Jordan Valeriote: Finished vs. Perfect, Debunking Mixing Myths, and Why the Kemper Wins

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 hosts, Joey Sturges, Joel Wanasek and

Speaker 2 (00:00:26):

Eyal Levy. Hey, welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. How are you doing? Awesome. Fantastic. Fantastic. We have a special guest joining us from Ontario. Is that how you say that, Ontario? That's

Speaker 3 (00:00:41):

Right, yep.

Speaker 2 (00:00:42):

Welcome, Jordan. How you doing?

Speaker 3 (00:00:43):

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me guys.

Speaker 4 (00:00:45):

If you guys don't know who Jordan Valeriote is, you should, because he's worked on a bunch of records that you should have heard, such as bands like Intervals, guitarist, Nick Johnson, structures counterparts, a lot of plural band names. Also, I got stuck with the plurals as well at one point in time.

Speaker 2 (00:01:07):

It's too bad that they're not known as the Silversteins.

Speaker 4 (00:01:10):

That would've been perfect. That would definitely, and the Johnstons, that would definitely complete the cycle, but he's also well known for being an educator like us. He runs hardcore music studio and you can go [email protected] where he has a badass mixing course called, as You Guessed, hardcore mixing, and if you don't have it, you should have. It also runs a weekly podcast called SJV and you make software too, right?

Speaker 3 (00:01:47):

No software, but some apps. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's a different business. Do some apps on the side and also have some drum samples out there too.

Speaker 4 (00:01:54):

So you just do a ton of shit.

Speaker 3 (00:01:55):

Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 4 (00:01:56):

Have you always been a, I guess a Renaissance man type person or is this something that happened recently?

Speaker 3 (00:02:06):

I've always been kind of, I mean I guess you could say kind of entrepreneur at heart. I mean even the music stuff just coming through high school and stuff, I knew I wasn't going to go to university and get a normal job. I knew I wanted to do something in music and ended up doing the studio stuff, and then I'm constantly just interested in new ideas and new business ideas and technology and everything. So yeah, I guess you could say I've always been kind of on this path.

Speaker 4 (00:02:30):

Do you get bored easily or what is it, why do you think you're into it?

Speaker 3 (00:02:34):

That's a good question. I don't know if it's that I get bored easily, but I think I'm just a fast starter on things, so I'm good at starting something from scratch and just taking it from zero to one. That's kind like my forte is if I get excited about something, I'll take action and do it right away and make something happen.

Speaker 4 (00:02:54):

That's what Joey or Joel, I don't remember which one of you guys said it, but that the hot potato principle you guys used to talk about,

Speaker 2 (00:03:02):

Oh yeah, that's me. Hot potato. Yeah, it's like the longer you hold onto your potatoes, the less you're doing just get it off, and that's kind of a strategy you can use a lot of different ways, and one of the easiest ways to implement that right away is with your email. I'm constantly just replying to emails and trying to keep putting the ball back in someone else's court. If someone has that

Speaker 5 (00:03:29):

Tactic. Doesn't work on me by the way.

Speaker 2 (00:03:31):

I know that delegating

Speaker 5 (00:03:32):

Bastard.

Speaker 2 (00:03:33):

But yeah, basically just try to get everything off your plate so that you can clear space on your plate for more.

Speaker 4 (00:03:41):

I don't know if that entirely works for me and I'll just say that because sometimes I need to marinate on something for a good week or longer, and then I find sometimes my best work comes after I've had something just sitting around in my subconscious for a little while. But I guess for most things I find that it's most productive to just do something about it. The moment you get the idea, just do something, start putting into the universe.

Speaker 2 (00:04:16):

I was going to say something about that whole fast start thing because I think mixing is the opposite of something that you can fast start. I mean you start mixing something for the first time ever and you don't know what you're doing. You results are going to be terrible most likely. So I'm curious if you, Jordan, if you have anything that you could tell the listeners about what kind of instant actionable item could you do to keep the ball rolling, to stay interested long enough in mixing to make it to that point where you're hitting those milestones? I think a lot of people probably start and end in a week period and the gravity of it all, how hard it really is to get good I think pushes a lot of people out.

Speaker 3 (00:05:09):

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, it's hard to think of one tip. I mean for me it was like I guess I never got discouraged because maybe I never expected to be really good out of the gate. I just knew that when I started recording and mixing, I literally was clueless. I had no idea about anything. It was a year before I knew that EQ plugins existed. I was just plugging in mics and I thought it was all about just put the mic in a good spot and play it well and that was it. Balance the faders. Yeah, I literally had no clue and my stuff didn't sound that good, but I don't know, I just love doing it and I kept moving on. I think maybe my main tip is it's okay to finish something and have it not be top notch. For me, finished is better than perfect, so I think a lot of people get hung up on remixing and redoing the same thing over and over for weeks and weeks when it would be better just to spend a few days finish it and move on to the next project because

Speaker 5 (00:06:13):

That's a great point. I think especially for mixing, because a lot of people, they sit around and they're like, well, I'm not getting better fast enough, and you're like, okay, well how long do you spend on a mix? I'll give you an example. Sometimes when we do nail the mix, a kid would be like, Hey, I spent all month working on this track and I'm like, I mix like 60 songs this month.

Speaker 3 (00:06:31):

You're

Speaker 5 (00:06:32):

Screwing up because when you sit and you mix one song, you're not really learning a lot of different things. You're learning how to mix one song. What you need to do is you need to mix a lot of different material

Speaker 3 (00:06:41):

Because

Speaker 5 (00:06:42):

When you mix a lot of different material, you run into a lot of different problems. You make a lot of mistakes, you run into things that are different and challenges that force you outside of your comfort zone. So when you really come in, you open up to a wide variety of stuff. It is so important just to finish stuff and then keep moving and you'll gain some momentum and et cetera. So you really have to, I'm a huge proponent of what you just said, Jordan. I think it's very important

Speaker 3 (00:07:04):

And that's exactly where I was going with that. You just need to keep doing more projects and I always tell people in my courses and stuff, set deadlines, keep moving. Even if you're not totally happy with it, you probably never will be. You'll always think that you can do better and that's part of the game and that keeps you moving forward and yeah, you've got to keep doing more work to get more experience and run into all those problems like you just said.

Speaker 4 (00:07:25):

I'm just wondering where did the idea, because that's great advice and people have said that you actually are really, really great at teaching and giving advice, so where did that even come from?

Speaker 3 (00:07:41):

Honestly, I have no idea. I just, I think I feel the same way. Yeah, I think the main idea came from when I was recording bands a lot. There would always be kind of one guy in the band who has his recording rig at home and he's really interested in stuff and he's kind of sitting beside me as I'm engineering a record and he's asking me questions and this and that and when we take a break we're talking about it and I love talking about this stuff, just hanging out and talking gear or store techniques or whatever, anything about recording making records and those conversations just happened so easily and so I just decided I was originally going to offer maybe one-on-one lessons in my studio or something, and then I just kind of started learning about online stuff and decided to go that way instead. But I don't know, I think I've never thought of myself as a good teacher per se. I just talk about stuff that I know and I don't know. I think that's kind of the key to being a good teacher I guess, is just to focus on stuff that you actually know really well. I mean, I'm sure if I was trying to teach something that I didn't know well I would probably suck at it. So

Speaker 4 (00:08:52):

I think there's more to it than that though because I know that your material is very actionable and that's also something that I've always done with my stuff. I think my creative live courses did well from the start because I always made them actionable and everything we do on nail the mix is actionable. That's kind what sets us apart from a lot of other people is that all our stuff is actionable, actionable, actionable. There could be some dudes who are way further up the chain who will show you how they did something on this crazy board and just talk through it, but it's not actionable. Your stuff is very actionable, and so I think there's more to it than just knowing the stuff. There's something about being able to communicate it in a way that makes sense for people who are living real lives who don't have a $500,000 board for instance. So out of curiosity, when you were first starting to put this stuff together, meaning the educational content, how were you allocating your time between that and the studio?

