ERMIN HAMIDOVIC: Landing the Periphery gig, the decline of big studios, and his mastering philosophy

Speaker 1 (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. Gunner, the days of having iso rooms or having to record an amp at ear bleeding volumes to capture that magic tone. The Torpedo Live reload and studio allow you to crank your amp up as loud as you want, but record silently. Check out www.two-nodes.com for more info. And now your host, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

(00:36):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. My name is Eyal Levi. My co-host here is Joel Wanasek, and we've got Mr. Ermin Hamidovic as our esteemed guest. Some of you may know him as a fantastic master engineer who's done the most recent periphery among other things. Others of you might know him as the author of the Systematic Mixing Guide, which describes itself by being able to kickstart your journey towards absolute mixed professionalism within the pop rock and metal genres. And Joel and I have read it and it's a damn good book and it's been around for a while. Irman, I've known about you for it's safe to say, a few years now just based on this book.

Speaker 3 (01:19):

Andy

Speaker 4 (01:20):

Sneep forum. Man.

Speaker 2 (01:20):

Are you from the Andy Sne forum too?

Speaker 4 (01:22):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, actually Joey and I go back to those days. So many of us actually owe our livings to that forum. I mean, it's where I initially met Nolie and actually started that whole partnership with the periphery guys too. It was such a hub of awesome engineering stuff back in the day. So that's definitely where I got my start.

Speaker 2 (01:44):

That's crazy how many guys we've talked to on this podcast who are bros from that forum. It's crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:52):

Yeah, it's absolute insanity. I mean, I was looking through your old episodes and you've got Ola on there as well who used to sort of pop in every now and then. I mean, he got his start there before he started doing the whole YouTube thing and eventually segued into the haunted and six feet under and all of that sort of stuff. Obviously Nolie before he is in periphery when he was still doing the Ben I call pickup demos. I think Joey passed by. I think Joey was already pretty well established at the time, but he was still there.

Speaker 2 (02:17):

Yeah, well, Joey was in there for quite a while. I think I remember him as the guy who always posted his own way of doing things and blew people's minds.

Speaker 3 (02:29):

I remember the attack attack thing.

Speaker 4 (02:32):

I think everybody remembers the attack attack thing, even if they try not to. I think I was really close-minded back in the day. It was very much not into the whole course scene. So when that whole thing broke into the scene, it just kind of really, you had to kind of stop and just kind of look and listen to it a few times and go, wow, this is something completely different. But obviously man, it started a movement. That band, I remember them just getting millions of MySpace fans just overnight. It was absolutely insane.

Speaker 2 (03:01):

Yeah, I wasn't too pleased about that shit when it hit the scene. I don't know, I felt like the scene was losing its manhood or something like that. I remember being on tour and that stuff would come out and all the bands would watch it at the bus or the van and be like, what the fuck is going on here? But over the years I've learned to accept it and there's some pretty good bands in it actually. But man, at the time, people were pissed.

Speaker 3 (03:33):

No generation wants to listened to their dad's generation of metal, you know what I mean? Every five to 10 years, it's a new group of kids and their definition of brutal and heavy is completely different than the generation before. I mean, I grew up, for me, it was really Gothenburg. I mean, when I was a little kid, it was original death metal, like Cannibal Corpse and Napalm Death and things like that. But then I got away from metal, but then I really got the Gothenburg stuff. So that was for the two thousands for me. And the first time I saw kids in pink belts and emo jeans with swoops doing fist punching in the air, I was just like, what the fuck is this? There's no guitar solos, there's no drumming. It's just open on guitar. What did I miss and when did this happen? And somehow I ended up making a living recording a lot of those bands. It's really weird. Awkward.

Speaker 2 (04:18):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:18):

Yeah.

Speaker 4 (04:22):

I've definitely come more from Joel's direction. So it was definitely a traditional metal fair around these parts. Ironically enough, it was actually new metal that got me into this vein of music in the first place. It was stuff like corns follow the leader and biscuit and all that stuff. I think a lot of us secretly or not so secretly do, I feel like I'm at a point in the industry where I have enough seniority I can just kind of say this shit and don't really care how people react anymore. So that's one of the coolest things. It's a good feeling, isn't it? It's fantastic, isn't it? It's really great. It only took me the better part of 12 years to get here, but I've got to say it was worth every single one.

Speaker 2 (04:58):

There was a time when I couldn't say that I loved corn. I remember that. It was a long time ago.

Speaker 3 (05:03):

Congratulations on justifying your manliness. The funny thing is about being a producer, though. I was at the bar the other day hanging out with my programmer and his roommate and they had some girl with them and she started talking to me and she was like, what's your favorite band? And I started listing some of my favorite stuff, and amongst those was Britney Spears. And she was like, what the fuck? I've never met a guy that likes Britney Spears. Are you gay or something? And I'm like, dude, I love Britney Spears. And she's like, how the fuck can you like that? Blah, blah. I'm like, because a producer, and I should say I love Max Martin really, or Jason Bloom or any of the other people that have written on her record. But I just love the songwriting and the hooks and just the brand. It's so well put together.

(05:41):

I just totally admire it from a production standpoint and I wish I'd worked on something like that and I'm like, it's my job. You have to listen to different kinds of music if you want to keep your studio booked and you want to be busy, unless you're one of those lucky few people that just hit that rut, you're known as the guy for the genre and you're solidly booked with only a certain type of band. I dunno. It was funny because seeing how normal people react, you're not allowed to say that. And she just couldn't believe that I didn't give a shit. And I was saying it so loud and proud and I dunno, it was just a funny experience,

Speaker 2 (06:12):

A true hero, Joel, someone's

Speaker 3 (06:14):

Got to do it.

Speaker 2 (06:15):

It's a true here. So speaking of multiple genres, do you work in multiple genres or are you mainly metal leaning?

