BILLY DECKER: Mixing 1,400 Songs a Year, Customer Service, and Mixing for Radio

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Mick DSP professional audio plugins. For over 15 years, Mick DSP has continued producing industry acclaimed and award-winning software titles. The podcast is also brought to you by Slate Digital, all the pro plugins. One more monthly price. And now your host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

(00:00:26):

Today's going to be a funny episode because we have a hell of a guy joining us. Billy Decker, welcome. How you doing, Billy? Good,

Speaker 3 (00:00:34):

Guys. Glad to meet You'all.

Speaker 2 (00:00:36):

You as well.

Speaker 3 (00:00:36):

Likewise,

Speaker 2 (00:00:37):

Dude.

Speaker 3 (00:00:38):

Greetings from Nashville, Tennessee.

Speaker 2 (00:00:40):

Love that place.

Speaker 3 (00:00:41):

A bit warmer than Wisconsin, I bet. Oh,

Speaker 4 (00:00:43):

Yes,

Speaker 3 (00:00:43):

Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 4 (00:00:45):

So I think anyone who hasn't heard of Billy, just doesn't know that they haven't heard of Billy, because you've probably listened to something he's done. You've worked with people like Kenny Chesney, Darius Rucker, Jamie Lynn Spears, Chris Young, Montgomery Gentry, Cassie Pope, Sam Hunt, on and on and on and on and on and on, and on. 10, well, 11 number one hits correct?

Speaker 5 (00:01:12):

On

Speaker 4 (00:01:12):

Billboard. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:01:13):

Oh, only, geez. That's it.

Speaker 4 (00:01:16):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:01:16):

That's amazing. Congratulations.

Speaker 2 (00:01:17):

Just one away from a dozen, man.

Speaker 3 (00:01:19):

Well, thank you. Actually, yesterday I went over and got a call from Rodney Atkins. He's a country artist's, been around for a while, but he was the second most played artist of the decade, and he actually had the most played song of the decade. So they had a ceremony where they were honoring him and Lon Hilton from the Top 40 Countdown from Aircheck was there and whatnot. And they took a bunch of pictures and we did the old griped grin shaking hands with everybody. But they informed me that he actually had, out of the top 54 songs over the last 10 years, they compiled the most played songs, a list of one to 100. He actually had six in that top 10, and I was fortunate enough to be part of it and got to mix those.

Speaker 5 (00:02:04):

Damn, that's awesome.

Speaker 3 (00:02:05):

Yeah. Yeah. It'll buy me a cup of coffee because you guys all know engineers just were as good as the last thing people hear. So I guess I live to fight another day.

Speaker 4 (00:02:17):

Speaking of living to fight another day and being judged on the most recent thing we did. How much work do you put out on average? I heard that you mix really, really fast and put out a ton of material.

Speaker 3 (00:02:31):

I do.

Speaker 5 (00:02:31):

Oh, hell yeah. We got another speed mixer on board.

Speaker 3 (00:02:34):

I actually do back in the day, take you back probably to 2001. I'm a dad, been married 24 years, the same crazy woman, and we've got two kids, and you guys know the engineers. I mean, if you're not careful, you can spend 24 hours without seeing the sunlight in the studio. Well, my kids were growing up without a dad. Basically. I would be in the studio in the morning and engineering at night, and after doing a bunch of research and just listening, I found out that mixers are kind of like the quarterbacks on the football team. They get all the chicks, they get all the money, they get all the fame and fortune. So I'm like, I'm going to be a mixer. So I stopped doing engineering and basically just focused on mixing and told everybody that and jumped on to the pro tools format way before anybody else did.

(00:03:28):

You know what I mean? And by me doing that, I was able to on more work than most people, just because of the format and whatnot. Nashville's famous for songwriters and all these songwriters record these songs every single day, and they need a mix so that their publishers can go out and solicit 'em to get them on the radio and get cuts and whatnot. And an average day for me would be somebody gives me about six to eight songs, and I would actually mix those in one day, and I would come in early, early, I'd drop the kids off at school, and I would be done by about five o'clock in order to get home and play with them and be a decent dad and a husband. So I learned to mix almost out of necessity to keep the balance in my life. If something's out of Billy, we got to hang out, man. We

Speaker 5 (00:04:22):

Live the same life.

Speaker 3 (00:04:23):

Yeah, I tell you what, it's funny because if you spend all your time in the studio, then your home life sucks and your social life sucks and you got no friends and blah, blah, blah. And the opposite's true. So you find a good balance and all of a sudden you're happier. You get better at engineering because you keep that passion for it, and all of a sudden the money starts rolling in because everything just starts to symbiotically happen, if that's a word. So

Speaker 4 (00:04:50):

That is definitely a word

Speaker 3 (00:04:52):

I wanted to be able to give a good product, but at the same time, I wanted to make money and then get home, and it all just kind of meshed together. And if you guys promise not to tell anybody, I know nobody's going to listen to this thing, my record, if you can call it a record. I had a songwriter that came to me, and it was like a Friday in late December, and he goes, dude, I just cut a triple session. So that entailed a normal session in Nashville. Everything's unionized and musicians work in three hour chunks. And he booked a triple, which basically means if you get five songs in one session, he did 15, he actually got 17 songs. So he brought me this and said, I need to turn this into my publisher for my quota, and then I'm going skiing and I'm going back to Colorado to see my folks.

(00:05:43):

I won't be back until after Christmas. So we got to get this done and turned in and his deal was up, so he was on a deadline. So he brought me 17 songs on a Friday morning. I started at eight in the morning. I got done at about eight at night mixing them. And he came in and he's like, all right, let me hear. And he would just listen to intro verse and course he's like, okay, good print. And then we'd move on to the next one. We got out of there about 11 o'clock at night, but I mixed 17 songs in one day. That was my record.

Speaker 5 (00:06:14):

That's pretty impressive. I once mixed a record in about three and a half hours with revisions, but it was like a death core record. So it was all just like, and it was the same template. So there really wasn't a lot of automation, and the band wasn't picky. They were on a deadline. So it was just like, all right, running gun, let's go. Nice. How fast can we get this done?

Speaker 3 (00:06:32):

Yeah, I actually had, I'm over at Westwood, it's called the Cabinet Westwood. It's Westwood Studios in Nashville for the last two years, but I used to be for the last 15, I was over at Soundstage in Nashville, which is a big multi-room complex. It's one of the last lake great, they call it one of the big three. There's two SSL rooms or three SSL rooms over there.

Speaker 5 (00:06:54):

Nice.

Speaker 3 (00:06:55):

And then a bunch of overdub and mixed rooms and stuff. But the general manager at the time, probably about three years ago or four years ago, used to run with Chris Lord Algae back in the day, and Chris out in California. Well, Chris came into town to speak or do something like that, and he actually stopped over to visit my general manager, and the general manager was like, dude, you got to do me a favor. There's this clown up front that wants to be you. His name's Billy Decker, and all he does is talks about Chris or algae drums and all that stuff. So he's like, you've got to go introduce yourself. So I'm sitting here mixing probably my batch of six to eight songs for the day or whatnot, and all of a sudden I hear, Hey, and I turn around and Chris Lord algae's standing right over my shoulder in the studio next to my general manager, and I gave him a hug, and he's like, all right.