Speaker 3 (00:10:05):

Well, it kind of came at an interesting time. I had just finished producing and mixing the most recent silver scene album and like you mentioned at the top of the show, I have another app business on the side, so I was busy with that. So it had been years and years of, I was pretty overwhelmed with music stuff and studio stuff and just almost burnt out. So I did this Silverstein record and I was like, I'm going to take a little bit of time off from making records. I did some traveling, focused on some app stuff and then during that period is when I started creating the content. So I wasn't really bouncing it with any other studio work at that point. And yeah, I just started putting it together. I chose a mix that I thought would be relevant and just started putting videos together where I talked through it and I mean that's pretty much it. Does that answer your question?

Speaker 4 (00:10:56):

Yeah, I just think it would be hard to do this stuff while working on records full time. Definitely as a solo, as a solo operator,

Speaker 3 (00:11:04):

Yeah, it would be.

Speaker 4 (00:11:05):

I quit recording bands to do this stuff because I don't see how I could possibly do, but

Speaker 3 (00:11:12):

Yeah, that's kind of similar to me. Even before I had finished that last Silverstein record, I had way scaled back my tracking side of things. I was mostly just taking mixing projects, so that was helping me with just time as well, and I'm kind of in the same boat. I mix a few projects here and there now based on things that I'm interested and passionate in, and other than that, I'm focusing on the teaching.

Speaker 5 (00:11:37):

I think this is a good point to bring in an important lesson for everybody listening here, and that is opportunity cost. So everything you do comes at the cost or the expense of something else. So if you're engineering a lot and you want to mix, you have less time for mixing or if you want to teach people how to mix, for example, everything you do is a trade off, so you can't clone ourselves unfortunately, and we can't do two things at once effectively. So you got to when you're going towards a goal, I guess what I want to say is that you have to sort of pick a direction and go and kind of focus and double down on it and really, really, really dig in. When I wanted to mix and make the transition from tracking, I started turning down a lot of tracking work and started taking on a lot of mixing work, and even if I really wasn't working at the time, meaning that there wasn't a lot of mixing work to take just because it is focusing, so spend that time practicing mixing or training, mixing or acquiring clients or things like that.

(00:12:31):

So it's really important to think about opportunity costs because there's always a cost associated with spending your time, whether you're going to the bar, whether you're watching TV instead of learning how to improve your craft, et cetera. So you really, I think it's impossible for us all to be super humans. We have to really learn how to balance and that word is opportunity cost.

Speaker 4 (00:12:50):

A really good quote is that you can do anything you want in life, but not everything. So choose wisely

Speaker 3 (00:12:58):

How

Speaker 4 (00:12:59):

You spend your time.

Speaker 3 (00:13:01):

Yeah, it's better to make a lot of progress in one direction than tiny progress in 10 different directions.

Speaker 4 (00:13:08):

Absolutely. I think that for people who are first starting out mixing, it's hard to do that because maybe they're overwhelmed with so many different options. What do they get a bunch of plugins? Should they get outboard? What should they learn first? Should they learn how to make cool effects? Should they just work on gain, staging, all these different things. I think that all those different options cause analysis paralysis, when someone is first learning how to mix, I think it's helpful to have people tell them to just to focus on your gain staging for a little while, forget everything else. I think that that applies as much to learning something new as it does to picking a career path. And I'm curious though, now that you do have several things going, but how do you allocate your time now? Do you make schedules daily or to-do lists or outcome lists or how do you get through the day?

Speaker 3 (00:14:13):

Yeah, I'm always trying to optimize that stuff. Basically I have a to-do app where I have a list of all the things that I'm trying to accomplish over the week and then

Speaker 4 (00:14:25):

What's the app?

Speaker 3 (00:14:26):

OmniFocus?

Speaker 4 (00:14:27):

I've heard of it. I've heard it's great.

Speaker 3 (00:14:29):

So usually kind of the night before or let's say at the end of today, I'll go on and write a list of the most important things I want to get done tomorrow and I'll set time limits or time deadlines to those things. And then a big thing is just delegating. I mean, for my podcast I've got a guy who literally does the whole thing for me, so I just record myself answering the questions for the podcast. I send it all to him and he puts it all together and uploads it and everything, and that's a huge thing. There's no way I could handle doing all of the work for the podcast. I'm sure you guys have editors and stuff too.

Speaker 4 (00:15:06):

Oh

Speaker 3 (00:15:06):

Yeah. So that's a big thing is just taking, I'm constantly trying to find the things that are not my highest contribution where I could put my energy to get the most outcome from. If it's not one of those things, I try to hire someone else to do that. Another thing is just clearing out distractions. So for a while now I've just realized that between eight in the morning and noon, I get my best stuff done, so I literally just try to close out my email between those hours and I'm not perfect at it, but if I can just not check email, not check Facebook for the first few hours of my day, it's shocking how much you can knock out in that. Do you like Tim

Speaker 5 (00:15:50):

Ferriss, Jordan?

Speaker 3 (00:15:51):

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 5 (00:15:52):

That's straight out a four hour work week. I love it. Eliminate all distractions. It's very, very, very important.

Speaker 3 (00:15:57):

Yeah, so that's it. It's hard to do. Yeah, it is really hard and like I said, I'm not perfect. Some mornings it gets away from me or I find myself, you guys probably had this experience too where you're like, you've got a big thing to do that you need to get done, and you find yourself just procrastinating that and using email and Facebook, you just automatically go to those things because really you're procrastinating the big thing you need to get done, so it's just trying not to do that as much as possible.

Speaker 5 (00:16:25):

I think the two biggest momentum killers right now in the modern world are Facebook and pop-up notifications or push notifications, that's what they call 'em on your phone. I have to turn those damn things off because if I sit there and I'm working or mixing or whatever I'm working on and focusing on, if that thing is sitting there, then you go over and you start getting involved and you read the chat or whatever because you need that little dopamine rush.

Speaker 3 (00:16:46):

The

Speaker 5 (00:16:46):

Same with Facebook. If you don't log out of Facebook, you'll sit there, you'll check it while you're exporting a file, and then it'll be done in 45 seconds, but you'll still be on Facebook for the next 15 minutes and you'll be like, what am I doing? I'm literally just clicking around and looking at nonsense. So it's really difficult. It's almost like a drug that you have to constantly fight because as soon as you cut that stuff out of your life and sit down and say, okay, I'm actually going to be productive during this period of time and here's what I'm going to accomplish, it's insane how much more you can get done when you're not sitting there screwing around on Reddit or Facebook or Instagram, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (00:17:21):

Yep, absolutely, and that goes for mixing stuff and recording. I even have this as part of my mixing course, the setup phase and getting ready to mix and getting your mindset right. It's right in my notes there. Put your phone in the back of the room. You'll be able to stay in the zone for hours at a time if you just don't have the notifications popping up and constantly taking you out.