Speaker 4 (06:24):

I've tried to break out over the years. I'm a huge fan of electronic music, hard trance, early days, hard trance especially. The problem for me is that once you kind of get pigeonholed, it's extremely difficult to break out. And over the years I've done some pretty cool rock CDs, but I seem to be cursed in the sense that I'll put everything into the cd, it'll come out, I'm like, oh, this is fantastic. I'm going to break into a whole new kind of scene and demographic here. And then the band breaks up before they release it or it just never comes out for some reason or other. So

Speaker 3 (06:54):

The label kills the record. Record flops? Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:57):

It's such a common story. It happens enough in the metal realm where I've got enough throughput of work, but in these genres we've got these key little records that you think are going to be career makers that never for some reason has come through for me. So I've just kind of accepted that metal is sort of where it's at. And I sort of split the difference. And I've started working with a lot of bands who fuse those hard trance elements into their music. Very recently, I'd mixed and mastered the Abi Genesis single, which is an absolute piece of technical and sanity. We love Francesco, by the way. Everyone loves Francesco man, he's everywhere. But yeah, it's just guys like that and silent descent from the UK who I'm doing a record for later in the year, and it's just, I think it's helped push my abilities as a mix engineer, which I'm sure you'll listener based doesn't care about quite as much as the mastering stuff. But to those who don't know, I actually started off as a mix engineer primarily. That was where the passion was for the last 12 or so years.

Speaker 2 (07:54):

Well, I mean you wrote a book about mixing. I

Speaker 4 (07:56):

Sure did. Yeah. And sometimes it's hard to know where the one leaves off and the other one kind of takes over because I was originally kind of broke onto the scene with that book and everyone was like, oh, hey, it's sermon, the author of the Systematic Mixing Guide, and then we did Juggernaut Alpha and Omega, and it's like, oh hey, it's sermon the Periphery Mastering guy. You can kind of conflate two aspects of the same persona very quickly in this industry. I think people tend to have a very short-term memory. So it's really whatever you're doing at that moment in time that defines who you are in their eyes.

Speaker 2 (08:27):

Well, there is some truth to that. You're only as good as your last gig in a way. So I mean, I think that people judge you on how relevant you are now, not how relevant you were five years ago. So I totally get that. But I think you've done a good job in reinventing yourself or keeping yourself relevant. You can't keep a career going in 2016 off of just one thing that you did a few years ago, which I'm sure it's not enough. But that said, it's kind of impressive how the book just seems to have a life of its own.

Speaker 4 (09:08):

Yeah, people

Speaker 2 (09:09):

Still talk about it. It's

Speaker 4 (09:11):

Amazing that the book has been out for about four and a half years now. I don't think back. And it doesn't feel like that great a span of time in my mind. It still happened like last year or something like that. So when people refer to it as their little, I dunno, modern classic if you will, I'm just like, what are you talking about? It's recent, it's still fresh, but I guess it's not really, the thing that I do kind of like about that book having eventuated though, is that I'll occasionally, every several months or a year, I'll go back and reread parts of it just to see how far we've come or if anything has changed. And so many of those concepts are still relevant and fresh to what I do these days. The only thing that's really changed is the way that I might apply them. That's something that's going to vary between each individual operator anyway. So I feel pretty happy with what's been put down in that book. And there aren't many things, if any at all, that I would change. I'm sure if there are enough, I would just revise the damn thing. One of the great things about it being an ebook primarily.

Speaker 2 (10:13):

Yeah. Well, as many people as have read it, I'm sure that we've got some listeners who are hearing about it for the first time. So maybe you could take us through some of the items that you cover in there. I definitely think that if you haven't heard of this book, you should pick it up and if you don't believe us, maybe some of the topics in there will convince you.

Speaker 4 (10:34):

Yeah. Well let me just start by sort of talking about the mentality that went into it first because I never really intended to write some instructional guide on mixing it sort of eventuated in a really natural way. And the reason that it happened was that I read some revered mixing books that were already out there and many of them read so esoterically to me that I got this urge to sort of write something completely different and completely practically minded. So I don't want to think about miking up a guitar cab as some dispersion of colors that I can only really attune to if I do enough LSD and shit like that, know what video, I know exactly

Speaker 2 (11:15):

What video you're talking about

Speaker 4 (11:17):

Or Yeah, I'd, I know what you're talking about. So I mean, after you spend 70 bucks on something like that, enough times, you go, you know what? Screw this man. I'm tired of the kids getting ripped off. So what I'm going to try and do is write the book that I wanted when I first started. I want someone to give me discreet techniques that I can read about and then literally apply to my mix instantly within two hours or so of reading the book, I can go back and discreetly make my work better. So what I ended up doing was essentially a chapter by chapter approach of the things that I thought are critical and key to understand for mix engineering primarily in rock and metal, but also applied at pop and electrons and some other things to a degree. So what we're essentially going over is how a EQ distorted guitars, how to process drums, how to process bass. It's the chapter by chapter approach of all the individual instrument groups and how to bring them all together in a way that actually works.

Speaker 2 (12:14):

And I know that from knowing lots of people who read your book back in the day, that the response was exactly what you were hoping for. People were thinking finally this has been written is not only is it that there were lots of books written in really strange language that had no practical application, but the quality of instruction for metal back then that was available was pretty much

Speaker 3 (12:43):

Absolutely. I mean, there was nothing like that. I mean, I'm just going back in my head all these books. It's like, Hey, when I worked on the Band Man at work and I'm like, what up early 1980s? How is that going to help me in late two thousands? It? So I dunno, I think when that book came out, it was cool because it was the first thing that actually covered metal, how to handle distorted guitars and EQ them. It's just not something anybody talked about back then other than on the sneak forum.

