ANDY JAMES: Winning Nail the Mix, Recording Tight Guitars, and the Real Secret to Networking

Speaker 1 (00:00:01):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Kush Audio, a premium manufacturer of top quality audio, hardware and plugins. The high end just got higher. Visit the house of kush.com for more information. And now your hosts, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and

Speaker 2 (00:00:21):

Eyal Levi. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. I am Eyal Levi. With me is my cohost, Joel Wanasek. Joey Sturgis is doing some massive website maintenance. I think we're kind of turning into a real company now. We have to tear the site down for a day to do maintenance. It's crazy. But with us also is one of my favorite guitar players. Mr. Andy James, welcome.

Speaker 3 (00:00:45):

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:00:47):

Yeah, we're stoked to have you. I am going to introduce you real quick to people who don't know who you are, even though they should. And then I want to launch right into questions. I've got a bunch, but yeah, Andy's a guitar player out of the UK who you should know about. If you look at him, you'll probably think he's a metal hard rock player, but all incredible players. His skills span the musical spectrum. You can find him at the andy james guitar academy.com, which is a really, really incredible instructional site. I've checked it out myself and there's a ton of great content on there. It's put out four solo albums as well as four albums with the band Sacred Mother Tongue, and he's the winner of the November Nail the Mix competition with the Papa Roach song, face Everything and Rise. Did I miss anything?

Speaker 3 (00:01:41):

No, I don't think so. I mean, I've got another band at the moment, which is wearing Scars, which it's kind of like a new band. It's been like a thing for a year or so. So I've been doing that as well. But no, yeah, you've pretty much covered it, I think.

Speaker 2 (00:01:54):

Alright, cool. Alright, well we're up to date. Well, okay, so now on to my questions, which is, I had no,

Speaker 4 (00:02:00):

Now hold on on a second. Hold on. I got a question. Andy, do you even 15 pull off 12 Ben 15 or what? I don't even know what that is. Oh my God. Pentatonic, come on.

Speaker 3 (00:02:11):

Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like minor to me.

Speaker 4 (00:02:13):

It definitely sounds like E minor depending on what your guitar is tuned to. But there's a longstanding joke I've had in my studio. Completely random, off topic nonsense. Sorry, I apologize. Of

Speaker 2 (00:02:24):

Course Andy would know the joke. Considering you guys have never spoken before,

Speaker 4 (00:02:28):

I'm going to inform him. Then he'll be in on the joke next time I talk to him, we'll have that joke and we'll have that thing together. You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 (00:02:35):

Yeah, yeah, true.

Speaker 4 (00:02:36):

Don't deny him that. So, alright, so you've listened to Kill 'em all by Metallica, I'm assuming, right?

Speaker 3 (00:02:41):

I have, yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:02:42):

Every fucking guitar solo is the same six note pattern and it's so great. I mean, some people look at it as bad. I look at it as great, if that makes sense. It's a lot of fun. So 15 pull off 12 just became very legendary. So a lot of guitar players, that's how we greet each other in the shred community is, dude, you even 15 pull off 12 or what?

Speaker 3 (00:03:03):

Right. Okay. What about a Bend on 15 on a

Speaker 4 (00:03:06):

Beat string? Yeah, bend is cool. You can bend 14, I mean whatever.

Speaker 3 (00:03:10):

Yeah, yeah. No, most people have got their kind of in jokes and stuff like that. I mean, I normally get ones on my posts and stuff saying, oh yeah, but can you play Smoke on the Water? Or something like that. Well, can you, I dunno. Actually, I've never tried. I'll probably play it in the wrong key, but yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:03:29):

I don't know how to play

Speaker 3 (00:03:30):

It. Maybe I should give that a go one day, see how I get on, think

Speaker 2 (00:03:33):

You can handle it, give it a shot. Do you mix professionally or is this just some side thing that you decided to get good at and I had no idea,

Speaker 3 (00:03:44):

To be honest with you. I mean, I can go back a little bit to when I was 16 and in college I left school, I finished school, kind of the normal age that you're supposed to here. You can stay on a bit longer if you want, but I didn't. I was rubbish at school anyway, so I went to, yeah, it just didn't interest me school. It was just nothing worth learning really. It was good to hang out with people and stuff, but that was about it. And then I just went to college. I did, it's like a recording technique, stroke performing arts thing. But really all I went to do was meet a bunch of guys and play in a band, which is something I'd not really ever done before. So the recording side of things, I mean back in, what was it when I was 16, that was probably, I mean you probably know more about the state of the recording industry then than I did. I didn't really pay attention, but it was like 96, 97. So it was all kind of digital kind of external hard drive recorders and stuff. But some of it was tape as well.

Speaker 2 (00:04:46):

Yes, I remember those days very well.

Speaker 3 (00:04:48):

Yeah, so I mean, for me personally, there was too many knobs on a desk. All the studio stuff just didn't really make sense to me. And all I wanted to do was play guitar. So that's kind of what I did for two years. So I went on the course and didn't even bother learning anything about it at the time. It didn't really interest me. But what I did remember is I learned a bit about Keybase and stuff. And to be honest, that's the only sort of door I've ever used. I've never really bothered with any of the other ones much later in my kind of recording career when other people have recorded the stuff, it's always been pro Tools. So that was kind of the early thing. I didn't really pay attention. I kind wish now that I had, because I would've learn a bit more about how to mic up a drum kit and deal with some other session stuff that went over my head at the time. Yeah. But I think I've always been interested in it ever since I started recording Properly with Sacred, we worked with a guy called Scott Atkins who was a guitar player for Stamping Ground. I dunno if you know them,

Speaker 2 (00:05:56):

Never heard of them. Not

Speaker 4 (00:05:58):

Familiar with them.

Speaker 3 (00:05:58):

Sort of UK hardcore band kind of thing.

(00:06:02):

But anyway, he'd sort of learned a load of stuff off of VanDyne and that kind of thought, well I'm going to give it a go, because this band, they were on Century Media and everything and it kind of didn't work out. So he quit and started doing his own studio. And then I heard about him for a friend of mine, and then I called him up and said, would you be interested in recording the band? He was like, yeah, come down or whatever. So he did. It was in his sort of shed in his back garden, but he'd done a few bands and stuff. I think he mixed silos, conclusion, age, and he'd done a bunch of other stuff. In fact, he was kind of doing that record as we went in and yeah, it was really interesting. I'd never really recorded guitars and stuff before and the way he'd go about recording guitars, I mean, he was like Adolf Hitler in the studio. It was ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (00:06:50):

With or without Mustache?

Speaker 3 (00:06:52):

No, without, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:06:54):

Bummer.

Speaker 3 (00:06:55):

I mean, I think it's safe to say that nobody has rocked that facial hair since, dude, I was

Speaker 4 (00:07:00):

Just going to say that. I mean, he was such a dick. He ruined that whole facial hairstyle for an entire

Speaker 2 (00:07:08):

Millennial millennium. Maybe in the year 32 or something.

Speaker 3 (00:07:13):

Probably the name Adolph as well.

Speaker 2 (00:07:18):

Very true. So, alright, so go on. So this guy was Hitler Junior?

Speaker 3 (00:07:22):

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I'd really gone in now, I mean I could play pretty well at this point. I'd been doing the Lick Library thing for a couple of years and stuff. So yeah, it came down to the sort of metal rhythm playing. Now I hadn't really done a lot of metal stuff, so the weirdest thing happened. I got hired at Lick Library to do more of the metal stuff. They needed somebody to do that. What

Speaker 2 (00:07:45):

Kind of stuff had you done up until that point?

Speaker 3 (00:07:48):

Well, I dunno, it was kind of sort of heavier of rock stuff, but none of the real down picking palm muted stuff and that kind of kill switch sort of thing, which that was kind of really my introduction into metal properly was kill switching gauge. I dunno, for some reason metal had kind of bypassed me through my whole growing up. There's metal elements of say like Dream Theater and Racer X and stuff, but it wasn't really like Metallica or Pantera or Mega Death or that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (00:08:20):

Race. Hell yeah. Finally someone else who gets it.

Speaker 3 (00:08:23):

So much reverb though, isn't it? Especially on the snare. That's not the Steve Fontana sound, you know what I mean? Like Prairie Sun Studios. You've got to have literally, I think he must've just dialed that reverb unit in and left it.

Speaker 4 (00:08:37):

Is there another setting? That's the only one I would ever use.

Speaker 3 (00:08:40):

I dunno, honestly, but I don't think people were using samples then. So in order to get the snare to sound so massive, I suppose that was just, it really wasn't it just whack a load of toilet on it and hope for the

Speaker 5 (00:08:51):

Best whack a load of toilet. Amazing. I need to go to England and learn. Yeah, dude, English correctly whack a load of

Speaker 2 (00:09:02):

God. We don't have anything whack a load of toilet.

Speaker 3 (00:09:08):

Well I guess that's referring to the acoustics of most toilets, especially probably a big tiled bathroom. Yeah, I understand

Speaker 2 (00:09:17):

What you meant, but what a great way to put it.

Speaker 4 (00:09:19):

Oh shit, that's awesome. Our programmer here in our office for our drum software company, he's from Scottsman. He has some pretty ridiculous phrases that we enjoy very often.

Speaker 3 (00:09:30):

Yeah, Scott is a very different form of English to say what I speak.

Speaker 5 (00:09:36):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:09:38):

I dunno. Sometimes people ask me if I'm from Australia when I go to America.

Speaker 2 (00:09:43):

You don't sound Australian.

Speaker 3 (00:09:45):

No. But it just depends on whether those particular Americans have been exposed to anything across the Atlantic before or not really. Or were they just sort of, I dunno, seen names home and away or

Speaker 2 (00:09:57):

Something, or anything outside their hometown.

Speaker 3 (00:09:59):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:10:01):

They watch those movies with Hugh Grant, those pussy love movies that all women and every man hates. I

Speaker 3 (00:10:07):

Dunno. No, I've only ever watched, he's Wolverine, isn't he? And then he was, what else has he been in? There was a good film he did in ages ago called Swordfish. That was good. I remember.

Speaker 2 (00:10:18):

No, that's not Hugh Grant, that's what's his name.

Speaker 3 (00:10:21):

Oh, that's Hugh Jackman, right. That from one, I mean whatever seemed Hugh Grant, right? Yeah, sorry, God

Speaker 2 (00:10:28):

Hug.

Speaker 5 (00:10:29):

Hugh Grant's English, I believe. Yeah, yeah. Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Speaker 4 (00:10:33):

He in all those British love movies from the two thousands that were really popular that my girlfriend at the time made me watch and I wanted to kill myself during.

Speaker 3 (00:10:41):

Sorry. Yeah, I feel like an idiot now. I kind of got the two huge mixed up, sudden first name. That's it. Totally threw me.

Speaker 2 (00:10:49):

So you got introduced to metal through a protege of Andy Sleep?

Speaker 3 (00:10:54):

Yeah. Is what you're saying? Well, he kind of just said to me, look, maybe you should, because basically in a polite kind of roundabout sort of way, he was going, look, you need to get tighter. So I was like, right, okay, fair enough. So I literally spent a week just going through these albums and stuff and kind of getting a bit better at them. I mean, I'd already heard this stuff before, but I'd never really actually sat down and messed about with it too

Speaker 2 (00:11:19):

Much. So were you already a guitar freak at that point? Or had you committed yourself?

Speaker 3 (00:11:27):

Yeah, I'd spent all my, I mean, you know what it's like you spend all your time soloing and your kind of rhythm chops suck. So you have to kind of apply what you,

Speaker 4 (00:11:35):

Yeah. But no one cares about the riff. All they care about is vibrato.

Speaker 3 (00:11:39):

Well, yeah, I mean, I had that bucket loads growing up with listening to Paul Gilbert, invo Stein, Zack World, Nuno, Betten Court, all of those guys, they've all got killer phrasing and technique as well as being able to create memorable melodic solos. You know what I mean? So that was kind of the thing I liked. So anyway, I got better at it and came back in the studio and then I just kind of knocked the stuff out. It took me about a week or so just to get myself used to it and then got back in there and did it really, I mean, I'm normally quite a fast learner when it comes to just having to learn stuff, which is kind of bringing me onto the mixing thing in a minute. But yeah, the guitar process and stuff, he used to just stick a click on for the most part, and I just play the same riff over and over again for about a minute.

(00:12:29):

And then rather than double track the stuff to a guitar that you'd already done, he would chop it and then just put 'em together 'em, and then it'd be like, fucking hell. That was pretty tight. But you wouldn't, because like any recording that I'd ever done before, I was trying to match another riff and trying to hear it and it would always be off not really knowing how to fix it. So that was an interesting thing for me. Recording guitars. If I've got something that's really technical now, I'll do it to a click so I can just loop sections and then put 'em together. But if it's something that needs to be with the band, something that's a bit looser or whatever, I'll tend to do it with the drums or whatever it is. So I'll try not get too surgical with it. But I think especially with the way I've learned how to track guitars now, it's pretty difficult not to do that. You hear loads of problems with stuff,

Speaker 2 (00:13:18):

Man. That's how Amal and I would record our guitars. Just set the click and go for five minutes. And there's just something that happens after a minute or two with your dominance over the riff.

