shit like that. The more you can make them feel like a VIP, even if you don't run a VIP operation, the more you can make them feel like they're getting taken care of, the better off it's going to be. And those little things, it is low hanging fruit and it seems dumb, but it is totally not dumb because they'll remember that you cared about them when it came time for their session.

Speaker 4 (00:14:01):

I mean, yeah, that's hospitality is number one man. And that's just I think back at Roseman Cherney who I think was at record plant and she was the first studio manager to really just take that to the next level, and that's why that place is still running at $1,500 a day is because clients, wow. Yeah, I mean clients go there expecting five star service and that's what they're going to get. You're going to pay for it, but that's what you're going to get. And there's no cutting corners at all and I think that's really, it's number one. I mean you don't have to go that crazy with turn down service and shit, but make them feel comfortable, make them feel at home, and I think the guys that learn that soonest are going to be the most successful and the whole surly old engineer thing, the ah, fuck, the bands I know better thing does not work anymore. You are no longer the gatekeeper man. The 15-year-old kid has an inbox and a laptop and if he's cool with the band, they're going to go record with him. Doesn't matter how much gear you have.

Speaker 3 (00:15:03):

Speaking of gear, I'm just curious, it is true that it doesn't matter what gear you have to some degree, but at what point do you think it starts to matter? At what point do you think that, okay, we should probably at least have some nice preamps or something. At what point do you think that gear does start to make a difference?

Speaker 4 (00:15:24):

Oh man. Depends on what gear, I think at the end, it depends on how well you know your gear. I guess that's such a loaded question. I know, I remember. Well, I'm just going to go. I remember I was sitting at the super bougie studio in Boston and someone played one of Joey's mix, I think it was Attack Attack or something, and they're like, yeah, this dude does it all in the box. And I just had my head in my hand. I was like, what the hell am I spending all this time learning all this gear for? I was very resentful at the time to be totally honest. I was like, shit, this kid is kicking my ass and I think we're the same age too, and he just figured out I'm 31, I just turned 30. All right. I don't feel so bad now, but I think it's really just what you do with it.

(00:16:13):

I think there really is no proper time. I think little changes what you focus on. I mean a lot of the kids in this forum are doing the di guitars, the midi drums, so how are you going to set yourself apart, have a really good sounding vocal, so spend some money on a vocal, a nice preamp and API. You can get a great river for a thousand bucks, which yes is a lot of money and you start to build it and you'll see where your weak points are if you're noticing, I mean, I think it's having one good free for vocals and then monitoring. I think if you know what you're listening to, you can do more damage than if you have an entire room packed with gear. If you don't know what you're listening to or what's going on. You're kind of just spending your own gears a little bit.

Speaker 3 (00:16:57):

I agree with you completely. I think that that room listening and what they're recording into computer as well as the interface should be the first line of attack

Speaker 4 (00:17:12):

And gain staging as well, which I get stuff to mix and I'm like, oh my God, this vocal ISS crushed and yeah, well, he just dimed it going into the pre because he wanted that saturation thing. I don't know what the deal is with that now. Everyone's saturating everything and I'm kind of like, all right. I guess

Speaker 3 (00:17:31):

Mean are they saturating it or are they just pinning the pinning a focus, right? Scarlet input.

Speaker 4 (00:17:38):

Dude, it just sounded like they put capitate on stun and just like, oh, this is the clean vocal. All right, cool. I guess we'll just go with it. So you end up just making it more crazy weird. But yeah, we're kind of off the gear thing now, but I think just gain staging and listening, just fucking listen and you'll get more out of your gear that way if you're starting out use references. That helped me so much.

Speaker 3 (00:18:08):

What do you do for referencing now?

Speaker 4 (00:18:10):

To be honest, I haven't been doing too much referencing. I finally feel like I'm at a point where I kind of know where stuff is hitting, but for years it was obviously Dan's stuff, which is why I kind of targeted that whole camp, A lot of rich costi stuff. I think listening to his stuff makes me put my head in my hands. Ben Gross is awesome, like the Manson record he did, this is the new shit or this is the new scene when that comes in. That's my reference for just low end and the way the vocal sounds all the time, it's crushing. So that's what I'm using for references. And it goes to the style too. If I'm doing an arctic monkey style band, I'm not going to go listen to cattle decapitation or something.

Speaker 3 (00:19:00):

So when do you have any tips for people who reference, because I feel like people do listen to us about using reference mixes, but I feel like they do it wrong. For instance, they try to copy one mix or something. Do you have a method for referencing? I

Speaker 4 (00:19:19):

Feel like level matching is the most important and getting a high quality version of it. It's like, well, I'm monitoring my mix through my DAW, but I'm streaming the song off of YouTube and it's way louder or it's way softer. It's like,

Speaker 2 (00:19:35):

Oh my gosh,

Speaker 4 (00:19:37):

I saw a post on this and I'm not trying to starch shit with this kid. I'm just saying people kind of got on 'em about it. But it's little things like that. I know you guys are both using Cubase now, but you can bring sessions in a song into your session, route it out of the queues and just monitor the cues and you can go back and forth and then use the meters to make sure they're the same volume. And I think that's pretty crucial is just level matching it as best you can because you're going like, why isn't my thing loud enough? And you were like, your whole mix is clipping and it's actually way louder than the thing you were streaming off of YouTube.

Speaker 2 (00:20:18):

Yeah, I mean that's the first thing that I think a lot of people need to understand right now is that iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, pretty much anything is playing back stuff with a normalization algorithm. So you're not really getting the true volume of the recording ever unless you, I don't know, buy the CD or download the file and play it in a lossless player that doesn't modify anything, which is kind of hard to do now because all the players have volume matching and soundcheck enabled and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (00:20:52):

Everything's kind of a little funky. I was actually talking to Mike Kian last night and mastering for iTunes and all this stuff. I think it's actually less compression, which is awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:21:03):

They want, my friend actually just got certified to do that. So basically what they want is every time the file gets transferred into a different format, like say it goes from wave to MP three or from Wave to M four A, they don't want it to clip. So there's a special utility that you get that comes from Apple that you can scan your audio through and it'll kind of predict if that's going to happen and it'll tell you this is too loud. So they actually want some peaks and valleys in there. It seems like

Speaker 4 (00:21:36):

Wow, say it ain't so. I mean that's kind of awesome. I think some converged Jane Doe should be clipped and sound like you're going through hell, but I don't know if it's for everything and if you level match or RMS, I forget the term, I think on brick wall limited slammed out mixes sound smaller than a just mix with that is just killing, you know what I mean? I think if you just kind of RMS gain match 'em, forget the exact term, but they were trying to implement that Bobcat Katz was on an a s panel a few years back and kind of not try to get too technical way above my pay grade, but they played 'em next to each other and holy shit, the Unmastered unlimited to hell track sounded huge. People fell out of their chairs with how big the kick drum was in comparison to the super slammed L two to death cliff. I kind of think it's cool, but I don't know. I think it's an artistic statement more than anything now on how much your brick wall and shit. And I think it's also kind of a cock measuring contest. Well, I'm lower than you are bro, so it sounds way better. I don't know what the change is going to be with that, especially with all Apple music streaming and what that's going to mean. I know Joe, you master your own stuff. I'm not that much of a masochist, so I sent it to Mike.

Speaker 2 (00:23:04):

I mean it's definitely at this point I feel like it's starting to, I don't do as much work as I used to, so I definitely see things starting to change to a degree where I'm like, wait for me. But I know at this point right now physical delivery is pretty much dead. So final product is always digital now everyone wants a DDP and I've been asked a couple times, and this is in the last year to do mastered for iTunes and I never went through it, so I was like, you guys have to find someone else to do it. I can give you the files that Apple wants to start with, but you're going to have to have someone actually certified do it. They don't let just anyone do it. You have to literally contact Apple.

