GEORGE LEVER: The Producer’s Evolution, Artist Relationships, AI in Music

Speaker 1 (00:00:03):

Wait, are you gaming on a Chromebook? Yeah, it's got a high res 120 hertz display plus this killer RGB keyboard and I can access thousands of games anytime, anywhere. Stop playing what? Get out of here, huh? Yeah. I want you to stop playing and get out of here so I can game on that Chromebook. Got it. Discover the ultimate cloud gaming machine, a new kind of Chromebook. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast, and now your host

Speaker 2 (00:00:36):

Levy. Welcome to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we are now on our seventh year. Don't ask me how that all just flew by, but it did. Man. Time moves fast and it's only because of you, the listeners, if you'd like us to stick around another seven years and there's a few simple things you can do that would really, really help us out, I would endlessly appreciate if you would, number one, share our episodes with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me at AAL levy, URM audio and at URM Academy and of course our guest. And number three, leave us reviews and five star reviews wherever you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, thank you for all the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way. All we ask in return is a share a post and tag us. And one last thing, do you have a question you would like me to answer on an episode? I don't mean for a guest. I mean for me, it can be about anything. Email it to [email protected]. That's e yal at M dot aca, DEMY. There's no.com on that. It's exactly the way I spelled it. And use the subject line. Answer me aal. Alright, let's get on with it.

(00:02:10):

Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM podcast. Today we have one of my favorite people and guests, and if you hear me saying that a lot lately, it's because I've just been booking a lot of my favorite people. George Lever is a producer, musician, engineer, songwriter, content creator, and educator who's known for working with a ton of artists across multiple genres such as sleep token, woven, war loath, monuments, and Thornhill. Among many others. George has developed an almost signature sound that stems from his care and precision in the work that he does and his very developed personal sensibilities. As far as URM is concerned from fast tracks to nail the mix, George has left a huge imprint on the URM community and the broader audio education world as well. He never hesitates to share insights and observations about his experiences and to just help elevate people's knowledge and abilities. Alright, let's do this. Alright, George Lever, welcome back to the URM podcast. Thank

Speaker 3 (00:03:14):

You for having me again. Again, it's third time, right?

Speaker 2 (00:03:17):

You welcome, welcome, welcome.

Speaker 3 (00:03:19):

Cheers, man.

Speaker 2 (00:03:20):

Yeah, it's good to have you on.

Speaker 3 (00:03:22):

It's good to be back. What's new? What's cracking?

Speaker 2 (00:03:25):

I was going to ask you that I am curious if things have developed in the way that you wanted them to since the last few times we've spoken, because I know that you're working on things now that are different than the things you were working on before, and it seems like your focus is much more refined now than it was say maybe the first time we spoke. So I'm wondering if you were to put a description on how you feel things are going, what would that be?

Speaker 3 (00:03:58):

Not as expected.

Speaker 2 (00:04:00):

Not as expected. And is that good or bad?

Speaker 3 (00:04:02):

It's just different really. I don't think it's particularly bad. I just think it's an interesting point of reflection. I don't remember what we spoke about last. I feel like I know that the first episode was pretty introductionary to me as a person and how I approach the job that I do. I don't remember what we went over in the second one. I

Speaker 2 (00:04:24):

Actually, I don't either, but we were talking a lot about bands,

Speaker 3 (00:04:27):

So I think coronavirus changed a lot for everyone, but it also changed the way that I looked at the job in hand. For example, for the last 12 months I've worked with two bands in person now, maybe three, whereas before there were people in-house all the time. So it shifted quite a lot of things to being more remote and changing the job that I'm needed to do. So it's less actually doing recording and more advising on things that make whole changes. So arrangement, focusing on rebranding or redirecting. There are a few bands that I'm working with now that have been dormant for a little while and they're having to, well, I'm sure you're familiar with this and having to revamp how to approach the market that we work within now and how to reintroduce yourself to fans that you're already familiar with, but how to be relevant in a point in time where this is going to sound awful, where the game is played a little bit differently now than it was five or 10 years ago.

Speaker 2 (00:05:25):

No, that's a great thing to be talking about though.

Speaker 3 (00:05:28):

Yeah, it's just interesting. I didn't really realize how much I knew about the traction of all some parts of our industry until I got put in that position of I guess advisory like Rick Rubing stuff. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:05:42):

That's exactly who I thought of when you mentioned the newer form of working.

Speaker 3 (00:05:47):

Yeah, I mean he's an idol, so I don't mind it from that point of view. He's incredible. So that's happened a lot recently and I'm okay with that, but as a result of that, I've had more time here on in my own time to network and make more connections working more so with Jesse Reti who worked. I've heard of him. Yeah, he's amazing. He worked with you on doth, right? I mean he is in doth, so he's in dos, right? Yeah, sorry, my mistake. It start from a position where it was doing production and then it evolved from that point

Speaker 2 (00:06:21):

Kind of, I don't exactly know how it happened, but when I decided to bring it back, he was kind of the person that was in my ear and who was encouraging me to just keep on writing more music because the first things I was writing when I first came back were just really, really rusty. So he's who I was talking to the most when I was just kind of sucking for a while and he pushed me to let him try and orchestrate way early on with the new material and he was just in it from the beginning of round two. It's kind of like as it got more serious, his role just kind of became more serious, but honestly he was right there from the beginning of me putting it back together. It wasn't like we have doth, we're going to get an orchestrator. Let's see who's around and give this Jesse dude a shot or anything like that. I was thinking actually of hiring Francesco from flesh, God to do the orchestration, but the thing is Jesse was who I was talking to every single fucking day and sending music to every single day, and the person who was super excited to work on it and who sent me orchestration and it just kind of naturally evolved. So it was never really like me hiring him to do orchestration. It just kind took a natural path basically.

Speaker 3 (00:07:54):

Yeah, it's nice that when personal and business relationships can sort of merge in a way that is beneficial rather than it being discordant clashing,

Speaker 2 (00:08:02):

Which that can happen with personal relationships. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:08:05):

Of course. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:08:06):

I was glad to see the two of you working together by the way, because I think you're both great, so thank you. It was good to see that you two had hooked up.

