JARRETT PRITCHARD: Live vs. Studio Production, Producing Goatwhore, Why Tone is in the Hands

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host,

Speaker 2 (00:05):

Eyal Levi.

(00:08):

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 al Levi 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.

(01:10):

All we ask in return is a share a post and tag us. Oh, 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 EYAL at m dot A-C-D-E-M-Y. There's no.com on that. It's exactly the way I spelled it and use the subject line Answer me Eyal. Alright, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM Podcast. My guest today is someone I go way back with, I mean well over a decade. His name is Jared Pritchard and he is an engineer, musician and producer out of the Orlando, Florida area. And I mean, he's done so much mix for tv, live, sound production. He has done all kinds of different things that fall under the umbrella of audio engineering and all at a super high level.

(02:12):

And some of the bans he's worked with are some of my favorites, like Goat Horror Cynic 1349 and many, many more. This is just a dude who has been crushing it for a very, very long time. I messed up. I didn't realize that he produced the last Goho record, and so when I had Sammy Duet and Kurt Lou on to talk about making that record, I found out during that conversation that my old friend Jart had produced it and I felt like an idiot. And so it felt like the right thing to do an episode with Jarret. So let's get on with this Charet Pritchard. Welcome to the URM Podcast. Thanks, Al. It's great to be here. Dude, it's been a long fucking time.

Speaker 3 (02:56):

I know it really has probably like eight, nine years or more. It's been a while.

Speaker 2 (02:59):

I left Florida in 2014.

Speaker 3 (03:02):

Shit. Yeah, so it

Speaker 2 (03:03):

It's been nine years. Crazy. It has been a while and it was really cool to just kind of start seeing your name all over Sick Metal Records. Obviously I always knew you in a professional capacity, but to start hearing about you with Goat Whore and then 1349 and it was just cool to start hearing your name pop up with super legit bands that I actually listened to. And I've just heard your name more and more and more in those circles. I know that you've been working in Live Sound for those bands for a while, but what caused the transition to actually producing those bands?

Speaker 3 (03:41):

Well, I was always a studio engineer. I mean, I started in the nineties with my own studios. I owned a couple different ones. I had retired for a long time from Live Sound because I had kids and I was being a dad or whatever, and 30 49 asked me to go out with them when they did the Carcass tour in 2008. That's kind of like my return. And once I got out there and I was touring and doing this and that and the other, I don't know, opportunities came up. We built relationships. I think probably making records is as much about that as the technical aspect of it. And so gruesome came to me and asked me to mix the first gruesome record for them. I was doing records here and there, but it got more constant when I did Savage Land. And then from there, then I went and did 30 49 and then a bunch of stuff started coming. It was just a shift of focus is all. At first it was just like I was touring, I was making money, I wasn't really thinking about the studio. I was just trying to pay my bills. And then opportunities came up and more and more and then I just kept doing it. And it seems to have a mind of its own. I would love to say that I knew what I was doing in directing all this to happen, but that's definitely not the case. It just seems like good fortune to me.

Speaker 2 (05:01):

I think there's definitely a lot of good fortune involved with anything involving music and success with it. But building relationships I think is the thing that creates that good fortune skills. I almost feel like that technical aspect is assumed, right? You're not going to be in the conversation or even have the chance to build the relationships if that part's not there. So I feel like that's just kind of the base level. So beyond that, it comes down to the relationships, I think.

Speaker 3 (05:33):

Yeah, and I would say the people that I work with, I think probably the most important thing is that they trust me.

Speaker 2 (05:38):

Yeah, I actually had a question about that, about the trust aspect. Obviously bands trust their front of house engineer, they're bringing them on tour and have brought them on tour more than once.