(00:07:45):

He's like, I hear you want to beam me. He's like, I can't stop it, but I can make sure you're doing everything the way that it fucking needs to be done. And he's like, snap up your session. Let me go through each instrument and make sure you're doing everything. So literally, we went through a whole session and he goes, yes, no. He goes, oh, that's cool. I may even try that. He's like, whoa, what are you putting an L two on your two bus? That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my life. And literally he went down the whole list and it was pretty cool because it had validated what I'd been doing and opened my eyes to something that maybe I wasn't doing.

Speaker 5 (00:08:20):

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3 (00:08:21):

But during that conversation, he's like, yeah. He's like, I'll just have, I mixed a thousand songs last year, Decker. And I said, Chris, no disrespect, but I mixed 1400. I said, but I didn't get paid five grand or seven grand a song to do it, but I beat you. And he's like, Touche,

Speaker 5 (00:08:40):

1400, holy shit.

Speaker 3 (00:08:42):

Yeah, that's my Chris Lord algae story. And some of those are demos. I've got all different price points where I mix at where if I do a demo, I'll charge somebody 200 bucks a song, and that includes me in the studio. If I do an indie record, I'll go anywhere from two to 500 all the way up to six or seven. And then when I start doing major label stuff, then it gets into the thousands. You can get a couple grand to mix 2,500 from a few labels in town. Some labels, they only pay a thousand, but you add all those up and it works out to being able to live the dream in the music business in Nashville.

Speaker 5 (00:09:23):

Yeah, I found that because budgets have gone down, one of the things you can do as a mixer to really compensate your income for that is just triple your speed and create a system that allows you to do that in a structure. When you're mixing, that's, what's the word I'm looking for? It's very pro speed. So everything you're doing is based around one premise. How fast can I get mixes out and do it consistently and turn something out that I'm going to want to put my name out and the client's going to listen to? It's like, this is badass. So creating a system, it's something that's I feel like time consuming to do upfront, but once you do it, the amount of results it can yield and the amount of money that you can make with it is stupid. It's crazy.

Speaker 3 (00:10:03):

Yeah. I really mix with, I don't use an assistant. I've never had an assistant from day one just because, I mean, in all honesty, it'd probably slow me down. I can load up a session, lock drums, do everything I need to do, and I really like using templates. So I'll mix a song and say, I've got all my plugins in place and whatnot. I will open up a session from what I'm going to mix, do a save as. And way back in the day, I did have a couple interns and a few assistant type people over at Soundstage that would come burn all my versions for me and my stems and whatnot, and archive everything. So the way I would archive or let everybody know what my mix template was, was I called it the decorator and it turned into my email and it was almost a joke.

(00:10:57):

Somebody came in one day and said, Hey, can you decorate my music? And I'm like, that's kind of fun to play on. So since then, like 2001, every time you open up a session, you'll see the name of the song, and then you'll see an icon that says decorator on it. And the decorator is actually the mix template, so nobody gets confused on what to open up to bounce down the versions or whatnot, or the most current mix. So I'll do a save as I'll call it the decorator, and then I will import in just the skin or everything but the audio into my new session and then just hold option apple so your regions can't slide left and right, only up and down in time or in place, and I'll just slide those right into my new template. And it's mixed. Yeah, it really is itself. And then you hit play and I mean, my samples are firing, everything's loaded up, and it's so constantly my templates are getting updated. So the last thing I mix that I think sounds cool. I'll use that as my new template.

Speaker 5 (00:12:00):

Yeah, that's totally exactly the way to do it because I have an assistant and he really speeds me up because for example, if drums need to be triggered or organized, but when I actually touch a mix after I've done the first song on the record, all I need to do is literally write automation and then maybe balance out some weird sectional parts. I hit play and the song is already mixed because the template is so well structured, everything is routed, all the stuff is on and it's ready to go, it's done. So I can rip through the song in 20 or 30 minutes and maybe do a little bit of automation and then boom, print it onto the next song and rip up the whole record in a half days.

Speaker 3 (00:12:37):

It really does work. And in Nashville, probably more so than anywhere else, you get a lot of the same studios being used and a lot of the same musicians. So I mean, I know I see these, oh, that's amazing. Yeah, I see these guys and I know the engineers, so it's like, oh, okay, this is coming from my friend's studio called Benchmark. Well, I know exactly what he does on the drums. I know the mic setup, so that even speeds it up.

Speaker 5 (00:13:01):

Yeah, you break the benchmark template.

Speaker 3 (00:13:02):

Exactly. So anything coming from him, it really goes fast. And in all honesty, I always kind of just shoot from the hip and go with my gut, and if I spend too much time on something, I start overthinking it and I'll literally mess it up. You know what I mean? If I don't, oh, absolutely. If I take too much time, then I'll start doubting myself and go, oh, maybe that should be brighter a door. And then you get out in the car and it's like, oh, hell, I should just gone with what I did an hour ago.

Speaker 5 (00:13:28):

I think that's a great point, Billy, because a lot of people, and this is something I see, and I tell this to a lot of people who are coming up, I'm like, listen, that if it's between somebody who's a season pro and an amateur is the amateur will sit there and spend six months on a mix, I'm like, yeah, if you spend six months tweaking your song or even three or even a month, it's like, well, these kids that sign up for nail the mix, and they'll be like, I spent all month mixing this song, and I'm sitting there scratching my head. I'm like, I wouldn't spend more than two or three hours. Because the best mixing you are going to do is going to be that initial first time after you've done your prep, you close that out and you come back and you actually start mixing the song.

(00:13:59):

You get into that zone, you're not questioning yourself. You're just like, this doesn't feel right. That's got to go here. This doesn't feel right. That boom, boom, you flip through it all, you get it done and you hit that first pass and you're like, yeah, it sounds like a song. And then you send it to the client. You can spend four days literally sitting there working on the sickest drum sound ever, only to find out the drummer doesn't like it and wanted to be more natural or wanted a different snare sample. Exactly. Then you just wasted four days. So I'm just like, all right, I need to get to the band as fast as I can get it to sound like a song you hit play if it sounds like a song, it's done. Right. Exactly. So send it to the band. They're going to have their stupid nitpicky bullshit that probably doesn't matter and that nobody cares about except for the stupid drummer. He wants his high hat up 0.3 db, but his mom doesn't care, so we can negate that crap. And then you run whatever revisions and boom, hopefully the song's done in a couple of quick passes and you can move on. So yeah, you just got to have a badass system. That's really I think what it's all about.

Speaker 3 (00:14:56):

Yeah, and remember, the client is always right.

Speaker 4 (00:15:01):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:15:02):

That'll keep 'em coming back every time. The client is always right.

Speaker 4 (00:15:06):

How often or how many levels of revisions do you typically do? Is it generally zero or how do you handle mixed notes and how do they not slow you down?

Speaker 3 (00:15:18):

I actually, I don't know how many guys do this, but from day one, I've always warrantied my work. And so I tell everybody I'm done when you're happy. And I think a lot of people be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We only allow two revisions and then we start charging after that. But the way I've always done it and it's worked out great, is a, because I can do it so fast, I can snap up. I mean, I literally mix a hundred percent in the box. I use no outboard gear and I bounce to disc and everything. So everything is a hundred percent recallable obviously, but I can be mixing somebody across town and then I get a call to do just a quick vocal up or raise this guitar up or whatever. I can literally just stop, save everything, boom, snap up, do the revision, email it out real quick.