Speaker 4 (13:13):

Yeah, absolutely. And I've got to say a lot of the stuff talked about in that book is sort of an amalgamation of the things that were spoken about on the sneak forum over the years. I just wanted to unify those concepts for somebody just getting into the industry and that wanting to read about it all in the one place without having to use a search option for the next two years and put it all together themselves. I think one thing that helped the book as well was that it was written at a point in time where the whole thing was really fresh to me. It came about very naturally. It wasn't something I intended to do. I didn't wake up one day and say, Hey, I want to write some kind of a metal mixing guide or Bible or whatever it was back in 2011 that I first started writing this.

(13:55):

And 2011 sort of was a bit of a milestone year for me in that it marked the transition from struggling audio engineer, struggling to get enough work to cover expenses and this and that to, hey, I'm booked nine months in advance. How the hell do I manage my schedule? How do I do this? How do I do that? It's a complete transition into a different form of work that I wasn't quite ready for and I was rapidly burning out and I was just mixing day in and out, day in and out. And I found that after those eight hour or 10 hour mixing sessions, I would stop and I'd try and unwind, but I was still thinking about mixing concepts. They were just flying around all over my head. It was about as natural as breathing air or something. So I thought, I've got to get this out while it's still in here.

(14:39):

These things, I'm applying them every day at a point where I can just articulate what they are fairly clearly. I might as well kind of use that for some slightly benevolent purpose. And the initial idea was to just write a couple of threads on the neat forum just to kind of spread the love, let people know what's going on. But it very soon became clear that it was just the amount of stuff coming out had to be confined into something else, something a little bit more holistic. So that's kind of how the ebook came about.

Speaker 2 (15:10):

So I have a question about something that you just touched on, which is making the transition from semi-pro to pro. Can we talk about how long that took and what kinds of things you did along the way in order to get to where you were making a full-time living off of it?

Speaker 4 (15:29):

Yeah, absolutely. I think that story is going to be a different one for each individual operator, but for me it was a pretty long slog. There are a good few years in there and there's pretty much my entire early twenties were essentially just to ride off of where I was just grinding away, grinding away, trying to get that one breakthrough project to sort of get me across the line and then to make things work in an international capacity and sort of open up that whole realm of work. And I think 2011 wasn't quite that. I was mostly booked out working with local bands, so I'd managed to crack the local scene and develop a niche or

Speaker 2 (16:08):

You can make a good living off of the local scene though.

Speaker 4 (16:12):

Absolutely no talking down about the local scene. If that's your thing and that's where you want to stay, you can definitely make a comfortable living. You can work on some great records that way too. But it was always my hope to work with bands from all over the world and just have extremely broad horizons in that sense.

Speaker 2 (16:29):

That makes sense. I actually have always been the same way. It's never made sense to me to want anything but a worldwide career, but more power to people who are cool with all local though, because hey,

Speaker 3 (16:44):

Yeah, like the guy across the hall from me, Eric, he only has the aspiration to do what he's doing, which is just working on local bar bands and stuff like that. And he makes a great living doing it. He does some licensing on the sides, so he takes all of his bands and he hooks 'em up through, oh, I forgot the name of the company, a PM licensing, and he's got all these placements on TV and I even throw my bands through him. So good at getting placements. And from that he's cracking six figures recording local bar bands and licensing of them. And he loves what he does and has fun all day. And I feel like he records the same band every week and he just never gets sick of it. So its

Speaker 2 (17:20):

Cool. More power to him. So how long did it take though, between I guess to where you got to the point where at least you were filled up with all local projects but filled up

Speaker 4 (17:31):

Up to that extent? I would say it took maybe the better part of five to five to seven years for me. So it wasn't a very quick process. There was no overnight success here, nothing really handed. I had to really kind of grind away through my early twenties, and I think I still have this entire stretch of time that everyone defines by all the crazy partying and traveling and stuff that they did where I just define by 16 hour slogs in the studio trying to deliver a mix to pluck over in Sweden to master by 6:00 AM the next morning because we've got the damn label deadline or something like that and he's got a master it that day. So that's sort of what my early twenties are defined by. So I think we all share the same life, man.

Speaker 3 (18:18):

We all do.

Speaker 4 (18:18):

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a sort of a common ailment we have in this industry. We have this propensity look back and you have to put in the work. I think to achieve anything in any career path, you always have to make some sacrifice. But I think in this one it's very easy to look back and say, Hey, I've got some living to catch up on. Maybe when things kind of ease up and I get more comfortable, I can pump the brake pedal a little bit and enjoy things a bit more.

Speaker 3 (18:46):

Definitely. So true. Funny, I know what I'm doing after this podcast and it's not mixing, it's actually going to the bar, going to Vegas. It's Vegas

Speaker 2 (18:55):

Excellent. Vegas. Yeah, cocaine and hookers. I actually am really, really thankful that my band got signed and I got to tour because I feel like I got a lot of that living out of the way. So now I don't really feel much of an urge for that kind of stuff. I'm kind of fortunate in that, but still was doing the 36 hour long sessions as well as that. So maybe I burned out a little early or something. So while you were struggling, I guess, were you working on the side?

Speaker 4 (19:31):

No, I was fortunate enough to usually make enough money to make ends meet just with the audio stuff. So I haven't really had to hold down a nine to five sort of thing in a very, very, very long time, so

Speaker 2 (19:44):

That's good.

Speaker 4 (19:45):

I kind of went into this balls to the wall man. As a kid I was really, well I say a kid, but I mean 18 to 21, I was really pigheaded. The whole idea was like I'm either going to make it, I'm going to be one of the best fucking mixed engineers in the world, or I'm going to clean toilets. And fortunately, I'm not sure about the first part eventuated, but fortunately the toilet cleaning didn't eventuate either. So it eventually led to a full-time living, but I think it took a lot of force of will because every mentor I'd had at the time was closing up shop. I saw many of the large studios here in Melbourne closing up shop, and it's demoralizing as a kid when you get into the industry and that's happening all around you. The Napster thing had set off a chain reaction. All the clientele there, their budgets were dropping, everyone's budgets were dropping. So it became really clear to me that the only way to survive in an industry like this was to run a low cost project studio and do all of your work out of that as opposed to running.