Speaker 6 (00:13:33):

You

Speaker 2 (00:13:33):

Know what I mean? It goes from just something you can play to something that you just own. And that's when it really starts to sound good.

Speaker 3 (00:13:42):

Yeah, it locks in. After about a minute, your muscle starts to go, right? Yeah, I know what you're trying to do now and it lets you do

Speaker 4 (00:13:48):

Well. Here's the problem. If you put any human into your guitar playing whatsoever on a recording and you shred in any possible way, shape, or form, you will get 4,862 hate emails directly in your box for even attempting to not be a robot.

Speaker 3 (00:14:04):

Yeah, well

Speaker 2 (00:14:05):

Fuck them.

Speaker 3 (00:14:07):

Absolutely. Yeah. I dunno. I mean, I'm not the same with solos though. With solos, I'm a bit more like, look, I'm going to have to play this stuff live. So I either record stuff in one hit and I know that I can do it pretty consistently every time. Or I'll stand up and play and if it's too hard, then I'll modify it.

Speaker 2 (00:14:27):

So do you record them standing up?

Speaker 3 (00:14:29):

Yeah, the album that I did with Scott, which is my self-titled one, which is probably the only one that I've done properly, because the first two records I sort of did myself with a friend of mine and I had no idea what I was doing. So they kind of sound horrible now I can't even listen to 'em. But yeah, so I'd never recorded those that way. But when me and Scott worked together on that self-titled album, it was very much a case of really trying to pull some different stuff out the bag. And he would have this thing where he had this, well I suppose you'd call it couch, but we call him set ease anyway, so he'd sit on this sofa, let's call it that, alright.

(00:15:13):

And he would just be down looking at something or whatever, and I'd just be standing there going for take after take over a solo section and I'd be looking at Scott and he'd just be sat there looking at the floor and I'd be thinking, God, what is it going to take for him to just get excited about what I'm doing? And then I'll just kind of get really angry and then I'll just play some total nonsense and then some life will be injected into him. He'd be looking at me going, what was that? What was that? And I'd be like, oh God, I dunno, I can't remember. He's like, that's what you need, that's what you need. So I'd be like, every time I managed to get him out of that sofa, it meant that I was doing something that was good or what he considered worth recording. So I think actually that process, it brought a lot out of me on that record. That actually is sort of what I gravitate towards now in terms of my kind of sound if, because I feel up to that point, I never really figured out what it was I was trying to do.

Speaker 2 (00:16:14):

So did you ever analyze what it was about those parts that got him excited as a producer? Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:16:21):

I think they were just kind of using something that wasn't the bog standard norm for Guitar album. I'm not saying that that album necessarily is like, no, no one's ever done that before or anything like that. But for me it was something that I'd not quite done before in terms of a few ideas and stuff. So I learned, right, this is what I need to do. I dunno, say if you're playing some diminished stuff and then you throw a bit of mix of lidian in there, it's quite a nice mix up if you like, rather than just have everything the same. I mean diminished because you can play everything the same in three fret sections up the neck. You have to kind of break up the tonality of that a little bit. So it's kind of learning because sit there and go, oh, what would Marty Friedman do?

(00:17:10):

Because he'd play some weird and wacky sort of thing. And then I'd be like, right, yeah, okay, wasn't what I was thinking, but yeah, let's just go with it and see what happens. So I think it ended up getting me to think about stuff slightly differently, melodically as well, trying to come up with things that would be anti anthemic. And I think the whole kill switch thing as well with the influence and stuff like that is a fairly big influence on the way I write heavier instrumental music because my songs are pretty much written. You have verses and stuff where you've got the sort of screaming or the shredding I suppose would be the same sort of thing. And then it kind of opens out into these choruses and stuff. And I always liked the way they wrote the songs like that, but I'd never really heard too many instrumental guys writing like that, I suppose.

Speaker 2 (00:18:00):

Well, because with instrumental music, you really have to find something to replace that vocal to carry it.

Speaker 3 (00:18:09):

It's hard for four and a half, five minutes. Definitely.

Speaker 4 (00:18:12):

Yeah. You just screw off over the whole song with nonstop soloing. Why would you want a melody? I mean, come on.

Speaker 3 (00:18:19):

Yeah. But when you've got to feel an hour's worth of cd, I'm kind of like hours worth. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:18:30):

No, that was actually when Amal and I did our instrumental album Avalanche Worms

Speaker 3 (00:18:37):

Back

Speaker 2 (00:18:37):

A while ago. That was one of our biggest challenges was how do we keep this interesting for 45 minutes without any vocals and not just have it be one of those boring albums that's solo from start to finish. It was a lot of work. It was really tough to find sounds and melodies and leads that are interesting enough to replace a vocal.

Speaker 3 (00:19:03):

I think that's kind of the thing as well. I mean, you've got guys satriani that even though technically it's not the most challenging guitar music, I think from a kind of musical perspective, it was always something that I liked about the way he constructed his songs and the melody and stuff. It actually sort of took you somewhere, I mean, not to be sort of cheesy or spiritual or whatever, but sometimes you can just listen to something and appreciate it for its technical ability. But then over and above that you might not listen to it again, if you know what I mean. There's not really anything that makes you come back to the actual piece of music to

Speaker 4 (00:19:40):

Yeah, totally. Every Neoclassical guitar player, they literally are all reliving 1985

Speaker 6 (00:19:46):

Over

Speaker 4 (00:19:47):

And over and over again. And I remember when I was big in the shred scene, there was like, you would get these press releases. I used to have a very big guitar site back in the day called 'em sang guitar.com,

Speaker 3 (00:19:57):

And I think I've heard of that.

Speaker 4 (00:19:59):

Alright, cool. I mean I haven't done anything with it since maybe 2006 or seven. But back in the early two thousands, that was one of the places, and you'd get all these press releases, it'd be like George Pelli teams up with this superstar singer and this superstar from that band, and there's all this hype, and then you'd listen to the music, you're like, oh, I've heard this band like 74 times this week. And the thing about Satriani is Satriani writes actual songs and I feel like that's why he's such a great guitar player because he always shreds, he's got some great licks and a unique identifiable style. But I always appreciated that Satriani could actually write a melody that sticks in your head. You could actually write a hook. And that's something so many guitar players have no idea how to do.

Speaker 3 (00:20:44):

Yeah, I think it is a struggle as well because quite often the bar that those guys set, especially using modal concepts and stuff like that, I mean, as soon as you play anything that's like Lidian either sounding like Steve VI or Joe Satriani, so you're kind of like, well, I can't use that mode. It's ridiculous. I dunno how I'm going to be able to use that. So because all these players that come before you, it becomes very difficult to find your own voice within that, I suppose.

Speaker 2 (00:21:14):

So how do you go about doing that?

Speaker 3 (00:21:16):

Well, I dunno if I have really, but I mean I don't really listen to a huge amount of instrumental stuff now. And I suppose at the time I was doing it and writing those songs back then, I suppose the ones that people keep going back to now that say that they're some of their favorites. I was listening to actual bands and stuff, so I wasn't really listening to guitar players at all. So it was a totally different influence because I found up until that point, some of my stuff is very reminiscent of a lot of my influences and stuff, which it's not necessarily a bad thing, but you kind of want to rise above that a little bit and end up with something that people can associate with you, I guess. I dunno whether it's something that you can engineer. I think it's something that just happens naturally over time. I mean now I don't listen to any in instrumental music.

Speaker 2 (00:22:06):

Well, I think there's something about what you just said is I'm going to want to key in on that. It's totally natural for your influences to come out in your style. And so I feel like if you're in a thrash band and all you listen to is Slayer and Metallica

Speaker 4 (00:22:26):

Testament

Speaker 2 (00:22:26):

And

Speaker 4 (00:22:27):

Testament,

Speaker 2 (00:22:27):

Your thrash band is probably going to sound like a triangulation of the three.

Speaker 6 (00:22:33):

And

Speaker 2 (00:22:34):

It's probably not going to be very original. However, if you're in a thrash band and you know your metal, but you spend all day listening to soundtracks or EDM or pop or whatever singer songwriter stuff, you're going to have something different to bring to the table and you're not going to have to engineer it. Hang on one second, Brendan. Bless God damn Brendan. That

Speaker 3 (00:22:57):

Was pretty metal.

Speaker 2 (00:22:57):

Edit that out. Okay. So yeah, you're not going to have to engineer it in. It's

Speaker 3 (00:23:01):

Not Leave it in, leave it in. That's

Speaker 2 (00:23:02):

A good stuff. Alright, leave it in. God damn, all

Speaker 3 (00:23:08):

It

Speaker 2 (00:23:08):

Sounded nice. Good.

Speaker 3 (00:23:09):

I dunno, going to segue into that and out of it again without it sounding weird.

Speaker 2 (00:23:13):

Oh, we can just leave it. Fuck it. But engineer, maybe that's a bad word. I say fabricate. I don't think it's something you can fabricate, but I think you need to honestly sit there and listen to other styles of music long enough to where they become part of your, I guess part of your DNA.

Speaker 3 (00:23:34):

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I've kind of had influence from blues players and stuff along. I would say blues. I mean people that are rock players that incorporate the blues in their playing. Guys like Gary Moore or Rory Gallagher or Andy Timmons is one of my all time favorite guitar players just because he can do it all. But he actually has got amazing tone and phrasing and all that kind of stuff. And I've always loved the way he approaches blues type rock playing because I suppose for me, if you listen to the older blues guys like Eric Clapton and BB King and all that kind of stuff, it's great, but for me it never really blew my skirt up. You know what I mean? It was like, say that one more time. You what? Sorry, I'm

Speaker 4 (00:24:25):

Kidding.

Speaker 3 (00:24:27):

Okay, sorry. I'll probably say something else stupid in about five minutes.

Speaker 4 (00:24:30):

Blew me skirt up. Okay, that's a new

Speaker 3 (00:24:32):

One. I

Speaker 4 (00:24:33):

Like that. That's a great one.

Speaker 3 (00:24:34):

Right. Okay. Well more of that came from, yeah, so I dunno, I like guys with a bit more edge to this sort of playing, you know what I mean? But still doing an older style, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (00:24:48):

Is this sacrilegious? If I say that I went to see BB King live and I fell asleep,

Speaker 3 (00:24:54):

I dunno. I dunno whether, I mean, I don't want to comment really, but yeah, I dunno.

Speaker 4 (00:24:59):

Yeah, now we have to delete the whole podcast episode because some guy on some forum is going to hear that comment. They're going to be like, oh

Speaker 3 (00:25:05):

Dude,

Speaker 2 (00:25:05):

That guy can come fight me.

Speaker 3 (00:25:07):

Well this the thing, this is the thing with the internet though, people don't understand that an opinion is an opinion and it's not fact. It's like

Speaker 2 (00:25:17):

Fact that I fell asleep.

Speaker 3 (00:25:19):

Yeah, yeah. Well that's fine. I mean he can come and beat you up for that. Just like that Blue Man group, huh?

Speaker 2 (00:25:24):

Yeah, I almost fell asleep at Blue Man Group as well. What is that? It's a Vegas show with a bunch of drummers in blue paint doing all kinds of crazy stuff. It's really cool. But

Speaker 4 (00:25:37):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:25:37):

I think I've seen that

Speaker 4 (00:25:39):

There wasn't enough guitar playing for us.

Speaker 2 (00:25:43):

No, but sorry, go on.

Speaker 5 (00:25:45):

I can't remember what I was saying now I'm just thinking of blue people in paint. Well

Speaker 2 (00:25:49):

You were talking about blue's guitar players with Edge.

Speaker 3 (00:25:51):

Oh right, yeah. I mean even like Steve Ray Vaughn for example. I mean he had a real kind of aggressive nature to his playing that for me, I instantly gravitated towards that kind of thing. So if I approach any style like that away from rock or metal or whatever, I do approach it with some degree of aggression as well. Maybe I should go and see a therapist or something.

Speaker 2 (00:26:18):

That's probably a good idea for all of us. So one question that I've got for you, speaking of great players, you've played with some pretty big names and also some names that aren't that big. Can you differentiate what the traits are between some of the really, really big name guys? What sets them apart?

Speaker 3 (00:26:42):

How do you mean? What playing wise or personality or?

Speaker 2 (00:26:44):

Yeah, playing wise, or is there something where you can point to these guys that are at the top, they tend to have something in common or they're just better?