Speaker 4 (00:17:45):

Oh man. There's some times where the notifications will make me want to throw my laptop across the room because sometimes I leave them on because there's several important things going on at once where people do need me to respond and I'll be trying to work on something that I owe everybody and they're just going nonstop and 10 different people trying to get ahold of me. It literally makes me want to punch a hole through the screen check

Speaker 5 (00:18:16):

Every 20 minutes

Speaker 4 (00:18:18):

I have started turning off notifications while I do certain things. Now I can't. It's weird now I start to get angry when I start to get distracted so much

Speaker 3 (00:18:33):

Because

Speaker 4 (00:18:34):

I just want to get something done. I think that Facebook is the single greatest thing ever and also the single worst thing ever for getting things done for me at least, because I feel like our business, I wouldn't say it runs on Facebook, but Facebook is a huge part of why we're doing well in terms of traffic and community. It's a huge part of it and it's been a huge part of my audio career for years, and so I have nothing but the utmost gratitude for Facebook existing, but at the same time, holy shit, what a time suck. God, it's so easy to get carried away with it.

Speaker 5 (00:19:21):

It's the modern curse and I don't feel like society has evolved enough yet to figure out how to totally deal with it because I mean, I've read all kinds of studies about decreased corporate productivity and things like that. I'll give you an example. I'll walk in the office in the morning, programmer walks in. The first thing he does is he hops on Reddit. I'm like, yo, are we going to get some coding done? Are we going to sit and look at Reddit all day? And he's like, yeah. Then he goes out for a smoke break and he sits down and he starts coding and then he opens up Facebook and I'm like, yo, code? He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it affects everybody. Literally. Every single person I know has this problem. Everybody I know that manages anybody in an actual traditional corporate setting, they say that employee productivity is down, everybody sits there screwing around on Facebook all day.

(00:20:04):

It's the challenge of this, I think decade really is how to conquer that and become productive, especially on an individual level, because when you don't have somebody sitting behind your back as an entrepreneur and you're your own boss, you're accountable only to yourself. So if you're wasting your time, again, going back to what I was saying earlier about opportunity cost, you are literally taking money out of your pocket and your family's pocket and just burning it. So it's kind of like you got to have that little whip driver in your head just like, get it, go, go, go, go, go. Work work. You can't. I dunno. Every time I'm on Facebook I'm like, oh, get to work. You're wasting time. No small time. So it's very, very difficult. What a challenge.

Speaker 4 (00:20:45):

In the older days when I was a kid and a teenager, the big thing was that the average adult watches between three to five hours of TV a night, something like that.

Speaker 5 (00:20:59):

Oh yeah, definitely.

Speaker 4 (00:21:00):

That was the thing before the internet that obviously they didn't have TV that they could watch like that at the office, but they would come home at five o'clock or six o'clock and literally watch TV until they went to bed, and that was kind of considered the modern curse, whereas they could have been playing with their kids or reading a book or starting a second business or whatever. Instead, they're wasting their lives watching tv, and I feel like that's the role that the internet has kind of assumed now.

Speaker 5 (00:21:33):

All right, I figured out our next business guys, we're all going to team up. We're going to make an app that every time you open Facebook, it runs a current down through a wire and it'll electrocute you, so you stop checking social media. Then it has a one minute clearance time set every four hours we're allowed to log in, but only for one minute. So it's like a red light, green light kind of thing. If not, it just shocks the crap out of you. Anybody want to invest?

Speaker 4 (00:21:56):

Yeah, yeah, I'm down. I honestly wonder how some people get anything done, I think. I don't know.

Speaker 5 (00:22:05):

They don't.

Speaker 4 (00:22:06):

Oh, okay.

Speaker 5 (00:22:07):

That's the problem.

Speaker 2 (00:22:08):

There's a lot of schools of thought sort of assumed here, and so I'm curious, what are some books that you would recommend for people to check out that are trying to be successful at the intersection of the audio world and entrepreneurship?

Speaker 3 (00:22:23):

Yeah, I mean, one that I read recently is called The One Thing, and it's talking about a lot of the stuff that we're discussing here is kind of really figuring out of all the stuff that you're doing on a day to day basis, what is the one thing that's actually moving the needle forward for you for whatever goals you have? So that's a good book there. Let me think.

Speaker 5 (00:22:46):

I just heard Ty Lopez recommend that. I have not read that book yet, but I'll add that to my list.

Speaker 3 (00:22:50):

Yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 4 (00:22:51):

So real quick, when you're going through your normal Jordan Day and you could be working on a course or developing an app or I don't know, maybe taking a mixed project possibly, how do you figure out your one thing?

Speaker 3 (00:23:08):

I need time to just reflect? I think the times when I do my worst work, whether it's in the mixing world or just with online business stuff, it's when I'm just like, I'm head down for too long creating stuff and don't kind of take a break to just think about what's actually working here and what's moving the needle. I think that I try to, A big thing for me is I try to wake up early in the morning and just I don't work for the first hour of the day. I read a book and I just try to have some coffee and think about what's coming up, and a lot of times I'll have ideas of like, I got to do this, I got to do this and this, and if I just take a few hours away from it, then I'll realize, you know what?

(00:23:54):

90% of that stuff is not important. I should just go back to the key thing. And yeah, I think big part of just determining what your one thing is for that day or that week is just planning ahead a little bit and having some space to think about that. I think as entrepreneurs and being your own boss so to speak, there is that pressure to constantly be on and constantly be doing something, which I definitely feel it's really hard for me to stop doing stuff, but I've noticed recently this year that if I just take a step back every so often I can really get a lot more clarity on what's actually important.

Speaker 4 (00:24:30):

Just out of curiosity, when you're doing your morning hour for yourself, how do you balance that with family life

Speaker 3 (00:24:42):

Basically, I wake up before my wife and my son, so I've just realized, and this is kind of funny, I used to being a studio guy, I used to have my sessions from noon till midnight and I'd sleep in. I used to think I was not a morning person, but ever since I started just practicing that discipline, I love it. It's my favorite time of the day now. But yeah, my son usually wakes up 7 38 and my wife gets up with him and we have an agreement and my wife's awesome. She watches my son during the day while I work during kind of normal work hours. But yeah, anyways, I know that if I start the day based in chaos or if my son wakes up before me, it throws my whole day off because I just need that time to focus and be by myself. So I actually set my alarm an hour before anyone else is going to wake up. That's how I balance it and not have it impact my family at all. And it's great.

Speaker 5 (00:25:44):

Do you work in your house? Yep.

(00:25:46):

You got to separate that stuff. You should try that, get an office like a block or two down the street so you can walk there in two minutes and that way you have no problems dealing with any type of family distractions. When you're at work, you're at work, you can turn your phone off and hit ignore all of your wife's calls. That doesn't work at all. I don't adhere to that one bit, but in theory it works in my head and sometimes I try to, but then she just keeps trying to call me. So it really helps. When I made the switch from not working at the same place I was living, it made a huge difference in my productivity because there was just so many less distractions and like you said, nothing comes in and interferes with your vibe for the day.