Speaker 3 (20:44):

Can I say something about that real quick and pig it back on because this is my personal take, but I feel like all of us are proof of this, what I'm about to say, and my whole career, I feel like my whole professional audio life, I've been listening to people complain about like, oh, everything's closing and everything is doom and gloom. And during that time, my career has grown exponentially as well as all of your guys. And I'm just thinking to myself, it got smaller and harder, but the people that really went out and they grinded, they did just fine and they're still doing fine and growing and expanding and it's just like, I just don't buy all of it. That's all I'm saying. I'm saying it can be done. I'm saying it has been done and it will continue to be done. You just got to go out and put in the damn work. And that's really what it comes down to. A lot of people just don't like to put in the work. They like to tell themselves that they're going to put in the work or they like to feel like, yeah, man, I'm working really hard, but they don't show up. They don't do the 16 hour days, seven days a week for months at end if they have to. And we all did. And that's I guess why we're here having this discussion about doing it.

Speaker 2 (21:45):

There's another key factor though I think, which is that lots of the guys that fell by the wayside didn't adjust their worldview or they didn't go through the paradigm shift that everybody who's succeeding now did. They refused to see the studio in a new light and refused to get rid of the old big studio paradigm. And that's like staying on a sinking ship while it's sinking and saying whatever, I'll be fine. It's not going to unsync itself. I think that a lot of the guys that I know who are personally doing great understood the new direction and busted ass to establish themselves in it. And in a way, those of us who did had an advantage because while this is a very saturated field and always has been, half of the competition was busy not getting busy, it was busy sinking. And so I think that we were kind of fortunate with the timing and fortunate that we understood the direction of things. And I feel bad for guys who don't, still don't, they're going to be hurting in five years if they're not already hurting.

Speaker 4 (23:02):

Yeah, I think it really helped to be a young guy during the time that whole paradigm shift in the industry was happening because if you had grown up as a teenager and the whole Napster thing was going on, you could kind of see where things were going. You grew up and you were recording into cool edit Pro two or something. You knew that digital DWS were the way to go. You're not going to buy a two inch tape machine or something like that and go from there. So it kind of helped you get into the right frame of mind for what to do and how to work. And I was fortunate specifically to work with mentors who unfortunately made all the wrong decisions. So I got to learn what not to do as I was there watching, namely, I had one in particular who used to own a studio up here in the northern suburbs, and he ran an interesting business model in which he would bring in bands to do a one day demo, really low level quick stuff in and out.

(24:01):

You walk out with a CD that same day, all track live together, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm sure, I bet those sounded great. Oh man, fantastic. But I mean that sort of stuff has its place in the industry and if you enjoy working with that amount of throughput of bands, more power to you. But the thing is that he was struggling to keep afloat and his solution to this problem in an ever encroaching digital age was maybe I should just buy a Trit analog console and a two inch tape machine and then record from there. And it's like, good idea. You couldn't have made a single worse decision to increase your overhead costs to sort of make yourself less marketable to bands looking for a lower cost day demo recording. And lo and behold, a couple of weeks after that happened, he kind of just closed up shop and went back to his day job. So it was little experiences like that as well as seeing some of the largest studios around Melbourne closing up that really put into perspective where the industry was going and had actually etch, had a full-time niche in this industry. And I think that's something that you guys were touching on. I think if you work smart and you work hard, you will eventually get somewhere.

Speaker 2 (25:13):

I totally agree, man. What a bad move. God.

Speaker 4 (25:16):

Yeah. Yeah. I was wondering whether to bring this up or not, but I think it's been long enough since this happened that I can just kind of reflect on it with some of you guys and share in that experience.

Speaker 2 (25:28):

Well, you're not naming names,

Speaker 4 (25:29):

Even if you are,

Speaker 2 (25:30):

It's okay. He's not listening. He's got his job to deal with.

Speaker 4 (25:35):

Yeah, lucky him. Lucky him. Probably still making better money than I'm doing this, but it serves as a good lesson. I think it helps to be around things that have failed because that tends to be, ironically, the best way that we learn. It's from the burn, it's from that pain, it's from, it sticks very strongly in the memory. When you see something go down in flames, you never make that mistake again.

Speaker 3 (26:00):

Yeah, that's very true. I mean, when I think back of my entire twenties and all of my musical endeavors, the only word that comes to my mind is failure. And then as my very late twenties came, like 28 or 29, that's when things really started to pick up and take off and break open. And I had to do everything wrong, play in a what would be a melodic thrash throwback band when no one cared about that genre and trying to make it and just being a stubborn bastard about it for eight years and just doing things like that, just dumb shit that a band would walk into my studio now and be like, why are you doing this? You need to completely rebrand. Do this. Everything you're doing is wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'd be like, oh, okay, great. Restart. And I had to figure that out all the hard way because I was such a stubborn asshole about it. But I look back and I don't regret any of those decisions because those were actually opportunities. And from those decisions, I learned exactly what not to do. I learned how to absolutely work your ass off and not get anywhere and drive your head into a wall, meaning that the insanity definition style and how to say, okay, enough's enough, I have to change direction and go around the wall. It was a great experience. I've learned very, very much from it and I'm glad that I had that in my life.