Speaker 4 (00:26:53):

He wants to know why Inve is the only dude that can wear leather pants and kick on stage and get away with it.

Speaker 3 (00:26:59):

I dunno,

Speaker 4 (00:26:59):

Maybe he's got,

Speaker 3 (00:27:00):

It'd still be cool. Maybe he's got 20 pairs and just when he's got his costume change, he puts another pair on. I've got no idea. Or maybe he uses the correct method of wearing leather trousers and puts talcom powder on so he's got movement. Okay. I dunno. I mean, I've never wore a pair of leather trousers, but I've seen people and know people that have and do. So I know that that's a technique used. So yeah. What was the question again? I totally forgot. I'm thinking about Egg Bay.

Speaker 4 (00:27:32):

Sorry. My fault. Thank you, Joel. Thank you. It was an amazing reply though. That was talcum powder and leather pants. That's it.

Speaker 3 (00:27:40):

What sets, okay, right. I remember now what sets, I don't know. Most of the guys that I've met and know from that are big, well just big players in the industry. They're just really cool blokes. They're just normal people that they've either got lucky or they've worked really hard at what they do. And in my experience, it's normally the people that don't want to do the work and that haven't really got anywhere that seem to be the asshole demographic. You know what I mean? So I think that's one thing. And I think another thing as well is there's always this argument about nature versus nurture kind of thing. And I suppose it depends on the type of person you are, but for me, I'm quite an obsessive person. So if I really want to do something or learn how to do it, two things happens. One is I'll just do it even if I don't know what the fuck I'm doing and still manage to make something happen. And two, I'll be doing it for long enough where eventually I'll pick up some theoretical knowledge along the way and that will just help give names or anything to the stuff that I've already learned kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (00:28:47):

Let's discuss real quick an example of Andy James getting obsessed about something and what happens?

Speaker 3 (00:28:54):

Well, I mean if you want to talk about the November now, the mix thing, that's kind of a perfect example really. I mean, very quickly, I was on tour last year with Mark Chaman with my band, with his solo band. And before we'd even started off the tour, I'd had some real bad pain in my left hand. So I was taking codeine tablets, painkillers and stuff like that. I was taking them for longer than I should have been. Anyway, we were on the way and we had to stop in Switzerland overnight before getting to Italy for the first show. Did

Speaker 2 (00:29:32):

They take them at the border?

Speaker 3 (00:29:34):

No, no, no, no. What happened was I'd taken another friend of mine's painkiller, which is the same kind of thing, but just a lot stronger. And then when we got there, I had some alcohol and well, I dunno what the fuck happened, but it nearly killed me anyway, so it was a really bad experience. I was in the car park almost passing out, throwing up, and then for the next couple of days I was thinking about maybe I don't want to be alive anymore, kind of thing. It was pretty bad. I dunno what happened. Anyway, I thought after a few days that would subside and I'd be fine, but it took me eight months to get over that. So with anxiety attacks and panic attacks and being scared of going to sleep and all that kind of stuff, I was just like, I had no idea what had happened. So anyway, a bunch of therapy sessions later and stuff, and I'm okay now, but for the most part, I think it was probably back in January or whatever, my singer, Chris Clancy, he told me about this website because back in

Speaker 2 (00:30:35):

Oh, I know Chris.

Speaker 3 (00:30:37):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:30:38):

He's great.

Speaker 3 (00:30:39):

Yeah, so we are talking about mixing and stuff and I was mixing some demos and stuff and he's like, I think you've got a good ear. Maybe you should probably just give it a go and see what, so he said, there's this website, you can go and join and have a look and stuff. And I think when I joined it was neck deep or something you guys were doing. So it was that, and I had a go at that and I didn't really do a very good job of it, but it kind of made me realize that there was a lot of stuff that I needed to learn as well as just being able to hear what was wrong with certain mixes or anything like that. So I'd been watching all the videos and you, Joel and Joey talking about how to do this, how to do that.

(00:31:24):

Loads of really awesome tips pretty quickly kind of getting my head around it, messing about with some demos and stuff and then backing and forth with Chris going, look, what does this need? What does that need? And then he'd just give me some pointers and then I would start to get a picture for where the guitar should be, how to do your drums properly, how to organize sessions and stuff just to make the workflow a bit better. And then fast forward a little bit, he sort of said he knows I'm really into that kind of charco thing anyway with the death punch stuff and in this moment, and Papa Roach, see that album that Cain did is one of my favorite kind of pop rocky metal albums, you know what I mean? So I really loved the sound of that. Anyway, so when he told me that Kane was going to come on and do his thing, I was kind of like a little school girl, you know what I mean?

(00:32:16):

I was kind of quite excited about it. So I guess as soon as the stems were available, I got them and I spent probably a good couple of days just really trying to figure out how to get this to sound any good without really knowing a huge amount about what I'm kind of doing, to be honest. So I didn't even send the mix to Chris either. I just kind of did it. I got it and I played it in the car and on my headphones and I was kind of like, right, I think this is okay. I referenced it a bunch of times to the actual track. I mean, I couldn't get it anywhere near as loud. I mean honestly mean now I know how he did it, but I was kind of like, how the hell has he got this so loud? I mean, that's probably one of the loudest albums I've ever heard anyway compared to anything else.

(00:33:02):

But him and his dad seemed to be able to just make these productions that just sound so massive, he'd just wonder what they're doing. But interestingly enough, when I watched Kane do, especially the drums and stuff, he'd used some electronic hits as well in the kit, which is what I did. I've got some dubstep things in a folder and I used a sub bass drum and I used something on a snare as well, just I couldn't figure out how to get the snare sounding that big and that loud and still cut through the mix kind of thing. So I used about six samples.

Speaker 2 (00:33:35):

That's like the secret sauce on his drum sound, is it? I think so along with

Speaker 4 (00:33:41):

That, it's a massive contributing factor. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:33:43):

Along with everything else he does, the electronic samples make a huge difference. Do

Speaker 3 (00:33:49):

You know what? I think that maybe the reason why I used it is because when I read the synopsis of what everybody had to do, it said about electronic samples, and I wasn't really prepared for what that meant. I think what that meant was that the intro and everything and everything kind of running throughout the song had some hip hop elements and stuff in it as well. I didn't realize it was that. So I think I'd had these drum beats in a folder anyway that were already ready to just load into slate sampler and because I'd read that synopsis, I just thought, oh, maybe he was using these. So I think that's why I gave it a go. I just shoved them in and it made a massive difference to the kit.

Speaker 2 (00:34:30):

Let me just take a moment to pause and tell everybody listening, this is why we post these notes for you guys and why we take the time to get the guy, the guest mixer to write them out because they're not doing it for their health, they're doing it so that you guys have a little bit of direction in which to take your mix. You could go in a million different directions, but only one of them is right. And yeah, I just think it's cool that you read it and that somehow you came to that conclusion.

Speaker 3 (00:35:05):

Yeah, well I just added that to the stuff that I'd already learned about. I mean, the thing is as well with that drum thing, I mean I listened to a bunch of the acoustic kit and stuff and then the other thing was because they were saying about sample drums, I was expecting some kind of midi file to be in with the files, but it wasn't. So I went in and I drew the whole drum kit beat from start to finish. So I just drew the whole lot in used. So the mixture of the drums was actually drum forge, which is your expansion for it, which

Speaker 6 (00:35:40):

I

Speaker 3 (00:35:40):

That my expansion. Yeah. Yeah, it's brilliant. I love it. I've used that for a solo album that I've got coming out, which I've mixed in a bunch of other stuff, which I've kind of done separate from any other bands that I'm doing at the moment. But yeah, I just find it, I dunno, I've sat there with Superior for a long time and I don't really like it. I dunno why I can't get a good sound out of it. Most people seem to be able to do really well with it, but I don't really know what it is because anything like that, I use the drum forge thing and then I just use slate to load in the samples. And then what I do is I just copy the MIDI track onto the other one and then that just triggers the bass drum samples and then the rest of it overheads and all of that.

(00:36:25):

And then what I did was, because also in that synopsis as well, it said about using the real kit as glue. So that's basically what I did. I think I used the snare up and I used, because I like the idea of the stereo overheads with a mono as well, that it seemed to work really well with the kind of sample kit as well. So if I mute off all the overheads and everything, it was just the real kit underneath it just kind of dies and the glue just totally disappears. So yeah, that was cool. What else did I do? Yeah, see it was good for me. I'd never done singing vocals either, so I'd done a bunch of screaming stuff that Chris had sent me for some demos that we'd done. And then just

Speaker 2 (00:37:12):

You work with Chris Clancy and you've never done singing vocals?

Speaker 3 (00:37:16):

No, not mixed.

Speaker 2 (00:37:17):

Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 (00:37:18):

He does most of the production for the stuff that we

Speaker 2 (00:37:20):

Work on. Oh yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (00:37:22):

Makes sense. So this was kind of all part of the learning really, is to sort of work on things with vocals and stuff because obviously the only thing I do know how to get is a guitar tone because obviously being a guitar player and recording guest solos and stuff for people, that's probably the one thing that I am, I already kind of know what to get, but everything else is a bit of a new thing for me. So it's only really been this year I've been doing it. But yeah, the vocal thing, I mean, I think I only just used a DSR and gain reduction really, and then clip just to get it louder. So I'm kind of promoting your business, I guess by using

Speaker 2 (00:37:59):

All that stuff. Well, I mean you won fair and square in that mixed competition, so whatever works.

Speaker 3 (00:38:07):

It was a surprise. Definitely.

Speaker 4 (00:38:08):

I picked the top 20 and we kind of talked about this a little bit the other day when we were doing our mixed crit episode, but I mean the difference between the first, I would say top four or five mixes is usually a vastly different than the bottom five or in the top 20 versus the next 30 or 40 mixes in the whole lot. So usually the ones that stand out pretty well above the rest,

Speaker 3 (00:38:36):

Right? Yeah. I mean, I must admit, I don't envy you guys going through literally every mix just to kind of pick up the ones

Speaker 4 (00:38:44):

We love doing the events and all that stuff, but sitting and listening to 300 mixes is, it's pretty cumbersome me even taking the top 20, which is picked out of the top 50 is very tedious.

Speaker 3 (00:38:56):

Yeah, well, I mean, you guys do it every month. I mean, I've run guitar competitions for myself. Well one actually, because we had such a nightmare. We had four or 500 submissions and me and Nick, my partner, we had to sit and just watch literally every video. I mean, I don't want to sound horrible, but you can kind of gauge what it's going to be like in about the first 30 seconds.

Speaker 2 (00:39:18):

That's exactly what I was about to say. Can't you just skip most of them after 10, 20 seconds?

Speaker 3 (00:39:24):

You can do, but I dunno, I do feel bad in a way. You do feel like you have to give people a bit of a chance, even though I suppose whenever, because you guys mix professionally and do all that kind of thing. You must know when someone sends a mix. Yeah, if this is dog shit in the first five seconds, the rest of it's going to be

Speaker 4 (00:39:45):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:39:46):

Which is not to be horrible, but I think its experience tells you that, you know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (00:39:51):

Just the balance. If you're doing a radio rock song like Papa Roach for example, and the guitars come up and they're two DB louder than the vocals, immediately you're just disqualified. It doesn't matter how good the mix is.

Speaker 6 (00:40:01):

If

Speaker 4 (00:40:01):

You're not mixing a top 40 style mix with a top 40 style, how is that going to compete with all of the other songs in the top 40 that you normally want to compete against?

Speaker 6 (00:40:09):

So

Speaker 4 (00:40:10):

It's pretty easy and obvious. It's like if you're an experienced guitar player, you can watch a bunch of guitar players solo and immediately just watch their fingers and be like, okay, this person's just learning. This person has absolutely no vibrato. This person's bending technique is shit.

Speaker 6 (00:40:24):

This

Speaker 4 (00:40:25):

Person's pick attack is garbage. You just know right away.

Speaker 2 (00:40:27):

Yeah. So it sounds like you almost died and due to pain in the hand and almost dying, you somehow learned how to mix

Speaker 3 (00:40:37):

Out of it. Now the mix has been a bit of a, now the mix has kind of been a bit of a therapy stroke, I dunno, kind of thing for me to just focus on that isn't guitar and what I do for a living anyway. I mean, I've been well now for about four months signed off well, but yeah, I mean up until that point I was literally didn't really go out much. I didn't go anywhere or do anything, even though the internet might have people thinking otherwise. I mean, I came back from Nam and I was fucked. So yeah, for me it's been a bit of a sort of salvation in a way to have something else to focus my mind on. So that's pretty much what I've been doing. I've just been doing this and doing demos and just mixing things and working with stuff for the band between me and Chris and that he's been a massive help to me.