Speaker 3 (00:23:52):

You got to get the blue check mark.

Speaker 2 (00:23:54):

Yeah, exactly. You talk to someone, an actual person in order to get verified to do that.

Speaker 4 (00:24:01):

Wow. Well that's pretty cool. I wonder what implications it'll have for the record makers. So I'm sure there's obvious ones, but it can go how we approach everything from how we're handling the low end of our mixes to the high end. Knowing I mix for mastering now I mix going into it knowing that or I even track knowing like, oh, this is going to be totally crushed by the time it gets out there, so it's going to affect some of the choices I make, how much EQ or something I'll put on when I'm tracking in just because I know what it needs to sound like when we're done.

Speaker 3 (00:24:36):

Well, haven't the productions of every era kind of been tailored to the medium in which the majority of the listeners play it back on?

Speaker 4 (00:24:47):

I think so. I think so too. I would love to know the requirements. Yeah, we're putting this out on cassette, what that requires, it would just be weird.

Speaker 3 (00:24:56):

I'm sure there was a whole page of it that I've never seen. But real quick about referencing stuff, we didn't mention it and I know some of you guys who are listening to this already know I'm going to say this, but for all you new guys, we have quite a few new guys. If you are not referencing in the way that Alex said, which means doing it through the queue outputs, get yourself a plugin called Magic ab, which you insert on the very last insert in the session on your master, on your master bus and use that you can load in nine different tracks and level match them all. It's the best referencing tool I've seen so far. It's called Magic AB and it's a pretty inexpensive plugin. Just please don't use YouTube or Bandcamp.

Speaker 4 (00:25:52):

Oh god.

Speaker 3 (00:25:53):

Yeah. So let's switch gears and talk about some guitar stuff. Oh, awesome. You ready? Yes, go for it.

Speaker 2 (00:26:01):

Let's do it.

Speaker 3 (00:26:02):

Yeah. Alright boy, just out of curiosity homie. Yeah, do you have a certain go-to as far as microphones for recording guitars? Are you in the camp of always start with 57 or I know you've worked with some pretty rad dudes, so I'm kind of curious.

Speaker 4 (00:26:24):

I think there needs to be some type of constant when you're experimenting. So yeah, I'll definitely just set up the 57, but that means I'm going to probably shoot out four or five different cabs if that's available. And then we're going to shoot out the heads. But yeah, I was 57, 1 21 for a while, but the 1 21 is really dependent on the room you're in because it's figure eight pattern, so you're getting a lot of kickback on the backside of the mic and shit can get weird depending on the room. But the last record I did, I refill back in love with the 57 and 4 21 on that new PV two 12 with the heritage thirties that they're putting out at the 51 53. It was that and then a diesel, whatever, the four channel one is not the super, it's a diesel, so it's going to sound awesome. And man, that was it for me. That was the best sound I'd gotten in a while.

Speaker 3 (00:27:21):

I remember a few weeks back you sent me pictures of some Friedman amps.

Speaker 4 (00:27:24):

Oh yeah. The one client I work for has got a bit of a problem. He spends a lot of money on amps, so he's got the Harry Brown eye 100 and then he just got one of the naked amps, which was designed for Billy Howard of a perfect circle. The thing about his, he has the original four Billy versions, which are there only four floating around. So one of the techs at Friedman sold it to him because he was just moving crap out and didn't need it anymore. And that being said, he also had the same version built by Naor, N-A-Y-L-O-R, which are some of my favorite heavy gain s on the planet.

Speaker 3 (00:28:01):

I've never even heard of Naylor.

Speaker 4 (00:28:03):

Yeah, it's a small operation, but man, those things are crushing and they're simple too. It's not like you don't look at it and there's 15 knobs and an ab OD thing, this fat, it's just base mid treble gain bite and that's it. It's just, just set everything flat and you're like, oh, well fuck me, this sounds awesome.

Speaker 3 (00:28:24):

So I own a Bogner ecstasy, but it's one of my favorites. But I got to say that want to know what keeps me from using it as much as I would like to is too many options.

Speaker 4 (00:28:37):

Yeah, you're sitting on the back and you're hitting all the different, the fat switch and this switch and you're like, I can't tell the difference. And then in your mind you're constantly going, did I make the right choice? Did I make, is this right? Is this going to be awesome? Is this going to sound good when I mix it? But yeah, I think you just got to kind of shoot from the hip with some of those amps and just kind of trust your instinct.

Speaker 3 (00:28:58):

Yeah, I think so too. However, I will say that I prefer amps that are like what you just described, gain treble base, mid bite, go fuck yourself. I think that that's my favorite way that an amp face is or could be,

Speaker 4 (00:29:16):

And maybe it's just growing up with old Marshall like Jason eight hundreds or SVTs, like there wasn't all this stuff. Is it better sometimes? I don't know, but I don't, I'm trying to think of it too much. I try to think of it more, I guess the band, the song, the Player first. I've had a couple people ask me like, well, what's your favorite amp? Well, what are we recording? Well, what's your favorite amp? I'm like, I have no idea. What are we doing? What's the song?

Speaker 3 (00:29:43):

Well, I totally agree with that. I mean I think a 51 50 block letter, which is kind of the staple for so much heavy music sounds like garbage clean for instance. So I don't like when getting questions, what's your favorite piece of gear or something. It's like what is the sixth grade?

Speaker 4 (00:30:05):

I mean there's stuff we lean on because we know what it's supposed to sound like and that'll be our jump off point, but where we end up in a couple of hours is it could be a whole different thing that we didn't even think we would get there. And I think I like that experimenting. It's looking for the light switch in a dark room. I think that's where the real art of the technical engineering happens. I think people get scared of engineering a little bit, all numbers and technical stuff, but no man, I think it's an art form that I hope we don't lose too much with the way things are going and how quickly we have to move. Now with records on experimenting,

Speaker 3 (00:30:42):

Do you ever get into Amp sims at all or are you a purist when it comes to

Speaker 4 (00:30:47):

Hell no. Whatever works, man. I like the Lao or INE plugins I think are pretty cool. I know those are kind of a crowd favorite. I thought those were pretty dope, but there's so many out there I kind of can't keep up. I got my buddy Cody, who's a younger kid and all into the eight and nine string guitars and shit, and he's the impulse responses. I'm like, I don't know, I just turn the knobs on the mouse until I think it sounds good. But Nick Crow makes a cool 51 50 kind of thing that's really kind of edgy and can be really cool for some parts. But yeah, I've been most impressed with the pooling. Maybe people will think I'm out of my mind or loop. Oo, I don't know. They're free and they work

Speaker 3 (00:31:38):

I think for free plugins, they're about as good as it's going to get.

Speaker 4 (00:31:41):

Yeah, I mean I haven't tried the soft tube Freedman or any of that, so if I have pod farm, I use it for some stuff. We

Speaker 3 (00:31:48):

Should send you the tone Forge stuff if you haven't tried it.

Speaker 4 (00:31:51):

I actually haven't tried that stuff out, so yeah, I'm always willing to try the new shit and see what's hip with the kids today.

Speaker 3 (00:31:59):

Yeah, we'll send you that after this gets done. Making a note right here, send Alex Tone Forge. All right.

Speaker 4 (00:32:12):

Or any free shit UF kicking around.

Speaker 3 (00:32:14):

Well, there's quite a bit. We've got a whole warehouse. I'm just kidding. A whole hard drive.