Speaker 2 (27:13):

I think also studying history, good thing to do because obviously the cliches that it repeats itself, but that's actually really true, and I've done a really good job in my life of being able to see where things are going next and putting myself there before other people could see it. And it's not like some I'm smarter than them or anything. I'm just actively trying to figure that out and always have been actively trying to figure it out. And it's served me very, very well. And so I suggest that along with learning from failures, pay attention to the world around you. I know a lot of guys who are in this world, they go into the cave and they work for hours a day sometimes they also have a day job. So between the day job and the studio cave, they're not too in touch with the world around them.

(28:10):

And unless you're some freak genius, like the 0.01% freak genius dude who just is so incredible that he's going to get noticed no matter what, which is don't count on being that guy. If you're a normal person like us, paying attention to the world around you is very, very important because you start to notice patterns and you start to notice the direction things are going in and you can better make your next move that way. I mean, I'll just say it now. The mix is an example of that kind of thinking of where are things going next? And it's doing great right now. I feel like had we had come around earlier or later, who knows? So I really, really do encourage people to pay more attention to the world. And it doesn't mean get wrapped up in the news and make yourself depressed, but pay attention to where your industry is headed at least, and to patterns of human behavior. That said, I want to talk a little bit about your mastering and also specifically how you got hooked up with periphery. That's a pretty damn good gig.

Speaker 4 (29:18):

Yeah, yeah, it is. The thing about that gig was it was the results of a few different factors coming together all at once. So I'd actually known Nolie prior to him being in periphery. We'd met as aforementioned on the Andy Sleep Board, and we sort of stayed in touch in a cursory way over the years. And I remember he was quite fond of the mixing guide back in the day and all that sort of stuff. And this is when he was still very much finding his feet as an engineer. He was still very much, still an extremely gifted musician at this point. So evidently he joined proofing in later years, and we sort of briefly in touch here and there, but what really did it was this really bizarre thing where I woke up one day, and this is going to seem completely irrelevant, but just bear with me.

(30:12):

My favorite record is Masu Zen. I love this thing. It is an absolute beast of a record, and I absolutely, that's a good one. Love everything about it. The thing that I don't love about it is the production. I feel like I turn it on and it's like ice pick 2K, three K, and it's like, oh God, just make it end. And no offense, Frederick Man, I love you, but the mix on that isn't that great. So I thought, you know, why don't I pull this up and just do a remaster for my own listening purposes? Because I had just seen Masu on their Zen tour here in Melbourne, and the way that they came across live with that material was so much more powerful than the actual record. And I wanted to try and recapture some of that with my personal remaster. So I cranked the lows, I kind of subdued the high mids and et cetera, et cetera, and I thought, since I've done this, maybe some other people want to hear it.

(31:00):

They might be in the same boat that I am, that they love the music, but not so much the production. So I just uploaded it on a whim, and because I would stay in touch and sort of bounce production ideas off one another, I'm like, Hey, dude, do you like this version or that version? I was running a couple of different limiters and I just wanted to see what he was feeling. So it turns out that he actually showed that remaster to Misha just as they were finishing up the juggernaut records and Misha put forth the idea like, Hey, why don't we have this guy's part of the mix tester array? I'm just like, whoa, that just went from zero to a hundred really quick. And so that eventually ended up unfortunately not happening in the way that I thought that it would because the idea was for them to actually get a couple of mastering guys to do a standard mastering shootout, just an array of different ones and sort of pick what they liked.

(31:53):

But it turned out that their impending tour schedule made them have to get on the road really quickly. So they had to go ahead with a really, I wouldn't say they had to go ahead, but they decided to go ahead with a really popular metal mastering engineer. So they went ahead with this, but the masters that they received weren't quite fitting the bill because the idea for Juggernaut was to be this massive hour plus opus. It was meant to be a record that you can just put on and listen to from start to end because all the songs just flow. There's really barely a start and end point anywhere on there. And what they ended up getting back was something that was very commercial, very radio, very top 40, and that wasn't the direction they were going in. So out of nowhere after I thought I lost this gig, I receive an email from Nolie saying, Hey man, how would you feel about putting in a quick test master for us? I'm just like, hell yeah, absolutely. I wasn't banking on this, but yeah, on a dime. So I just dropped everything I was doing and just got in there and did it. I mean, the rest is history. I think the guys unanimously kind of preferred it, and it sort of established our working relationship from there, and that was Juggernaut Alpha and Omega.

Speaker 2 (33:03):

There's a key thing here that I want listeners to pay attention to when you didn't get the gig. I'm going to just guess you didn't say this, but I'm just going to guess that you weren't a dick about it and that you didn't act all hurt and pissy or anything.

Speaker 4 (33:22):

No, no, no, of course not. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:24):

Well, I'm saying this because a lot of people do, and here at Nail the Mix URM, we get to hear a lot of people's frustrations with their careers, and sometimes we see that people who lose gigs will get angry with the client about it. And I've never seen anything good come out of that. And this is a case in point where you thought you lost the gig, but you maintained the relationship and then the big shot didn't deliver the goods, and by maintaining that relationship, you got another shot, and then the rest is history.

Speaker 4 (34:00):

Absolutely, man, I completely agree with that because the way the industry is set up is that the big shots are always going to have a leg up on you. They're always going to be one ahead with their reputation. They're always going to have more opportunity than you do as a relative newcomer or whatever it is that you might be. So you need to keep your options open at all times to just kind of snap up whatever might happen because you never know how things might change. It's a really tumultuous industry, and you never know how something might backfire on someone or come back around to you and hell, man, if I was pissy, dude, do you know how many mixed projects I've lost to Jacob Hanson alone this year? It's fucking fascinating. But I love the guy, his work is amazing. The bands are fantastic, and they're going to do great work together. So I'm not pissy about it. There's always more bands around the corner. For me, it doesn't really bother me whatsoever. So as long as you say don't be a dick about things, you're just going to increase your likelihood of getting your tendrils out further and getting further into the industry.