Speaker 3 (00:08:16):

Yeah, well I wasn't expecting it and actually honestly, I dunno why it's grown in the way that it has. I'm not unhappy about it, but if everything that we are working towards can happen, I mean it could be life-changing for both of us, which is what's really the latest new excitement currently I think

Speaker 2 (00:08:36):

For people not listening. So Jesse, for people not listening, for people who are listening but are unaware of what we're talking about, Jesse is a composer that does work for games and soundtrack stuff. He is done stuff for Netflix and Marvel, et cetera, stuff you've heard of stuff where you didn't know it was him. Just lots of stuff and him and George are working on some stuff together.

Speaker 3 (00:09:04):

We're doing the stuff,

Speaker 2 (00:09:06):

Doing the stuff. That's about as much as we're able to say about the stuff. But the thing that I think is interesting about you and Jesse doing this stuff is how much of a parallel there is to the band world because it is very similar when you're working with Jesse, right? You've got an advisory kind of role

Speaker 4 (00:09:28):

Up

Speaker 2 (00:09:28):

Until you go to work on a mix or something or whatever part of the audio chain you're involved in. It's basically advisory up until that point. And it seems like with bands that's also kind of how it's going. It's like advisory up until the point that the tracks show up for you and then you do your physical work.

Speaker 3 (00:09:49):

Yeah, I think with Jesse the level of respect, and this isn't really, I'm not trying to downtalk the interaction I have with the bands. I think because Jesse was in, I personally I think a really great band and has done the industry stuff and has been through the ringer and then moved into what would be, I guess considered now a corporate gig. The interaction that I get to have with him is almost the perfect business relationship alongside a really good friendship that exists outside of business hours because he understands where he is most effective, which is composing and writing, and he understands where I'm most effective, which is providing either a sounding board, so someone that can just talk him through things that we're trying to problem solve. And even if I'm not saying the right stuff, the fact that I could be advising incorrect answers is still evidence of where to move to next for him, which is beneficial.

(00:10:44):

And then on the mixed stage, I have the opportunity and the trust, which is most important from him to bring it home and to extend what he was writing to fill the entire environment in which we're working with that relationship has been really awesome. That experience has been really rewarding as well because it has allowed me to understand the relationships that I would like to keep with everyone that I work with from here on and how to best guide those conversations and those introductions when I do work with new people, how to get that or a similar result or a similar level of respect between both parties because it hadn't even occurred to me, but there are quite a lot of toxic interactions that exist for one reason or another, and I think quite a lot of producers put up with them because they feel the pressure in order to earn an income. And it's a shame because it then sets the status quo that those toxic relationships are a necessity of the art of creation, which is a shame. It happens a lot. It's something that I'm actively working towards not having to participate with in order to continue doing the job. Or if I can't resolve that for myself, then I'll find different avenues again.

Speaker 2 (00:11:56):

So the question I have is, I know exactly what you're talking about is do you feel like at some point in the early stages of your career it's kind of unavoidable just because I mean you always have the choice of saying no, right? To work with somebody?

Speaker 3 (00:12:11):

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 (00:12:11):

But early on in your career it's a little stupider to say no when you haven't established yourself, you have to weigh the benefits of putting up with a situation, whereas later on you have more options, you bring more weight to the project,

Speaker 4 (00:12:29):

And

Speaker 2 (00:12:29):

So it's easier to choose to work with people that are respectful and also awesome with doth being back, for instance, I tried working with not an ex band member, but someone that we used to work with on something who's very much in the old style of working, which is toxic and crazy and shitty

Speaker 4 (00:12:53):

Does

Speaker 2 (00:12:53):

Great work, but we had to stop working together recently just because I can't handle that manner of working anymore because I've gotten so used to with everyone I work with, everything is so pro, it's so pro, it's so respectful. Jesse being a great example. We're not afraid to tell each other when something sucks. We're still friends though, and it's not toxic at all, and most of the working relationships I have would work like that, and I've noticed that now my tolerance for that toxic music industry style relationship is super low. I can't put up with it, but what I ask myself is, is it a good thing that I did put up with it in the past?

Speaker 3 (00:13:38):

Well, to a degree, I think everything that we get presented with is a learning opportunity and it's sort of on us to decide how we want to then frame what we're experiencing so it can be equally good as it is equally bad. I think for me, there are things that I would not have as a personality trait. Now, had I not experienced something like that, I don't necessarily think that I love that I experienced those toxic environments. I think there are better ways of learning the same lessons. Personally, and I agree with you, my tolerance has gone down considerably. I don't really have time to entertain people that behave in such a way.

Speaker 2 (00:14:18):

The thing is though, if you're going to be dealing with bands and you're going to be dealing with the record industry, if you don't learn how to deal with any of that stuff, you're going to at some point get shocked by it and stopped in your tracks. It's a luxury to be able to be at a point where you can choose who you want to work with and still make money, right? Early on in your career, you can choose who you want to work with, but you also might be choosing to not make an income. So our choices have consequences to get to a point where you can choose to not work with people yet still have an income. Maybe it's not a luxury, but it's definitely something that doesn't happen overnight and you're lucky if it happens at first.

Speaker 3 (00:15:08):

I think it's possible to learn how to manage a conversation at any point in the career. And I think even when you're having to take on work maybe that you're not going to fall in love with, it's possible to know how to better steer those conversations into results that both parties are happy with. It's just learning good communication that gets you there in the end. I think the reason why it feels like going through those toxic situations or those early situations where you don't get to pick and choose is a necessity is because it's like the direct route or the direct line to learning those communication skills. I mean, sure I pick and choose, but some of those people that I do end up choosing still have poor assumptions about how the job is going to work or how things should be submitted or what my role is or because they've spent money that I owe them a certain result or that I owe them anything other than my time and my interaction.

(00:16:01):

There is a lot of misinformation that drives people to act poorly. My belief and my hope is that that can be managed at any pub. If I went back in time, maybe I'd change my mind, but there have been situations where with Nathan who works with me or Brandon, who I am mentoring and teaching at the moment, I've just told them, if you get into a difficult conversation, just let the individual know that I, George, I'm happy to have that conversation on their behalf if they want. Because normally it changes the tone of the conversation immediately and it shows them the opportunity to see that the reason why the person is being an asshole is because they're talking to someone that they don't value in the same way that they value as someone that has a different name to them. And that's not fair. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because Nathan or Brendan, they can go into those situations where they think that they are not allowed to set a boundary or set something up for themselves in order for them to fill secure or sturdy.