Speaker 3 (00:26:28):

You

Speaker 5 (00:26:28):

Wake up, you get in your zone, you're doing your thing, you're working, and while you're there, you're working. And when you're at home, then you're at home and you're not thinking about work, which is a constant source of contention in my life and my family because I have to turn off my phone when I'm at home or else I'll be sitting there like, oh, I got this idea. I got to text Joey and Al, we got to do this, this and that. I got to reply back to this and she's just like, I need your help. Can you take the kid and move him here? And I'm just like, yeah, hold on. Let just finish this text. And she walks right over and just grabs the phone from me and she's like, I need your help. I'm like, sorry.

Speaker 3 (00:26:59):

Yeah. Well that's your classic entrepreneur. You separate it. Yeah, am in my house. But yeah, I do my best to have my office in the house and I don't ever take my laptop out of there. I leave my phone in there half the time when work's done. And so yeah, it's hard it

Speaker 5 (00:27:17):

Respect for being able to pull that off. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:27:19):

Well I'm certainly not perfect, but try

Speaker 4 (00:27:22):

So let's change. Alright, so changing gears here, can you tell us a little bit about hardcore mixing Studio?

Speaker 3 (00:27:28):

Yeah, so it's basically like a website, a blog podcast and courses just to help people with recording and mixing heavy music. So rocking metal similar to what you guys do and yeah, I'm just trying to teach people to get better at this stuff.

Speaker 4 (00:27:44):

So what do you think is the reason that people think your courses are awesome? Just out of curiosity, feel free to brag, but seriously someone listening here for the first time or who's never heard of you before, why should they check your stuff out? Other than that, we said that it was good.

Speaker 3 (00:28:05):

Well, that's a big credit there, but I think I just try to focus on the stuff that actually matters. I mean, I think there's a lot of stuff out there that is just misinformation and it just gets people focusing on the wrong things or just having the wrong mindset. I mean, I read emails and see blog posts about how you should never boost with your EQ or you should only cut and all these rules that I think are just useless. My whole thing when I started this was I thought back to the experiences I had in the studio that really improved things for me and those things were always talking to another, talking to someone whose work I admired or being in the studio with an awesome engineer or mixer doing their thing and literally just looking over their shoulder and soaking it all in.

(00:28:59):

That's what I'm trying to do with my courses. So that's why all of my courses are based around an actual mix session that I've done for an actual band that people who are fans of this genre, they would actually recognize these releases. So that's kind of another a plus factor is that this is real stuff. I'm not just recording my own song or my neighbor's garage band. It's real releases and then just giving full access to it, not holding anything back, just being like, this is how I achieve this sound just as if you are in the room with me going through it. And I think maybe that's why it's been helpful is I'm not trying to create these rules for mixing or anything. I'm just being like, Hey, this is, I made records professionally, this is how I did it. You can get a full look and do with it what you will.

Speaker 4 (00:29:53):

I want to talk a little bit about dispelling bullshit myths that you just touched on for a second. For instance, additive EQ on one of our nail the mixes, I believe it was March, right, Joey? Where Chunk, no Captain Chunk. You decided that you were going to use primarily additive EQ just to prove a point.

Speaker 2 (00:30:13):

Yeah, I wanted to, I guess what happens, especially after you do so many, I've done like 80 albums, you get bored of certain techniques or I don't know, you just get bored of the craft in general. And so sometimes I'll just read about something I was reading about additive EQ and how it's supposed to be this school of thought and I was like, oh, I'll just give it a try. And when I started mixing the song, I approached it with that mindset that I was just going to do as much additive EQ as possible and the least amount of subtractive EQ as possible, and I ended up really liking the mix and I just went with that same mentality for the rest of the album and it worked out well.

Speaker 4 (00:30:57):

I think that kind of blew people's minds a little because as you know, everyone says that you shouldn't do that. What are some of the other myths that you feel like you've dispelled or set your targets on?

Speaker 3 (00:31:13):

Well, I think this is kind of a debate. I mean, I'd like to hear your guys' opinion, but the whole gain staging in the box thing, I constantly get emails from people asking me like, Hey Jordan, do you set all of your tracks to minus 18 DB before you start mixing? I've heard that you have to do this, and it's just like, no, I don't worry about that at all. I make sure that stuff's not clipping and I mix. I think that people just, to me it's like, sure, that's fine if you want to do that, but that's not going to be the thing that makes your mixes sound pro. So that's something that I just try to, I don't know, just make it easier for people. Yeah, don't run stuff super hot. You don't need to record really hot, just leave some headroom and continue on. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Speaker 4 (00:32:03):

I think that the minus 18 thing is there's some waves plugins that are optimized for that level of input and that's it. I think that's where the whole thing comes from is because there's some waves plugins optimized for that and it started spreading online that you should do that for all your plugins.

Speaker 5 (00:32:23):

Yeah, there was a huge thread. Now this is a long time ago, there was a very big, I think, mentality changing thread on gear slot. It's about gain staging all your faders down at minus 18, and it was one of those things where just thousands of comments and it kind of blew up and kind of went viral in a way for a recording post for him. I remember that thread and the guy was like, Hey, I thought about it and I started gain structuring down and setting everything at minus 18 because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then a bunch of people came in, they're like, oh yeah, I do that too. And then everybody's like, oh, we should always do this, and now this is the way to gain stage digitally in the box. So

Speaker 2 (00:33:01):

There's

Speaker 5 (00:33:02):

Different ways to gain stage and anything as long as you use it properly and understand how it works, it doesn't matter how you use it, it's more so I think a matter of what is the best workflow for you and how you mix.

Speaker 3 (00:33:16):

Yeah, totally. And again, if that's part of someone's workflow, that's totally fine. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, it's not what I focus on. And some other things are like some people teach to only, what's the buzzword now? Like top down mixing where you are always on buses first or you try to do all of the heavy lifting on buses. That's the total opposite of what I do. I do pretty much all my heavy lifting on individual tracks and I do a little bit on buses. So again, that's like, I know guys who do that, who have awesome mixes. Maybe some of you guys do that, but again, that's not the thing that's going to fix your mix, right?

Speaker 4 (00:33:53):

That's what Ali does,

Speaker 3 (00:33:55):

But

Speaker 4 (00:33:55):

Even Ali will tell you that it's not written and stoned that that's what you should do. That's just what he does.

Speaker 3 (00:34:02):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:34:03):

He's damn good at it too.

Speaker 3 (00:34:04):

Yeah, exactly. It comes down to what is your preference? But I mean, I think the point that I'm trying to make, it's not that anyway is necessarily really bad or the best, it's just that I think that sometimes this stuff is communicated as this is the magic bullet that's going to finally make your mixes sound professional, and it's just not

Speaker 5 (00:34:28):

The only thing that's going to make your mixes professional this one trick. Yeah, exactly. I knew it. If I just put L one in everything, it would be perfect.

Speaker 4 (00:34:37):

Well fuck it, do it L one everything forever. No other plugins ever. We try really, really hard to break people out of that kind of thinking. It's so contrary to getting better, in my opinion, to focus on one thing like that being the change maker, I guess. However, I will say that when I first started gaining down my track six DB with the trim plugin in Pro Tools and giving myself a ton more headroom, my mixes did get way better, but I think that's just because I was clipping like shit before,

Speaker 5 (00:35:19):

Which is ironic now we clip everything. I

Speaker 2 (00:35:22):

Think that some dolls have affected, I want to say mixing knowledge in general. I know for a long period of time, probably about five years ago or so, pro Tools had this internal clipping ceiling on every channel, whereas Cubase didn't. And so you had two different schools of thoughts where, I dunno, I learned on Cubase and I always mixed on Cubase, so I was able to, you can push something over zero without chopping off your audio data, whereas in Pro Tools at that same time, you would have to stay under zero or you would start chopping off the samples. So I think it's been interesting to see how software has sort of affected the knowledge of the craft.