Speaker 4 (00:32:20):

We were joking about the gain reduction. I was one of those late night phone calls you and I have, but I was kind of freaking out about how awesome not to blow smoke up your ass or anything about how awesome gain reduction was just it didn't sound like anything. It had its own vibe and its own thing and it either works really awesome or it doesn't. And I think that's the new platform for plugins to go, I'm tired, I don't need another 1176 emulator.

Speaker 2 (00:32:44):

Yeah, exactly. That's how I feel too. It's like we have all this space to work in, how come nobody's trying to do something new,

Speaker 4 (00:32:53):

Just program weird shit into there and see what happens.

Speaker 2 (00:32:55):

I mean, at this point, and I mean I don't want to give away my secret or anything, but it's like there's a whole generation of people that don't know what 1176 even is, so what are you selling to them? You're selling them something they don't understand. It doesn't make any sense. So I really approach my products as just a whole new thing and people will check out Tone Forge and be like, what is this based on? Is it a Mesa or is it a 65 0 5? Neither. I just made it up.

Speaker 4 (00:33:24):

Yeah, no, turn the knobs if it works, great. If not, there's a million other things you can use.

Speaker 2 (00:33:29):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:33:29):

I think that that's a valuable insight that, I mean, I know what a UI 1176 is like, but what kid has $6,000 to spend on?

Speaker 4 (00:33:42):

And that's kind of what's baffling as the record budgets plummet, the price of gear is skyrocketing, really. You're going to a $7,000 compressor, I'm sure it's awesome, but that's some record budgets now for Rock, for newly signed bands. Not calling out any labels or anything, but that's what they have to spend. I'm going to spend my entire budget on one compressor. I think I'm all right

Speaker 3 (00:34:08):

When there's already some pretty damn good versions of it out there.

Speaker 4 (00:34:12):

And what's also people forget is what you kind of going back, Joey, you make stuff just like the way it sounds, what people like about that older weird gear or the flaws or technically are flaws like, oh, this distorts in a cool way. Fuck yeah. Oh, this doesn't handle the whole magic with the SSL channel dynamics where they didn't handle the low end well, so what happens? You get a ton of low end through because the compressor doesn't react to it at all.

Speaker 2 (00:34:42):

Yeah, well I would like to think that, I mean, I don't know the history of a lot of analog gear. I'm not a huge analog guy, but I'd like to think that whoever made the 1176 or maybe whatever came before, it was just someone like me trying to create something new,

Speaker 4 (00:35:00):

Just putting stuff together and hoping nothing catches on fire.

Speaker 2 (00:35:04):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (00:35:06):

I feel like the most exciting stuff and I think that goes back to the art of it, not looking at the numbers all the time and just figuring it out like, oh, this is wrong in every sense of technical, anything, but it works. And then that's happened. You asked what the 57 is and sometimes you using a small diaphragm like a Cam 180 4 or something might work on the guitar, but you don't know until you try. And I read that with Kurt Ballou as well. He switches up guitar mics and cabs every record

Speaker 3 (00:35:39):

Just as a discipline,

Speaker 4 (00:35:43):

Just as a baseline. And I was like, that's really, that's hard, dude, that's impressive. Especially with the go go pace. And I know he tracks a whole band in a week. Oh yeah, he moves quick. So that's really impressive and I try to take some of that, but sometimes some of the bands we're getting, we just don't have the time or we just have to go. They don't want to sit and wait for it. I remember, Joe, you had mentioned, or I read something years ago, you had written an ultimate medal where you're like, people were giving you flack for your sounds and he's like, dude, these bands coming in want the sound, so I just give them the sound. They don't want to sit there and experiment and sometimes it happens with some bands, they just want the sound

Speaker 2 (00:36:27):

And I think ultimately it's tough. There's so many different ways to look at things. You can look at it as an art form, as a business or as both or a balance of either, and that's where I think a lot of people struggle. So many people are like, well, you shouldn't just give people what they want. If they want autotune, then what they want is stupid. And it's like, no, not necessarily. The thing that I always try to put in front of me is that there's so many different goals and so many different people that want different goals, and so it's like when I got asked to do attack attack, I was really uncomfortable about the whole UNE thing, but when I actually talked to the band sit down and talk to them, they were like, no autotune. It is like a thing. And I was like, what do you mean?

(00:37:16):

I thought autotune was just a way to make crappy people sound good. And they're like, no, it's like a cool thing that's happening right now in music and listen to this, listen to that. And I'm like, oh, I see what you're saying. And there's so many other people that want to attack me with a sword or something and be like, you shouldn't have done that. That was stupid. It sounds stupid. It's like, well, yeah, but that's for you and not for this whole other audience or this whole other generation of people that just like that sound for whatever reason. So freedom.

Speaker 4 (00:37:48):

I always think of the sketch from the one of the Eddie Murphy standups where he's getting chewed up by Bill Cosby and he calls Richard Pryor and Richard goes, you selling tickets, you selling shirts? People laughing when you tell your jokes, bill Cosby to shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, have a coke and a smile. You know what I mean? I probably butchered that, but I kind of think of that too, and I think you might not be the right person for the band that you want to get out there and get as much as work as possible. And I get it, you're hungry, but sometimes for everyone's sake just walk away from the project.

Speaker 3 (00:38:24):

You don't mean Joey. You mean

Speaker 4 (00:38:26):

The proverbial you. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:38:27):

Yeah, the proverbial you

Speaker 4 (00:38:28):

Just talking to everyone. It took me years to learn that and you get so hurt when you got rejected or something didn't happen and you're like, oh man, and whatever.

Speaker 3 (00:38:40):

Let's talk about that for a second because there's been times when a band hasn't come back to me where at the time I was all huffy and then after a while I was like, I hated recording them. Why am I mad about this? We totally didn't see eye to eye. I was counting down the days for them to leave. I kept complaining at night to my girlfriend about how working with them fucking sucks and I can't wait to not work with them. And then why am I mad they're not coming back? I got what I asked for.

Speaker 4 (00:39:13):

Yeah. I think because we all take a lot of pride in our work, I don't think we'd put up with so much bullshit if we didn't. And you want to make things that are awesome and that bands are happy with and that the kids buy. And even if it was just awful, you kind of forget about that shit when the record comes out and the band's doing well and you see pictures of people singing along, you kind of forget about, oh my God, that was an awful awful time. You know what I mean? And there were a couple of bands that started at Joey's came to Dan's and now they moved on and I don't know if we all had the same experience, but it was like, oh, the record did pretty good, but I don't know if I could handle another record with those dudes. I love them to death in a social setting, but man, that might've been, maybe it's good where it is. We chat, we go to shows, we hang out, we get drunk, but maybe working together wasn't the best thing and I think the better you deal with the rejection, the more happy you're going to be. First off. Cool. I got rejected from a record yesterday for a mix. We loved your drums. We're going to go with the producer. Awesome. I'll see you guys around the bend. Good. Best of luck.

Speaker 2 (00:40:25):

Yeah, well, I want to say that a lot of this stuff I feel like I learned from these bands. I learned how to work in a team or work with people from probably the Dev Wars Prada. I'm fine with naming them because those guys, and I don't mean this in a negative way at all, in fact this is probably why they're good honestly, is that they just are not very easy to work with. What I mean by that is that they put the standards so high and they all have very different opinions about what they like. Mike is this one direction, Jeremy's this other direction, Daniel's this other direction, and so what ends up coming out of that situation is so well thought about and so diverse in a certain way, certain sense that it's so good and that's part of what makes them amazing is that they can sit there and fucking argue about the dumbest shit, but it matters so much in the end. When I first, I did a lot of albums with them, so I had to learn how to work with those guys, but in the end I look back on it and I'm like, oh, it makes so much sense now.