(00:41:34):

It kind of annoyed him. Actually, he introduced me to the site. He's been in the top 20 a few times, but never won it. He just said to me, he was like, you just surpassed everything that I've been trying to do for the last six years in three or four months. So thanks a lot, dickhead kind of thing. But I didn't do it on purpose. It was just, I think for me, I work solely on instinct. I do it with guitar playing. I'm doing it with this, although I'm learning along the way, I still, I've got a ton of stuff to learn and be able to do it consistently. You know what I mean? So for me, this is very much the kind of, right, well, I'll just throw myself in at the deep end. I'll mix it doesn't matter if I dunno what I'm doing or not.

(00:42:21):

Does it sound like the record? No. Well, I need work then, and I'll just keep doing it until it sounds, and I used to do that with guitar playing as well. I mean, I did it for a living for Lick Library for a long time, dissecting player styles and almost being a sort of guitar impressionist. So I think it does really train your ear to be able to hear what actually is and not what you think you are hearing kind of thing. I know people have that thing where some people are hearing something and it's totally not what the real thing actually is, and then you're like, you can't hear that

Speaker 2 (00:42:56):

When you see a cover that someone posts and they're playing things like hole steps off.

Speaker 6 (00:43:02):

It's

Speaker 2 (00:43:03):

Like, how do you not hear that?

Speaker 6 (00:43:04):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:43:07):

What is going on? How are you not? I get mad.

Speaker 4 (00:43:11):

I'll tell you guys a story. One time I had this, we'll call him a singer. I say that loosely come into my studio and this is a signed band. I mean, it was a small label. The band was definitely signed and they were on their way towards breaking pretty quickly. The singer was tone death. So it's like you have one job in this band and that's to sing and you can literally not hit a pitch. I had to have him sing each line a few words at a time, about 40 to 50 times each, and then autotune it into what it was supposed to be while singing to a reference guide. It was incredible,

Speaker 2 (00:43:45):

Joel,

Speaker 4 (00:43:45):

Some people just don't have it. That's all I'm saying. Joel.

Speaker 2 (00:43:48):

Great story, bro.

Speaker 4 (00:43:50):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:43:50):

Yeah, great story. Thanks. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. That was a good story.

Speaker 4 (00:43:56):

I'm going to take 10 scoops of pre-workout and come over there and find you. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:43:59):

That's fine. You should come visit, man. You've never visited me here. So how long did you spend on this mix? You said just a couple days, but was it like,

Speaker 3 (00:44:10):

Well, this is what happened? I was a bit in a bit of a panic actually. I sent the wrong one initially. I did two versions of it. I did two different masters. I couldn't decide whether I was going to send one that was a bit louder or slightly brighter than the last one I did. But no, I downloaded the stems on I think the 3rd of December and I've submitted it early morning the next day. So I probably spent about seven hours on it.

Speaker 2 (00:44:38):

And you want it in seven after. That's great. Alright. So that's another thing that we keep telling people, which is don't spend too long on these work at them, get it right. But if you are spending weeks on it, you're spending too long.

Speaker 4 (00:44:54):

Yeah, it's not realistic. I mean, in the pro leagues you get a half a day, maybe a couple days at max to mix a song, but I mean most of us are so busy when you're playing at that level, you don't have more than a couple hours to do it. So we don't sit there and obsess over the guitar tone for three weeks. We're just like, mm, sounds good next.

Speaker 3 (00:45:12):

Yeah, I mean I guess you probably have a bunch of mixed notes and that to work through as well, but I mean, yeah, I dunno if I'd be able to mix a song that quick. I mean, the thing is, I suppose the only thing is if you're working an environment where you can save a template and stuff, I suppose once you've done the mix for one song, unless you've got something that's just massively different, I should think all those settings work for every song. I think,

Speaker 2 (00:45:38):

Yeah, that makes a huge difference to work with templates. So this is kind of impressive because we were talking about earlier you get good at dialing in tones for the instrument that you're good at and you being a guitar player, I've heard how a lot of guitar players mix,

Speaker 6 (00:45:57):

Which

Speaker 2 (00:45:58):

Is guitar heavy, and this was more of a pop song that's supposed to be vocal heavy and you nailed it. And do you find it challenging to mix something that's vocal heavy or do you find yourself overly biased towards guitars in a

Speaker 3 (00:46:13):

Mix? No, no, not at all. I mean, I actually hate guitar. I'm just kind of like, isn't that the truth though? It's that frequency. It's like, God, you just, because I like the way those guys mix though. I mean, when you listen to anything that Kane or Kevin's done, they seem to have the guitar so present in their mixes. But the thing that really impresses me about the stuff that they do is the drums. And for me, whenever I'm listening to music now, if the drums suck, then the rest of it can fuck off. So for me, that's kind of the main thing. And the main thing I wanted to get right or try and get right in this mix was to just get somewhere close to what he was doing with that particular drum sound because just it's, I dunno, it's almost kind of tribally aggressive, I dunno how to describe it really.

(00:47:05):

It's just massive. A lot of metal bands and stuff in order to get the big guitars and stuff like those kill switch records that I mentioned or whatever, you'll notice that the kind of drum kits popping in the distance in the background and everything's so guitar driven. But actually I was referencing end of the heartache the other day to just make sure that I wasn't getting paranoid about my own solo album mix. Because when I play it in my car, the kind of two to 4K range is just ridiculous, especially on, it's a new car and it's one of those crappy new stereos that doesn't seem to have an amp that's got enough headroom for the speakers that it's driving through. You end up with all that high end and then it's just bouncing off the glass and that you think, oh God, there's just so much whistle frequency going on in this.

(00:47:51):

I'm going to have to go and literally duck out every horrible high-end frequency I can hear in the mastering stage just because I've fucked up my mix. But I put on end of the heartache in there and it was twice as bad and I was thinking, oh actually I don't feel so bad anymore because that album for me, I suppose it was because it was the introduction to a lot of my metal listening, if you like. I love that mix. I mean, even now I can sort of hear, well, maybe it's a bit harsh, but I still love the sound of it. So if you can get away with that being the way it is compared to what I've mixed and then I'm, I suppose that's just the importance of referencing rather than just getting too strung out on your own mix and worrying about whether this is right or that's right, or just listening to someone that stood the test of time. I think that was like a Grammy nominated, well it was a Grammy nominated song on that. So I'm thinking, wow, that's obviously fine then to leave that high end in there.

Speaker 2 (00:48:49):

Yeah, it's good to use reference mix as like a north star because you can definitely lose your way when mixing, especially if you've been at it for a while. Reference mix can help show you if you're being crazy or not because sometimes we trick ourselves.

Speaker 3 (00:49:06):

Yeah, I mean it's interesting you say about not spending too long in a mix. I wonder, I mean, I dunno if you guys are doing your own music necessarily now, or whether you just kind of used to do it, don't do it anymore, and you just spend all your time mixing other stuff. But I suppose would either of you guys find it easier to just mix someone else's stuff and then just close the door on it rather than if you were doing your own stuff and then be Hell

Speaker 4 (00:49:32):

Yeah. Hell yeah. Absolutely. I can't even get a guitar tone on my own stuff. I don't work on my own stuff very often, but what I do, I can't even get a damn guitar tone that I like because I'm like, oh, this sounds good, this sounds good, this sounds great. This is good. This is good. I like all of it. I don't know what to pick.

Speaker 2 (00:49:47):

Yeah, I'm more like, I hate this, I hate this, I hate that this sucks. I want to kill myself. Done. That's more what it's like the complete opposite of Joel. I've always, even from before my band got signed, I tried to hire people to mix my stuff and that's why I hired James Murphy before my band was signed. Even though I had a studio and I guess I could have done it myself. I wanted someone better than me who was objective, as objective as you can be to come in and mix it because it's really fucking hard to mix your own stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:50:24):

Yeah, I mean, just on a slightly different note with my website, I edit all the videos now and do everything, but I dunno, sometimes I just think, am I being too arrogant to think that? Because you've got all these other guys that they set out and they do their careers and they get paid for it and that's what they do for a living. You are just some guitar player that swans about thinking he's cool and then you just, you're like, am I arrogant enough to think that I could probably do the same job as this guy who does it for a living and actually probably do it as good if not better. So bollocks, I'm going to learn how to do it myself. I mean, we were paying a guy to do academy videos and it'd be like, I wish you'd have told me that my beard was kind of going off 90 degrees to the left or my hat was about to fall. Off the back of my head, I look a total bellend and why? Because nobody's going to care about this.

Speaker 4 (00:51:20):

Hold on a second, right? What the hell is a ball?

Speaker 3 (00:51:24):

A penis? Yeah, it's the shape of the end of your knobs.

Speaker 4 (00:51:30):

I learned that word

Speaker 3 (00:51:30):

Yesterday.

Speaker 2 (00:51:32):

I knew that one already, but I had never heard swan along. I like that. Oh,

Speaker 3 (00:51:37):

Swanning about, yeah. I dunno. How does S one Swan, I dunno, swanning about

Speaker 2 (00:51:41):

Just as a guitar player? Yeah, well that's the beauty of the modern age and that's kind of when we decided to start nail the mix and do this whole thing that we're doing. We just kind of saw that this is the future of production is guys like you saying, wait a second, I can do this. And then learning how to do it.

Speaker 3 (00:52:01):

So you are cleverly kind of going, well, we know this is going that way. People aren't hiring producers anymore, so we'll teach people how to do it themselves. So we still have a career, but then producers around you are kind of dropping like flies.

Speaker 4 (00:52:16):

Yes, but no, because you'll never be able to replace a topnotch or even close to topnotch person. You know what I mean? Like a genius producer or even a really fricking good one

Speaker 3 (00:52:25):

Is

Speaker 4 (00:52:25):

Always going to have value in a role. Same thing with a mixer or a mastering engineer. I mean, there's some people that just have it and some people that do not. But at the same time it's just like there are more people that want to make music than ever. So why not help them make it better? Because a lot of guys don't care about what the guitar is, if it's run through this piece of gear or that they just want to get a good guitar tone. They want to write their song and listen to it and enjoy it and not have it sound like absolute shit, 19 85, 1 mic in the room demo. And so why not try to cover the whole spectrum from people that want to do it professionally and aspire to do so, as well as people that just want to make and record their own music and we encourage it. I think that's awesome that so many people can make music now and make it listenable.

Speaker 3 (00:53:12):

Yeah, so it's a killer idea. I mean, honestly, watching some of these guys that are obviously at the top of their game, including you guys and that, it's just like, wow. I mean, I love the fact that you are limiter on everything. I think that's brilliant. I'll tell you what, I didn't really know how to tackle base, and I think that's what I did on that Papa Roach mix. I literally just got the left hand side of an L one and I just pulled it all the way down and then just controlled the volume with the out ceiling. I was just like, right, that's the correct way. There's literally no movement in this whatsoever. It's brilliant.

Speaker 4 (00:53:46):

That's probably why I liked your mix

Speaker 5 (00:53:48):

So much. You could say

Speaker 3 (00:53:50):

It's the L one running throughout.

Speaker 2 (00:53:53):

It's kind of like the force, I guess. Yeah. So, hey, we're almost out of time, but we've got some questions from the crowd

Speaker 3 (00:54:01):

Mind

Speaker 2 (00:54:01):

If we ask you a few?

Speaker 3 (00:54:03):

No, no, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (00:54:04):

Cool. This one we already asked. Well, you already told us when you joined. Nailed the mix. I'm not going to ask that one. So, okay. Joey Ez asking Key to a great solo guitar tone, question mark,

Speaker 3 (00:54:16):

Mid range and not too much gain. That's about it really. Pick attack. Yeah, well, you kind of get that out the mid if you've got it. I mean, the trouble is if you dial the mid all the way back, you're just going to end up with that kind of wasp in Aja horrible tone, and you're not going to get any kind of attack, you know what I mean? Whereas, I mean, normally what I do, I'll just set up the base at, I don't know, seven or whatever. I almost always turn the presence off. I dunno what it is about presence. It's almost adding in more of that high end shit that you don't want. So I just use the treble and the mids kind of over halfway and then get a good balance between the mid and the high end. So it's not really screeching, but it's enough to get the attack.

(00:55:00):

I mean, using the net pickup quite a lot as well, it's a good way of being able to gauge how much top end you need. If you're getting just enough pick attack with using the net pickup when you put it onto the bridge pickup, it should be okay. You are not going to get too many shrill frequencies. And also I hear a lot of guitar players using way too much gain and it just causes a lot of noise. So just kind of work on your technique a bit so you don't have to use so much gain. I think that's probably

Speaker 2 (00:55:28):

It. The one thing that Amel and I always used to do is we would practice apart from the band, we would get together and we would run through the songs with gain at 20% almost clean. And just to keep us honest, and it really made us a lot better. It made recording and playing live so much easier and it made me such a better guitar player to have to play like that because exposed and you can't hide behind anything.