Speaker 3 (05:49):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (05:49):

There's also this stereotype, which is I think based in a lot of reality that front of house engineers suck at studio mixing. The stereotype is there because of, I think it's just two different disciplines in that front of house. You got to do everything super, super fast. You don't have time to tweak. I mean, you could tweak some, but you don't have four days to get drum sounds. It is what it is, and it's trying to get the most out of whatever quick situation you're in. And that is one particular skillset and someone who becomes awesome at that. I don't think it necessarily translates one-to-one to the studio. That's a whole other type of mindset skillset. I'm not saying that there's a stereotype that front of house engineers are bad engineers. It's just, it's like comparing classical guitar with electric guitars. So yeah, they're both guitars but completely different skill sets. Just because someone's good at classical guitar doesn't mean they're going to be able to play with a pick or play metal or something. So how did the trust for you as a studio engineer build?

Speaker 3 (06:56):

I think it because I was more of a studio engineer that was just doing front of house because I knew how to, the thing is too, you're right, you're exactly right. It's the difference between using a scalpel and a sledgehammer live. It's a sledgehammer now. This is what's in front of me. I have to make it work. It's usually very fast and not a lot of time to think. Whereas obviously on a record you have time to really sort of surgically make something be what you need it to be. The big thing that I think is weird about it, I knew you were going to ask me this, so I was thinking about it the other day. The one thing that's kind of interesting is that live it's now. And so a lot of what I do in addition to make records is I'm a system tech.

(07:47):

So I'll go out and design a PA for an arena show and go and deploy it and tune it and time align it and all that stuff. In a way it's making a record, but I'm creating the acoustic environment every day, whereas I set my studio up one time, it's treated, my monitors do what they do, and it's once mixing live is kind of having to do that every single day. But it's also now it's fleeting, it's in passing. It's a singular moment in time, whereas making a record is obviously continuous, so they're different. But the bands, I think people knew that I taught large format recording SSLs and Neves and all that stuff. I also had a really long history of television mixing. I had done 300 hours for discovery in Nat Geo and stuff like that. And I had played in bands. People knew of the bands I'd played in, and obviously I'd worked on the engineering of those. So I don't know, I think probably my demeanor and just my execution of the day-to-day tasks made 'em know that they could count on me, I guess. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (08:55):

I think a lot of it does come down to that man. There's so many people who orbit in music that just don't follow through on things, just don't execute. And I think that execution, it does matter and people do notice it, especially over a long period of time. If you're just someone that gets the job done, lots of times you can take a genius. We all know some genius types that are very, let's just say tough to work with or very all over the place, not good with deadlines, not good at executing. But when they do work, it is the most brilliant thing you can ever imagine. But just doing the work, that's the challenge right there. And I think that people don't have time for that shit and they don't have the patience for that stuff. They would much rather work with someone that executes. Now if you're both good and you execute, that's the best of both worlds. But I think that even I would say, and you get this with musicians too, you can take 20% less talent, but 50% more work ethic and it'll totally compensate. You see that with lots of musicians who have careers being reliable and pretty damn good at it will beat being an Olympic level virtuoso who is impossible to deal with and unreliable.

Speaker 3 (10:20):

Yeah, for sure. I agree completely. I know a couple of those. We all do. I mean a thing to behold to watch them when they do execute it, but the surrounding things can be Sure. But yeah, I mean, I don't know, man, it sounds probably kind of weird, but I care about this a whole lot and I don't work on things I don't care about. I don't work with people that I don't care about. So what their situation is coming into it, what their deadline is, what they need from me, how they're going to be perceived, what's happening at the other end of my hands is extremely important to me. And I know that that sounds obvious, but I don't think it necessarily is. I think that there's some instances where there's a process or there's a machine and we're just running things through feel like that. If I don't care about it, I can't do it. I

Speaker 2 (11:13):

Get it.

Speaker 3 (11:13):

If I don't have that thing, if I don't attach to it, if I don't have a vested interest in it, I just am not super great at it. But I'm lucky that I love engineering so much that pretty much any opportunity like the material, I can almost find a reason to appreciate and connect with almost anything that comes across my desk. So that's an advantage, I guess. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (11:36):

I completely understand what you're saying though. I feel like I'm the same way. There's this part of my brain and I wish I was different, but I kind of have given up on trying to change this about myself because believe me, I've tried, there's this part of my brain that just doesn't switch on if I'm not interested in something and there's no amount of work ethic in my way out of that situation if my brain does not engage, no amount of caffeine, no amount of pep talks, nothing. It's weird. I feel like my IQ drops by 30 points and my a DD goes up by 200%. When I'm interested in something, I'm a fucking killer. So I have realized that it's really, really important for myself and also everyone around me that I'm very, very brutally honest and focused on those things that do get that side of me because that's what gets the best results. That's what gets everybody else the best possible situation out of me. It's hard, man.