(00:16:09):

I mean, literally half my day is probably doing a few revisions and then mixing on top of that so I can still get it all done just because the beauty of the a hundred percent recall. But because I say I warranty my work, it almost lets everybody relax and they don't drive you bananas on that first time you're doing a revision. And they actually will ease up. And I've had maybe two or three people that have abused it where they call back and I'll do a demo and they call me 18 times, but that's very rarely. Most people are just like, they know they can call me and get something fixed that easy. So it's just like, oh, okay, just put the vocal up. That's great, dude. Just go ahead and bounce it. That's awesome.

Speaker 5 (00:16:55):

That's interesting. I find when I do that sort of behavior, and this is just the clients that I've worked with, I feel like it gets abused more often than not because if you don't give people some sort of deadline because of their artists, they'll always find something wrong with it. They'll get way too analytical about it. I remember one particular band I was doing revisions for, and I had six different revisions where I take the same bass drop and moved it up a DB or down a DB over a certain breakdown in a song, and I'm just like, guys, make a fucking decision or I'm done. You're wasting time. It literally does not fucking matter if that bass drop is up a DB or down a db, the kid's going to be like, bass drop sick. This breakdown is cool. I'm going to go jump around and throw my fists, or they're not, so can we just make a decision? And I feel like there has to be a point where you have to show some sort of backbone because maybe it's because I deal with a lot of metal bands and maybe people in your genre are way cooler than in ours, but metal bands,

Speaker 4 (00:17:58):

It sounds like they're wearing more pro.

Speaker 5 (00:17:59):

Yeah, metal bands are just so picky. It's crazy. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:18:02):

I don't know if it's, I think it's pretty chill down here. You know what I mean? And I don't know if it's like, I don't want to say it's a southern thing because actually up from the north, I'm from Nebraska originally, or I guess that's right in the middle. But everybody down here, I mean, sure you have people that will, I mean just revision after revision after revision. But I would say for the most part, by me doing that, I've actually had people go, dude, we know you ain't the best, but you're like the coolest and you're the easiest to work with and you never squawk. If we want to do a revision, you just go, oh, okay, thanks. You want to kick me in the nuts? Can I have another? And they just love the fact that they can call me and I mean, literally, I'll be working on a record for a major label artist and I'll have somebody call up that wants to make a change on a demo.

(00:18:55):

I'll be like, yeah, hang on, give me 10 minutes and I'll just stop, save what I'm doing. Most of my stuff is unattended. I'm by myself just mixing, cranking 'em out, and I'll stop doing a full blown major label record and squeeze in a few revisions for demos. And I always do tell all my clients, you'll never miss a pitch because of Billy Decker. I'm not going to slow you up. And if you've got to get this song done and over to Jason Aldean or Kenny Chiney or whoever, you're not going to miss that opportunity to make yourself a couple hundred grand if you get a number one song. It's not going to be my fault if you miss it.

Speaker 5 (00:19:32):

I think that's a really important point and something I feel, I mean at least I know talking to Joey and Al that we've all live by on our end because thinking about our careers coming up and just going through it and making mistakes and doing it the hard way and learning as you go, something I always did that was really successful for me is that exact same thing where I would come in and I would just, no matter how much I wanted to strangle the person because it was revision 72, I would still do the revision and be like, all right, get it quick, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I feel like that sort of reciprocation, they come back to you or their friend hears it and then they recommend you and then all of a sudden your clients increase. And it's really good for word of mouth. So I feel like especially when you're getting started getting established and really building your career, you really, really have to go out of your way to just, I don't want to say drive yourself into insanity, but in a way you kind of have to just always say yes. Always do it by your lip no matter how much you disagree or think it's wrong, and in the end it will mathematically most likely reward you.

Speaker 3 (00:20:36):

Oh, absolutely. I mean customer service, they do not teach that in recording schools, but if they could teach, I went to full sail way back in the day before it was even accredited. There was like five kids in my class, you know what I mean? I mean we're talking 93, I think I went to full sail. But what they don't teach you is customer service. I mean, I tell everybody I am no different than the dude at the McDonald's window going, Hey, do you want pickles and ketchup on that burger? My only thing is, Hey, do you want reverb and delay on your vocal? It's all customer service. That's a great analogy. If you treat them like they're the king of the world, no matter what you're doing, I'm telling you guys, you will work forever. Nobody wants to work with a nasty mean engineer. That's just no fun to be around. So

Speaker 2 (00:21:27):

Exactly.

Speaker 3 (00:21:28):

I focus on customer service and actually I've been told I've got the nicest smelling control room. I burn incense all the time. I burn no choppa. So you take a shower, burn incense and be nice. You'll work forever. There's my 2 cents

Speaker 5 (00:21:44):

Shower incense. Nice.

Speaker 2 (00:21:46):

I always put myself in their shoes. If I was in a band, what would I want the producer or the mixer to do? And I think a lot of people lose sight of that. They think about themselves a lot. They think about how annoying it's going to be to do this or think about what they want to do. And the more you can put yourself in the head space of the artist, the person that's hiring you, the more you're going to see very clearly what you need to do in order to keep their business.

Speaker 3 (00:22:13):

Absolutely. And you'll probably agree with this, but once you get to a certain point in your career, I mean, you get to a point where, okay, I've got the basics figured out. I've done some work. It's like, okay, I'm really getting good. What do they say? You got to do something for 10,000 hours before you become proficient at it or an expert or something like that. Malcolm

Speaker 5 (00:22:34):

Gladwell. So

Speaker 3 (00:22:36):

You do that. We are all good. We're all good. Maybe even great in some people's opinion. So the only difference between going to say EAL Joel or Joey is whose personality and who do they want to hang with? You're all going to get make a great record. There's no denying that. So it's like, well, hey, who do I want to spend the next two months with hanging out? Maybe I like Joel laughs more and his control room smells good and he's fun and he keeps the kind of candy or chips around the studio that I really like. I'm going to hang out with Joel. I I'm going to pick Joel even though any of the three guys could do it Right. All those things are inaccurate about me.

Speaker 4 (00:23:18):

I like Al because he sits in the dark all day long and doesn't talk to me. That's true. So that's kind of an accurate reason to make the choice. I'm curious about, sorry to talk about something that we already discussed, but I'm curious, were you always focused on speed or did maybe early in your career, did you find yourself taking too long on mixes and say to yourself something like this has got to change or something? Was it a conscious thing?

Speaker 3 (00:23:55):

It literally was to get me home quicker when the kids were young. You know what I mean? I used to work on a console. There was a studio I worked at called the Sound Kitchen. I was out there for a while and I was always on a Neve, I think it was like a VR or something, I can't even remember what they had. But I mean, just the amount of time, it took an hour, almost two hours, hour and a half to recall everything, turn all the buttons and you had to have an assistant and all that stuff. And I'm like, oh man, this is killing me. So between that and just trying to make more money at the end of the day, I turned into very, very fast. And I tell everybody, it's like, Hey, I figured out how to eq a kick drum.

(00:24:37):

It ain't going to take me 30 minutes. It's going to take me 30 seconds and even less when I just pop a sample in and mute the real kick drum. And I've had the good fortune of knowing what it's going to sound like when it hits the radio. So I'm like, well, I know for a fact if I set this right there and that EQ curve and that compressor, it's going to work. So it's like boom, that's done. And you just do that enough times and you move down the line. And sure, it may get a little generic or stale sounding. Everything will kind of sound the same, but I try to reinvent myself. I'll get bored with my sounds and my samples, so I'll be like, I'll call up my buddies. I've got a good friend up that does a lot of hard rock, Dan.