Speaker 3 (00:36:14):

Yeah, that was something with I think with Pro Tools hd with the TD M systems, right? There was a zero ceiling, right?

Speaker 4 (00:36:22):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:36:23):

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:36:23):

Alright, so on the topic of game staging, I do think that not fucking it up is crucial,

Speaker 3 (00:36:30):

But

Speaker 4 (00:36:30):

I do think that spending way too much time on it is also dumb. Thank you. I have spoken. Cool. Great talking to you guys. We'll see you later. Gain staging with Al Levy. Yeah, actually we do have a gain staging course that Joey did and our fast tracks and I actually learned a lot about gain staging from how you guys do it in Cubase. It kind of blew my mind. It's so different than how I do it in Pro Tools, but I tried using the trim plugin to kind of do it the way you guys do it and it was kind of cool.

Speaker 5 (00:37:08):

Did you ever mix into a summing mixer? Al?

Speaker 4 (00:37:11):

I had one for a brief moment, yes.

Speaker 5 (00:37:14):

Okay. Because a lot of guys, I feel like at least for me, that kind of developed from doing that mixing into a summing mixer where you're keeping your fader at zero and Joey just likes to clip and limit everything to get a super aggressive sound. So I think he doesn't like to automate anything below minus six. So it's like, I think it happened kind of out of necessity because it's more convenient to mix at that level and it just makes sense if you mixed analog at all. So having your stuff done at minus 18, it just feels so, or even minus 12, it feels so weird when you're writing automation to go from minus 18 to minus 16.5 now back down to minus 18, it's just like,

Speaker 4 (00:37:53):

Could you explain to Jordan how you guys do it? I feel like I'll butcher it.

Speaker 5 (00:37:57):

Sure. Okay.

Speaker 4 (00:37:58):

And also for anyone that's not familiar, just we're talking about it.

Speaker 5 (00:38:01):

Yeah, okay. For sure. So basically we do this, so Joey and I, we both like to keep our faders at zero when we mix in Cubase. Jordan, what DAW are you on?

Speaker 3 (00:38:12):

Pro tools.

Speaker 5 (00:38:12):

Okay, pro tools. So what we do is we keep our faders at zero because you can go over the maximum of headroom into the red or whatever, as long as you turn down the master channel. At some point we do it on the input, you can turn it down to minus 12. Then you get all that extra headroom and you can really push the crap out of your channels and it's not going to distort after it goes past zero. So we keep everything at zero super loud, so we can not have to write a lot of complicated automation. So you're going zero to plus one or plus 1.5. You're not going minus 18 to minus 17. So you have a much higher fader resolution because faders are logarithmic, I believe. So what ends up happening is all of your levels are kind of at zero.

(00:38:55):

Everything looks like it's all red and maxed out on the track side, but when you look at the master bus, you're hitting minus six approximately at peak level on the master, and then we come in and throw it in and slam it into a mastering chain. So we use a lot of limiters and clipping and things like that and really, really push the mix up super loud on the channel side so we can keep the faders all at zero because you have to really crush your drum mix up and clip it up to get it to work that way where you can keep your guitars at zero and the minimum up and et cetera, and then bring down the master channel and it allows us to get just a very in your face sound. Is there anything I'm missing, Joey?

Speaker 2 (00:39:31):

Yeah, I think that's pretty much it. I mean it's just a really basic concept that you're going to do everything relative to itself. That's the main message is the relativity of volume rather than being able to think when you hear something, how many decibels up or down do you want it to go? And knowing what that number is in your head. And it all starts with basically for our type of music, it starts with a kick and snare. You get the kick and snare at your zero level, and then everything is either plus 3, 4, 5, 6 or minus 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. From there. I mean it's going to be rare that you have anything less or more than that. So the fader range in Cubase goes from plus six to negative infinity. So you can pretty much, if you have everything zeroed out, you can pretty much go up and down from that zero point and end up with a pretty good balanced mix. And then everything from there just is automation. So that's the basics.

Speaker 3 (00:40:34):

That's interesting.

Speaker 4 (00:40:35):

Yeah. See in pro tools to recreate that, we need to use the trim plugin,

Speaker 3 (00:40:39):

Right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:40:40):

Because you compress something, you put a distortion EQ on it, now you're blowing over zero already. Whereas in Cubase, I can keep my fader at zero, even if the output is going over zero and I can send it to a group track and then adjust the pre-game into the group track down so that I'm not going over zero and I'm not losing anything by doing that. The peak data is preserved perfectly. I like to say this, the easiest way to understand it in Cubase is that you could turn a track up plus a hundred and then send it to a bus and then turn that bus down negative a hundred and you would have the same result.

Speaker 3 (00:41:24):

There'd

Speaker 2 (00:41:24):

Be no difference.

Speaker 3 (00:41:25):

Right. So is it mainly just that you, just like the way the Fader algorithm around that range, is that the main thing is that you're just doing small automation moves?

Speaker 2 (00:41:36):

Yeah, it's basically the thought process of relativity. I want my guitars one DB louder than the snare or one DB quieter than the snare, whatever you figure it. It

Speaker 5 (00:41:47):

Makes writing automation so much faster because like I said, you have a lot more because faders are logarithmic I believe. Is that correct? Is it logarithmic or is it different math curve?

Speaker 3 (00:41:57):

No, that's

Speaker 5 (00:41:58):

Right. Sounds

Speaker 3 (00:41:58):

Right.

Speaker 5 (00:41:59):

Okay. I'm not a math major and I don't want to say something wrong and have my programmer death stare me. Alright, so it's logarithmic. So faders are logarithmic, which means that the scale between zero to six is much. You have just a lot more range in terms of precision of the fader. So it's easier to get those decimal values than if you're down at minus 18 or minus 20 or going way down

Speaker 2 (00:42:21):

The distance from minus 18 to minus 20 is very small compared to zero to plus two, there's more resolution between zero and plus two than there is from negative 18 to negative 20. Even though those are both two decibel difference, the resolution is different on the fader itself.

Speaker 5 (00:42:42):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:42:43):

So within that range, that negative six to plus six range, it's very easy to automate things and also kind of to learn what works with your tone. So if you have your snare eqd and compressed a certain way and your guitar eqd and limit it a certain way, you can sort of start to predict what's going to happen when you hit the chorus, maybe your snare, as you work on a few songs, you're going to start to learn. Okay, guitars always have to go up plus one. If I want something to sound a little bit more in your face or you learn what you want to accomplish and you learn what moves it takes to do it and it kind of becomes more predictable I guess, which is totally the opposite of reaching for a knob and listening with your ears and turning knobs and mixing. I would almost call that mixing blind. And there's nothing against either way, it's just a different way to work.

Speaker 4 (00:43:45):

I got to say that back before I was better with my gain staging back in the olden day, I would end up getting to a point where I was clipping the shit out of the master bus. And so before automation was written, I would just select all on a group and then turn it down, bring the faders down like six db like I was told to do. But I noticed that it never quite sounded the same. The balances were different. Even if it said that it was or 12 DB or something that it was bringing everything down evenly. It didn't seem right. I don't know. Have you ever noticed that, Jordan?