Speaker 3 (00:55:57):

No, exactly. Especially if you've got a picking technique as ridiculous as Amal as well. I dunno. I mean, we were talking about it just before we came in this podcast, but yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:56:09):

We're talking about Amal Worr, by the way, people,

Speaker 3 (00:56:11):

Yeah. Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. I mean, obviously there's some great pickers out there like Petrucci and Gilbert and stuff, but it's more in a kind of linear fashion, whereas Amel just seems totally unhindered by direction or that there's another string that he's got to worry about. He just burns through it. It's nothing,

Speaker 2 (00:56:33):

I don't understand it, dude.

Speaker 3 (00:56:34):

Yeah, I've never seen anything like it really. And I can't figure out what, I mean, I'm pretty sure he's an economy picker as well, and if he is, how does he get that much attack out of using a technique that seemingly doesn't have any power in it? So

Speaker 4 (00:56:52):

Yeah, that's interesting. Economy picking is really hard to deliver any sort of attack. I mean, it's such a smooth,

Speaker 2 (00:56:57):

Oh, but he's all attack. But the thing is that he's very, very mapped out about how and when he's going to pick. And so he plays a lot of guitar, but he also, not just blaze, but he analyzes his picking like crazy. I've never seen anything like it either, but the way that he lays it out across the fretboard and which strings he's going to play, how he's going to pick why all that has worked out for it to not just sound great, but be totally fluid. So once you understand what he's doing, once you wrap your brain around it, it makes perfect sense and it's actually the easiest way you'll ever play anything. What's crazy. So it allows him, once you get the mechanics of it, it's way, way easy. And I mean, it's fucking hard, but I guess what I'm trying to say is once you figure it out, it's not hard anymore and it's actually designed in a way to where once you wrap your head around it, it's so fluid that you can play hard as fuck.

Speaker 3 (00:58:05):

No, I totally understand. I mean, that's kind of the way I approach it really. Picking was one of those things that I always struggled with. So seemingly now it's probably my strongest technique because of that obsession with trying to get it right, but to the detriment of say, other techniques like sweet picking or whatever. But

Speaker 2 (00:58:24):

Picking real picking is so much more important than sweet

Speaker 4 (00:58:27):

Picking. Yeah, well it is. Yeah. Guitar player fight. Now I'm with you. Alternate picking is really a pain in the ass. That was something I really struggled with for many years. And then one day I just sat down, I'm like, fuck this, I'm going to get good at this. And I practiced speed picking for maybe 12 hours a day, and after about three and a half weeks, one day I woke up and I could play a hundred BPM faster. And I'm like, okay, this is cool. Now I get it. I understand what I was doing wrong.

Speaker 3 (00:58:56):

Yeah, it's a feeling once you memorize the feeling of when you nail it and you do it enough times, you're like, right, that's what it feels like. And weirdly enough, I've noticed with my pick technique actually, that the pick doesn't leave the string at all. It's very much a kind of push stroke through the string rather than actually whacking it, if that's even a word.

Speaker 2 (00:59:14):

That's a word.

Speaker 3 (00:59:15):

But most of the time now, I've discovered that most of my playing naturally starts on an upstroke. So things like doing two open string picking and that kind of thing is way more natural for me now. I can't do anything with a downward motion. Everything's always upstrokes, but it's still alternate picking. It just starts the opposite way around. And I teach that concept as well, and some people, it's really helped them out. And other people, they're still not quite getting their head around it.

Speaker 2 (00:59:42):

As a matter of fact, one of the things that Amel taught me that made me way better right away was to focus on my upstrokes, because your downs strokes come a lot more naturally to you, but your upstrokes are 50% of your playing. So if you work on your upstrokes, you're probably going to be 50% better, at least.

Speaker 4 (01:00:03):

Yeah. I mean, Hetfield used to only play with down picks. So I'm just saying you these upstrokes, you can, but real men just chug and play down picks.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):

Yeah. The thing is though, when you wear your guitar that low, you can't reach to do an upstroke anyway. That's literally the

Speaker 4 (01:00:19):

Full stretch. Exactly. So that's it. Why set yourself up for failure? Just down pick metal. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):

Exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):

That used to be a legitimate thing in guitar back in the day. The amount of downs, strokes you had on a riff was an actual thing of pride. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):

Oh yeah. Ask yourself, what would Hetfield do? I mean, if Clint Eastwood could play guitar, he would only use downs. Strokes. Most definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):

Fuck yeah. If Clint Eastwood could play guitar, I think that he, James Hetfield and Zach Wild would have a band.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):

Possibly with

Speaker 5 (01:00:45):

Chuck Norris on drums,

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):

Probably. So yes,

Speaker 5 (01:00:48):

There would be no upstrokes though.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):

So here's a question from Charlie Williamson, which is when writing a solo, do you tend to improvise it on the spot or do you write the solo beforehand?

Speaker 3 (01:01:00):

I probably do about 400 takes of the section that I'm going to play over and improvise it until certain things like

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):

Actually 400 takes. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):

It's been known. Yeah. I will sit there and just because I enjoy playing as well, and if I enjoy the part, I will just keep looping and looping and looping and then I'll forget. But then I'll kind of look at how many takes I've done and it'd be like 400 odd. But yeah, it's ridiculous. But that's pretty much how I do it. I don't listen to a song, get a preconceived idea of what I'm going to do. I'll just have the section play it a bunch of times. There'll be kind of licks that are go-to things like when you improvise, there's always things that you just naturally gravitate towards the same old kind of patterns and the set and the other. And then if I'm kind of bored with that and that doesn't really work, then I'll maybe maneuver some of that around to be a bit more interesting.

(01:01:55):

I mean, for me, I try and record solos incorporating anything new that I've learned recently. So it forces me, I mean, if I'm doing my own stuff or whatever and I have to be able to recreate it, most of the solos and stuff that I write is incorporating things that I've probably only just learned. So it keeps me on my toes in terms of like, right, I've just learned this lick. I'm going to put it it into this solo. Obviously try and make it as musical as possible. It's not all about the lick that I've just put in, but it stops me from playing the same thing all the time. Because if I did just sit there with a solo, yeah, I could probably just wing it first couple of takes. I could get a solo that I haven't messed up or whatever, and we could use that. But then it would, every time I did a solo over the similar kind of thing, it would be that same solo in just a different order or whatever. So that's probably the most important thing that I have in my mind when doing any new solos or whatever, is just to try and think about anything new that I have learned recently or been working on and try and work that in somehow. So it keeps it a little bit fresher than it normally would be.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):

Makes sense. Here's one from Paul Forfeit, which is what's your guitar warmup routine? Do you spend a lot of time warming up or do you just go for it and mixing? How do you not mix the guitar louder than all the other instruments? Wink, wink.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):

Well, I mean, we talked about that with the drums and stuff because actually the song that I mixed for the website was, it's a great vocal. I mean, it's a really good song. I mean, I'm not surprised. It's number one, it is such a memorable kind of song. I mean, I've always been a fan of Papa Rach anyway since the Infest days. So I don't think they've really done any wrong in my eyes as far as writing and putting stuff together. So it was quite cool actually to work on the vocals for this song as well. There was so many of 'em. So yeah, I say the guitar was the probably least interesting thing about it to be quite honest with you. So I suppose everything else just sort of took precedent over that really

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):

Real quick, let me just say, Joel has to go, but we should keep going. We've got more questions. Well,

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):

Does

Speaker 4 (01:04:06):

He need another shit? Yeah, I got to go pick up my car and all that fun stuff. So

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):

Fuck you Joel.

Speaker 4 (01:04:12):

Andy, thanks. That was awesome. You're hilarious. It was a very good time. Cheer.

Speaker 5 (01:04:17):

Okay, cheer. Cheers. We're going to keep going. Cheer nice to meet you anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):

Fuck you Joel.

Speaker 3 (01:04:21):

Alright

Speaker 4 (01:04:21):

Guys.

Speaker 5 (01:04:22):

Alright, see later.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):

Alright. Yeah, well we didn't need him anyways.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):

Sorry. Yeah, that was a two part question, so I think I skipped, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):

Well he was asking about your warmup routine.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):

Oh no, I don't really have one. I'd probably just sit and play the same kind of lick that just comes to my mind when I get up, because normally when I get up and there's a guitar near or whatever, I'll just to kind of wake myself up, I'll sit and just play and do a bunch of stuff. But I haven't really played guitar that much this year, to be honest. Not really for pleasure. It is more been for if I'm needed to do videos for my website or do anything. So I haven't really worried about whether or not I'm going to lose some kind of dexterity or whatever. And I think a lot of it comes down to this new pick that I've got with Dunlop. It's a new signature pick that me and Chris Johnson have been working on and it's done now, but there's something about this pick that means that I don't have to warm up. I dunno what it is, but it just cuts through the string and I just feel so comfortable.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):

I'm not stressing Well if that's not a good sales pitch for the pick, I don't know what is.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):

Yeah, yeah. You don't have to warm up with this pick. It's just instant awesomeness right off the bat.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):

What is this? So alright, you got to tell me a little more about that piece,

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):

Your interest now, haven't I? Right. Yeah, maybe I'll take a photo and send it to you and you can post it up on the thing, but

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):

Sure.

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):

Yeah, it's not like a new pick that Dunlop have come up with. It was a pick actually that I was using a lot six or seven years ago playing with Sacred and stuff when I first joined. And it's just a jazz tone 2 0 8. But the thing is with the material that they made it out of, it's like polycarbonate, so it's a little bit spiky in the high end. So I've been on this kind of pick quest for ages, people that have come to see me or clinics and gigs and stuff. Whenever we've got onto the subjects of picks, it's always been a So what pick are you using this week? So it is like a totally different thing, but I decided I was going to go back to those polycarbonate ones I thought, I know I stuck with those for a good couple of years at least.

(01:06:41):

That was the longest serving pick I've ever had. There must've been something about it that was good. And then when I started playing with them again, it reminded me, actually it was the material that kind of put me off of it. So we've been through about three different signature picks we've done up at this point. I think Chris is kind of losing his patience with me going, look, if we do another pick, this has got to be the one because we're not doing another run of 5,000 feed just, I dunno, just lose down the back of the sofa or whatever.

(01:07:12):

So yeah, I was like, right, okay, I've been using Tex for a while now. Can we try and do that pick but with Tex? And he was like, yeah, I'll have a word to dun up guys and see what they say. So he came back with some good news and said, look, we're we're going to do you a run. And actually no, before that he had some three mil prime tone ones, which are kind of the same shape, and they were sitting around the office and he went, do you know what? We made these a while ago. Nobody's using them. I mean these were three mil picks, Mineo two mil. And he went, look, we'll just send them to you and see how you get on. Nobody's using them. No one gives a fuck about these picks. They've been collecting dust for ages Anyway, he sends them to me and of course because it's a pick that everybody else hates, I instantly fall in love with it.

(01:07:57):

And I'm like, right, this is definitely a step in the right direction. And that was made out of Tex, but I found it was a little bit too thick and I didn't like the pick grip that it had on it because a bit like a big stubby in the middle where they've dipped it and put some carving into the pick and I don't really like that. So yeah, he agreed to do the Tex version of the 2 0 8 and he sent them to me and I've been using them since the beginning of this year and I probably won't ever use anything ever again. And I can say that hand on heart, these things have just kind of changed my life in terms of consistency.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):

So you got it here first. You don't need to warm up if you use these picks.

Speaker 3 (01:08:36):

No, but I'll send you a picture so everyone can see what they are.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):

Yeah, please do. So here's a question from Hon, which are, what are your go-to pickups?

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):

Well, the ones I've got in my guitars right now, they're the EMG Metalworks 57 66. And they're actives. They've been pretty much, when ESP said they wanted to do a signature guitar with me, we were initially just going to put the 85 in the bridge and 60 in their neck, what I was using for a long time. And while I was over at Jam play filming some stuff for them, I had a couple of days where I left Cleveland to go to San Francisco to do some filming for EMG. And when I was there, because Chris, who now works for Dunlop, was working for EMG at the time, and he said to me, he said, look, we've got some new pickups. Nobody is using them apart from the only other guy that's using them is Richie Falconer from Judas Priest. And I was like, right, okay.

(01:09:41):

He came up with this idea that he wanted something that was a little bit hotter but more kind of retro looking with the metal casing and stuff. So they came up with these 57 66, which actually I think if my memory serves me correctly, was actually a mistake by EMG because they'd wired one of the pickups wrong and sent them to Richie Falconer. And then he rang them up and said, what have you done with this pickup? And I went, oh right. I dunno. Somehow he knew what it was supposed to be and then he realized it wasn't what it was supposed to be, it was something else. And then they had a bit of a revelation. They were like, oh right, yeah, it's not supposed to be like that, but if it sounds great then we'll leave it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):

Happy accident.