Speaker 4 (00:25:26):

We love Dan.

Speaker 3 (00:25:26):

Yeah, Dan's great.

Speaker 4 (00:25:27):

We love Dan.

Speaker 3 (00:25:28):

Dan's great. And so I'll call him and say, Dan, I'm bored out of my mind, dude, send me a new kick drum and I'll return the favor. I'll send anything you want of mine. It's yours, dude. And he'll just be like, okay, here I got three new ones I just tried out. Check these out. And I do that with a lot of people and I'm always trying to constantly learn too, to keep myself fresh. So I had the good fortune of running out to Vegas and I met Kevin Chico and we stayed in touch through mutual Canadian friends here. And he's been a big influence on me too. He really helped me get my low end down, even though he's in the hard rock world and I'm in country, it still translates pretty good. That's

Speaker 5 (00:26:09):

Awesome. We have canine actually this month for Nail the Mix. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:26:11):

That's what I heard. A friend of mine said he was going to be on, he's going to do that Papa Roach song. So that should be educational. I know for a fact that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree at all. So Kevin or anything, Cain knows he learned from his papa, so that'll be a great nail the mix episode.

Speaker 5 (00:26:29):

Yeah, they're super tight. We've had them on the podcast. I think we had canine twice and Kevin on once, and all three of those episodes I think were some of our best and most interesting. Those guys are just so talented at what they do and just amazing people.

Speaker 3 (00:26:43):

Yeah, it's really cool. They're a good father son team. They really are.

Speaker 4 (00:26:47):

Definitely a brilliant family. So you're all in the box.

Speaker 3 (00:26:51):

Yes, sir.

Speaker 4 (00:26:52):

And have been all in the box. I'm wondering, in the studio scene, the big studio scene in Nashville, maybe especially a few years ago, did you get any shit for being all in the box?

Speaker 3 (00:27:05):

I did. I did back in 2005 or six, actually that number one most played song of the decade, I actually mixed that all in the box back on Pro Tools. I think it was on five or something like that. I bounced a disc, no delay. Compensation samples are probably out of phase. The whole thing was a nightmare. And the thing was a six week number one, it ends up being the most played song in the decade. So I was like, suck it.

Speaker 5 (00:27:37):

I mean, there you go. There's case in point. Sometimes we see when we do nail the mix, somebody will find some crazy inconsistency like, oh, there's a drum edit that was missed. And you're like, the song was still number one. No one cares. It doesn't matter. Deal with it. I mean, obviously they did when they mixed it. So figure out how to work it. You're not going to get perfect sessions from half the people you're ever going to work with in your career. So having the expectation that nobody's ever going to miss an edit or there's going to be something that's slightly out of phase, just deal with it. That is your job as AER to make a song sound like a song,

Speaker 3 (00:28:13):

Not

Speaker 5 (00:28:13):

To worry about edits or tuning or any of that bullshit. Do your job, figure it out. Use your brain.

Speaker 3 (00:28:21):

I think we all, I know all you guys probably agree, there's no such thing as a perfect mix. There's only a perfect mix. It's impossible. Yeah, and I take that back. You know what the perfect mix is. It's doing as good as you can on that specific day and then being able to let it go and walk away and move to the next one. That's what I call the perfect mix.

Speaker 5 (00:28:41):

I like that definition. Mine is you hit play and it sounds like a song, meaning you listen to the song instead of the mix. That's good. That's good. So

Speaker 4 (00:28:50):

I actually have some slightly more technical questions

Speaker 3 (00:28:54):

Please,

Speaker 4 (00:28:54):

For you, because I'm curious about this because you've done so many songs at this point that have gone to radio. That's such a thing. And I was reading an interview with you where you called a few radio stations to understand their process to make the tracks sound the best, given that medium and you felt that you were losing the snare in the mix.

Speaker 3 (00:29:18):

Yes.

Speaker 4 (00:29:19):

I'm just wondering what results did that yield and is this something that you've made part of your process? Can you tell us about that? Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:29:27):

Actually, a friend of mine owns, his name's Andrew Mendelson. He owns Georgetown Masters here in Nashville, and he does just tons of major label work, but he and I are basically drinking buddies. So I was like, dude, the last couple of things I've done when I get what I think sounds cool and then it hits the radio, it's just like getting something's happening. It's not working in my favor. So he basically, and I called some radio stations and found out what type of processing they were using, and we mimicked it over at his place. He's got a lot of those old limiters and whatnot, I think it was an OR band or something. And he set it up to mimic what the radio stations would do, and I literally would mix and then I would run over and we'd play it on CD and see what it would do, and then I would run back and make changes and then run back.

(00:30:22):

So we did that probably we spent a day doing that. And to the best of my knowledge, if you really want something to sing on radio, I found you've got to almost put the nastiest frequency in a snare to get it to cut through. Almost like in that vocal nasal range, like almost 2K, maybe two, three, not a whole lot, but just give it a little bit of a oomph there and then go base shy and then, so wherever you think your base is sitting, cool. I usually would drop it almost two db, and then I would put the kick up probably an extra db. So if I had my mix where it was, kick up a couple DB base down a couple db, and then push the snare up and then put that obnoxious frequency in it to make it cut through. And so you listen to it by itself and you're like, dude, there's no low end. The drums are kind of spiky, punchy, but when it hits the radio, it would sound good. So I actually talked a couple record labels into letting me do a radio mix and then one that would hit for the CD or iTunes and all that. And it seemed to work. It seemed to work. So I actually just got hip to your guys' plugin, Joe, you and specific there, your clip JST clip.

(00:31:48):

And I just used it on this new artist named Seth Ennis. He is brand new on Sony. He's got a song right now out called Woke Up in Nashville, but that's like a ballad, but there's a bunch of uptempo stuff. And I started using that and I actually put that on my snare bus, and I'm hoping that thing changes my life. It sounds great in here, and it's doing almost what I would do on a radio edit mix. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (00:32:14):

Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 3 (00:32:16):

I'm excited to hear what that does. When that hits the radio, I'll report

Speaker 5 (00:32:19):

Back. Clipping really helps keep your perceived volume and impact. Ever since I started using clipping in the mix stage as opposed to mastering, I found that when it would translate into the mastering stage, my balances would be more the same. So there's something about the way that it shaves off a little bit of that transient and brings the body closer to the transient of the drum, but maintaining the punch and impact of it, it's harder to destroy. It makes it more like a stronger foundation when it comes to cutting through.

Speaker 3 (00:32:49):

Oh, wow. Yeah, I'm excited to see what it does. I've also started almost in Nashville. It's pretty typical where we just mix and then we send to a mastering engineer. But I've actually almost got into, I guess I'll call it pseudo mastering. I still don't have all that big smear analog stuff all the guys use down here, but because I do a lot of demos when I'm not doing records or indie stuff, they might not have the budget to master. So I basically just do it on my two bus. I'm mastering as I'm mixing. And that's been pretty cool too. And I've almost done that for probably the last five years. So anything coming out of my studio is usually as loud, if not loud or as big and wide as something that's been professionally mastered. And I think people dig it, so it saves 'em a little bit of money. And B, you can a be up against something and you don't have to mimic Jimmy with the volume or anything like that.