Speaker 2 (35:02):

Yeah, I mean, the big guys might be the big guys, but just because they're the big guys doesn't mean that they're going to do a great job next on that gig. Maybe it's not the right gig for them. Maybe they don't understand what the band wants. Maybe they're going through a divorce.

Speaker 3 (35:19):

Sometimes they just get lazy about it too. Exactly, if they don't give a shit. So I mean, when you have all these awesome projects and it becomes more about maintenance, I feel like mentally as opposed to trying to grow. So it's really, there's to lose. I mean, you guys are right on the point. I mean, that's kind of how I got machine head. It just kind of randomly, Rob was friends with a dude that I had worked very hard for, and our relationship really hadn't made any money, meaning the record had come out and they kind of ended up getting screwed by their label. And it's a very long story, but we made a record and it got Rob's attention, and he decided to give a guy he'd never heard of a shot on the thing, and it ended up being a really, really good relationship and everything worked great. So sometimes you just start in the right place at the right time with the right sound, and the right person hears it and says, that's what I want.

Speaker 2 (36:08):

And they could have easily gone with their go-to guys like Snoop or Richardson.

Speaker 3 (36:14):

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm very happy that they didn't,

Speaker 2 (36:19):

But I mean, it's one email away from that at all times with a gig like machine head,

Speaker 3 (36:25):

As I've said, I nail the mix that actually almost happened where what Rob and the band wanted to hear, I feel like was very different than what Monty Connor wanted to hear. And as soon as Monty heard the first mix, he's like, Nope. Going right to steep. I'm like, hold on, let me do a revision. What do you want? He told me what he wanted and then I was able to get it right away. But it's just a kneejerk default response. It's like they have a relationship already with that person. They've been working with him for 15 years plus. They just know what they're going to get. It's predictable, it's safe. It's a good sound business investment. So sometimes being the newcomer, you just have to be way more flexible and you have to work a lot harder

Speaker 2 (37:00):

Than

Speaker 3 (37:01):

The old school guy does, but if you get a little bit of luck, you can break in and stay and it gets some traction. Well,

Speaker 2 (37:07):

You're not going to lose if you go with sleep. And it's just a sure bet, like you said, it's reliable. You know exactly what you're going to get. And just imagine if after that first mix that Monty didn't like, if you were like, well, figures, I was going to lose the mix anyways, blah, blah, blah, or some bitchy ass move, you would've lost the gig right then and there.

Speaker 3 (37:28):

Yeah, I mean, I was just like, let me do a revision on it. At least tell me what you want and I'll give you what you want. Why is that an odd request? And he was like, okay,

Speaker 4 (37:37):

Boom. That can be a difficult thing to get across to a band, especially if they have a pre-established sort of relationship with another engineer. Their first response to you sending 'em something they aren't a hundred percent over the moon about may not be, Hey, I'll ask him to change this or that. It'll be, Hey, I'll go back to the guy I know is safe, which can be really precarious. That's the point at which you have to really show some tenacity and push yourself across and be like, look, man, speak to me. Tell me what's wrong. I don't have to just do things one way. I've got an arsenal of bags of tricks in my bag, so to speak. So just come at me with something and I'll revise it for you. And I think if people knew what happened behind the scenes and how many of these slightly larger records I almost missed out on this year, it'd really be a sobering experience for them because nothing is a sure bet, even if you're told that it is, you really have to work your ass off and you have to be prepared. Oh,

Speaker 3 (38:31):

That's so true, so true.

Speaker 4 (38:33):

Yeah. You've got to be prepared to really put it all on the line.

Speaker 2 (38:36):

I remember when I first got hit up to work with the monuments vocals a few years ago, I only knew John Brown. I did not know their vocalist Chris yet, and I hadn't really worked with that world yet. So I mean, I had worked with the Contortionists and stuff, but I hadn't worked in the, let's just call it the gen royalty. The people who were from the Periphery Circle and the Tesseract Circle monuments aren't as big as those bands, but they all come from that same circle. We're all in bands together and all that. I hadn't worked with any of those bands yet. And I got hit up to work with Chris, and we had lots of phone calls about it, about the direction, about everything. And then after all this, we're going to book it, they're like, he's just going to record with Spencer from Periphery.

(39:31):

And it was like, oh, well, that's disappointing, but okay, good luck, Spencer's awesome, best of luck. And I kept it super cool. And a month later I got a call that it wasn't going to work out with Spencer. They're coming to me and man, through getting that gig, so many other things have happened with that band. Just doing that record was awesome. But then bringing Brown onto Creative Live and then doing Creative Live again with the entire band and doing a tone pack with John Brown. And there's just a bunch of different things I've done with monuments over the years as a result of not having been a bitch when I didn't get the gig, and thinking about that now, that if when I didn't get the gig, if I had been a bitch about it, how different the relationship would be now two years later, how many things probably won't have happened as a result of that. So keep it cool boys and girls. So we have some questions from our audience for you. Since we're starting to come up against the clock, I want to go ahead and ask you some of these. Go

Speaker 4 (40:41):

For it.

Speaker 2 (40:41):

All right. So here's one that probably everybody's wondering, which we haven't asked you yet, but I'm sure you can guess what it is. It's from Alex Nala who actually writes for Gear Gods. We love you, Alex.

Speaker 3 (40:56):

Alex is everywhere. Yeah, he can't avoid Alex everywhere. He's literally everywhere at

Speaker 2 (41:01):

All times. Omnipresent. When's the new book coming out?

Speaker 4 (41:05):

Which new book? Your new book don't disappoint? Would this be the fabled mastering one that I'm never going to write? That's a great question. Honestly, I'm not sure about a new book, truth be told, but I have thought about following up the systematic mixing guide with a series of video tutorials, sort of a chapter based kind of thing, and accompaniment to the actual book, if you will. But it's just, I think the amount of work required in that run up against my day schedule these days. It's just a hard thing to reconcile. So can't really put any projections on anything, but you might be seeing a tutorial video series coming from me in the next couple of years. Maybe

Speaker 2 (41:45):

You should do that with us. So Alex, I

Speaker 3 (41:47):

Was just going to say that.