Speaker 3 (00:44:29):

No, I never really had the problem where my stuff was always in the red though. So yeah, I never had really to do that

Speaker 4 (00:44:36):

Cause I'm a loser. Flogged me. No, I'm talking about a long time ago. I used to have that problem.

Speaker 5 (00:44:44):

I know what you're saying guys. There's only one way to mix everything in the ride and then print.

Speaker 4 (00:44:49):

Well, I guess I'm just pointing out that it seems to me like what they're saying is right

Speaker 5 (00:44:53):

That

Speaker 4 (00:44:54):

The resolutions change

Speaker 3 (00:44:56):

Because

Speaker 4 (00:44:57):

It never, if I would grab everything and turn it all down, it never quite had the same balance as it did. It just wasn't the same. Right. It was very, very sad.

Speaker 5 (00:45:08):

Yeah. I wonder if that's because it was clipping it slightly or truncating it or

Speaker 4 (00:45:13):

I don't know.

Speaker 5 (00:45:13):

Because that would make sense. It's kind of like when you turn the mastering limiter off, all of a sudden you're like, what the hell happened to my balance? What's going on? This doesn't sound right at all. So that's interesting. That's definitely interesting. I've never really mixed that much in pro tools and I'd have to experience it and hear what you're hearing to agree or disagree.

Speaker 4 (00:45:32):

Well also, let me point out that older versions of pro tools, you would just breathe on a channel and it would clip when I started on eight, it would clip so easily. It was really, really, and this was before I really knew how to properly gain stage. So it was just like you just start throwing an EQ on a kick and you're in the red. Wow, that sucks.

Speaker 2 (00:45:58):

I don't necessarily want to change the top. Well, that's a lie. I want to change the topic. Alright, change the topic because I'm kind of curious about this. We get this question so many times and I'm hoping that you have maybe a different or interesting answer here. People are always wondering, how do I market myself? How do I grow my brand? And I think it's easy to get this wrong nowadays thanks to social media because it's just so easy to make a graphic and post something or make a tweet or a Facebook post and people think that they're marketing themselves. And I don't think that that's necessarily the key or the secret. And so I'm curious, what kind of tips or tricks do you have on that?

Speaker 3 (00:46:47):

Well, I would say that when I was coming up, I didn't do a good job of marketing myself per se. I don't know, I didn't really have to, I just worked really hard and I was in bands or I was friends with lots of bands, so I got my earliest clients that way, even though I sucked at it. But as I got better, those bands just kept coming back and coming back and word of mouth spread. And it was just that for me, it wasn't marketing, it was just word of mouth. And it was literally like I just was really busy because I had recorded every band within a three hour drive and that just spreads. And I worked hard on every single project. I would not let something out of the door unless I felt like I did everything I possibly could to make it sound good regardless of what band came in.

(00:47:39):

So I think that was my strategy, and it was just word of mouth and proof. All I had was forever, including now it's just a simple website with a list of credits I never advertised. I think the most I did maybe is reaching out to the mastering engineer Troy Lesner that I used. I sent stuff to him to master for years, probably three years. And I knew that he did a lot of stuff for tooth and nail and solid state records. So after years of sending my stuff to him for Mastery Night, I reached out and was like, Hey man, I know you do a lot of work with this label. Maybe you can throw my name in. And a few months later I got a solid state record to mix. So maybe the one thing I did is just leveraging connections, but that's it. As far as online stuff, I'm kind of the wrong guy to ask. I never did that.

Speaker 4 (00:48:28):

That's actually kind of impressive.

Speaker 2 (00:48:30):

And I think it's important because there's a lot of people who, and we get to talk to a lot of our subscribers on a one-on-one basis through the one-on-one sessions we have. And I have a lot of people who are asking me, how do I advertise what? And I'm like, I mean, you shouldn't even be thinking about advertising yet until people know your name. And then when they do see your name in that ad, then they'll act on it. But then if they don't know who you are and they see this random ad of this person they've never heard of before, why would they interact with it? I always tell people, focus on building the raw materials, make your skills known and do it in a way that's impressive and do a good job and to be a good guy. And I think that will go much further than posting What time should I post my Facebook post? No, it doesn't matter as much as the person.

Speaker 5 (00:49:31):

I think there's a lot of truth to that. I mean, there's probably, I mean, think of retrospectively back here in your careers guys. I mean, there has to be at least a 10 to one, if not 20 or 30, to one ratio of bands where you went out and you hustled them and tried to get them in the door and they'd be like, yeah, yeah, I'll check it out, blah, blah, blah. Versus ones that are like, dude, I heard from so-and-so you made that band sound great and they're fricking terrible. We play live with them every weekend and if you can make them sound good, we got to come work with you. So let's book some time. It has to be at least a 10 to one ratio because I think of every demo CD as a producer, I hand it out to a local band at a show or something like that versus the amount of people that came in via word of mouth. And it's not even comparable. I mean obviously you have to start somewhere, but for every 50 bands you hit up, a very small percentage of them will come in and try you until they hear something that you've done from one of their friends and then they'll all line up like ducks. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:50:26):

Well there's definitely a chicken or the egg thing here, but I got to say that while I agree with you guys completely, if it wasn't for my insane hustle at the very beginning, well

Speaker 5 (00:50:39):

Of course,

Speaker 4 (00:50:40):

I mean I hustled harder than a lot of people and it paid off and then my hustle shifted to other places once people were coming into the studio. So yes, you're correct that at a certain point, once your name is out there, it's not that your hustle dies down, but you do don't need to approach people in person quite as much because people are talking about you. So

Speaker 5 (00:51:08):

Yeah, you got to put out work worth talking about. That's exactly,

Speaker 4 (00:51:11):

Yeah. So really all you're doing, if you think about it, really not much is changing. What you're doing when you're going out there on your own is you're starting conversation about yourself. Once your work is out there, people are talking about you. Either way you're in the conversation and that's the key point is that you're in the conversation. So if no one is doing it for you, you absolutely have to go get it started yourself. If you have done enough badass work to where people like it and play it and listen to it and enjoy it, well then you probably don't need to do it as much. But the thing that hasn't changed there is that people are talking about you. So to me that's kind of the key. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:51:56):

Well, do we want to switch and take some audience questions here?

Speaker 4 (00:51:59):

Sure. Here's the first one. This one's from Rodney, and sorry Rodney, I'm not going to even try to pronounce your last name. He said any kind of details on the intervals record of voice within, is there anything about that that stood out to you about that record

Speaker 3 (00:52:15):

In terms of,

Speaker 4 (00:52:16):

I don't know, that's kind of a bad question. Let's skip it.

Speaker 3 (00:52:19):

Well, no, I mean, I think I could say what stood out is that Aaron, the main guy, the guitar playing intervals is amazing. Just like a joy to track with. So I mean, we all are all familiar with the ways to cheat guitar performances and that's cool, but when you listen to that intervals record, it's like he's playing that stuff. It's totally legit. So that's one thing that stands out,

Speaker 4 (00:52:49):

Man, it makes such a difference when you have a player who really delivers the goods. I think that we talk about it a lot, but I feel like until people actually experience what it's like to work with a great, when you have a great player, they just won't get it. Here's one from Jeremy Jonas, which is how did Jordan approach working with intervals as a producer and mixing engineer differently from any other project, any special goal you wanted to achieve? Also, what was the guitar chain on the in time ep?