Speaker 4 (00:33:47):

Do you do anything specific to prep for mastering when you're going to send it to somebody else? So I know with metal mixes, if I'm sending it to a mastering engineer, I'm definitely going to send a drums up version. For instance, the snare is going to be the first thing to get lost. So I always have them where I think they're good, but then the snares, I'll turn them up by a DB or a DB and a half, for instance.

Speaker 3 (00:34:15):

Oh wow.

Speaker 4 (00:34:15):

Do you take any steps like that before mastering or you just send them the mix and that's that?

Speaker 3 (00:34:21):

No, A lot of times I mix really besides mixing fast. I mix really loud and anybody will tell you when they see a wave form of mine, they're like, what the fuck? It looks like a piece of duct tape Decker, what the hell are you doing? I'm like, well, does this sound good? They're like, yeah. And I'm like, well then shut up. But the mastering guy, obviously they hate that. And I'm actually on a pretty good first name basis with almost all of them around town, and I'll take off. Usually I'll put the last thing will be like a maximizer or a limit or something like that, and I'll just run that back. I'll pull it down. So nothing's peaking, but I'll take off the limiter. So they do have something to do. And what's cool about knowing all these guys on a first name basis is if something's fucked up, they'll call me and they'll say, Hey, dude, it still looks like duct tape. Ease it up more. So I got a little more maneuvering over here, but it's pretty cool when a mastering guy either calls you and says, Hey, this sounds really good, thank you. Or Hey, this doesn't sound good, take that off. So I got something to do, but either way I need 18% less duct tape, Billy.

(00:35:37):

But no, everybody's pretty cool in Nashville and we're all working to the same end goal, so they'll be like, dude, just loosen it up. So I got a little more on my end, I need to add a little more low end, and I got nothing. I mean, you literally have blocked me out. And I said, well, it's kind on purpose so you don't fuck up the mix.

Speaker 4 (00:35:57):

Do you ever have attended mixes or is that your thing never attended?

Speaker 3 (00:36:03):

No, I actually like it when the client will come over and hang with me. And a lot of times when I'm doing, say for instance, I'm just mixing a demo session, I'll mix the five and then nine times out of 10 I'll get the songwriter or the client or the artist or whatever. They will come over and hang with me at the end of the day, and then we'll zip through the mixes. They'll make their revisions. But more and more, I'm finding that just with the speed that the internet's gotten and everybody's into Dropbox and High Tail and we transfer, I can almost just, they almost prefer it where I just send them the mix, I'll mix, I'll just fire it out to 'em, send them MP threes or whatever, and then they'll actually just email me back notes or they'll say, Hey, can we get together?

(00:36:50):

If it's Monday, they'll go, Hey, how about tomorrow afternoon? I'll just swing by after my co-write and we'll close these out. And it usually lasts about an hour, hour and a half. So I keep, like I said, snacks and drinks around the studio and people actually will come by and actually like to come by just to get out of what they're doing and hang out in the studio for a day. Everybody loves hanging out in the studio. So I would say 50 50, it's gotten 50 50 on major label stuff. I always have the artist come over with the producer and sometimes even the record label, but on the indie stuff, and especially if it's out of town, we'll close it over the internet or phone and whatnot. So I'd say 50 50. But I love people coming over. It's always good to see everybody and it keeps you insight and in mind as well.

Speaker 5 (00:37:42):

I think that's important because it's really easy to forget that a society exists and there's actually other people in the world other than your speakers and the person you're emailing that day.

Speaker 3 (00:37:51):

Yeah, I was once told that old saying, it's not who, but when I came to Nashville, I modified it. It's not who but who knows you.

Speaker 4 (00:38:01):

That's very true. And what they think of you. Exactly.

Speaker 3 (00:38:03):

So you almost need to make it a point to every once in a while, Facebook's great. I get a lot of work through Facebook and it allows me to talk to old clients and keep in touch with them and whatnot. But back in the day, I mean late nineties and whatnot, before they started building all these condos and tearing studios down and all that and making music roll a mess, in my humble opinion, we always would see everybody, everybody Music Row is basically a mile long strip and about two to three blocks wide, and that's where everything is located. Studios, publishing companies, record companies, and everybody would just be walking around and there was restaurants down there. So you'd see everybody on a daily basis. And I can't stress the importance of being at the forefront of somebody's mind. They know you know what you've done, but if they see you, you're out walking around or they see you at a restaurant, it's like, oh man, Decker, how you been? Dude, you know what? I got this new record coming out. I think you're the right guy for it. Damn, I haven't seen you for a while, dude. Almost forgot about you. So make it a point to anybody up and coming in the music business, definitely stay insight and in mind of the people who are going to employ you.

Speaker 4 (00:39:15):

That's in business. We call that top of mind.

Speaker 3 (00:39:18):

Top of mind,

Speaker 4 (00:39:19):

And that's exactly what that means actually. And we use that strategy a lot. I've used it my entire career. We use it a lot. And it's, it's exactly what you just said and exactly what it sounds like, that if you're not on people's minds, they're not going to choose to go with you.

Speaker 3 (00:39:38):

Exactly.

Speaker 4 (00:39:39):

They're going to choose to go with what's on their minds. So you need to get into people's heads at least as an option. And then they decide from there. Of course, it's their choice who to go with, but if you're not at the top of mind, you're not going to get picked. That's really all there is to it.

Speaker 3 (00:39:58):

Yeah, that makes perfectly good sense.

Speaker 4 (00:40:01):

So speaking of Nashville, you touched on something I wanted to ask you about, which is, I've heard about Nashville that it's kind of like a mafia, the music industry, and I want to know if this is true or not, but I also want to know if it is true that getting into the high level music scene, or at least the mid-level music scene in Nashville is like penetrating a crime family. What advice would you have for people who want to get into Nashville? How does someone go about getting noticed there or getting into the loop?

Speaker 3 (00:40:35):

I've been doing this 2001, two thousands. I mean, I've been doing it way before then about seven, eight years before. But I didn't start getting my stride and getting calls until about 2000, 2001. I actually had my best year ever last year, and I think this year we're going to even beat it as far as money.

Speaker 4 (00:41:00):

Congrats.

Speaker 3 (00:41:01):

But what I'm trying to get at is, what is that 2000 to 2006? It's taken me almost 15 years just to get to that stage. And it's not because I'm doing a lot different, it takes that long of doing it every day. Nobody uses business cards in Nashville. It's all word of mouth. And it literally takes me back in the day doing a demo with a songwriter, and then his or her co-writer hears it and they're like, oh, cool. Yeah, maybe we'll use Decker. And then two months later they do a session and then it literally just builds and builds, and you're only as good, like I said, as the last thing you've done. And it takes that long to have something done the way you want other people to hear it, for them to hear it. It's taken 10 years for me to finally get some quality stuff that people are like, oh yeah, let's call him for a record, and then somebody else will hear that. And then luckily, I was fortunate enough for it to be on the radio and got played a lot. So that just kind of spirals it and it just build, build. But it used to be where Nashville was, there was only about five producers, and they would do everything. And there was five studios.

Speaker 4 (00:42:21):

So that's the mafia.