Speaker 2 (41:49):

Yeah, no, you should. Hey, I trying to make bank. No, well, it'll make you bank too broached. I've brought that up to him before and I'm going to keep bringing it up until either you block me or agree. So Alex actually says, but an actual question on mastering is how do you go about figuring out and deciding compression for a track you're mastering? What would make you decide if a track needed multi-band compression or regular bus compression?

Speaker 4 (42:19):

That's just one of those things you have to proceed by active listening, everything, every project that you get, and this is just cliche stuff, everyone knows this is that every project is unique. Every project calls for a different chain of gear and a different approach. So you kind of listen and you see where the dynamic content is at. If it sounds like the guy hasn't really given it much of a squeeze or there isn't much saturation, the drum transients are a little bit pokey, stuff like that, things aren't unifying or congealing in a musical way. You might actually benefit from giving it a broadband compression, squeeze some tasteful, bringing things together, kind of locking it in. But being that it's mastering, you have to be extremely mindful that you can't do what you would do in a mix. You can't go in with fricking Andy Wallace settings and take off like six to eight DB and hope for the best because you're going to end up with acoustic verses being 60 B louder than the choruses.

(43:10):

So you have to kind of be sensible about what you're doing, listen and just be very sparing with what you do because you can't afford to get tunnel vision and mastering if you're focusing on getting the vocal dynamics just right, you might be obliterating the drums or vice versa. So just be mindful of what you're doing and just proceed it with active listening. And in respect to multi-band compression, that's something I reserve as a complete last resort in mastering. I'll very often, if it comes to that point where I feel like using it, I would much sooner go back to the mix engineer and say, look man, let's revise a few things in the mix process because it's going to have a much more elegant outcome than me going in and getting super surgical and crazy with this stuff.

Speaker 2 (43:53):

You're not the only mastering engineer who has said that about multi-band. So Matisse is asking, how do you reset yourself when working with so many projects? Do you have a routine to keep the perspective fresh? And most, and by far the most important question, how the hell do you manage to keep the band's signature sound? It's a lot of questions.

Speaker 4 (44:15):

Yeah, it's like three questions rolled into the one. That's cool. I appreciate that. Very economical. It's actually a great set of questions as well, because one of the main things that we need to keep in mind when doing a job that's like this is balanced, we need to find some kind of equilibrium in our lives, and that's extremely important, is to keep you ahead in the right place because this isn't the sort of job where you can walk into a cubicle and clock in and then just fuck up around a spreadsheet and then just clock out. You have to be invested. I love that You have to be creatively invested to some degree, no matter how purely technical your aspect of the project is, you have to understand where they're going. You have to kind of bear in mind what they're trying to achieve. As soon as you lose that, you start putting out mediocre product no matter how good your skillset or hearing is.

(45:04):

So in my particular case, I tend to balance my life out a lot more these days than I used to kind of avoid that tunnel vision and burning out. One of the main ones is that I go to the gym six days a week for about one to two hours a day. It's a tremendously big part of my life. And ever since I started doing that, you might think on the surface, oh man, you're losing so many hours. You could be investing in work, you're not going to achieve the heights that you can. But it's actually helped the quality of my work immeasurably because it's helped me get away from that tunnel vision. It's helped me see music a bit more objectively, and it's helped space me out into a sort of view that's a lot more, I suppose, sensible. So one thing I would suggest that the listener base to find your equivalent to that, ideally something that has a physical component. So because our jobs are so sedentary, they involve just sitting down for eight to 16 hours a day just twiddling away, and that can really mess with your physiological functions, man, your body, you haven't evolved to do that isn't where you come from. That's not what your body is trying to do. So just be sensible and definitely have an active component to your life. And I think I've forgotten what the second part of that question was.

Speaker 2 (46:16):

The second part of that question was, well, you kind of answered it. Do you have a routine to keep the perspective fresh? So you did kind of answer that.

Speaker 4 (46:25):

Excellent. So that's the great thing about ranting. You're eventually going to come around and cover everything, so fantastic.

Speaker 2 (46:31):

And how the hell do you manage to keep the band's signature sound was the third part of the question. Sure,

Speaker 4 (46:37):

Sure. Well see, that isn't so difficult in your role is so relatively minor. You need to understand that you're not there as a mastering engineer to redefine their sound or create the new black album. Your role is essentially to sort of refine what they've given you and make it more palatable to the average listener and make it more portable and translate to a wider array of speaker systems. So it's not like it's something you really have to worry about. But as a mix engineer, of course, it comes into things a little bit more. I think it's very difficult to get away from imprinting a certain aesthetic onto bands, especially if you have, we'll all eventually run through a set of compressors and EQs and verbs, and we'll always pick favorites. You might like de verb, I might, I don't know, whatever the hell else, the brick hu, the M seven impulses.

(47:27):

But we're all eventually going to get our own little toolkit of tricks and we're going to be tempted to reach into that toolkit and apply it to multiple artists in the same vein, especially if you're working with bands in the same genre that often because, oh hey, so the jump bands really benefit from having an RNC on parallel drums, or they might benefit from having a distress on parallel snares. So you're going to lean towards that and that's going to give you music a pervading sort of aesthetic over the years. But that's not necessarily something you need to shy away from because we all, it's part of your brand, it's part of who you are. You just have to limit it to a point where you can actually tell that one band stops and another band begins.

Speaker 2 (48:13):

Yeah, good answer. Here's another one from Brandon Folsom. What was one of the most difficult obstacles you've had to overcome and how did you rise above it?