(00:16:59):

And by introducing my name into the frame, I think there was a situation with guitars needing to be retracked and they were saying no. And I said, well just say that if you delivered that to me George Lever, I would fire you. They'll change their chain. And then they mentioned that and the band has ended up re-tracking it. So it's such a silly thing to get uppity about the guy trying to advise the band so that they get a better result and they're going, no, I don't need to. I've played the guitar, therefore it's on you to make the guitar good. It's like it's not. It's a joint venture. And all it did was take for them to be shown a different perspective on the same answer or the same problem, and then the band had changed their direction. So

Speaker 2 (00:17:39):

You are very, very right in that the frame of a conversation determines a lot and you have to understand the context in order to steer things in the right direction. So in the case where the guitars are badly tracked and the guitar is giving pushback, they just don't trust Nathan and Brandon yet, not because there's anything wrong with Nathan or Brandon. They just don't know them the way that they know you. And I have encountered that a lot in my own career. For instance, in the early days of URM when I was trying to get people on nail the mix, producers will always be hesitant because producers are not the attention seekers and the equation the musicians are, right? A lot of people prefer to be producers and engineers and mixers because they get to make music, but they don't have to do the public side of it really. Or they wanted to do it one point in time, but now they've been engineering for so long that the public side of it has just not been even a thing for them.

(00:18:47):

So very rarely do you get a producer who's just like, fuck yeah, to be on camera. So I'm used to objections. I'm used to people feeling weird about it. However, at the beginning it was more than that. People didn't trust us and were very, very, very uncomfortable about the idea of doing anything with us because of the stigma in 2015 of online education and had to break through that. And once I got one reputable person on and then another and then another suddenly starting, the conversations became much easier. And it's not because I changed, all that changed was the frame of the conversation. Now it's like this thing that really great producers do, and so if they can look and see, oh, all these people have done it have been on there, they're great. I actively compete with them or look up to them, okay, this is legit.

(00:19:50):

Nothing changed with me. I'm still the same exact person. I'm still coming after them the exact same way as before. The only thing that's changed is who they associate me with and the frame of what it means to do something with us. And that immediately bumps the resistance down, I'd say like 50%. And then we're only dealing with their psychology. We're no longer dealing with this added stigma shit or this lack of trust or any of that stuff. Now we're just dealing with their personal issues about being on camera, and that is just about having conversations and either we agree on something or we don't, but at least then we're dealing with only their personal objections to it rather than this thing built up because of lack of trust or an improper frame on the situation. And it's not just that I've noticed it throughout my entire career, people just listened to me differently now than they did when I was 25, and it frustrated the shit out of me when I was 25 or 30 or whatever, that I just felt like someone else could tell people that they need to retract the guitars and if I said it, they'll fight with me about it even though I'm right and they should retract their guitars.

(00:21:07):

I've been in that situation actually when I was at Audio Hammer where I would need soff to say something to a band because I would say it and they'd just blow it off.

Speaker 3 (00:21:18):

No, I get it. And I think that those interactions and conversations lead to not just doubt, but leads you the individual away from going, no, I actually know what I know. I can trust my own information. I can trust the decisions that I make to be the right outcome to the problem because it starts introducing an element of doubt that the person's opposite doubts you. They doubt your authority on the matter. Therefore, you in turn have then a new opportunity to go, oh, do I actually believe what I'm talking about? Do I believe what I'm saying? Maybe they know more than I do about this thing. Maybe they are correct. You can end up in this cycle of, I guess it's not about not knowing your identity, but not knowing what your work identity is. Do I know what I know? Do I trust what I know?

(00:22:04):

Does it work? Can I repeat it? Because with the invention of the internet and everything being infinitely searchable, there's always going to be half dozen people that disagree with you and say something else and they're going to have a different position of power. And it's only up until recently, really the last couple of years, maybe even the last year where I've gone, no, I'm pretty sure I know all my opinions and how I feel about stuff, and I'm actually quite happy to state my opinion on something and stick to it even if someone disagrees with me because I've got my own evidence and I've got my catalog in my portfolio that helps back it up. But maybe even three, four years ago, I was still in that position of all it would take is for someone to come along and go, no, George, it's like this. And I'd go, okay, now my opinion, I'm going to follow this until I learn something else that changes the facts for me. It can create quite a lot of turmoil going through that.

Speaker 2 (00:22:56):

The thing is though, I think that to get to the point where you're strong in your opinions and not in a delusional way, it called again, why is it escaping me when someone who is just learning something, it's like the ratio of their knowledge about something Dunning Dunning Kruger. Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:23:15):

Yeah. It's the rate of how you learn something and how quickly you learn, and then you expect your experience to be that level of improvement all the time over time. But actually what you end up doing is you peak initially, then you should plateau, maybe even regress as you refine your opinion and then improve once more again after that point because you go through that period of making all the right decisions because all the new things that you're learning are better than the incorrect decisions that you made before, but then you start revising them, which is why you regress. And then once you find your formula, you start improving that level of plateau and regression actually lasted I think about 18 months for me.

Speaker 2 (00:23:54):

It's going to take a while when I think about people who submit for the nail to mix competition

Speaker 4 (00:23:59):

And

Speaker 2 (00:24:01):

Don't make it in and get irate about it, and then I hear their submission and it's terrible and I realize what's going on is they're at the very beginning of that curve. They took in all this information and what they're doing now is better probably by a lot than what they were doing a month ago

Speaker 3 (00:24:19):

Or

Speaker 2 (00:24:19):

Two months ago. So they're probably riding on the fumes of their own farts basically up into the stratosphere. They're feeling so good about themselves, and I'm not trying to tear them down, it's just fumes. As soon as they get a little further out, they're going to lose all lift and realize that yes, they're better than they were before, but now they can see clearly and they have a long way to go. But when you deal with them when they're at the top of that peak,

Speaker 4 (00:24:46):

They

Speaker 2 (00:24:46):

Can be very, very difficult because their vision is completely obscured by their own farts basically.