Speaker 3 (01:10:25):

Yeah, exactly. So I think it's got something to do with the pole pieces or something. I dunno, you'd have to speak to Rob Turner to find out the exact details. I'm probably remembering it wrong, but I know there was something wrong with it that got left. So anyway, they had another set and Chris just gave me them. He said, look, put 'em in your guitars, see what you think. Because at this point we'd already come up with the design for the signature guitar and it was going to be all black with black pickups and everything. But these pickups he gave me were Chrome and I put them in the guitar when I got back to Cleveland, instantly when I looked to the guitar before I even played the thing to hear what the pickup sounded like, I was like, well, this has just completed the look of the guitar because the chrome pickups with the matte black just looked amazing to me.

(01:11:09):

And I was kind of thinking, well, I hope the pickups play as good as they sound. And anyway, I plugged them in and stuff and yeah, I dunno, right off the bat it just had a real liveliness, almost like there's a preamp fitted in the volume control or something where you hit it and you get a bit of extra gain. I've noticed now going back to the setup that I used before, I feel like I'm getting a lot less out of the pickups than using these ones. They're pretty lively, but it is a nice lively, it's not uncontrollable. You just feel like you can play anything kind of thing. So there you go. You don't have to warm up if you use my picks and if you use those pickups and

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):

Your picks,

Speaker 3 (01:11:47):

You can play anything. Yeah, so there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):

Perfect. Okay, so Andrew Hoang tends asking a lot of shredders just do technical wanky and not really musical melodic stuff, but Andy can play really, really long lines of straight shred and have it maintained a sense of melody. What is his mindset while writing guitar solos to achieve such great results? By the way, just bought your hybrid picking lesson pack. Super stoked to get started.

Speaker 3 (01:12:16):

Sweet. Thanks for buying that. Yeah, well just exactly what he said, the melodic thing is always in my mind, there's kind of ways, I mean I suppose this is probably bringing back to what we were talking about earlier about certain techniques being your strengths and others being weaknesses. I've always found techniques like sweet picking to be very kind of unusable for that very reason. Unless you're kind of Jeff Loomis or Jason Becker or that guys that actually really do something with that technique that's just ridiculous. I dunno. Or say Frank and Barley for example, I don't want to leave him out, kind of the guy that started it all, but, but a lot of that kind of monotonous up and down arpeggio thing, just, it never really sat well with me. I realized from an early time in my career of playing guitar that arpeggios were definitely a way of being able to cover a lot of the neck very quickly.

(01:13:16):

So I suppose when Paul Gilbert came along and with his concept of string skipping and stuff like that, it was really great because you can sequence the notes in such a way that actually make the lines and arpeggios sound way more melodic. And that was kind of a good start for me, really was experimenting with how many different ways that I could use that technique in order to get melodic sounding passages and stuff like that. Also, I suppose it depends on influences as well, because I naturally gravitate towards guys that are very technical, but very melodic guys like Tony McAlpine, John Pucci, Vinnie Moore. I mean there's hundreds of guys, but they always manage to maintain a sense of melody with the way that they played. And I suppose that's just stuck with me really. And plus the fact with a lot of the earlier demos that I'd done with songs and stuff, because I'd got strayed from the path a little bit and really did just have a time where I was just concentrating on technique and nothing else.

(01:14:18):

It was pointed out to me by non-music people that they're like, yeah, it sounds like you really know what you're doing, but I dunno what you're doing. And to me that just makes me not want to listen to it. So I guess that really it's being able to play music to people that aren't necessarily guitar players and still get what you're trying to do. And using that as a bit of a rule of thumb has helped a lot as well in terms of being able to write music that can speak to people other than guitar players. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):

Speak to actual music listeners.

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't want to say the average person that makes this seem that I'm somehow better than they are playing the music and they're just listening to it. But yeah, the average listener, I suppose mean if you think about the percentage of the population, there's probably more people that don't play an instrument than people that do.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):

Yeah, for sure. Alright, here's one from Ole Nova Kovski, which is, did you have any career plan or strategy when you were beginning to emerge as a guitar player? I'm asking that because I've been playing hundreds of local gigs with an amazing band in the past few years, but I'm struggling to get to the next level of my career.

Speaker 3 (01:15:32):

Okay. Well I dunno how long we've got, but it's kind of a weird situation for me because

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):

Go for it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:42):

I mean playing, I was obviously playing in bands and stuff in college and then those same guys, we stayed in touch and we had cover bands and stuff while we were doing day jobs. My last day job was sitting doing insurance. People ring up and go, oh, I've crashed my car. And I got to tell them, sorry, you're fucked. Or Yeah, we can sort it out kind of thing. But obviously it wasn't really what I wanted to do and I guess in my own mind and other people saying to me like, oh, you really should be doing this for a living, or why are you just doing that and doing pub gigs or whatever. And I suppose it never really occurred to me to properly go for a music, a career in music. I mean, I suppose I just wanted to be able to do something because guitar for me wasn't really, I want to grow up and be a rock star.

(01:16:34):

I was pretty useless at school and stuff like that. It was more a case of something that I understood from a young age and I did it as a social acceptance kind of thing. Once I started to be able to play a little bit, I noticed that kids that maybe thought I was probably a bit of a loser before were starting to think, oh yeah, actually he's pretty good at that. It's pretty cool. I can't do that and he can do something that I can't do. So I dunno, maybe that makes him all right kind of thing. So there's that and then I dunno really, and then just doing gigs and stuff like that. But I suppose the more and more people said, oh, maybe you should sort of think about doing it professionally. That's when you start to kind of think, well how would I go about doing that?

(01:17:17):

I've got no contacts, no idea. I dunno what I'm going to do. All I've done is just look at these players that the other side of the Atlantic that seemed to be massive players and I'm just thinking, well, what am I going to contribute to that? So anyway, I was working one day and I got a guitar magazine and I saw that it was a guitar competition being advertised. It was called Guitar Hero I think, and it was a national thing. They were taking auditions and stuff, people come down and the whole event was sponsored by Ernie Ball. I've met the guys in Ernie Ball much earlier because when I went to GIT in London after college I got to meet Vinnie Moore and that he came in and did a masterclass and then I got up on stage and we jammed and stuff and then started chatting and then I got to meet the guy that was part of Ernie Ball back then. So I was kind of like, well, I know these guys run pretty good competitions. That was a competition thing as well. So I thought, no, fuck it, I'll lent her.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):

So this is just normal for you doing these competitions?

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):

No, not really. He came into GIT to do a clinic and then it was like five guys get up on stage and jam with Vinny.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):

Then

Speaker 3 (01:18:33):

The guy at Ernie Ball picked me as the winner, and then I went off to do another jam, which was at one of the national guitar shows in Birmingham. I mean, I didn't win or whatever, but I kind of messed it up because I didn't really understand what we had to do. So I was one of the only guys that didn't read the sort of small print. I suppose maybe that's why I read everything now is because, do you know what I mean? Because I never used to and then things go wrong. So always read the small print.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:06):

So anyway, I entered it and I went through a bunch of heats and stuff and then they called me back and said, oh, come back and do it. You're through to the next bit. And then I'd go and do it and then I'd wait, and then they called me back and go, yeah, you're back. And then eventually it got to the live show and they're like, yeah, we want to bring you back as one of the finalists. And I think there was five of us. So yeah, the competition was actually being judged by a guy called giz, but who he played guitar in a Prodigy for a while and since it's become a sort of friend, if you like. And then there was Jamie Humphreys as well, who is one of the guys who he does all of the demos for Ernie Ball and stuff like that.

(01:19:51):

He's played with, he plays with Brian May, I think at the moment, doing the Queen Queen thing or something. And then there was Blaze Bailey, who was the old, well, the other maiden singer I suppose, or one of them. So it was a pretty good judging panel from people that were already in the industry and stuff. So I got up, played my own original song from start to finish, pretty good reception, got down. Anyway, long story short, they call out all the winners and then my name wasn't called and I was like, all right, I've obviously fucked this up. I was kind of getting ready to get my coat and leave. So at this point they announced that there's an overall winner of the whole thing. So I thought, well, I better stick around for this. And anyway, they called out my name and I couldn't believe it, so I ended up won a guitar and an amp and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:20:37):

Nice.

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):

And then, yeah, it was through that I mentioned Jamie, but he actually worked for this company called Lick Library, and I dunno if you've heard of them, but it's like a company where it does all this instructional stuff, everything that you can ever hope to learn or want to learn or think of. So we kept in touch and stuff, hadn't heard from him for a while, and at this point I'd quit my job. I was just teaching because I didn't want to do that job anymore anyway, regardless of how my career was panning out or not panning out at that time. So I used to just go down to the local music shop every day and annoy my friend Greg, because I'd go in there and play all the guitars and never buy anything. So I got a phone call from Jamie and he sort of said, oh, I've got a potential offer for you.

(01:21:34):

I dunno if you'll be interested, but he passed me over to the guy who runs Lick Library, Kim, his name is, and yeah, we had a chat and stuff and that went pretty cool. And then he booked me in, he said, look, do you want to come in and do a screen test and stuff? And I've heard some really good things about you and we are looking for somebody to do more of the shred thing. They had guys Guthrie Go and Dave Kilminster, but because they were fairly busy, I think doing other things, they probably wanted somebody that was a bit more readily available to just come in regularly and do stuff that weren't out on tour or whatever. And at this point, I wasn't doing anything. I wasn't in a cover band and teaching local kids guitar. So yeah, I went in, the first lesson I did was get the Funk out by Extreme.

(01:22:21):

And yeah, I did that, a bunch of lessons and stuff and I did it. They edited it, it all looked great, the playing, they were really happy with it and stuff. And then he called me up and said, yeah, do you want the gig then? And I was just like, yeah, okay, sweet. So the YouTube thing for them was just sort of taking off, and I think I was fortunate at the time to get in at that point and do videos that did do quite well. They became fairly popular and people liked my staff and there was kind of requests coming in for like, oh, can you do this, that and the other. And then I started doing Pantera Mega Death and all that kind of stuff, which was sort of furthering my metal knowledge. I was learning as I was going kind of thing. But yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):

One thing led to another and here you are.

Speaker 3 (01:23:11):

Yeah, pretty much. I mean I did that for a number of years and then I was sort of doing the guitar shows and stuff, and then I started getting offers from other websites and things, oh, do you want to come and do this? And sometime sometimes it was a bit of a kind of conflict of interest crept in a little bit. So it was a bit of a minefield I suppose, when they'd obviously created a bit of a monster with what I was doing. Other people were keen to get me in to do stuff because maybe they liked my approach or they liked the way I played and stuff. And then it was a bit of a platform for me to start putting some instrumental stuff out there. But that was really networking through forums and stuff. Most notably the John Pucci forum, which at the time was kind of a hub of bubbling players, Rick Graham, Tom Quail, I think guys like Travis Montgomery, and then you had Misha Mansor in there as well. He was just posting up demos of his stuff under Bob. I mean, who would've known that? It would've ended up being the fucking massive

(01:24:21):

Band that's periphery now. But it is kind of cool seeing it sort of grow from that to where it is now. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):

Both the John Petru forum and the Andy Nee forum.

Speaker 3 (01:24:30):

Yeah, well, I suppose if you were more of a recording guy, I mean, I didn't even know who Andy Sneak was at that time, but yeah, the forums were vie was another good forum as well. So yeah, I think there was just this time where forums seemed to be an important place to network and put your name out there and gauge whether people liked what you were doing or not. And then I sent a bunch of demos out to some labels. One got back to me, which is a New York label called Graveyard Records, and they put out my second album, which I did myself horribly, but they signed off on the mix and they went, yeah, it's fine. We've heard worse. I was like, okay, so

Speaker 2 (01:25:14):

That's encouraging,

Speaker 3 (01:25:16):

But it kind of did. All right. There's some songs on that that people still ask me to play and teach and stuff, and then it grows from there really. But it wasn't really until I hit my thirties, well, I had a long-term relationship and that kind of broke up and then I kind of just went off the rails a little bit. I started kind of thinking, right, fuck this, I'm going to move in with my mate, literally just start my life again. And then I spent probably from about 30 to 34 just playing all over the world, doing clinic tours, going to Nam, networking, meeting people. Some of the scenarios where I've met people like me and Pad from Bullet for My Valentine are good friends now, but we met at Frankfurt and we were both just totally off our faces on Jagermeister and we just kind of hit it off, you know what I mean? And we stayed in touch ever since I met Mark Tramonti at a steel pump for concert, I was walking backwards through a cloud, a cloud through a crowd drunk I or

Speaker 2 (01:26:19):

Through a cloud.