Speaker 3 (00:42:22):

Yes. Yeah. Now it has changed with the influx of pop music into Nashville, whatnot. There's a lot of younger people that are now producing. Most of 'em are songwriters, and because the royalties have gone down and whatnot, a lot of the producers will say, Hey, I'll give you my song if you let me produce this track. So now, whereas before five producers were doing everything with five engineers at five studios, and it was a nightmare to break into now. I mean, literally the dude down the street might have a song that's awesome that he programmed and he can call up and say, Hey, I'll give you my song, but I'm going to produce the track. And then he'll come in and they'll go record it and do the exact same thing, the five producers back in the day were doing. But now you've got five or six producers on each record. It's starting to become that pop thing where one guy's not doing everything now. So I would say now it's even more easy or easier to break into Nashville than it used to be. It used to be really tough, and you'd have to go down and convince one of these five guys you were worthy of getting in their inner circle, or you'd have to wait until somebody took too many drugs or drank themselves to death and get his saw.

Speaker 5 (00:43:42):

I think this is really refreshing to hear because everybody's so doom and gloom and I think unnecessarily so because there's just so many people out there doing amazing things and making great careers, and it can totally be done. You just pointed out a perfect example. It's actually easier to break in into market like Nashville than it's ever been. And I think that people need to hear more of that kind of stuff right now in this industry because so many people are focused on all of the negative stuff. Oh, budgets are down file sharing, no one's selling enough records, blah, blah, blah, doom and gloom. And it's like it gets old. So

Speaker 3 (00:44:16):

It's

Speaker 5 (00:44:16):

Nice to hear something positive for once. So thank you, Billy.

Speaker 3 (00:44:19):

Yeah. Well, I tell everybody, I'm almost in a niche based. The economy goes up and down and Spotify, iTunes, all that stuff. Nobody's making any money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, they still have to sound good. You know what I mean? So nobody's going to, absolutely, nobody's going to want to send an ugly daughter to prom. You got to have a beautiful, somebody told me that the other day. They're like, Decker, your mix is a hot chick going to prom. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I'll use that.

Speaker 2 (00:44:51):

She's decorated, man.

Speaker 4 (00:44:54):

That was like a three pointer at the ball, dude, Joey. No, that was a half court shot. Joey.

Speaker 5 (00:45:00):

Joey, you win the internet today or whatever day this episode comes out. That's funny.

Speaker 4 (00:45:05):

Yeah, you've been sitting in the corner this whole episode waiting for that shot.

Speaker 5 (00:45:12):

Can we get an applause button sample or something?

Speaker 3 (00:45:20):

But yeah, I mean, you got to sound good. So guys that mix, and I think we're always going to be able to find work at the end of the day, regardless how much it costs to make or how much it's earning, people still, they have to sound good. I mean, if it was really that easy to mix, there'd be more than the four of us. You know what I mean? Sitting on this podcast, we'd have a hundred thousand people you'd be wanting to interview

Speaker 5 (00:45:46):

Anything. It takes time. You got to put in the work, right?

Speaker 3 (00:45:48):

Yeah. And I almost equate it. I mean, I'm not being boastful in any way, but it's almost like people, singers, you either can do it or you can't, can't really teach it. I mean, you can, but it's like, hey, you either got it or you don't. And I almost equate mixing the same way, otherwise there'd be 50,000 of us doing it. I mean, you either can do it or you can't. And the ones that I've always said are the super mixers are the ones that can make the music sound the most pleasing to the masses. The most people that go, oh, that sounds good to me. Those guys end up being the super mixers. And that's definitely not something you can learn. It's either you got it or you don't taste.

Speaker 5 (00:46:36):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:46:37):

Somebody once said, what's your favorite plugin? And I just pointed to my ears,

Speaker 5 (00:46:41):

Man, you guys are shooting half court shots today. We got the one-liners.

Speaker 2 (00:46:44):

That's the best response. Dude, I had an interview recently and they were asking me, it was supposed to be about your favorite gear. And I was sitting there in front of my laptop looking at this email just thinking, I don't have any favorite gear. So I wrote, the way they constructed all of the questions was about gear, like, take a picture of your gear. How often do you use your gear? And blah, blah, blah. And I was like, well, it's my ears. I use my ears every time. Here's a picture of my ear. Oh, that's awesome. This is my favorite gear.

Speaker 3 (00:47:24):

That's funny. Another thing I want to impart on your listeners out there, don't ever stop learning. I think if you get to the point where you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I've had a couple number ones. My shit sounds great. You stop trying to be better than that, I think you die. You stand still, you die. Country music pays the bills for me, but I am so in awe of you guys. I love hard rock, modern metal, the drums, the guitars, the bath. I tell everybody, country pays the bills, but rock sues the soul. You know what I mean? And if I could sit where you guys sit every day, it would just be like, that's like my dream job. Careful

Speaker 5 (00:48:12):

What you wish for.

Speaker 3 (00:48:13):

Well, to add on, or to segue into that another big word, I actually got introduced and reached out to a former guy that did some stuff with you guys on your podcast, Brian Hood here in Nashville. Oh

Speaker 4 (00:48:26):

Yeah, guy. We love Brian.

Speaker 3 (00:48:28):

And a friend of mine, I was doing a session and this metal kid came in, he's like, oh yeah, I produce these and it was a country thing, but we got going. And he was like, yeah, you got to meet my friend Brian Hood. And he's like, he does this recording class and he posts these videos online how he does it, and he's like, check out his stuff. And I went all music.com, whatever, and looked at what he's done and listened to it. And I'm like, oh, wow, that would be so cool to morph what he does into what I do. And tried to slap Nashville with some metal drums, see what that would do. Hell yeah, it'll either get me fired or hired. So I reached out to him and he and I got together. We spent two hours talking. We traded samples. He kind of told me what he did.

(00:49:18):

I told him what I did, and he actually picked up, he didn't know the Apple thing or option Apple, where you can not slide regions left and they'll just go up and down. And when he came over, I was just in awe of his sounds and his approach and stuff like that, especially on drums, because kick drums sell records. That's our motto. And he was like, dude, no way. Option Apple. He's like, I've been doing this for this long and I just realized that the regions won't slide left and right. He's like, dude, you are my hero. And I'm like, you're my hero. I'm like, he's half my age. I'm almost 50. I'm 49. And I'm like, dude, you just opened my eyes to trying out these radical new drums in Nashville. Because in Nashville, pretty much drums just keep time. They're really not. I mean, they're an instrument.

(00:50:10):

Yes. But the way country music approaches drum, it's changing. It's getting more poppy. But for the most part, I mean you guys lead the charge as far as drums. It's just that format and your genre of music is awesome as far as drums go. And I was like, man, if I can incorporate that here, that might be a new country phase or whatever, if I can push it in that direction. So I've made it my motto to learn as much as I can from guys like you and pick your brains and see what plugins you're doing and just talking to you here and morph that in. And so I'm telling y'all, don't ever stop learning. And if you think you know it all, you don't just reinvent it. That'll keep you young and employed.

Speaker 4 (00:50:54):

Amazing advice. We're always learning here too. I think we're learning junkies. I totally agree that the moment you stop is kind of the moment you stagnate. We were actually talking about this with Brian when he came on the podcast is the three of us never stop learning ever. Never.

Speaker 5 (00:51:15):

It's crazy. I've studying more now than I did when I was in college getting a bachelor's. I literally go home and study and read and more than I ever did in any sort of actual school. And everybody that we work with does the same thing. It's all part of the team. You have to.