Speaker 3 (00:24:51):

Well, I mean it is just because they've had 100% success of doing something that worked for the first time

Speaker 2 (00:24:58):

And they're probably a thousand percent better than they were.

Speaker 3 (00:25:01):

Sure, but it's not the whole picture all the time. When I am working with people, I spend a lot of time trying to encourage them to make mistakes and actually get it wrong and figure out all the incorrect stuff first. Because when you know the things that don't work, you learn a lot more about why it's not working. If we're talking about tracking, this is too bright because then this happens, or I've gained staged this incorrectly, these things clip or this is too much compression. Whereas if you got it right, let's say all the gain staging was perfect, but you didn't know that you were gain staging it perfectly the first time. You don't dunno what you've done, you've just turned up the gain and then it worked and then the compressor worked and you're not over compressing, but that doesn't mean why it's not over compressing.

(00:25:46):

It just means that you didn't fuck it, which then relies on you to not fuck it every single time from then on. Whereas if you intentionally try and make a mistake and intentionally try and fuck it up, then you're going to go, well, last time I did this thing happened and it blew the signal up and that's not useful. Or I need to blow this signal up. I know what I can do because I did it this way. At least for me, I ended up with this sort of internal encyclopedia that allows me to infinitely search the amount of fuck ups that I've made and then go back through to those things and be like, oh, I need this particular fuckup to get this result. And for someone else that fuckup is the right sound for what they need, but they don't know that I learned that through a fuckup and there's this huge fear of experimentation, I think, because everyone seems to want to get it right from the word go, that it's kind of like the idea that you're not allowed to fix your iPhone anymore because Apple will tell you off even though you probably could fix your iPhone if you needed to, if you had everything.

(00:26:46):

Everyone's so used to being told how stuff works now or how you are supposed to do things.

Speaker 2 (00:26:51):

I think the moral of the story is though that the confidence in your own opinions on things was hard fought and hard earned. You don't feel good about your positions on things on whims. You can actually back it up with years and years and years of actually trying to figure this stuff out.

Speaker 3 (00:27:12):

I can now. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:27:14):

Yeah. I think where I was going with it is that the thing that might be discouraging for people, but it shouldn't be, is that I don't think you can fake that. When you see a band

(00:27:27):

That's headlining and they have that confidence that just smokes everybody else that played before them, and that's something that no amount of back line, no amount of lights, nothing like that can create. You either have that thing or you don't, and the only way to get that thing is by going up and fucking up on stage a lot and doing it over and over and then getting reinforcement that you're connecting with people over and over and over and over until it just becomes your expectation that you're going to connect with all these people. And then that expectation becomes reality is you can't fake that same way that the confidence in production decisions, right? You're confident in them because you have so many years of reinforcement and so many experiences that get you to that point. You can't manufacture that. You can only get there dunning Kruger aside through just putting your nose down and doing the fucking work. Really,

Speaker 3 (00:28:28):

I think what I was trying to get at is that I think it's possible to learn some of the things that you need to learn in a nicer way

Speaker 2 (00:28:34):

Rather than it being torture.

Speaker 3 (00:28:36):

Yeah. I don't think it needs to be torture all the time, but it also doesn't mean that being a mute is going to be beneficial either. There's a lot that comes from listening and by not being the loudest voice in the room, but there's a balance to it. But I think it is possible to learn what you need to in a better environment, but I don't think we always get access to that. So is it possible to get here without those toxic environments existing

Speaker 2 (00:28:58):

Or were they helpful?

Speaker 3 (00:29:00):

Are they helpful?

Speaker 2 (00:29:01):

Yeah. Is it possible to get to where you get without going through those fucked up environments or were they at least helpful or are they a part of it at least because now you see the contrast?

Speaker 3 (00:29:13):

I think they are helpful, but I don't think I would encourage anyone really to walk towards them. I know that I can tolerate them because I tolerated them, but I don't think I would actively encourage anyone to walk towards them because it's not nice. It's a really hard question to answer actually. I know that I'm only capable of handling the things that I handle because of the poor situations that I may have experienced.

Speaker 2 (00:29:35):

The thing is though, I do think in order to survive in music, you need to have a certain amount of patience

Speaker 4 (00:29:42):

And

Speaker 2 (00:29:43):

Thick skin to be able to deal with that because at some point, man, you're going to encounter those types of people. The industry is too small, it's going to be unavoidable that at some point you're going to end up dealing with some shithead. And if all you've worked with is great people, it could be a complete and utter shock to the system the first time it happens. I dunno, maybe that's when you get tested.

Speaker 3 (00:30:07):

I think the rule that I wish I got told a lot sooner that would've helped a lot is when you get that message or that email that really it's pressing buttons,

Speaker 2 (00:30:16):

The novel

Speaker 3 (00:30:16):

They got under your skin and you're there and all you want to write is fuck off and just hit send. I got told, yeah, probably leave it a day and see how you feel at this time tomorrow. And that's all I've done now for the last however many years. And it does work every single time because the person that I am when I receive that email immediately and I'm there just like, how can you write an email like this and send it? This is an awful email. A day later I'm like, this doesn't matter. I'll just talk around the subject and I'll fix it later. But attending to it immediately there and then is literally the worst thing that I could ever do. I used to do it a lot when I was younger. Same thinking that if I deal with this right now is gone, it's done. I don't have to think about it, but giving it a day does help.

Speaker 2 (00:30:59):

Yeah, I've gotten a lot better about responding to that. And anytime that I do give in and respond, I always regret it always without fail. And I wish that I had known that a lot earlier too, that not being reactive when someone comes at you is the best thing to do.

Speaker 3 (00:31:22):

But again, I think that's an age thing. I think that's a time thing, but being shown that as soon as you can be shown it is probably the best way of dealing with any of those environments, it's just like, alright, it's not going to change. If you deal with it now, give it a day and if you're not any better, give it another day. Give it enough time until you don't care about it and then deal with it. Then

Speaker 2 (00:31:41):

Don't make decisions when you're mad

Speaker 3 (00:31:43):

Or drunk.

Speaker 2 (00:31:44):

The thing too is when you get those emails, there's a lot of things on the other end, are they drunk?