Speaker 3 (00:53:26):

Okay, so the first part, I think the approach is, it kind of goes along with what I was saying. Aaron's such a good musician and player. It's like there's certain projects where as a producer and engineer you need to put yourself more into the process. But when you're dealing with guys like that, you almost need to have the discipline to stay out of the way and make sure that you're not messing up the feel of his performances for the sake of perfection. When you get a player like that, he's going to be able to the whole verse at a time, or at least most of it. And you want to try and capture that and preserve it and not kill that in the name of just using certain techniques or trying to make it too perfect. I mean, hopefully that makes sense. And as far as the guitar chain, it was ax effects on both of the albums I did with them. I don't remember any specific settings or anything, but it was just direct from the X effects.

Speaker 4 (00:54:25):

Well, interestingly enough, Kyle Presque right here said to you, I've noticed, or to us, I noticed that you meaning me, Joel, and Joey, like to reamp with tone Forge and other great programs. While I believe I've noticed Jordan go more the ax effects route, I would be interested to know what some of his favorite Amps cab stems for building ax effects tones or any little tips for dialing in a tone that doesn't pump with low tune chugs and leaves a nice crisp mid range.

Speaker 3 (00:54:55):

Okay. Yeah, that's wrong because the only times I've only used ax effects on a couple records, only when the band has one and wants to use it. Most of my discography is real s and cabs.

Speaker 4 (00:55:09):

Nice.

Speaker 3 (00:55:09):

Yeah, maybe they have just only seen those things, but yeah, I've used X effects on the intervals and one other band. I'm actually, I'm not a huge fan of it, so

Speaker 4 (00:55:19):

Neither am I got to say I used to own one and I tried at one point doing a tone pack with them. I feel like it takes four times as long and to get something usable.

Speaker 3 (00:55:32):

Yes. That's my problem man. And that's my problem with a lot of these plugins and I don't use a lot, but the ones I've tried, it drives me nuts. I give up, I've tried to tweak the ax effects and it's like, I don't want to mess with all this stuff. Just give me the base mid and trouble and that's it. Just let me get a tone in five or 10 minutes. I want to spend two hours fiddling with all this stuff. It drives me nuts.

Speaker 4 (00:55:57):

Joey. We should send him some tone. Forge plugins.

Speaker 3 (00:56:01):

Let's do it.

Speaker 4 (00:56:03):

If you don't like messing with stuff endlessly, you'll probably, that's the tone Forge is for. That'd be great. Yeah, I

Speaker 5 (00:56:08):

Usually just open it and close it when I use it, so I don't even care what the EQ is set at because it usually works. That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:56:16):

Well, yeah, that was one of the other things that we did with it is we left it, the default settings when you open it are the ones that I use.

Speaker 3 (00:56:25):

Nice.

Speaker 2 (00:56:26):

Now of course you can tweak it and do whatever you want, but I made it, it's kind of gain reduction too. It's like when you open gain reduction, it's set how I use it. And same thing with, so you can literally, you can kind of mix a song just by opening the plugins

Speaker 5 (00:56:40):

To

Speaker 2 (00:56:41):

Some degree.

Speaker 5 (00:56:42):

Yeah, I like that philosophy. I mean it's the same thing we do at Drum Forge. We try to make things that allow you to be creative and not get in the way, meaning you don't get in the way of yourself because you're sitting there trying to play with the two bias or some that shit that really only affects 0.05% of the sound. So it gets easy. I think a lot of designers, they like to add features because it looks cool, but I'm more for utilitarian kind of stuff because what I'm mixing, I'm all about speed. The more songs I mix, the more money I make. So the faster I can get a sound dialed in, the better my life is. So I kind of think that a lot of tools should be something that helps you do that, make music and not worry so much about the technical nonsense.

Speaker 3 (00:57:24):

Absolutely. Couldn't agree more with that.

Speaker 4 (00:57:25):

So yeah, Kyle, he's not into it. So, alright, here's one from Benjamin Mueller's wondering, do you use saturation tape tube stuff on snare yay or nay?

Speaker 3 (00:57:37):

Yeah, on snare. I love Massey tape head plugin. And I also just use, here's a good tip for any pro tools users, try out just the stock lo-fi plugin.

Speaker 4 (00:57:47):

Yes,

Speaker 3 (00:57:48):

Use the distortion slider on that with just a little bit on snare. It's like, it's killer. It's awesome,

Speaker 4 (00:57:55):

Dude. That's a great plugin.

Speaker 3 (00:57:56):

Yeah, I use it on tons of stuff now. It's one of my favorites.

Speaker 4 (00:58:00):

Alright, here's one from Daniel Joseph Bush or Bush, I don't know, what do you miss, if anything, since downsizing from a larger studio to your bedroom studio or house studio?

Speaker 3 (00:58:11):

That's a good question. What do I miss? I miss just the quietness of it, but my other studio was treated really well, whereas at home now it's like I can hear what else is going on in the house, I can hear the air conditioning. It's like all that stuff, but in a way it's almost almost kind of works in my favor because it makes me work harder on the mix. You know what I mean? It's kind of funny. I feel like even though I had a way better environment in my old studio, it's like my mixing room at home, I feel like I'm actually mixing better because I'm, it's mimicking more of the average person's listening environment. So it's almost making me focus on really what's important to the mix and maybe not focusing too much on the tiny details that don't really matter as much. Hopefully that makes sense. So in some ways I miss it, but in other ways it's like, man, this is actually, it's helping me in a way.

Speaker 2 (00:59:11):

Yeah, I have the same philosophy and the same thoughts, share the same thoughts as you there, and actually I kind of have always worked that way, so it's worked out pretty well for me.

Speaker 4 (00:59:24):

Here's one from Lucas and it's how do you use Decapitate in your mixes? How about, do you use decapitate in your mixes first?

Speaker 3 (00:59:33):

Yeah, I've started using it recently. I think maybe I know once who's following my stuff, he's been following it. I used to mix on Pro Tools eight, so I had these TDM plugins like Crane Song Phoenix and the heat plugin that was built into Pro Tools. I was getting a lot of my saturation from there. And now on my new rig with Pro Tools 12, it's all native and so I'm having to replace some of these plugins that I used to, I was used to before. So Decapitate has been one of them, which I really like. So I think usually people are asking me this in the context of how am I using that instead of the other stuff. So I pretty much just use it in a really subtle way. So I just turn it to one or two, probably not even two, just around one. And I'm just trying to get a little bit of extra life and body out of it, and so I just turn it up a little bit and I just switch between the different models and whichever one gives me what I'm looking for, I just go with that and move on. I keep it pretty subtle. I've never used it for aggressive stuff yet, but I haven't had that much time with it yet either, but that's where I'm at with it now.

Speaker 4 (01:00:33):

Let me just say that I feel like Decapitate is one of the greatest plugins ever made.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):

Yeah, I'm loving it. So far I've been using our drums, guitars, vocals. It's been great.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):

I mean there's other great distortions and saturated out there too, but there's something about decapitate that it just works great from Jamie Peterson, which is what was the best part about mixing Gavin Harrison's drums on the new Nick Johnston album?