Speaker 3 (00:51:32):

I agree. I agree. And now that you guys had me on this podcast, I actually have your cell phones and your emails. So you're going to be getting tons of questions from me off the record. Shoot away. Shoot away anytime.

Speaker 2 (00:51:45):

Yeah, more than welcome.

Speaker 3 (00:51:46):

And you're more than welcome when somebody pulls out a steel guitar or a banjo on your next metal record, you know who to call. You got my number now.

Speaker 4 (00:51:55):

Amazing dude. I can't wait to hear metal drums on country. That's going to be killer.

Speaker 3 (00:52:00):

It should be fun. I'm trying to get the double kick thing going here in Nashville. I can talk a few of these guys into just start rocking them.

Speaker 5 (00:52:06):

I'll send you some new drum samples when we get off this podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:52:09):

Beautiful. Beautiful.

Speaker 4 (00:52:12):

So we've got some questions from the audience that we'd like to ask you. They were pretty stoked that you're on here.

Speaker 3 (00:52:20):

Oh, cool.

Speaker 4 (00:52:21):

Yeah, so definitely ask some questions, but let me just jump right in. And I'm trying to find one that we didn't already cover. So, alright. Jason Domnic is asking, I would like to know how he gained stages here. He runs his Master Fader in the minus area instead of leaving at zero. Would like to know what benefits he finds from doing so.

Speaker 3 (00:52:45):

I actually am, for the most part, I mean, yeah, I went to Full Sail, but after that I never to apprentice or be an assistant engineer underneath what I would call a mentor or a great engineer or somebody I really wanted to learn from. I just didn't ever have that opportunity. So I pretty much don't do anything the way you're supposed to, if that makes sense. Just, and I figured out if it sounds good, it's right in my book. So I don't care how you get there as long as you get there.

Speaker 5 (00:53:17):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:53:18):

I mix with a lot of compressors. Lemme see if I can get this right. I use a lot, lot of compressors, but I use a little bit of each one and I mix really hot on the individual tracks and that was causing my two bus to overload. So I constantly find myself pushing down my master fader and then making it up with limiters and whatnot. I've tried flipping that, starting with my master fader up at zero. They teach you in recording class and unity gain and all that stuff. And for some reason I always just, I'm hitting the, what is it, the option button and the fader and it's snapping up to zero on my individual tracks. So my kick drums I always like to have up, but I'm doing that with too many tracks and it's overloading my two bus, so I just bring my two bus down and I've actually tried hitting the all button and grouping everybody and bringing everybody down and then pushing up all my returns, my master fader, my augs, my verbs and delays and my subgroups and all that stuff. And that'll kind of do it. But I mix, I guess I probably mixed too hot. And that was one of the things when I told you Chris Lord Alga came in, he's like, dude, you got red lights everywhere. What is going on? And I'm like, well, it's not distorting. So apparently Pro Tools has built in a few DB a headroom, even when it's tapping the red.

Speaker 4 (00:54:51):

I've heard it that they did do that.

Speaker 3 (00:54:53):

So I turn it down and y'all know that you basically can only hear distortion at real low levels. So I turn it down, hit the dim button, and if it's not crapping out, I really don't care what it looks like as long as it sounds good. But the reason, tell Jason, the reason I run that two bus down is just because everything else is coming in too hot. So if something's got to come down and I just made it the two bus.

Speaker 4 (00:55:19):

Got it. Alright. Here's one from William Lennon Willis. And I'm going to add something to his question that I'm curious about William's asking, what made you want to go into the music business and why country music? And I'm going to add to that, you went to school for criminal law, right?

Speaker 3 (00:55:38):

Yeah. Criminal justice, the University of

Speaker 4 (00:55:40):

Nebraska Criminal Justice. So why did you go from that into music? And maybe you can work the answer to both questions together. Why did you go from criminal justice into music and then why music and why country music?

Speaker 3 (00:55:57):

Yeah. So in college I always played in bands. I was a guitar player and a singer in a college dance band. We would play sorority fraternity parties. And it was a pretty good gig. It always paid for my spring break trips and it was like my extra spending money in college. So when I graduated from college at the University of Nebraska with a degree in criminal justice, I was going to go into, actually, actually my dad's good friend had a son who was a recruiter for the CIA. And he's like, Hey, when your boy gets done with college, if he's interested, have him call me. And it's just like anything, it's who you know. So he's like, I can help him weave his way through the introduction path or the auditioning process or whatever for the CIA and kind of just help steer 'em in the right direction.

(00:56:47):

So I actually had an interview lined up and at the end of the day I was like, man, I don't think I could shoot somebody and live with myself. I mean, I'd like to beat some ass, but I don't think I could kill somebody. And so I bailed on that and decided to go to a recording school with the hopes of learning how to make my band sound better through demo tapes or doing a record so we could make more money. And when I got down to the recording school, I realized I was way better at making the music on this side of the glass than making it on the other side of the glass. So I just stayed. And after I went to school, I went out to California and did a stint at a studio in San Francisco and we did a bunch of alternative rock and I actually traded room and board for the internship.

(00:57:42):

So instead of getting paid, they let me live above the studio. There's a little efficiency apartment. So what I did was at the end of every day I was working with pretty big names and pretty big producers and we would finish up for the day and obviously I was the last one to leave. I lived upstairs, so I would come down and remix and make my own reel out of all this music that I had been doing during the day and just practice and play with it. And I made a reel of all these songs that I mixed and it was pretty good names and stuff, even though I didn't mix the record. I had a mix of that song and sent those out and got three job offers and ended up at a studio in Virginia Beach that was doing hip hop and RB. And so I went out there and did a stint and worked with a group that Michael Bivens, a Bell biv Devoux was headlining up and

Speaker 5 (00:58:42):

Nice.

Speaker 3 (00:58:43):

Yeah, it was really cool because he actually taught me how to get that real silky r and b vocal thing where it's real compressed and it's, it's just air. Probably the most important thing I learned from him was how to EQ vocals. He always had a saying, he goes, find the gain, reduce the pain. So basically he taught me how to EQ by just jamming it all the way to the right and gaining up the most obnoxious frequency, sweeping through it. And wherever it sounded the shittiest, that's where he would cut and he cut way more than he would boost. So I guess I learned how to EQ from him, and I've kept doing it that way ever since. But we ran for about a year or two, and then it was right when gangster rap was getting pretty popular up in Virginia Beach and it literally started getting dangerous.

(00:59:40):

I mean, we had a gun locker at the studio where everybody checked their gun and everybody was smoking weed and all that stuff. And we didn't have kids at the time. And I told my wife, I said, I literally am going to die just because it's getting dangerous. And so I was like, man, there's got to be an easier and better way to do this without getting shot accidentally or on purpose either one. And so a friend of mine moved to Nashville and knew some producers and knew there's tons of studios and just made a couple calls and said, good lord. I mean, if you got half a brain, there's a gazillion studios in Nashville. And this was 93 or 90? No, 94. 94, I'm sorry. And they're like, if you're halfway good, you can probably get a gig doing something. So I literally, my wife and I, no kids, we just had a little dog, but we literally credit carded a move from Virginia Beach, Virginia all the way down to Nashville.

(01:00:40):

And she took a job at a temp agency and I took a job like washing dishes, a bartend. I was a waiter. I mean, whatever you want to do, I did it. You know what I mean? And I would engineer at night and then go out and network. And one thing led to the next, and I ended up getting a house gig, which are very rare these days. I mean, everybody's almost self-employed and independent now. But back in the day there were some house gigs and I think I got hired on for 17 grand a year or something like that. And I just thought I was the king because I was doing what I loved getting paid. Life was good and it just kind of took off from there and I kept my nose down and boom, here I am.