(00:41:38):

And then I learned how to work with people through that work environment.

Speaker 4 (00:41:44):

Those dudes definitely fight for it and it's a really cool process to see where some bands are just going to come in and be like, cool. Yeah, whatever. Sounds good. I guess that's the sound, right? That's okay. Yep. Just put it out. Cool. I'm going to go in the other room.

Speaker 2 (00:42:01):

They really care a lot

Speaker 4 (00:42:03):

And I think that's kind of like what separates the long-term bands that are going to be around for the 10 years and we see it, you see it with Prada and I know I see it with Pierce of Vail just being the more recent thing I've worked on. They fight for it, they're going to work it out and they're going to put the time in and I think they're now afforded that luxury. I think you've got to maybe pay your dues a little bit more now for the label to chill out and give you, well three months, then six months, and then two years to put out a record. Whereas some of the smaller bands on the metal labels are getting, you got six weeks bud.

Speaker 3 (00:42:43):

So sometimes with some of the smaller bands that I've had to work with where there is very limited budget, you got to get it done within four weeks or five weeks. There's no way around it. You're not spending 90 days on this or more, it's four weeks or you're paying out of pocket to keep recording these guys. A lot of 'em have these big dreams for what they want done, but it's just not all possible in that amount of time. So at what point do you think it's good for bands to start fighting for the ideals and at what point do you think it's good for them to realize what's realistic and at what point is it bullshit that you should give up on your ideals? Do you get what I'm saying? There's always going to be resistance when you're fighting for something to be better. So at what point is it legitimate to fight for something better and at what point are you just causing problems?

Speaker 4 (00:43:44):

I think that's where it's the producer's job to step in because he's got to look at the big picture. If the guitar player or someone is fighting for this little two bar thing where he is like, no, we have to have this guitar line in. I think it's the producer's job to step in and be like, okay, grand scheme of things in the quality of this song, I want you to explain to me why this little two-bar guitar lick is going to make the song better. And I think that's kind where it comes down is someone looking at the big picture and I think in the moment 14 hour days you get caught up in, you are in the rabbit hole. I think that there needs to be always someone in the room is kind of can set back and look at the small picture. I don't think you should ever stop fighting. I think you should know I guess where the battle's over and the war's still going on, if that makes sense. Well maybe your idea didn't make it this time, but there's always next

Speaker 3 (00:44:36):

Time and well, maybe all we had time for was to track tight ass rhythms, tight ass leads, tight ass drums, tight ass bass and tight ass vocals, but there wasn't time to do a million guitar layers and then synths and all this stuff. There just wasn't that kind of time.

Speaker 4 (00:44:53):

And I think it's ultimately the band as a whole and the producer to kind of be like, we still have a good song. It could be better, but we still have the song. I think there really is no right answer to that. Maybe the producer agrees that we need the two bar thing, but three guys in the band are like, no, we don't have the time.

Speaker 3 (00:45:12):

I have definitely agreed with bands at certain points where there was no budget left and given them a week of free time to be able to complete a few things. I've done that a few times. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:45:24):

You've definitely done it because ultimately it's going to come out, it's going to have your name on it and if it sounds incomplete, especially now with sessions that are 300 damn tracks, you got to hit kind of fire on all engines a little bit. I kind of feel a little bad, not bad is the right word, but it worries me that the label send bands in with only four weeks. I wish they spent a little bit more money then they have. Maybe the records don't move units like they used to, but I think it kind of cheapens the result to the fans. I don't think the fans get a good record. And how does that incentivize them to spend money at the show? You

Speaker 3 (00:46:02):

Want to know there is a solution for this. No one's going to take this idea and run with it, but there is a solution and it'll work and the solution is a signing freeze for one year for all labels.

(00:46:18):

If there was a signing freeze, it would restore a lot of order to that process assigning freeze, and I don't actually believe this because I believe in a hundred percent free market, but just in this ideal universe, if you could have the amount of bands that labels are signing now you have a quota and you can't go over it. And then we started signing freeze. Now I bet that within a year the music industry would be in a way, way better place because they'd have to actually think about who they're signing during this one year of no signing, a lot of the bands that don't deserve to be signed will fall apart, so cream will rise to the top like it normally does. And then if they can only sign X number of bands per year, they'll have to really think about who they're signing to get the most return on their investment. I feel like those two things would solve so many of these problems, but that's not going to happen. So I'm just talking out my ass.

Speaker 4 (00:47:24):

Yeah, I think it seems like they'll sign 30 bands and hope one sticks and spend five grand a band. If one band sticks and they sell some units. Cool. I guess we met our quota for the month, so yeah, I'm learning that side now with working with the new venture. I'm going down with working at this label,

Speaker 3 (00:47:46):

You should convince them not to sign anything else for you?

Speaker 4 (00:47:49):

No, I mean we have two bands. We're launching the first one and then we're going hit the second one and then maybe we'll think about signing the third next spring or finding a third project to really develop. There's one we've kind of been working with off and on, but nothing set in stone yet because especially launching it, if we don't get the first one right, the doors aren't going to be open for the second, the third, the fourth, and the 35th band down the line.

Speaker 3 (00:48:18):

What are you looking for in a band

Speaker 4 (00:48:21):

That's loaded? These are either like Terry Gross questions, these are awesome,

Speaker 3 (00:48:25):

But really what are you looking for if you've got two and you're possibly looking for one more in the nearish future, meaning next six months or something. Or

Speaker 4 (00:48:37):

We kind of want to be moved a little bit, something a little bit different to the table. I'm not expecting the next Jeff Buckley to come walking into the room, but that would be nice though. I would, oh my god, I'd sing to the high heavens, but I feel like things are a little bit kind of stagnant now. I'd like to see something a little bit different at the table. You're doing the kind of big ass intro to the screamy verse to the singing Breaking Benjamin Chorus, back to the verse, the super heavy bridge, two bar radio break and then the double chorus out. I'd like to hear a little bit something different and a singer that really pulls me in I think is going to be the biggest one for me. Everyone worries that they have to be a pretty boy and all this stuff and I think that's nice, but I'll take Andy Go's line of I don't listen with my eyes, so I want someone like a singer to really just grab me and challenge me a little bit and fuck me up a little bit. I think that's why I go to Jeff Buckley. I'd really like to hear that again,

Speaker 3 (00:49:39):

If you had a signing freeze, you could spend an entire year just looking for that person.

Speaker 4 (00:49:43):

Yeah, I think that would be awesome. But a girl can dream.

Speaker 3 (00:49:48):

Yeah, I know. I'm quite a dreaming girl. So we've reached that point where we have some questions from the audience for you and I know that we said we were going to talk about guitar and bass, but apparently we have a lot of shit to talk about, but most of these questions are about guitar and bass and so you ready?

Speaker 5 (00:50:08):

Yeah. Shoot.

Speaker 3 (00:50:08):

Alright, Rodney's asking when is it necessary to split the DI into two tones? I guess he's talking about bass. I see it done all the time and I understand having control, but what would make you decide to go that route? I can only see doing it if I want a good grit based tone to compliment the low end.