Speaker 3 (01:26:21):

Yeah, well, I dunno. But yeah, I dropped my wallet and I was looking for it, but I was kind of walking backwards. I was looking for it. Anyway, I sort of bumped into a few people and there was this one guy I bumped into and I quite hard and and I just sort of turned around and went, oh, sorry mate. And he was like, fucking hell, it's March money. And he knew me from this sort of lick library stuff. So we just sort of stood there chatting in Disney World drunk,

Speaker 2 (01:26:48):

I think because a lot of people don't know that he's a sick guitar player.

Speaker 3 (01:26:52):

Totally

Speaker 2 (01:26:53):

Like a never ending guitar student. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:26:56):

He loves it. Honestly. I mean, I saw him the other week just like whenever he is in town or he's kind of near to where I live, he's like, oh, you're going to have to come out and we're going to sit down and trade some more licks and stuff. So it is pretty cool that he's just totally not this guy that you would expect. He's been in one of the biggest bands throughout the nineties and all the stuff he's done and that he's still kind of a geek for the guitar thing. And it's great because you get something out of it. Obviously you learn a ton from him for some of the styles that he's got, especially with his finger style and stuff. So the licks that you're trading aren't necessarily the same kind of thing. But yeah, it is just great when you network and you just kind of put yourself out there. I think you'd be surprised at who you can meet and the kind of relationships you can forge just through being normal and having a love of a mutual thing.

Speaker 2 (01:27:54):

I think it's interesting that you say how this networking stuff that you've done is just basically hanging out. We've had a lot of guests talk about how really the word networking is thrown around a lot, but in all reality it just comes down to being someone that people like to hang out with. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:28:12):

Exactly. I mean, you haven't even got to be the greatest player or

Speaker 2 (01:28:17):

No, definitely not.

Speaker 3 (01:28:19):

I mean obviously you've got to be sort of good or whatever, but I think more importantly, these guys, I mean they don't want to work with people that are constantly in awe of where they are or I've noticed that as well. I mean just as it's uncomfortable for you meeting one of your heroes, it's just as uncomfortable for them knowing that there's this weird barrier of no conversation because somebody's just totally frozen because they don't know what to say. So if you can totally diffuse that straight away, it makes the relationship building a lot easier between the people because then you can just have a normal conversation and then you can actually get to know the person rather than the idea that it's somebody

Speaker 2 (01:29:08):

That shit doesn't even matter once you get to know the person.

Speaker 3 (01:29:11):

No, exactly. Exactly. You kind of, after a while you sort of forget really.

Speaker 2 (01:29:14):

Yeah, and also I think another thing that is really important that's served me well with networking is this might seem counterintuitive, but if you approach it with no goal in mind

Speaker 3 (01:29:26):

Other

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):

Than hanging out,

Speaker 3 (01:29:27):

Yeah, definitely. So

Speaker 2 (01:29:28):

The goal is to hang out and have a good time, and if something comes of it, great

Speaker 3 (01:29:32):

And

Speaker 2 (01:29:32):

If not great too.

Speaker 3 (01:29:33):

I almost kind of purposefully don't ask for, I mean, it depends how well somebody or whatever, but I mean even if you've had that initial thing and you've traded contact details and stuff like that, knowing that they're going to be in town and they've got a gig, it's almost like, oh God, I don't want to be the guy to be asking them if I can come and stuff like that. Normally, I mean, I've been fairly fortunate that people, because you've kind of forged a relationship in that and they know they're going to be near you. They normally offer and go, oh look, I'm going to be around. You want to come down and stuff like that. But yeah, like you say, somehow having that relationship that's new and then using it just purely get passes or to purely go, oh, well this guy's my friend now and I can get us all in, or Yeah, don't worry about it, I'll sort it all out.

(01:30:26):

Or you start bombarding them with links to your band or you start sending them your music and going, oh, what'd you think of this? Because it's like, I dunno, that is the quickest way to ruin any kind of fledgling relationship with a potential contact that Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying it couldn't be useful in the future, but I want to establish enough of a relationship with somebody, whereas that's not weird and almost they offer and go, look man, you really should do something with this music. Maybe I can have a word with somebody and see what's going on. You know what I mean? But that's not to say that you don't mention that you are doing something, but you don't directly go, oh look, I'm doing this band. You've got a big label behind you and that you think you could put it under somebody's nose kind of thing. It's very weird. It's a delicate situation.

Speaker 2 (01:31:14):

Only if it's relevant to the conversation. Do you bring it up?

Speaker 3 (01:31:17):

Yeah, totally. Yeah, but I dunno, you say these friendships and stuff like that, they purely because we've met on mutual terms and you just get on. There's some people that you meet that you don't get on with, but that's

Speaker 2 (01:31:34):

Fine too.

Speaker 3 (01:31:34):

That's fine. Yeah, exactly. You don't have to get on with everybody. I mean, some people, you have to know them in order to progress so you have enough of a relationship with them in order to do business. Face it, record companies, people that mix, master produce, people that are in bands, singers, guitar players, they're all doing the same thing that you are. So it's like if you want to work with a singer, the sole purpose of them being a singer is so they can sing over songs. So if you can write songs that facilitate that, then you are going to have some kind of symbiotic relationship that will work. It's not like, oh, I can't possibly work with this person because they're such and such. It's like, well, all of these guys are doing what they do because it's the same thing as what you do. They've just got a bit further maybe, but it's like record labels, they want bands to promote. It's not like they're sitting there going, oh, we don't need bands to promote. What's the fucking point of a record label? Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:32:31):

Absolutely. So yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:32:33):

Everything works both ways. It's not like somebody needs you more than you need them kind of thing. It normally ends up being, well, you're a band, we promote bands, let's do that. I mean, it's a shame that some people get fucked over along the way, but that's due to maybe lack of experience or just dealing with genuinely not very nice people within the industry, and that's going to happen. But I think the industry does get a bad rap though. Honestly, there's so many people in posts I see now about, oh, there's no money in it anymore. There's not this, there's not. And I'm thinking, well, fucking hell, someone's making money.

Speaker 2 (01:33:09):

I beg to differ. I think there's plenty of money in it if you're doing the things that made money in 2005 or 1995, you might think that there's no money. You need to figure out what makes money in 2016 and 17. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:33:25):

Exactly. The industries, I mean, the thing is now, I suppose it's different is record companies were giving out ridiculous advances of which was borrowed money anyway. It was never initially the artists, unless they kind of took that money and then made it into millions and millions of their own money. I suppose that's why a lot of say artists from the eighties and stuff they were living on, borrowed money from record labels, and then either when their deal kind of got pulled or the label went bust or whatever, then all the stuff had to go back kind of thing. But it's the same now, but people aren't spending stupid amounts of money on bands anymore and this kind of, because there's no need for it. I mean, people can still make money. I mean, you look at bands, I don't know, five Finger Death Punch for example. I mean, they're an arena band, but they weren't big back when Metallica were big or Slayer were big. Or there's still a band that are relatively young and have made it in the last sort of decade. So it can't be that bad if bands like that are out there doing it for whatever reason, whether love will hate their music or the way, but there's still a market for it

Speaker 2 (01:34:32):

And they are doing very well for themselves.

Speaker 3 (01:34:34):

Yeah, exactly. I mean, Papa Roach have been around a lot longer and they've probably had to stay and fight through changes in the industry, but fucking hell, they're still here. That is a perfect example of a band that has been malleable enough to change with the times and still be relevant. You know what I mean? It's possible. You've just got to not stay within the time period that you believe was better, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:34:57):

Yeah, the time period in which you were christened basically.

Speaker 3 (01:35:01):

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it is hard for new bands. I mean, I'm suffer with it myself, but it's not like, I dunno. I mean we are just having to do things a little bit differently. It's not holding us back at all. I think a lot more people are taking it upon themselves to do stuff in-house now, getting better at mixing and stuff like that, which it obviously gives relevance to what you guys are doing now. The mix. It totally gives people the upper hand on how to do that and save money and learn properly as well. It's a fun way of doing something that would normally be boring, doing a degree or working on styles of music that you don't particularly like, but you have to learn the techniques through doing that anyway, just to so you can get a piece of paper at the end of it

Speaker 2 (01:35:53):

Or super expensive.

Speaker 3 (01:35:55):

Yeah, exactly. I mean it's really affordable. I think this is the thing. I mean, it is a business model that has changed. You've put it out there and gone. This is a way to make money within the industry, even though you guys have produced some great records and that it's like, yeah, but we can still do this and give people knowledge and still have a career in the industry. I'm guessing none of you work at a car wash or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:36:26):

No, no, not exactly. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:36:27):

Exactly. You know what I mean? So it's possible. The thing is always hope,

Speaker 2 (01:36:32):

Dude. There's always hope and it's always possible. You just have to see the future, I guess. And I see the solutions to problems that people don't even know they have yet,

(01:36:47):

And I know that that sounds esoteric, but it's not. You have to try and part of it comes from knowing your audience and knowing what they want and what they're not getting enough of and what they would be really excited over and giving it to them in a way that makes their lives better. You have to try. You're not just going to figure it out. If you think that you're going to just put out records and make money off of records or do things the way they've always been done, you might not fare so well, but if you figure out a way how to make people happy, now you can probably do okay with some hard work.

Speaker 3 (01:37:30):

And I think you just kind of hit the nail on the head there. Everything boils down to how hard you're willing to work at something.

Speaker 2 (01:37:38):

Yeah. To me that's kind of assumed with successful people is you just assume that they bust ass.

Speaker 3 (01:37:47):

Yeah, I suppose if you look at my day-to-day life, you'd probably think, well, it does fuck all really, but I don't. When I do work, I work stupid long hours, hours and hours, spending video editing and making sure things look cool and planning releases and writing music and constantly everything I do is kind of geared towards my art in some form or another, but it's not like a day job, but it is hard work. But that's the thing that I think the technology, even though it kind of improves workflow and things like that, it's still never going to replace the work that you have to put in initially to just improve yourself, either as a musician or whatever it is that you do. I think that's always going to be something that separates people that are successful compared to people that aren't.

Speaker 2 (01:38:40):

Well, the technology is just an infrastructure. I mean, it's neutral in my opinion. It exists to help you do your thing, but you still have to do your thing.

Speaker 3 (01:38:52):

Yeah, I mean, I suppose because of YouTube and stuff like that, I could argue maybe that if it wasn't for the internet, I wouldn't have a career, but I dunno if that's true either. I think the same process would've played out just very differently, but ultimately,

Speaker 2 (01:39:09):

Well, with a different medium.

Speaker 3 (01:39:10):

Yeah, exactly. I think the same drive and the same direction would've occurred. I mean, my initial part of the career and getting out of my work into doing what I was doing anyway was nothing to do with the internet. It was still very much a hard sale business in terms of selling DVDs and how I found about the competition was through a magazine. So the internet wasn't involved at all. So those things, even if somebody unplugged the internet now would still exist.

Speaker 2 (01:39:38):

Well, that's kind of how I feel about it as well, is before the internet was a thing, I still had the same mindset. I wanted to do something bigger. I didn't want to be tied down to one career. I wanted to do something that helped people and I had the same types of ideas and the same drive for sure. You work in the world you live in, so right now you had YouTube so great. 20 years from now, guitar players will probably have something different and that's fine too.

Speaker 3 (01:40:13):

Yeah, I mean I have heard on the grapevine actually that even CD printing companies and stuff like that are actually advising in the next four years about printing CDs or even any form of physical medium in which you can own music, everything's going to go streaming, which is kind of interesting in about the next four years, hard versions of any kind of music will just be phased out completely. So that's interesting. It is kind of going that way anyway, but

Speaker 2 (01:40:47):

Doesn't bother me.

Speaker 3 (01:40:48):

No, I mean the only thing I'm thinking though is, is it going to be more geared up towards supporting the artist if that is the case? I mean, I know companies like Spotify and the like are going to have to probably rethink their royalty scheme if anybody's going to have a hope in hell of having a sustainable income from streaming. Because then I think streaming in a way will get rid of illegally downloading and illegally owning stuff. So actually that should set the kind of baseline for well back to where it used to be, but it would just be streaming and then not. But I dunno, because then some illegal streaming sites will probably pop up where people can hear stuff for free and they don't pay for it.

Speaker 2 (01:41:37):

I think artists need to just realize that their music is a commercial for whatever else they're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:41:42):

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right actually. I mean, it kind of has got that way now. I mean, I know guys in bands and stuff and yeah, it is touring. I mean that's why bands are going out for so long now as opposed to they bank so much money off the record and do a six month tour and then that'd be the cycle for the album. That's kind of not the case anymore. It's actually gone back towards where, say like bands like Bon Jovi and that used to do two and a half year touring cycles of an album nonstop. You just think fucking hell. I mean,

Speaker 2 (01:42:16):

The thing is that we can say it'll go this way or that way, but I kind of assume the worst. And I also assume that I have no power over it.