Speaker 3 (01:01:03):

The best part was they sounded freaking awesome. The room sound was ridiculous, man. It sounded so good for me. There's nothing better than being able to turn up the room track with almost nothing on it and have it just sound awesome. I think he recorded it in this old church or something, but I mean,

Speaker 4 (01:01:23):

And how rare is that that you can just turn up a room track and it sounds awesome. It's

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):

Ridiculously rare. Usually the room track is adds nothing. Most of the stuff I get, so yeah, the performance is awesome. If you listen to the mix, there's hardly any samples tucked in there. It's all just natural drums and it was great to mix. I loved mixing every song because of how the drum sounded. So

Speaker 4 (01:01:46):

Real quick, this is my question is since you said that you normally use real amps and cabs, what are some of your go-tos? And I know that the guys listening are going to want to know if you have a go-to mic position on the cab.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):

Yeah, so my go-to, if you listen to any of my discography for the last five years, it's a 51 50 into a Messa two by 12 micd with a SM 57 oh and a Maxon two screener in front I should say. But I've made so many records like that and yeah, I position the mic, I start with it right where the, what's it called, the dust Cat meets the cone right where it meets there and just if it's too bright, then I move it more away from the center for if I need more brightness, I move it towards the center. Just basic stuff like that. Yeah, that's 95% of the stuff I've done is with that chain and anything that's maybe more pop rock or just straight up rock stuff, not metal. It was always the JCM 800. I had those two amps in my studio and that covered pretty much anything I needed. The

Speaker 4 (01:02:53):

JCM, is it mod or straight up?

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):

No, it was a straight up.

Speaker 4 (01:02:58):

Nice.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:02:58):

Classic. Those two rigs right there are so classic and awesome. I often wonder why people bother with so many boutique amps when those two amps right there aren't that expensive and will get you most of the way on almost every record.

Speaker 3 (01:03:18):

Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:03:20):

I've owned both at one point in time. What kind of 51 50, the

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):

Original

Speaker 4 (01:03:24):

Good dude. You can get those for like 500 or 400 bucks on eBay. It's incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:03:29):

Yeah, that's what mine cost me. I think I sold it for the same amount. A buddy of mine who has a Kemper, I got him to do a profile of it and it sounds like the same rig I used to use, so I did that and then I sold the amp.

Speaker 4 (01:03:41):

Nice. Joel and I were talking earlier about whether or not we should sell our amps.

Speaker 5 (01:03:48):

It's true, not because I don't love my amps, it's just I never use them anymore because all I do is mix and master and if I actually had to amp something, I would definitely pay somebody else to do it. It's a waste of my time,

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):

Right? Yeah. That's where I was at too. Once I started doing, only mixing is like I don't need these things, so it's hard to let 'em go though.

Speaker 5 (01:04:07):

I won't sell my Black Star or my 65 0 5 though, just for the record.

Speaker 4 (01:04:11):

Well, I have a Bogner Ecstasy and I love it, but I haven't used that thing in years. Maybe it's time to go.

Speaker 5 (01:04:19):

Maybe it's hard to let go of things. Dude, it hurts.

Speaker 4 (01:04:22):

I'm saying this and I'm feeling pain on the inside. It makes me physically uncomfortable to say this.

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):

It's a good, I forget where I heard this, but when it comes to selling stuff or if you don't want to let something go, you got to ask yourself the question. Let's just say you could sell that Bogner amp for $2,000. Ask yourself, I could, if you didn't have that amp and you had $2,000, would you spend $2,000 to get that amp again? Fuck no. If the answer's no, then you should just sell the amp.

Speaker 4 (01:04:54):

It's not just No, it's fuck. No, I wouldn't buy any of those amps, honestly. I wouldn't buy any amps.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):

Well, there you go.

Speaker 4 (01:05:02):

Yeah, sorry, listeners, so I just wouldn't, I am perfectly fine with Amp Sims now, so that's a good, Hey, I like how you think. Do you have any more great tidbits of advice like that can help me sell off my life and feel good about it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:23):

I dunno. Just that's my only tip, man. I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 (01:05:26):

Alright, well hey, that was a good one because I have a Sano also that I think's got to go. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):

You could probably get rid of that. It's

Speaker 4 (01:05:34):

So good though. Alright,

Speaker 5 (01:05:35):

Well I'm getting really upset by this conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):

What really, I got kind of bummed last year, or I guess it was almost two years ago now, on the last Silverstein record, we had all these amps. We had the 15, 1 50, the eight multiple, eight hundreds Sanos, all these awesome amps and cabs micd up, and then the assistant engineer I hired, I got him to bring in his Kemper and we ended up using Kemper on half of the album. Up until that point, I was such a real Amps guy, the ax effects was never as good to me and all this stuff and I was like, yeah, bring your Kemper, but we'll probably use all the real amps. And then of course, what do you know? The Kemper ends up winning half the time and so ever since then I'm kind of switched. I'm open to Amp Sims now, but it's taken a while. Welcome

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):

To the dark side.

Speaker 4 (01:06:28):

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was thinking the exact same thing. You know what though? My Kemper sounds great. What can I say?

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):

Yeah, I think if I was going to buy a guitar Amp again, I would do that. It just makes so much sense.

Speaker 4 (01:06:43):

Joel, are you racking yourself with anxiety hearing this?

Speaker 5 (01:06:48):

Yeah, I'll never settle all of my amps because what if I want to pick up, not like I have time anymore, but what if I actually want to pick up a guitar and play it through something?

Speaker 4 (01:06:56):

What?

Speaker 5 (01:06:57):

There's something like playing through sims just doesn't feel right to me.

Speaker 4 (01:07:02):

When's the last time you picked up a guitar?

Speaker 5 (01:07:04):

I picked it up this morning to put it in its case so I could move it down the street.

Speaker 4 (01:07:09):

When's the last time you picked up a guitar and played it

Speaker 5 (01:07:13):

On somebody else's record? Probably the last time I actually recorded something when that was, I don't remember because I just mix now and do this. I don't know, don't ask me difficult questions that upset me. Same here, dude. In my mind, I play guitar every day for four hours, but then reality is I just walk past it every day and look at it. I'm like, tomorrow and then I'm like, oh yeah, what's that thing in the corner? What's it called? I don't remember because I don't have time.

Speaker 4 (01:07:39):

Yeah, I haven't played guitar in a while. Oh well. Alright, well I'm selling my amps and thank you, Jordan. Do you have any URLs you would like to plug here? We would like to get all your info out to our listeners. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):

We'll just keep it simple. Just check out hardcore music studio.com. All the stuff is there right on the front. I have this free mixing cheat sheet that you can sign up to my email list. You get that, you'll get a bunch of free videos as well. So that's the main thing. Hardcore music studio.com, sign up to my list and that's where I give out all my stuff

Speaker 4 (01:08:18):

And his videos are really good, so

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):

Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:08:22):

Do it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):

Thanks. Watch them.

Speaker 4 (01:08:24):

Well, thanks for coming on, man. You rule.

Speaker 3 (01:08:26):

Yeah,

Speaker 5 (01:08:27):

Thanks for having me. Happy to do it. Yes, thanks. It was awesome. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:08:30):

Love talking to you. Talk to you once before on Skype and I think we ended up talking for like 90 minutes.

Speaker 3 (01:08:36):

You've

Speaker 4 (01:08:36):

Got a lot to say and thanks for coming on and

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):

Yeah. Well thanks guys. We'll keep in touch for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):

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