Speaker 4 (00:50:25):

I think he's talking about the Joey method of high passing the DI and then running that through a grindy and then just putting, doing the max base thing. I don't do that to be very honest, especially when I'm tracking. I know for Pierce to VA we had six or seven tracks of base going to clean di and then amps and different pedals. One I would go for it. I don't know, it would have to, does it work for the song? Are you getting the results you want? Maybe just throwing that TSE Zam base pedal on there works for what you need. For

Speaker 2 (00:51:00):

Me as original idea was to try and get two different types of dynamic range on the two different layers to have the low end have a different range of dynamics versus the high end because it always seemed like it was either too compressed or not compressed enough and I can never really get it just right. When I would get the low end locked in, then the high end would be all cut up and didn't have any life to it. So that was the whole idea behind splitting it into two different bands,

Speaker 4 (00:51:30):

Smarter man than I am. But yeah, I don't really do that. I'll sit there and reamp it through different pedals until I get it. I think a sand rack versus a sand zm pedal or a full to base driver is one of my favorites. They're all going to handle it a little bit differently and I think if you find a nice blend with that stuff and just experiment, you can do some really, really, really awesome stuff. So

Speaker 3 (00:51:56):

I agree. So Nikolai asking, and I'm assuming that this is about base saying, so you know how certain notes just seem louder than others and seem to suddenly dominate. Is there a way to control those better than automation and limiting?

Speaker 4 (00:52:12):

Well, that can be two different things. It can be resonating or that can be a couple of different things depending on what you're doing. If you're miking up a cab, it could be the resonating frequency of that base cab. It could be where you're playing that note on the neck. It could be how hard you're hitting it. It comes down to the player. Is he hitting that note hard? Is the way he's sliding into it, sliding out of it. I really think automation might be honestly the best way. I think there's no kind easy way around that when notching out certain frequencies, multi-band compression. I know on certain P bases that'll be weird from a hundred to 200 hertz. You just got to find out where it's resonating. But yeah, I think maybe just playing that note in a different spot on the neck could really help you out instead of going past the 12th fret on the e string or drop Z, whatever kids are playing and now go up to the next string and play. You'll get a lot more clarity.

Speaker 3 (00:53:08):

Joey, do you automate EQ for stuff like that?

Speaker 2 (00:53:11):

Yeah, I do a little bit of EQ automation on every major track to be honest with you. I know a lot of people are probably hearing me say that and go, I've never seen you do it. Well you've never seen me mix a song for 20 hours. You only get to see me do four or five hours. But once you reach the 20th hour of the mix, it's

Speaker 3 (00:53:35):

Things get crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:53:36):

Yeah, you start doing little 2K, half decibel, 2K bumps on guitars and when certain notes are played and dumb, stuff like that. But yeah, for sure.

Speaker 4 (00:53:46):

Yeah, so these are seem primarily mixing questions, which is totally cool. I was kind of approaching it more from a tracking kind of mindset.

Speaker 3 (00:53:53):

Well I think that's totally valid though, especially if these guys are tracking their own stuff and then mixing it.

Speaker 2 (00:54:03):

I, a lot of the people listening to this are probably doing double duty, but from a tracking point of view, my whole school of thought too is as far as EQ goes to do the least amount, but that's because I want to open. I want it to be a completely open canvas, a blank canvas for me to do whatever. Now I know over there at the Dan factory, you guys got all kinds of cool shit, so it's way cooler for you guys to dial tones in because you have all this great EQ gear to use and stuff.

Speaker 4 (00:54:37):

Yeah, it is kind of a luxury thing, but we always have, we never want to paint yourself into a corner, so we'll always have the clean di, but if I'm going to mic a kick drum, I'm going to push 60 hertz, like 18 decibels if I like it. You know what I mean? Fuck it. It sounds awful, but if it sucks that bad, then I didn't tune it. Right. Or the player's terrible. I guess Kick 10 it is.

Speaker 3 (00:55:06):

Do you know Jay Mass?

Speaker 4 (00:55:08):

He's in defeat, right? He owns Gateway up in Boston. He used to do a bunch of my friends' hardcore bands.

Speaker 3 (00:55:14):

Yeah, we had him on, he told us that he doesn't capture DI just to grow more hair on his balls, basically.

Speaker 4 (00:55:24):

Yeah, those Massachusetts dudes, they are not fucking around, huh?

Speaker 3 (00:55:28):

No, they're not. Between him and Kurt like holy shit. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:55:31):

There's enough punishment to go around. I think just when I do kind of the indie noise rock stuff, yeah, this is very much about capturing the guitar player's tone, but for some of when you're dealing with 300 tracks and you don't know what the programming is going to sound like, or you don't know what this is going to sound like yet, or last minute the dude goes, we're going to put a whole string arrangement. You kind of want to have the, because you might have to switch up the guitar tone.

Speaker 3 (00:55:58):

Yeah, highly likely.

Speaker 4 (00:56:00):

Yeah. And how quickly we're moving and how quickly decisions are made. The most awesome sound I got for Dan just might not work. Fuck it. We got to reamp it. Cool, we got it. Let's go. Move on. What's next?

Speaker 3 (00:56:12):

Yeah, exactly. I don't understand why not do it, but that's just me. So Josh Miller's asking, getting the mids at high end of the base to cut without fighting the click of the kick drum. I always have that problem and I guess the question is how do I get better at dialing the mids and high end of the base and getting them to cut through the mix without them blending in with the click of the kick?

Speaker 4 (00:56:36):

Again, it depends on the resonating frequency too, you figure out. So that kind of comes with mixing everything kind of together. I'd say instead of soloing out and doing your EQs that way, do your EQs and get your balances and then do your EQs with everything. Playing I think is a big trick to that because you might want your kick drum to be hitting at 2K or three K, but then that opens up that 800 to one two or 800 to 1.2 K range for the base, which as a bass player, I always kind of the attack that comes with there, it's super punchy for me. Some of the new kids like the grindy thing at 4K, I know the Will Putney thing that's super hairy base and that's a little bit higher. I'm a huge fan of side chaining, the base very lightly off of the kick drum.

(00:57:31):

I know in Cubase just using the built-in one, so every time the kick drum hits, it kind of pushes away the base just for a split second and you can actually kind of have fun with the low end depending on how long you have the compressor holding. And then there was something else. I had it and then it just escaped me. But yeah, that's kind of, oh, editing. I think getting all that stuff to line up is getting your kicks and your base to kind of hit at the same time. You're going to realize how much is going on down there phase wise. If all that stuff is lining up really nicely, I think that opens up so much of the frequencies. If there's a couple of milliseconds between when your kick drum hits, when your base hits, it can kind of cancel each other out.

Speaker 3 (00:58:14):

So you'd like to make sure that bass and kick are line the fuck up.

Speaker 4 (00:58:19):

Yeah. I don't want to suck the entire life out of the performance, but we'll definitely get in there and do some gorilla tactics to make sure everything's hitting that speaker at the same time because you can almost do kind of trick your ear a little bit to be like, man, that base is super clunky, which it is, but you're not going to lose it when the kick drum hits because they're going to hit at the same time. So it's just going to make it seem more in your face and more aggressive sounding, especially for the metal shit that we're doing.

Speaker 3 (00:58:48):

I wonder how many guys listening actually factor in that this stuff needs to be physically reproduced by speaker.

Speaker 4 (00:58:56):

Yeah, I mean you got to know the air. It's moving air and if everything's hitting at the same time and your base and kick drum are in phase and they're not, your kick drum is hitting at 60, your base is kind of living around that 80 hertz to a hundred thing and everything is kind of pumping at the same time. It really makes those things just explode out of the speaker, and I think it comes down to tracking, to be really honest with you, tracking and editing and making sure everything is tight. I think a lot of kids are putting so much faith into the mix and multi-band compression and all this crap when it just, you got to track it, right? You got to make, I think their worlds would be so much easier if they spend some time slicing and dicing or practicing their instruments. I don't know. I don't want to get too crazy.

Speaker 3 (00:59:41):

You don't want to dream too much.

Speaker 4 (00:59:43):

No, no, no. I know.