Speaker 3 (00:31:50):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:31:51):

Are they mad? Did they write it or did their girlfriend write it? What is going on? You don't even know who you're even talking to. Are you actually talking to the person who it says, are you talking to their quote representative? You don't even know. So for you to just get mad and respond, it's a very easy thing to do. But an ill-advised.

Speaker 3 (00:32:14):

Yeah. Also, there's that, I dunno if you have this, but sometimes if I'm reading an email and it's written a really particular way, I'm reading it as if someone's pissed off and they may not be writing it as if they're pissed off, but my internal voice is going, yeah, they fucking hate you.

Speaker 2 (00:32:28):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:32:28):

And this is all, it's so dumb.

Speaker 2 (00:32:32):

It's dumb, but it's because the way that you're reading it, I know what you're talking about. It's a subconscious interpretation because whatever voice you're reading it in is just interpreting the way the words are on the screen or page a certain way. And it's like if you put these words together in this sequence, you would only do that when you're mad. So that person must be mad. I think it's something like that.

Speaker 3 (00:32:58):

Yeah, no, it's exactly that.

Speaker 2 (00:33:01):

But then sometimes they are mad. So

Speaker 3 (00:33:03):

Yeah, sometimes you're not going to win. It's not about winning, but it's what my dad would say. It's not about winning George. You're not going to win those chats. It's just better to treat it like a storm in a tea cup.

Speaker 2 (00:33:16):

Yeah, I agree. The thing too is when you're dealing with people who are coming at you like that, since you don't know exactly what you're dealing with, more often than not a conversation solves it because the way that it came off was even if they were mad, it was just a moment in time and oftentimes you are misinterpreting some of the things.

Speaker 3 (00:33:40):

Yeah, it happens that way. But we do have the option of time we get to check ourselves. Do you know what I wonder with the invent of ai now whether you could take those emails that trigger me or you and then put it into chat GPT and go, is this person pissed off? What do you think? Does this read as if someone is upset? What emotion does this calculate at and use that as a sounding wall.

Speaker 2 (00:34:08):

I'm sure you could get some sort of feedback. I don't know if you've been getting AI ads, have you been getting them?

Speaker 4 (00:34:15):

No.

Speaker 2 (00:34:16):

Okay. I've been getting ads for a bunch of AI apps, for everything from entrepreneurial stuff to production to dating or responding to people. These are just Instagram ads where it'll show you a text message you got from somebody and the video will be the person starting to respond and then actually copy pasting it and putting it into the AI assistant who will then come up with the ideal response for you, which means that it is interpreting what's going on.

Speaker 3 (00:34:50):

Wow. I know that you can get a chat GPT keyboard extension for your iPhone now and just sort of have it interact on your behalf, but that's wild.

Speaker 2 (00:34:58):

It's wild. And the question then becomes, is that a good thing because you're putting a professional foot forward, an even keeled foot forward, or is it a bad thing because it's training you not to be able to deal with it yourself. And I think that the truth is somewhere in the middle, same way as a tuner helps you get the guitar in tune, but it prevents you from being able to tune it completely by ear or GPS helps you get to the location, but you don't remember how you got there.

Speaker 3 (00:35:31):

Yeah. I mean, I use AI tools for, because I'm dyslexic, so I have to use ai, things like chat GPT in order to check what I'm writing to make sure that the tone is correct, the grammar is correct, and more often than not, it'll show me what it could be like. And then I'll go, okay, well that's not in my voice. So if this is the rough outline, I'm just going to take out the things that I think I would never say and then reinterpret it, rewrite it like I was talking about earlier, being shown the wrong answers are often the most useful ways of finding what you do need. So using it as GPS to get to the way that you do want to say things, it's not a problem using it to be you problem. I've seen you talking about dating. I've seen reels on Instagram of people using chat GPT to reply to people on Tinder.

Speaker 2 (00:36:20):

Oh, nice.

Speaker 3 (00:36:21):

And just like, how do I reply to this person so that I get a response and it works? And that is insane. There's a black mirror outcome there where actually we're never ever talking to each other. We're just letting AI talk to AI on our behalf. And then there's a result at the end of that conversation.

Speaker 2 (00:36:39):

I wonder what happens if people actually do meet based off of that. It's like a much more sophisticated version of catfishing.

Speaker 3 (00:36:47):

So then if we're in AI world at this moment in time, how do the automated AI like mastering services make you feel? Or the automated ai, automated ai, YouTube background music generators. Now, you don't have to pay for royalty free music. You can just subscribe to a service and then tell it what you want it to create. And it makes awful elevator music for your videos, but it is being generated.

Speaker 2 (00:37:12):

It doesn't bother me because I guess I don't see much value in say, corporate art

(00:37:20):

Or something like the kind of art that you would see in a hotel. Now, I'm not saying that I don't see any value in the people who make it, and I don't want them to not have gainful employment, but I guess I am just saying that it doesn't bother me. For instance, with AI mastering or something tools like Lander, I feel a lot the same way that I feel about the invention of superior drummer and easy drummer. What did it do? It made it to where I no longer had to deal with shitty drummers, right? But when bringing my band back, did I even for a second consider, and it's not just now, it's not just superior. You have so many

Speaker 4 (00:38:02):

Options

Speaker 2 (00:38:03):

For great program drums, and I bet some of them now are building AI engines into them. And I bet at Nam, someone unveiled that. I'm just guessing, but would I for a second consider bringing my band back with one of those as opposed to crim? Fuck? No, of course not. And that technology has been around well over a decade now at best. It's a great writing tool and a good substitution for a shit drummer. Maybe there's some genres of music where the feel is right for programming, but it still has not eliminated the need for a good drummer. And I kind of see this as a similar sort of thing. Yeah, it might wreak havoc on people writing elevator music. It's possible, but I don't think that it's going to wreak havoc on the retis of the world or the people that write really good music.

Speaker 3 (00:38:55):

No, that was what I found with my,

Speaker 2 (00:38:58):

Or with mastering. Sorry, with mastering.

Speaker 3 (00:38:59):

Mastering, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:39:00):

Okay. So who would use an AI mastering tool? It'll be a musician who is writing a demo, who wants to send it to the people they're working with or something so that it sounds louder. Or a mixing engineer who's first learning, who doesn't have a mastering chain, who wants to send something loud or a very low level mixer. By low level, I mean just like early in the career, very few clients, very inexperienced, where the clients can't afford a mastering engineer. Nobody who is going for a real mastering engineer is going to replace them with an ai, at least at this point. It's just not even close to as good.