(01:42:26):

So I assume that the idea of, unless you write a number one hit or something like that, the idea of making money off of plays of your music is kind of out the window. Unless though YouTube is pretty cool about that. I think overall as a business model, I want to get into writing music and I'm going to make a living through streaming income. I just think that if anyone thinks that they need to rethink things because we can't control, we can't control what they do, we can't control where any of this goes. We're just along for the ride. So my experience tells me that musicians need to be smart about using their own music as a platform to launch a bunch of other things. And it's not just touring. It can be the Andy James Guitar Academy, it can be the clothing brand that, what's his name from Five Finger that Zoltan from Five Finger has. It can be any number of things. It can be nail the mix, it can be a jam play or whatever band, happy Once upon a time, whatever it is. It can be a crazy merch line. We can't expect that things that were valuable to the consuming public 20 years ago are going to still be valuable. I think songs, while we all love songs, they don't hold the same value to the market.

Speaker 6 (01:43:56):

No, you're

Speaker 2 (01:43:56):

Right. And it's probably not going to change. I mean it will change, but it's not going to go back to how it was. Nothing ever goes back. No. It's like things aren't going to become less chaotic.

Speaker 3 (01:44:10):

No, I suppose it's like having been exposed to heavy drum sampling for the last 10 years, it'd be like going back and listening to Totally Dry Kits in mixes again, which I don't think is ever going to happen. Doubtful. Yeah. Well, I dunno. It happens, but yeah, I mean unless anybody really figures out how to illegally download a t-shirt or a hoodie, I think you're pretty safe with merch for now, unless they 3D print clothes or something. I dunno.

Speaker 2 (01:44:37):

Yeah, I feel like with what we do, they can't download our community.

Speaker 3 (01:44:44):

No, no.

Speaker 2 (01:44:45):

And that's why we put a lot of our time into making sure that our online community is incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:44:51):

It's great. Yeah. I mean, I've posted up a couple of things, but already people just get on it straight away and you're informed within minutes about something that you would probably not get an answer from. I a question about Cubase or something. I put it up and I couldn't find anything to do with their website or anything like that. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place, and then you've got to wait 48 hours for someone from support and maybe, or may not get back to you. So stuff like that's brilliant. I think being able to just talk to a community that has seemingly infinite knowledge of how to do this, that and the other, especially with what you guys do

Speaker 2 (01:45:28):

Well, and that's a big part of how we built this, because we figured that you can try and steal our content, though we hope you don't, but someone will. But you can't steal our community. You just can't. It's impossible. And our community is a big part of why our stuff is worth it.

Speaker 3 (01:45:47):

Yeah, yeah. I wonder how many guys that have done mixes for the stuff saying that they've actually mixed the original song and done it as a promotion for their mixing stuff. I wonder if that's happening.

Speaker 2 (01:45:59):

Very few. Most guys are really respectful about it. We've caught a couple on YouTube and we've had them take their stuff down though. Some of our tracks, if you go November, 2015 through April, 2015, those you can use them for self-promotion, you can use up to 45 seconds of any one of those for self-promotion. It's just after that, we started to get a bunch of label bands, and

Speaker 6 (01:46:29):

It's

Speaker 2 (01:46:29):

Hard enough to get the labels and the bands degree. I mean, everyone's been cool, but still we don't want to push it and we do have to get this legally signed. And again, those are the rules. But so far, literally we've only found two or three people over the course of six months.

Speaker 3 (01:46:47):

That's pretty cool, actually. I mean, you're always going to get the odd one, aren't you? But

Speaker 2 (01:46:52):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:46:52):

Yeah. No, that's awesome. It's interesting as well, actually, I listened to, just kind of going back to now the mix again. I was listening to that podcast that you did with Logan Matter, just listening about the Go Jira thing. I thought, oh, kind of check it out. And then you guys started talking about a guy called George Valet, which was interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:47:11):

Oh yeah, I love George.

Speaker 3 (01:47:11):

Yeah, it was interesting because my band wearing scars we're touring with Devil next January.

Speaker 2 (01:47:19):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:47:19):

And he looks after them. So he's, it's been sort of fed back to me through Devil You Nose guitar player, Francesco that. He's a big fan of me and the band and stuff, and he wanted to chat. So we started talking because he sort of expressed an interest in maybe getting involved. I think ultimately our band is,

Speaker 2 (01:47:40):

That would be a really, really smart thing, by the way. He's a fucking great dude and he knows how to make things bigger.

Speaker 3 (01:47:52):

He was definitely enthusiastic when I spoke to him on Friday and stuff. So yeah, we'll see what happens with that. But it was interesting because I didn't really, when you guys mentioned his name and then you were sort of seemingly both very, this guy for a number of reasons. I was kind of thinking,

Speaker 2 (01:48:11):

Oh,

Speaker 3 (01:48:11):

Absolutely. So I Skyped him that day. I heard the thing just saying, oh, do you look after Logan and his band and stuff? And he's like, yeah, yeah, I said that you guys were singing his praises sort of thing. So it was cool. It was like a validation because it's always a bit testy. I've kind of been involved with some managers before and it's not always been sweetness and light. You know what I mean? So when you meet somebody that says that maybe they can help you out on that kind of level, that isn't to do with anything internally within the band. You start to sort of think, I dunno, is this guy kind of on the level? But I've definitely heard from a few guys. Chris was talking to Tommy Ve, he plays in Westfield, Tommy. Yeah, yeah. He was saying about him and the name George came up again and he was like, yeah, the guy's fucking, he's great. He's a standup dude. He's really passionate about what he does and stuff. So it is cool.

Speaker 2 (01:49:11):

Yeah, I've gone through a lot of different publicists and I've had a few good experiences and a lot of really bad ones. Same with managers and agents, and when you find one of the good guys, I feel like it's your duty or my duty to spread the word about them,

Speaker 6 (01:49:32):

Because

Speaker 2 (01:49:34):

I do feel like the music industry gets a bad rap. But at the same time, I also feel like there are quite a few bad seeds in the music industry who, it would just be a better place without them. And by promoting the people that are actually good guys, hook them up with people, getting them working together, it just makes for a better industry for us to all work in. Yeah. I'll always sing George's praises. He basically saved my ass in my career a number of times

Speaker 6 (01:50:08):

And

Speaker 2 (01:50:09):

Helped build some of my stuff up when nobody else would. And getting my guitar album and Guitar World, things like that when nobody else was helping out, he did that. So yeah, he's great. Have I sucked his dick enough on this?

Speaker 3 (01:50:30):

I dunno. But it's cool. Again, it's kind of the networking thing. We've got an agent and I dunno, I'm not going to say what I think about that scenario, but George actually requested us to do the tour. So we are thinking all the time, our agents kind of sold it to us going, oh yeah, we've got you this tour and that. And I'm thinking, I spoke to George the other day and he was like, oh yeah, I loved it. I requested to get you guys on the thing. He's got an idea of what should be happening as opposed to what is actually happening. So it's interesting finding somebody's idea of what it is that they think, because we've had a lot of positive feedback about the band and stuff like that. I think it's definitely probably not the direction that maybe either Chris's fans or my own fans thought that we'd go in working together because both of our projects previous to this were a lot heavier.

(01:51:32):

So it's definitely more geared up towards writing more commercial based stuff, which is kind of what we're more influenced by anyway than the outward out metal thing. Although we both do that as well. And I've had enough experience doing that kind of thing. But yeah, it's interesting because we've come up a lot against a lot of brick walls and stuff in the uk, especially now. I dunno whether the UK is really geared up towards what we do. I mean, there certainly isn't any radio stations playing stuff that we play. Not unless it's like nine, 10 o'clock at night when most people aren't listening to the radio anyway kind of

Speaker 2 (01:52:10):

Thing. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (01:52:11):

It's really not a thing that's pushed here at all. So with that said, we get good feedback about, oh yeah, great bangs, great live, it works. And then you get people like managers and labels going, well, it's great, but we just dunno where we could place it in the market. And we're just like, well, you don't know. Or is it just not weird enough? Because the things that seem to do really well in the UK are kind of really obscure weird things that have somehow become commercially viable. I don't know. And then you've just got this influx of every radio station plays the same Kanye West and all that sort of stuff, which is fine because that's definitely a much bigger market than say where we are set anyway. But me and Chris have had plenty of conversations thinking, oh, we need to just see if we can start building some contacts and stuff in America, because I think it could definitely be a different set of circumstances for us, probably leaning towards more positive than negative. And it was interesting talking

Speaker 2 (01:53:16):

To, I think that sounds about right.

Speaker 3 (01:53:17):

Yeah. Talking to George kind of solidified that as where he was like, look, I am not a miracle worker, but if I believe in something and I think I can do something with it. So it was just cool in a space of a week not really knowing something about a guy that it seems interested to now being fairly confident that he's kind of universally got people kind of singing his praises and that, and that's always a good thing. I think

Speaker 2 (01:53:47):

That's a really good way to verify things. If I don't listen. If one person says something bad or good, no. But if a bunch of different people say good or something, I'll listen.

Speaker 3 (01:53:58):

Yeah. Weirdly, if it's bad though, if it's unanimously bad, I don't listen. I still want to find out for myself if that's the case.

Speaker 2 (01:54:05):

Yeah. Listen, I only listen if it's unanimously good. I don't listen if it's unanimously bad, because sometimes unanimously bad just means that someone could have been right and they held onto their opinion and were an asshole about it. It was the right decision and everyone else hated him for it. That happens.

Speaker 3 (01:54:26):

Yeah. Yeah. There's a bit of ego creeps in there, you know what I mean? It's like,

Speaker 2 (01:54:30):

Yeah, I never listened to people shit talk. I never take it seriously. How many times have you met someone and heard that they were a total dick and then you become friends with them and it's like, nah, this guy's fine. And people have said that to me too, that they heard I was terrible and then they are my friend and they don't understand.

Speaker 3 (01:54:54):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I must admit I've had that a lot actually. I think because I'll tell you what the weird thing is with people that when they meet me is because most of my lessons and stuff are very kind of serious. And I mean, I'm probably not the sweetest looking bloke out there. So I think the problem is is people just kind of, they learn off of you. They sit there, they spend hours in front of your content, and I suppose quite rightly so in a lot of ways, they feel like they know you. And when you meet somebody in real life and you're kind of a bit goofy or you laugh or you're cracking jokes all the time, or you're a bit, people are like, wow, this is not what I expected at all. But I dunno. I mean, I've got kind of just normal really. I like having a laugh. I don't like being a dick to anyone really, unless it's for a joke. And then I

Speaker 2 (01:55:51):

Like a normal human being. Imagine that.

Speaker 3 (01:55:53):

Yeah, exactly. But it's kind of odd that the perception people have of what it would be like to meet you. And I think there's always this other thing as well. I mean, I have met a few people that are known and you kind of wish that you could rewind and then just not have met them for whatever reason. But then again, sometimes when you meet people, it might be backstage on a tour or there's a lot of press going on, or there's just a lot of shit happening. If you bump into someone at Nam and they blindside you for whatever reason, I'm probably not going to base my opinion on that person solely for the fact that there's probably a lot going on. And for them to just shut all that out and give you exclusive time to talk or just about nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:56:42):

Yeah. It's kind of selfish to expect them to do that, to just be like, Hey, I have all these meetings planned and getting paged in eight different directions by people, but I'm going to stop it all and talk to you.

Speaker 3 (01:56:57):

Yeah. I mean, someone filmed me doing it at Noun once, actually, it's probably why I brought it up. But some guy was going, oh, they were just filming the guitars and stuff, and I got there and they stopped me in and it was like, oh, he knows it quite. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I've got a play in it in a bit. But yeah, we can stop and chat stuff. And maybe my responses after that seemed divisive, but they really weren't. Like, we had a couple of minutes just talking about stuff and I was just like, look man, I've got to go. I'll see you later. And I noticed some people in the YouTube comments just supposed to going, oh, Addy James, what a dick he is. Got no time for his fans and all this. And I'm like, no. I was 15 minutes late for a performance I was getting paid for on the ESP stand, and I didn't even have to stop, but I did. It's like, wow. People, they just see one little bit of a scenario and just that's it. But that's

Speaker 2 (01:57:51):

Andy. Andy James, where's your leather pants, man? If you're going to act like that, you got to put on those leather pants. Yeah. I'll

Speaker 3 (01:57:58):

Start kicking my picks into the audience.

Speaker 2 (01:58:00):

Yeah, exactly. So with that, I think that's a good stopping point. I want to thank you for coming on, and any of you out there listening who want to become way, way better at guitar, just go to Andy james guitar academy.com and sign up.

Speaker 3 (01:58:19):

Yeah, thanks for the plug mate.

Speaker 2 (01:58:22):

Anytime, dude.

Speaker 3 (01:58:23):

Yeah. Well, thanks for having us. It's been great to finally meet and chat and stuff. It's been awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:58:28):

Likewise. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:58:31):

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