Speaker 3 (00:59:46):

Well, when people say that your low end has to is a puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle, but once you get it, it just locks in and works. I know that when I've gotten in it to just finally work together, it's kind of like there's no ifs, ands, or buts about it that you just got it right where everything is just working together. So I think with a lot of people who are wondering is my low end good or not, or what I think when you get it suddenly everything just focuses and there's this punch to your mix that's kind of undeniable.

Speaker 4 (01:00:26):

Low volume is pretty key too. So many people crank the fuck up luc to that low. It's like, yeah, but turn it down and you'll hear all this weird stuff if I know, if I can kind of hear some things moving around and it sounds exciting. It's like the old Chris Lord algae thing, man. If you can get it sounding really exciting and pumping in a nice way in the low end just hitting everything at speaking volume when you crank the speakers, you'll probably shit your pants in a good way. I mean is there really a bad way to

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):

Shoot? No problem. I can't think of one. So here's another one. Michel is asking how do you make the bass and guitar stick together? I always find either one or the other to be too loud or too quiet.

Speaker 4 (01:01:09):

That's kind of an interesting question. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):

I guess more how do you get them to work together and one not take over the other.

Speaker 4 (01:01:17):

Okay. I think it's knowing where, especially with tuning stuff too, it's what you're tuning you're in and knowing your frequency spectrum and where to push boost stuff and where to cut stuff out. A drop D guitar is going to resonate significantly higher than a drop a guitar. But if you're just going and just start boosting the same frequencies, shit isn't going to work that way. I think you're going to know where your holes are and filling the gaps, as weird as that sounds, but I sound like a bumbling retard here, but

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):

No, we talk about this all the time that depending on your tuning, that's going to tell you where your resonance is.

Speaker 4 (01:01:55):

And I think also for people forget tempo too. If you're in a song, my buddy was dealing, they came in with nine string guitars and then they tune the bass drop C and octave lower than normal drop C and they're playing at 200 bpm. I'm like, you're not going to hear anything because you don't have time. The frequencies just literally don't have time to develop. It's just flubby low. The string on the base was point maybe

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):

In a different universe. The laws of physics change.

Speaker 4 (01:02:30):

It has to do with distortion on the base too and which distortion you're using. A lot of the guys are using pod farm, so try the different amps. You might realize maybe the invader doesn't work with the tone you chose or the tuning you're in. I like that criminal one, which I think is a 51 50 and the rectifier one, the Cali plate can sound really cool too if you EQ it. So I think it just takes a little bit more just experimenting and seeing what works and not start with your presets, but you got to fuck with it a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):

Just for example, Shuga, I think I'm right on this, that their guitars in their bass in the same octave.

Speaker 4 (01:03:11):

I believe

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):

You're correct.

Speaker 4 (01:03:12):

You're absolutely correct on that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):

It's like, come on guys. Not them, they're good, but it's like everyone else is like, what are you guys doing? You don't need to be going any lower.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):

Well, Shuga are one of those examples where what they do works because they're just fucking amazing musicians. They can do a bunch of things that your normal player can try and fuck up and they'll sound great masuda, same way that Kurt Ballou can walk that edge between noise and Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):

Well, actually I like what you're saying because I know a little story about Bleed the Drummer, they decided, they sat down and as a band and decided that they wanted to do this thing, bleed this song, and they were like, okay, in order for us to pull this off, going to kill

Speaker 4 (01:04:11):

Thomas going to kill himself.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):

Yeah, I'm going to have to practice for weeks and weeks and weeks just to be able to play his pattern. So he dedicated a month of his life to just being able to with his feet and all that. So I think kids hear those songs and they think like, oh yeah, my band could do that. And they write a drum part and they go to a studio with a producer and he programs the drums for them. Then they try and play it live and it's just a sloppy mess and it's because they don't appreciate the hard work and the time, the effort that went into making that song possible. I mean

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):

The mastery involved.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):

Exactly. I mean you can listen to it and it sounds so simple because they pull it off so fucking good. And to you, you're just like, you take that for granted all the lead up and the prep work that went into making that song possible.

Speaker 4 (01:05:03):

Yeah, I mean, I spent a month and learned a couple of the sugar records and it was probably the best thing I ever did for myself, but those guys are just insane and everything fucking grew. No matter how techie and weird it is, it's like you're still going to Bob your head. Those guys are just on, they're playing. I saw them at New England Death Fest in oh seven and I swear to God, every single band was just lined up around the stage and in front just watching mouth aga, how are these guys doing it? How is this physically possible? So good. It's funny, Kenny Grabowski, who's the drummer for Secret Chiefs, he's on that Thomas Hawk level, so we would be sound checking and I would just call out and be rational gaze and he was like, God damnit, and he would just start playing it. Then he would start improvising over the top of it and it was just seeing that level of player in person and let alone getting to work with them and then sit in the van for fucking 20 hours with, it's pretty awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):

Alright, yeah. I have a question. What's Trey Spruance? Because in my mind that dude's a genius.

Speaker 4 (01:06:07):

He is. He's super well read and totally self-taught in all this eastern philosophy. And that being said, he is the sweetest guy ever. He's just a total sweetheart. It's like Uncle Trey. He is kind of the elder of the group and he's just super humble about everything. He knows what he's capable of, but he's always on the hunt. He's one of those guys that's always searching for something in his life. Education, whether it's spiritual, whether it's musical, whether it's food, whether it's something he hasn't heard before, whether it's something he hasn't read before. It's like he's truly one of those dudes where this is a journey that I want to experience. And yeah, it's really kind of nice being around people like that. Self-improvement sounds like a Tony Robbins thing, but he really is, he's just like a child of the world. He wants to travel, he wants to experience it and shit, and he is like the person he wants to talk to you and it's really, really, really cool. He just wants to be immersed in life.

Speaker 3 (01:07:17):

And is he as good as I think he is at music?

Speaker 4 (01:07:19):

Yeah, he's pretty scary. He's at a point where he's operating in a different level too. The voicings and just how he approaches the guitar is more than just like, I'm going to rip a sick fucking solo bro. It's like, what can I say? What am I trying to get across to the listener with this? And yeah, it's just, it's really fucking crazy and he'll put on, that band will put on the same show in an intimate 10 to 15 person setting as they will in front of 2000 people. That's the same tour. It just happened to be an off night. They put on the same damn show. They were like, shit, we're going to try some new stuff now. We're going to experiment and we're going to operate as a band. We're going to learn how each other play off of each other. And I think some of that's missing and kind of heavy rock now too.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):

Yeah, it is pretty much gone.

Speaker 4 (01:08:14):

It's like hit the backing track rig go.

Speaker 3 (01:08:18):

Yeah. Trey's band, Mr. Bungle was a huge, huge, huge influence on me.

Speaker 4 (01:08:23):

Yeah, I remember listening to the girls of Porn, man, what the hell is this 10 inch dead dick? I have no idea what you're talking about. And then 11-year-old me, I had no idea what porn was yet. It was like two more years until I realized I could have more fun by myself

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):

Than out in the world. With that, I want to ask you another question about bass. Well, because bass and porn go together,

Speaker 4 (01:08:53):

It depends.

Speaker 3 (01:08:55):

Sean Joyce is asking, one of his biggest issues is getting a more three dimensional sounding bass and he says, since bass is primarily mono, what's the best and safest way to make a deep and wide bass that jumps out at you?