Speaker 4 (00:39:41):

So

Speaker 2 (00:39:42):

I guess it just doesn't bother me because I understand the usefulness. A musician who just wants their demo to be loud enough and sound kind of mastered, they're not going to hire a mastering engineer anyways. So I don't see the problem

Speaker 3 (00:39:56):

With you saying the application for ai, mastering looks a little like this. I've never used it. I've seen it, but I've not used it because I've got access to people like Mike Rogue Planet or Jens.

Speaker 2 (00:40:07):

Yeah, why would you use that shit if you have access to Mike or Tony Lindgren or Ys or whoever, you wouldn't even dream of it.

Speaker 3 (00:40:17):

I'm just surprised. I guess I must be built already. You were talking about the application for AI drumming and immediately when you were talking about AI mastering and people that being at a certain point in time or at a certain level wanting to send, and it was the word send, if it's not already built into SoundCloud or Dropbox or Google Drive, it's going to be, isn't it really?

Speaker 2 (00:40:36):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:40:37):

Because it'll just be a button where it goes, make it loud, please. And then maybe there's going to be another one that costs money that goes make it a good loud that you're going to pay for a subscription tier towards or something.

Speaker 2 (00:40:48):

And I'm sure there'll be some outlier producer who works on big things that only uses that and somehow figured out how to make it work for their productions.

Speaker 3 (00:40:58):

Oh, there's always one.

Speaker 2 (00:40:59):

There's always one.

Speaker 3 (00:41:00):

And

Speaker 2 (00:41:00):

They're going to get a lot of press for it. And so then people are going to be tricked into thinking that that's how things are typically done. But I don't think that it's going to replace the need for good human skills same way that I would never consider not hiring a reti to write music for something if I actually needed the music to be good.

Speaker 3 (00:41:23):

I guess today's podcast is surrounding conversation and communication because what you can't do with AI is go, you can give it prompts, but you can't have a conversation about direction or pull from all these different experiences that you might share or know similarly, and then go, I need it to be like this because you're not going to be able to tell AI what grief sounds like. It's just going to be able to approximate it. And that response, that emotional response, is going to be the thing that makes us allow a connection to exist, either between the people that we work with or the art that we work on, or then the art that we then share. So I guess the reason why you are not concerned, I'm going to go back over it, is because people exist, you can have a far more accurate portrayal of your intent with a human than you can with a computer.

Speaker 2 (00:42:13):

Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny with program drums, when I'm writing, I use a lot of the grooves that tune track offers, and I know that lots of the drum instruments out there you can get grooves for.

Speaker 4 (00:42:26):

So

Speaker 2 (00:42:26):

It's not specific to tune track, but these grooves, their MIDI performance is played by real drummers for people who don't know. And I find that that's nine out of 10 times going to be better than me writing the beat a hundred percent from scratch, at least going to have the feel of a drummer. It's not that I can't do it a hundred percent from scratch, and I will do it sometimes that way, but by and large, it's a lot quicker. It's more efficient to just grab a groove and go. And if you get used to listening to that groove, since it is a real drummer who played it and it feels kind of like a real drummer, you might trick yourself into thinking that it's the right part for the part, or these drums are great. I mean, fucking Nick Barker played these drums. This is great. But then all that has to happen is you then have a real drummer write their parts on top of that and track their parts and you forget the program drums. All you need is a real drummer to do their thing, and then all those grooves go out the window.

Speaker 3 (00:43:34):

Yeah, that's always a really exciting point of the production process for me. When you go through that pre-production song arrangement idea, sketching out stuff with midi, grabbing grooves, because I've done that too with the record that I'm building for myself as well, and every single time replacing the MIDI drums feels so rewarding or freeing for whatever reason, I dunno why it happens the way that it does. I've never really understood mini drums takes up a certain size and a certain shape and mixes, and it only ever takes that shape. It never goes beyond it. It can go below it beneath it. It can always be smaller. But there's a thing about life drums that when it works, it's huge. And it's such big personality contribution to a song, not just from the performance side of things, but also from a tonal characteristic sonic point of view that every time I get to swap out MIDI for live and I get to go through that production process, I think outside of amping guitars with something that is moving as opposed to using a plugin, that process of swapping out drums is always like, oh, I've got so much more space to work with now.

(00:44:45):

They sound huge, but I've got all these little pockets that I can put stuff within. That's great. Whereas with the MIDI drums, it felt very, maybe I'm biased, but it just feels really static.

Speaker 2 (00:44:55):

I know what you mean. Crims not the first person to have brought this up. My opinion of what's going on has crystallized in the process of working with crim. But I came up against this in the past, and I've noticed that because of the way MIDI drums feel and sound, and I realized that they can sound any number of different ways and feel any number of different ways. There's so many tools you can use to change the way they sound and feel. However, there's this box, and because that box is strangely limited,

(00:45:31):

The instinct that I have is to fill it up with more shit. So there'll be more double kick, more fills, more symbols, more stuff to just add this energy that is just not inherent in the program drums. It's like I want to add more elements happening so that I can get more of a propulsive human feel like it's alive. And then I give crim the drums and he's like, dude, I can't play double kick for this long at this speed. It's going to have to change. It's going to have to be less stuff. And my response is always, oh, that's fine. I didn't write this for you to play it. I wrote this so that I would feel anything when I'm playing along to it. Then a real drummer will play less stuff and it'll sound more alive. And I've noticed that. I think the tendency with programming drums is to do a lot more precisely because of that box you're talking about where you're just trying to do whatever you can to compensate for the fact that it just does not sound alive at all. And I don't know what it is.