Speaker 4 (01:01:26):

Boom. Perfect. So here's one from Giovanni Angel with full analog recording becoming increasingly rare. How has Nashville changed in the past decade?

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):

The last time I was over at Soundstage, I actually saw some tape machines, but they were just using them to run the two mixes through. And I don't think I've seen anybody not record on pro tools to analog tape. Good Lord. In five years, I know there's a few studios that still do and there's a couple producers that that's their shtick, their thing. But I would say for the most part, everything I get and everything I see is just wave files. There's a lot of programmers and producers in town that love logic, and most of the guys I'll get stuff from that are like track guys. They all will just send me wave files, but if it's not coming from them, 99.9% of the time it's all pro tools.

Speaker 4 (01:02:31):

So what we're seeing everywhere else is just as true in Nashville. The big studios are going away and people record the computers.

Speaker 3 (01:02:41):

Yeah, they really are. There's been a bunch of studios that have closed down and I mean literally you can go down and book one of these world-class rooms for 5, 6, 700 bucks a day. You know what I mean? On an off day when they're not doing a record or something. And you can have full access to their mics and everything, and then take it home, do your overdubs at home, sing at home, whatever you want to do, and then just hire somebody like one of us to mix it. And also a lot of the track guys are making beats in their computers and whatnot with logic and stuff, just using software. Those are actually then taken into the studio and they'll add real drums on top of it and maybe do a few overdubs and then have the artist sing. And a lot of those are getting upgraded into masters now.

(01:03:31):

So whereas before you used to have to go into a studio and spend days, weeks, months, you can turn something around and do all your programming at home, take that in the studio, just book out a little three hour session and grab just drums and bass only on say, five to eight songs and look at the time and money you're saving. Then you'll go home and lock it and edit it and all that stuff. So it's really changed. But like I said, because I just mix, I've been almost immune to a lot of that stuff, knock on wood, just because I'm the last guy in the chain that's getting a hold of all the music, so they just call me to mix.

Speaker 4 (01:04:10):

I think not just the fact that you mix, but the fact that you mix fast. That's huge. Nick Maki's asking, how do you like mixing today's country artists compared to more traditional country artists?

Speaker 3 (01:04:25):

It's almost, you know what? It's fun to mix some of the r and b elements and the pop elements of the new country stuff, but there's something about just getting bass guitar, drums, piano, steel and fiddle. That was really cool back in the day. And nowadays all the guitars are heavier, they're distorted less Paul's, Paul, Reed Smith's, even some drop tuning on some songs. Not way as dropped as you guys do, but as opposed to 5, 6, 7 years ago when everything was just telecasters clean and they're doing the chicken picking and the country stuff. I would say I'm split on that. I don't want to say it's better or worse. Let's just say I've had to pull out a lot of my RB chops though with all the programming and stuff and a lot of filtering because now everybody's using sub bases and eight oh eights, and if you're not careful, that'll just blow the fucking speakers right out of the truck if you're not careful. You guys are used to the sub stuff, but in country it's like some of these guys that don't know anything about RB or something, they'll get an 8 0 8 and it's just like, and your doors start rattling and shit's falling off. The mirrors are falling off and all that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):

That's my kind of country right there.

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):

High pass filters are a must in today's country music. How about that? How about that?

Speaker 4 (01:05:56):

Yeah. Here, last question. This one's from Sean.

Speaker 3 (01:05:59):

Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:06:00):

And any tips on making super flexible templates to cover a ton of material, or do you have separate templates for many different approaches?

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):

No, you know what? Usually just almost every session I get is going to have drums, bass, acoustic guitar, two electrics. The acoustic will be doubled, by the way. A lot of guys are using a zuki now, which is, I think it's a Greek instrument origin or something. It's tuned like a mandolin, but they're doing this open tuning thing that's pretty cool, fiddle. You hardly hear fiddle anymore. In country music, you'll hear a steal, but fiddle is almost gone by the wayside, and then there'll be loops, and if the loops aren't locked to the drums, it's just like, it sounds like tennis shoes in a dryer. Dude,

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):

It's horrible.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):

The flas, it's god awful. So I'll usually lock those to the loops, but as far as setting up a template, that's almost what you need to have set up for your template. I mean, for the most part, I always try to make my, I use the same samples a lot just because I know they work. I'll change 'em up every once in a while. But I would say just the most recent thing I've done is probably a good template for anything I'm doing. And I use the same templates on records as I do demos. There's no difference. I don't spend any more time or less time or less enthusiasm. I always try to give 110%. The only thing doing a master allows you to do is it gives you more time and the producer can make more revisions and everybody's a little laid back. You take longer lunches, go to more expensive restaurants,

Speaker 4 (01:07:40):

Love expensive restaurants. Lemme just say

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):

Templates are the same. So I would say just use the most recent template of a song you think sounds good and just constantly keep updating that. That's what I do. I've actually went back

Speaker 4 (01:07:54):

And

Speaker 3 (01:07:54):

Check some old templates and I'm like, I get the other day, I bought that new plugin from you guys, the JST clip, and I go back and I looked at old template the other day. I'm like, well, I really like the sound of the snare with that clipper on it now. So I'm going to have to either import that in or just use my new template and I've changed some routing and some busing and just got a little more with it these days. So I'd say just use your most recent one. That sounds good.

Speaker 4 (01:08:20):

Yeah. I look at templates, like those types of templates kind of like as a living thing. That's always evolving.

Speaker 3 (01:08:26):

Yeah, that's a great analogy. That's really good. That's almost better than the decorator thing, half court that Joey did. It's a good term. It's catchy. You all's got one. You all got his, Joey's got, Joel, we're still waiting on yours. You haven't hit

Speaker 5 (01:08:41):

One yet. Well, I just go by no small time. That's my thing,

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):

And it bounces off the rim. Joel's still down three. Hey, someone's

Speaker 5 (01:08:51):

Got to do it.

Speaker 4 (01:08:53):

Someone's got to let us win.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):

That's right.

Speaker 4 (01:08:55):

Okay, Jill, thank you, Jill. Well, dude, Billy, thank you so much for coming on. Been an incredible guest, and thank you for just sharing with our crowd. I would love to have you come back on in the future. I feel like we could probably talk for about three more hours about this stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:09:13):

Absolutely. We're going to call it How to Kick Ass with Billy Decker,

Speaker 3 (01:09:17):

How not to get fired. No guy. I want to thank you guys. Not only do I enjoy the podcast and regular and listen, but I'm also a fan of all three of your work. So I'm Thank you. I'm a forever student, and you guys are at the top of my list, so please answer my emails when I start asking questions.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):

Well, let's all get together. Let's go down to Nashville and hang out, and that sounds like a good time.

Speaker 3 (01:09:43):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):

Absolutely. Hell yeah. The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast brought to you by Mick DSP Professional Audio plugins. For over 15 years, Mick DSP has continued producing industry acclaimed and award-winning software titles. Visit mc dsp.com for more information. The podcast is also brought to you by Slate Digital. All the pro plugins one low monthly price. Visit slate digital.com for more information. Thank you for listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit urm.academy/podcast and subscribe today.