Speaker 4 (01:09:09):

You could do the old Andy Wallace trick, which putting a slight chorus on it, that can be really cool or really bad. But if you guys are splitting DI and you're worried about the low end kind of farting out, you could use the high DI and do that which is pitching left and maybe like 7 cents down on one side, 7 cents up on the other and just kind of blending that up underneath. That's one of my favorite, it's like an old harmonizer H 3000 thing. That's one of my favorite things to do for vocals because the perceived loudness of that mono source, it seems way louder, but it's kind of blended across your sound field. It's a really cool trick.

Speaker 3 (01:09:49):

I've done it on a good plugin for that is a little micro shift by sound toys. If you basically put it on your base from three or 400 and up and then tuck that in, it's very, very nice way to do that trick.

Speaker 4 (01:10:05):

And if you don't have that Doubler two is really awesome. You just got to get rid of the direct signal. Now, I wouldn't put it right on the track. I'd maybe do it as an ox end and that way you can just kind of blend it up and it won't really affect what's going on. If you realize it's starting to get a little weird, you can always pull it back and it gives you a little bit more control.

Speaker 3 (01:10:26):

What do you think, Joey? How would you go about it?

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):

I think for me, the one thing that I always try to avoid is, I mean I feel like this kind of goes without saying, but maybe to some people listening to this, they have never thought of this, but you don't want your low end to be stereo eyes stereo, if that's a word. I try to keep the low end always right down the middle, super mono, but then when you do that, it's real plain. So how do you get the base to sort of jump out? For me, it's always been getting the EQ perfectly and getting the saturation, but then I mean in addition to that, you can also still do some of those cool tricks. You can do that chorus trick, but just do it only on the high end of the base. I split my base, which we talked about earlier, but the low end is going to be mono and straight up down the center and then that high end, I can throw a chorus on there or distortion on there, whatever it is to kind of get it to jump out in the mix.

(01:11:27):

And you can run that in stereo. So sometimes I'll put, I'll take my base track, I'll put it on two stereo audio tracks, but even though the low end one is not really generating any stereo information, the only thing that's coming out of that track is mono. But then in the other one, having that be in a stereo audio track kind of allows me to, if I just decide on a whim, I could throw a stereo plugin on it, like a chorus or whatever, and that's open to me. I don't have to worry about the track being mono, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (01:12:01):

Yep. Here's another one from Austin, and this is interesting because it's a non-technical question, but it's a good one. In my opinion. Austin's asking how do you get that pop punk mid range bass sound that just cuts through the mix? Well, you know what he's talking about. I know exactly what he's talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):

I do too. Yeah, I always looked at all time low. What record is that? It's like their big record or green day. And for me, and maybe you guys have found this too, is that it's just like you don't scoop the base. In fact, you'd probably do the opposite. The area that most people scoop, I'd boost, I'd boost it somewhere around 400, 800 hertz, maybe even 200 hertz depending on tuning. But boost that.

Speaker 4 (01:12:52):

A lot of that base like that Mike Dirtt thing sounds almost like a j and p, like a Marshall Amp. Not totally distorted, but it definitely sounds like they makes some type of ally lemy thing in there a little bit just to get that kind of attack and clarity on the top end. I think it's a really cool sound.

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):

Agreed. So Al is asking, saying his biggest problem is the relationship with the kick. How do you discover who's under and who's above and how when to decide which one should be under or above. So I guess what he's asking is when do you decide that the kick should be focused at 60 and the base should inhabit 80 to a hundred, and when do you decide the opposite?

Speaker 4 (01:13:33):

Man, that's a good one too. I kind of start with those and then again, it comes down to the tuning of the song. Maybe the fundamental of the base, like that open C or that open B is going to be hitting right around 50 hertz, so maybe then push the kick drum a little bit higher around 80. It might not be that super so kick drum, but it's going to sound better in the song and it's going to translate better across your speakers because the energy of everything hitting at the same time is going to have the same impact, just slightly different. But

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):

Here's one from Sean. He says his biggest question is to fuck with Antone or not to fuck with Antone. That is the question as in when do I bust out the whole rig to reamp with or stick to making the super dope? How does that work for you? When do you decide we're going to go amp on this and when do you decide or you just go amp from the beginning and then decide later?

Speaker 4 (01:14:26):

I'll always have an amp. I try to think of what the final product is going to be like the final mix, and when I'm doing stuff for Dan, I kind of leave it a little bit more open. I won't go crazy dialing it in because I'll spend three hours, four hours doing it and then he'll come in and make three changes or whatever in 15 seconds and it sounds better. But yeah, I'll usually start with a clean di. I have a 70 blue line SVT and then a Sand Z. I mean there's really no wrong answer. It depends on how much time you want to spend on it. If you can get close enough with the plugins and you got 15 more songs to mix for the amount of money they're giving you, fuck it. Just do that. It sounds kind of awful.

(01:15:15):

And then the flip side is like, I don't care. I'm going to sit here and I'm going to get it right. I'm going to bust out every single amp in my collection. Dude, if you want to do that, I salute you. That's awesome. Go for it. It'll probably pay off in the end and if it doesn't and you end up going back to your plugin, you might've learned something along the way about your amp or about the base that you didn't know before that you can now go grab for more quickly because you figured something out. You're like, oh shit, I did that on the thing. It didn't work out, but here's the perfect opportunity for me to use that thing I learned.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):

I guess key takeaway is the more you experiment and the more you learn, the more robust your toolbox, your mental toolbox for this stuff is going to be. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:16:00):

And then you get to a point where you're not thinking about it anymore. You kind of shoot from the hip and you're like, well, I did this, I did this. Let's put it all together and see what happens. That's where it gets fun when you're not worried about like, oh my God, well I'm cutting at 200 at a queue of this or that. It's like, no, fuck it. Just go. But I think you got to learn the fundamentals before you can kind of do that or not and just fucking go for it and see what happens. There's really no wrong way.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):

Here's one, and this is going to be the last question, and this is from Bobby. I am picking this one because I think it's applicable to a lot of our listeners because a lot of them don't have subs, so I'm sure that this comes up a lot. So he says, I don't have a subwoofer, so anything on where the sub of the base sit, car testing is always a disappointing surprise. I probably went to my car five times checking the low end of the, we came as Romans mix. So I guess how would you recommend getting better in that below 80 or below 60 zone for people who don't have a subwoofer,

Speaker 4 (01:17:09):

Go to your car 10 more times. That's kind of what I do. If your speakers that you have aren't representing what's going on below 80, you'll hear upper harmonics of that stuff. If you're not cranking your shit and you're kind of at that nominal volume and you're kind of here where everything kind is moving, but go back and forth to your car. Use frequency analyzers. The waves one is great. I use the Nickelback something in your mouth mix by Randy Staub and then mastered by Rigg and Ted Jensen. If my low end EQ curve is kind of in that ballpark, I'm like, yeah, I'm probably hitting somewhere close. But yeah, just learn your speakers and learn where, go back and forth, take the time. I still do it, bounce it 15 times, go to your car, go listen to speakers until what your monitors are doing and what's going on. There's no shame in that, and there's no magical button that's just going to be like, ah, I figured out low end. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (01:18:16):

Yeah. How do you do it, Joe? You've never had a sub.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):

Same thing. It's check on everything. Check on the car, check on the headphones.

Speaker 3 (01:18:25):

I mean, really, it sounds like the dude who asked this is already doing the right stuff and was hoping that

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):

He was hoping there was a magic answer or something. Yeah. Sorry dude. Yeah. Welcome to our hell of a reality that we live in.

Speaker 4 (01:18:42):

I had a friend joke with me recently. It was kind of a little bit of morbid humor, but he goes, man, I remember in college we'd go out partying or whatever and you'd be sitting in your room listening to snare samples, and I kind of didn't say anything back and he was just like, and now I work in a factory and you're working on the records. Just like

Speaker 3 (01:19:02):

He kind of punchline that one for himself.