Speaker 3 (00:46:36):

I had some thoughts. I have been working on a drum library for a while, but that process of working on that drum library has been the thing that's taught me that A, making a drum library that is good, really good, and actually works and feels right is really difficult. And then doing it in a way that not just feels good and sounds good, that works, but you are professionally happy with, is also really difficult. I learned this when I went from only using Superior drummer when I couldn't afford to record drums to then going to recording real drums that I was told, and my thought was, our superior drummer sounds, this is superior to drummer too. So Avatar, I was like, God, these drums sound awful. I can't believe this is what live drums sound like. And then I went and recorded real live drums, and I went, no, this sounds way worse. And I was like, well, what is it that these people are doing? If Avatar is real live raw drums, what is it they're doing? And I didn't realize that to these individuals that raw meant there was still some EQ on the desk. There was still some selective processing going on, but raw meant they weren't obliterating the dynamics into the stratosphere. And I've learned from, no, it was

Speaker 2 (00:47:46):

Your job.

Speaker 3 (00:47:47):

Yeah, no, that's my job to just L one everything until people cry. And then from doing my own development process, there's so much that comes into it, which is down to do you EQ at all? Do you allow for the things that are not musical frequencies to exist within the signal? Because then that feels more similar to what you and I are now familiar with that is live drums. However, from a sales point of view, it's really unattractive for the end user. It's not mix ready. So there's this moving target that's happened where program drums sound a particular way because the end user that is normally early doors producers or people doing demos want a particular result, but then they go, this sounds really good, but it sounds smaller than the record that I think it's going to sound like. And that's because that record has a set level of production that's going on that you can't get when you're tracking live drums. And then live drums sound a particular way and feel great because they have dynamics that are beyond 1, 2, 7 that are dynamics other than 1, 2, 7. And so it's like this moving target of, and you brought up AI earlier, which I think you probably are right, but I don't think it can exist within contact. From what I've learned is that in order for that bridge to be crossed, so that divide to exist, you know how you can get AI to write words as if it's a personality of someone else?

Speaker 2 (00:49:11):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:49:11):

To get AI to drum the MIDI or rewrite the MIDI as if it is a drummer, which then you get into a whole sort of IP problem to approximate someone's personality and their style within MIDI on the thing that you can purchase and then have it choose human or musical velocities and performances for you. And that in combination with things being less processed and then now with MIDI to having far more velocity control, you could get there, but I still think even with all that development, it still won't feel right because having a human that you can interact with and you being involved with the ascertaining of the performance or ascertaining of the tones is going to be the reward. We become really attached to it the same way. I'm sure when you tracked guitars, you could have gone any number of routes. You could have tracked everything at home on your own and probably would've gotten a particular result that would've worked.

(00:50:05):

But you went and worked with Jesse and you went and worked with John Douglas, and that involvement yourself will feel rewarding and then you will feel far more connected to the music as a result of it. And then that on its own, even if the performance was worse, which I'm sure it's not, feels different and feels better because that connection means more. I guess that's a really long way around the block about explaining why MIDI and real drums are going to forever be different. Even if we get MIDI three and there's infinite levels of velocities, there's so much information to fill in the gaps for us as individuals that a computer can't resolve for us. And it comes down to that.

Speaker 2 (00:50:42):

The thing is also using a computer to try to be you, I don't think is what the point of all of this is. I think from everything I know, what people are trying to build with these ais is assistance to us that just helps humans do better work, helps humans live better lives, but it's not meant to replace the artist. I'm sure that people are obviously messing around with that as a thought experiment. And there's some people who are putting out Musak, right? M-U-S-A-K,

Speaker 3 (00:51:19):

I dunno about this.

Speaker 2 (00:51:20):

Okay, so Musak is a term from decades ago for elevator music for basically sound that has a musical quality to it, but that is used more as a background setting for being at the dentist's office or being in an elevator or some waiting room or some shit like that. It's just like the lifeless drone music sounding stuff you hear in a corporate building or something when it's not like the radio or whatever. And so they taught you how to do that at Berkeley, and I don't know if Zach was a formal term, but that's what it was called. Music or M, and it's music like sound. So they are making M with ai and that makes perfect sense because the shit sounded lifeless and horrible. Anyways,

Speaker 4 (00:52:12):

The

Speaker 2 (00:52:12):

Thing is it was never supposed to have any artistic value to begin with. It was always meant to just be a product to make your life a little bit more pleasant while you're waiting on hold to talk to the person at the cable company or the internet company. But it wasn't meant to replace your favorite records. Same way with the ai. Yeah, I'm sure there's some people out there who are thinking that Arc spire generator will one day be able to replace arc spire, but I just don't think that that's where this is going. I see where this is going. Is that the music type shit? I have a YouTube channel. I need some background music for some rent I went on. So either I'm going to have a friend do it, I'm going to do it myself, or I'm going to get this library to do it. But either way, we're not making art here, we're just making wallpaper for my rant,

Speaker 3 (00:53:01):

Wallpaper for my rant.

Speaker 2 (00:53:03):

And I think that for that it'll be pretty good, and I could be wrong, but I don't think that AI generated drumming anytime soon will be anything more than a glorified version of the grooves that you get. I think it'll be better than those grooves because right, you get a great drummer who inputs grooves into an AI who then starts to learn everything about their style and then will output a groove for you in that drummer style, but specific to the part that you just wrote or will take a part you wrote, and we'll alter it to be more in that person's style. I'm sure that'll be a lot better than the drum grooves we have now. And I'm sure that in some cases people will just use that on records and I'm sure that it'll be one more nail in the coffin for shitty drummers. But I don't think that any time soon we're going to see it as a replacement for people doing really good work.

Speaker 3 (00:53:58):

I hope not. I hope you're right, because selfishly doing drums is one of the most fun parts of making any record, especially making a metal record, especially now, I think we get so much more that we get to explore that whole shoegaze and new metal comeback has allowed for us to have things that have sustained and weird characters. And it would be awful to just be limited to what was captured for a drum library and we just do this now. That'd be such a shame. So I hope you're right.

Speaker 2 (00:54:30):

I don't think people's fundamental emotional and psychological need for music is going to change. It's never changed. Those styles, genres, delivery, that's changed. But I think people's need for something visceral to connect with has not changed ever. And I don't think that that's going to change. And as long as that's being delivered, people will continue to consume it and make it. I mean, shit, if an AI drummer can deliver that then it might be trouble. I'm just questioning whether an AI is going to be able to deliver. That is all.