Speaker 4 (48:22):

I think breaking that local international barrier was definitely one of the most difficult things for me because as I spoke about with AOL earlier, our goal is to sort of break out into that international elements. And it was a slog getting there for me. And the irony is that it didn't happen through traditional means. I didn't just work at it really hard, and then the merits of that work came to fruition. The thing about this industry is that it's little opportunities, little key moments and milestones that project you into that realm. My very first one, ironically, was deciding to write a mixing guide. That's the first time people from outside of Australia really started to pay attention and go, oh, okay, maybe this guy's got something to offer. And then the second time was when I on a whim decided to remaster my favorite Masu record. So it's always these little bizarre things that I've done that have sort of propelled me across to a new tier. It's never really been the grinding away at the local work. So you need to kind of think laterally, I think they call it, and just really approach things sideways and see what you can get.

Speaker 2 (49:29):

So I think we have time for one more question, and this one is from NAR and Magnuson and it is, I remember your Guitar EQ guide of turning up the guitars way loud and in queuing away the stuff that mask other things. I like doing that, although I have varying success. Do you use this method on other instruments as well?

Speaker 4 (49:49):

To a point? I think you have less flexibility with other instruments to do that sort of thing because when you mic up a drum kit, it's going to sound like a micd up drum kit. It's not like you can choose to give it more frequency content or less, I mean, you can kind of alter the way it's perceived based on the angles that you kind of set up, the mics and the distances and the phase relationships. But the reason I brought that up with guitars in particular is they're a really strange one. Guitars are really bizarre, and to me, they are by far the single hardest mix element to consistently get right from project to project because so many elements need to be in perfect alignment for that to happen. And the reason I wrote that is because you can often capture a really large guitar sound from the amp just by micing it up and then size it down to fit your mix.

(50:37):

You're always going to have that bass, fantastic guitar sound. You can just tailor it to fit the situation. Whereas if you were to capture something really, I guess, mix ready, you're sort of limited in the spectrum of what you've captured. It might sound like it's too thin or too that, or too that you don't have as much flexibility. Well, it might be easier at the end of the day to kind of slot it in. It may have that same potential. It's going to sound different if you record a guitar amp, but the presence really cranked to get that super hard saturated top end and then EQ that down versus turning down that presence and capturing a really dull guitar sound. They're going to present themselves very differently in the end mix. And one is going to sound a little bit more exciting than the other. It respective of how much work either of them took within the mix to get to that point. So guitars are one of those things you really have to feel out for yourself. Everyone has a completely different approach. There's really no right or wrong way to do it. You just kind of go in there and you look, man, it's sustained pink noise. You kind of screwed from the outset. So you just go with it and try and get the best outcome that you can.

Speaker 2 (51:41):

I agree. Actually, one more question because it's super relevant since this podcast is coming out when we have nali same month that we have Nali on now the mix, it's a question from Chris Hard, which is what was Ali's mix like before it hit his mastering table for P three, and what did he do to get so much life power and drive it on the mix? It sounds nothing like P two or the Juggernaut Duo.

Speaker 4 (52:05):

Yeah, well, I mean as Nelly's mixers usually do, it sounded pretty fantastic. He's one of the greatest guys to work with because we have such a similar mentality to engineering. Our work sounds very different, but Nolie is very locked in and he knows very much what he's doing and he goes for it from the source. So it's very obvious that he's working with very strong source material as well. So the thing about that record was it had all come together and we were chatting as we often do, and it became really clear that he was struggling a little bit to translate the low end in M's mixed room because it was, I think the first time he was mixing there, he wasn't quite familiar with the low end response. The room from what I gather had just been treated, et cetera, et cetera. So I ran the idea past him to just break it out into stems and send me the record and then see if I could help out at all because I've got the advantage of having worked in this one room for well over 10 years now.

(53:00):

So if I hear some discrepancies in the low end, I can usually isolate it pretty easily. So he sent across the stems. I essentially just tweaked a few little things here and there and sent him the ProQ presets for each stem and said, look, man, use as much of whatever one of these settings as you need and just kind of apply it as you will. Here are my suggestions, your mileage may vary. So I'm not really sure how much of it he ended up using in the end, but he seemed quite thankful that we'd gone through that process. And that's something that I touched on earlier actually. When you're working in the capacity as a mastering engineer and a client sends you a mix and you feel that that mix can be superior with a revision, speak to them. Tell them that. Don't bust out the freaking R base or the multi-band or the spectral enhancers or crazy shit. Just speak to them, see if there's a simple mix refinement you can make because you'll get an elegantly better result that way. So ultimately what Noli ended up sending to me was a really, really strong mix, and all I really had to do was a bit of tightening here and there and a bit of enhancement here and there, and the rest is history

Speaker 2 (54:04):

Helps when the source material's great. Right? Isn't

Speaker 3 (54:07):

That the truth?

Speaker 2 (54:08):

Yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:08):

With periphery, what else is it going to be? I mean, they're all just phenomenal musicians in their own right. I mean, where do you find a weak point in that band? It's just phenomenal. So it's just a fantastic records of you, part of you.

Speaker 2 (54:21):

Those are always the best. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Unfortunately, we got to cut out now, but you've been awesome. Thank you. Definitely.

Speaker 4 (54:32):

Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (54:33):

We hope to talk to you again. Thank

Speaker 4 (54:34):

You guys so much for having me. I hope to speak to you again too. Likewise,

Speaker 1 (54:38):

Cheers. The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is brought to you by two notes. Audio Engineering two Notes is a leader in the market for load box cabinet and Mike Simulators. Gone are the days of having iso rooms or having to record an amp at ear bleeding volumes to capture that magic tone, the Torpedo Live reload and studio allow you to crank your amp up as loud as you want, but record silently. Check out www.two-notes.com for more info. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit nail the mix.com/podcast and subscribe today.