Speaker 4 (01:19:04):

Yeah, I didn't even go that dark with it. I was just like, yeah, well, I wanted to do it and whatever. I was kind of a weirdo in college anyway, so fuck it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:15):

But I mean that's absolutely relevant because yeah, it does. I mean, I've gotten up to 50 versions of a mix. It doesn't happen like that anymore, but 50 versions where I check on a boombox checking the car, check every fucking place possible.

Speaker 4 (01:19:32):

Yeah, believe it or not, and you do get better. You just got to keep, it sounds so cliche, but just keep running at the wall. I don't know if it's maybe a generational thing, but I didn't come up with presets or anything like that or let me get those samples. It was kind of figure it out on your own type of thing. And maybe it's just a generational thing. It seems like kids just, I don't know, blame anybody for it, and it's not like, this is good or this is bad, but I think kids want the presets and then they get kind of a little bummed out why their shit doesn't sound like Joey's or Dan's or something like that because they didn't kind of fight for it. And yes, the presets are a good jump off point, but they don't really go into what's going on within that preset or why it works a certain way.

Speaker 3 (01:20:27):

It's funny when getting people's samples was much harder when I was coming up and when I finally convinced someone to send me their samples, they did, and I was like, okay, why aren't my mixes as good as yours? I got your samples.

Speaker 4 (01:20:43):

Yeah, I mean, I've heard, I know Paul, we met a couple of times who was Andy Wallace's current assistant, and he was nice enough just to show me the end, the famous Andy Wallace snare Snapple that's been on the slayer and the ridge against the machine records. It's nothing crazy. It's really nothing crazy. And that guy turned that into not a snare sample, but he was getting 15 grand a mix for a long time. Jesus.

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):

Well, I think sometimes it's just the concept of, well, not the concept, but just the use of a sample even no matter what the sample is, just having that consistency there, those frequencies always there for you, and then you can kind of manipulate them how you need.

Speaker 4 (01:21:26):

Yeah, I think the big, there was some talk, but check the phase on your samples too, man. You can layer seven samples of snares together, but if they're not hitting in phase, then you're just, you're working against yourself.

Speaker 5 (01:21:38):

Print

Speaker 4 (01:21:38):

That shit and check the fucking phase, man all the time. And then sometimes the way people are routing within their DAW can adversely affect the phase the way you're sending your base if you've got it sent to three different places and you're not, I know Yon, we spoke about this, if you're,

Speaker 3 (01:21:57):

You're doing this in Pro tools, watch out.

Speaker 4 (01:21:59):

Yeah, I mean, things can get hairy not in your delay compensation. They're not really calculating for what it takes for the program to send the audio from here to there. So make sure that everything is routed from the same place to different places with the same start time. So route stuff off of your audio track rather than like, okay, so I've got my base di feeding my base sub group, and then I want to feed that to a distortion thing and something else. Don't feed it off of that first group, feed it off the base di track.

Speaker 3 (01:22:34):

Very, very important.

Speaker 4 (01:22:38):

When I found that out, I was like, oh my God, I just had my head in my hands. I'm a schmuck.

Speaker 3 (01:22:42):

Well, you want to know something. That right there is an instant mix, better overnight kind of magic button, those kinds of things. They sound really basic, but those are the things that if you're getting wrong, the moment you stop doing those things wrong, your work will improve drastically.

Speaker 4 (01:22:59):

Yeah. Joey, are you messing around with parallel stuff at all or have you kind of just fuck it?

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):

Nah, nah, I haven't. I think we've shown it a few times. I'll nail the mix, but I've never really find myself reaching for that.

Speaker 4 (01:23:14):

I remember I was doing some assistant work for Alex Newport and we were doing the block party and city and color stuff, and he lived in that world and it was really cool to see. He was doing it on an SSL, but he was running the snare through these weird Japanese buzz pedals and all this crazy shit and

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):

See if I was that guy and if I had that stuff, I would live in parallel world too. But I think one of the big problems of that in the digital space is just latency. You never really know if your latency is tight or not, unless you record it back in and then look at it

Speaker 4 (01:23:50):

And then you go down to the sample and you're like, oh my God, all this bullshit I thought I was doing. And it's just losing everything with the console where it's all electronic and it's literally going at the speed of electricity. It works. But I guess we can't go too much into that stuff because who's really mixing on a necess L anymore corner. If you dick,

Speaker 3 (01:24:12):

Maybe Dan will listen to this episode.

Speaker 4 (01:24:14):

Do you feel like, dude, I hate you. You're a dick. I got a call from, so do you guys have any other questions for me? I hope

Speaker 3 (01:24:23):

No, no, that's great. We wanted to actually thank you for coming on and being so generous with your time and answers and hopefully everybody looks at you as an example to follow and takes everything you said seriously and heart.

Speaker 4 (01:24:38):

I appreciate it. I'm actually flattered you even asked in the first place. I've kind of been a behind the scenes guy for so long. It's kind of weird to feel like I'm kind of like golem or something stepping into the light a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:24:49):

I mean, there's lots of amazing engineers in this world who work on the records everybody listens to, but just aren't the guy in the spotlight who have plenty to share.

Speaker 4 (01:25:02):

Yeah. I mean, some of my heroes, I've never read an interview or one interview and they're like Doug McKean, who's Rob Al's engineer who did all the Green Day records. I'd love to read an interview with a more in with him. I don't know if he was on Satos Place or something, but that dude's a fucking genius.

Speaker 3 (01:25:20):

Well, I mean, let's just bring this all back home, Dan, for a long time, Dan Corny for a long time was that guy who was the behind the scenes genius engineer who nobody knew that he was the man. I think now people know he's the man, but I think for a long time people had no idea who he was or how important of a role he played on those records.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):

We exposed him. I'm just kidding.

Speaker 3 (01:25:48):

Well, I'm not going to say we exposed him, but we definitely shined a light on.

Speaker 4 (01:25:53):

I think people finally fucking figured it out.

Speaker 3 (01:25:55):

I think everybody at the same time was like, this guy's amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:25:59):

Yeah, I came in into the last year of that world before Dan was like, Hey, asshole, you're with me. And it was blatantly apparent and I had heard rumors of it before, but yeah, everyone was kind of afraid now to say anything because of someone's reach or whatever, but fuck that. It was, thank God for Dan Cato and John Bender. Those three guys made some amazing fucking records.

Speaker 3 (01:26:31):

Hats off,

Speaker 4 (01:26:31):

Dude. Thank you very much. Kind of set the bar, at least for me personally, there was a lot of stuff coming out 2007 to 2011, and yeah, those three dudes, Dan stuff just had a whole nother depth to it that I wasn't really hearing with some of the major rock stuff coming out. It was darker, there was more low end. It just was cool to me.

Speaker 3 (01:26:55):

Yeah, I've always thought stuff is incredible. Well, Alex, thank you for coming on. You rule. We love you. You're sexy.

Speaker 4 (01:27:05):

I work out not slower.

Speaker 3 (01:27:08):

We'll do this again sometime, hopefully.

Speaker 4 (01:27:10):

Yeah. Thanks guys. It was fun. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):

Thank Thank you.

(01:27:13):

Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. It's brought to by GMOs Oil Engineering Two Notes is a leader in the market for robot cabinet and my simulators during the days of having iso rooms or having to record an amp at ear blading volumes to capture that magic tone, the tope live reload and studio allow you to crank your amp up as loud as you want, but record silently. Check out www dot two notes. Do com for more info to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit mail the mix. Do com slash podcast and subscribe today. Today, thrive today. Thrive today.