Speaker 3 (00:55:05):

Well, I think this is why it's just exciting as a thought process or as a question in general because up until the last couple of months, I don't even think any of us, maybe you'll think differently about this because of the businesses that you run. I don't think anyone cared about LLC or chat GPT, like devices. Their first introduction to AI was midjourney or this portrait artist thing that they used for their Instagram profile pictures for a bit. And then all of a sudden we got chat GPT, and we've got people in the education system using chat GPT to fill out their essays for their submissions. Now

(00:55:42):

The way that universities have battled that is that they now submit those essays to chat GPT and then go, did you write this? And it goes yes or no because chat GPT has a pattern for how it writes and it can detect its own pattern, which I find really entertaining. It's like it's got its own fingerprint with how it does stuff, but with the rate that things have improved, and I might just be naive, I didn't predict that we would get this. I didn't think that we'd go from Ask Js to this. And so I think it makes it really, really difficult to predict that whether it will or will not end up with MIDI music that is comparable or not. There are going to be things that are being worked on that we can't think of. I think that's insane.

Speaker 2 (00:56:23):

Oh, I just think no time soon is all

Speaker 3 (00:56:25):

You reckon?

Speaker 2 (00:56:26):

Yeah, not soon. Not like tomorrow. I do think that at some point we're going to get something that blows our minds, but I still don't see people connecting to Midjourney art. The way that they connect to real art people are wowed by how cool it looks.

Speaker 3 (00:56:40):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:56:41):

That's about it.

Speaker 3 (00:56:42):

I think the fact that a computer can make anything that we can understand from just a sentence is insane.

Speaker 2 (00:56:50):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:56:51):

That idea of crazy. What's the thing in Star Trek that you just say, I want this and it just appears it's that, but it's art and I loved mucking around with that because it's just a toy and you just go, ha ha, Darth Vader wearing pink. Ha. Now I can see it. It's fucking awesome. Yeah, it is dumb, but it's what, but none of us thought that that would ever exist. At least I didn't even ever think, oh yeah, I did. Alright, okay, sure.

Speaker 2 (00:57:18):

I don't know. I've always figured that this shit would exist. It just has always seemed like the natural progression of things that computers are going to get more and more and more and more and more intelligent. And so

(00:57:29):

Why wouldn't this exist? They've been saying that they're going in this direction for forever and we know how quickly technology evolves. How could this not be the logical place that it goes? The only thing that I'll say is we don't fully understand how the human brain works, so we can't replicate the human brain. We don't totally get it. So we're creating a different kind of intelligence and I think that no matter how far it goes, it will never be the same. Which that doesn't mean it won't be great, but it'll never be the same. And with it never being the same, I just question whether that emotional side that we have that seeks connection, I just wonder if it's going to be able to create whatever that is. And I think that all the outer characteristics it will be able to create. If you were to go down a checklist

(00:58:20):

Of everything that creates emotional connection in music, I'm sure that a program is going to be able to go down that list and to where on paper you could make a spec sheet about it and have all the elements of an emotionally captivating song. Whether or not it's actually emotionally captivating. That's the question I think. Not whether or not it has all the elements of an emotionally captivating song and I think there's a huge difference there. Going down the checklist, it's going to get so good at it. I think that it'll be better than some people, but some people just write shitty music, so of course a machine's going to be better than them in it.

Speaker 3 (00:58:58):

I don't mind if it gets challenging. I don't mind if it gets really close to being difficult to discern because hear me out, we already know what it's like with it not, but we dunno what we get. If it does, we might learn that we can do something else with ourselves that if that process is semi-automated or as an idea starter, it's a starting point and we get to build on top of that. Do we save ourselves time or grief trying to get to a starting point that we could just have, there are multiple avenues that we get to travel down as a result of it existing, but if it doesn't exist, we kind of stay in the same lane.

Speaker 2 (00:59:37):

I agree completely. Actually, the fact that I do think that it's going to get better than most people anyways does mean that I do think that we're going to get a good starting point because that seems like a very logical thing that we're going to get out of it. I can't see why it wouldn't go there. We're going to be living in a world that we can't understand what it's going to be like in a few years. I think we can kind of speculate, but we can't totally understand it because it would've already been there if we knew where it was going.

Speaker 4 (01:00:06):

Right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):

Humans can't even fake being human. Right. Humans who try to copy other humans and use fake emotion,

Speaker 4 (01:00:15):

You

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):

Can spot that. So a non-human doing it. I just think that all the other side of it probably will be able to do it better than people.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):

I guess we will just find out. We'll see. I think it comes down to whether Elon gets the block that he wants for that six month period. I dunno if you saw that because he asked for everyone to pause everything. We dunno what's going on, but really it's just so that he can build his own company that does ai. But I would think in, I'm going to say a year, maybe two years, it will just be part of those smart assistants that we have on our phones. That's just where it's going first. That's where it's going to be that smart speakers everywhere. It will evolve into something really useful, but then also something really dumb. Do you remember Clippy from Word? Yes. It'll be that there won't be an in-between. It'll be stuff that's really dumb like Clippy. It looks like you're trying to write a cv. Should I write it for you? Or it'll be really, really intense, really great, but there won't be a middle area. It'll either be really great or really awful I think. And it is going to be everywhere on our phones inward trying to help you write your CV or trying to help you finish a text message where you don't want to be angry. I think it's just going to end up everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):

I think you're right. I'm looking forward to it. I'm not afraid of it. I'm sad. We're not going to get to see where it is in 500 years.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):

You think we're going to be around in 500 years

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):

If we are. They

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):

Figured out why you age now. So just give it a bit and they'll make sure that you don't age and then give it 500 years.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):

I will. And I've got Darth Vader wearing pink for you right here. So

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):

Have you actually done

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):

That? Yeah, I did. So I'll text it to you, but I think it's a good place to stop the episode. I want to thank you very much for taking the time to hang out and talk shit as always. It's a pleasure.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):

Anytime. Alright then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post them to your Facebook and Instagram or any social media you use. Please tag me at al Levy URM audio at URM Academy and of course tag our guests as well. I mean, they really do appreciate it. In addition, do you have any questions for me about anything? Email them to me at al at M Academy. That's EYAL at M dot aca, DEMY. And use the subject line answer me Al. Alright then. Till next time, happy mixing. You've

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):

Been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.