Speaker 3 (12:44):

Yeah, I mean there's one record, I'm not going to say who, but if I look at a situation going in and I know that it's going to be a fucking nightmare and I'm not going to be able to do it, I'll pass on it no matter how big it is. If I know that I'm not going to be able to drop in there and really, like you said, get that best aspect out of me for whatever reason, I'll usually I'll pass. I'll just be like, eh, it's not for me. Maybe somebody else should take this one.

Speaker 2 (13:09):

That's great. That's not going to hurt your reputation, right? Well, the thing is, early in your career when people don't have work, we've all been there. That drive to say yes to everything is very strong and you probably should say yes to everything. But I think that one thing that you learn as you go is that saying yes to things that you're not going to do as great of a job on is going to hurt you more than just saying

Speaker 3 (13:33):

No. Oh, I completely agree. Completely agree with that.

Speaker 2 (13:38):

But at the same time, you have to have a good perspective of where you're at because there's a point where you really should be saying yes to everything and sucking it up and just do the fucking work. I think that what we're talking about is a luxury that happens once you've been in the game for a little while where you can say no. So I'm just saying that for people listening who are in the early stages, we are not in any way, shape or form suggesting that you start pretending like you're Andy snip or something and can choose who you work with.

Speaker 3 (14:12):

No. Also too, I think about people that are coming in and joining this community at this point in time, and there's so much information available and it's such a glorious thing because when I started, I mean I had a growing up background in engineering because of my dad. So I mean I had kind of a jumpstart, but when I figured out this was what I was going to do, I was feverish. I mean every book, I mean sitting there reading the audio encyclopedia every magazine because I didn't really have the internet. I called studios and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was just really, really, really intense about it. And when you're early and you can't turn down things, every experience, everything that you come across is going to be a learning experience. And when it's first happening, the two things that are probably the most important is tenacity.

(15:08):

If you really are going to do this, the first few years are going to be a bitch. There's no two ways about it. It's going to be hard and you really have to lean into it and just say, this is what's happening. I know that this will work if I do my part of it, if I clean my side of the street clean, if I apply myself, if I do this, I know that it will happen. It just might take time. I don't really know that there's instant gratification I think it takes to work. But the whole point to this was is that the amount of information that's available to you that I wish was there when I was starting is spectacular. It's an amazing time to want to learn this because there's so much there.

Speaker 2 (15:46):

Do you know what's funny? I remember those days. So I only ever wanted to be an engineer because I wanted to be able to record my own music. And in the late nineties, it was like you could either go to the big ass studios that were like 1200 a day or you could go to some shitty metal studio and get garbage. But at the $1,200 day studio, it was also you're going to get garbage because you'd get somebody who hated metal. So that's the reason that I decided to try to learn and finding information was being a forensic scientist or something. It was barely anything out there. And everything's very abstract trying to learn audio through books. It's like trying to learn how to cook without tasting food doesn't make any sense. And so that's actually part of why started URM was to change that, especially in the world of heavy music because even at that time you could go to a regular school to learn the craft of recording, but there was literally there zero about metal.

(16:59):

And metal kind of has its own rules, I think. And so that's actually the reason that I started URM. And what was funny about it was when we started, there was a lot of pushback. A lot of people were thinking that it was going to replace their jobs and that we were giving away the secrets and that it was a dirty thing to do. But the way I saw it and the way I still see it was every other genre on earth, you can go to an actual university and learn how to do it. You can learn how to play it, you can learn how to write it, you can learn how to record it. Our art form, which is now at that point was 40 years old, has literally zero. So what's going to happen when the N and Richardson generation died? Is there information, it's just going to disappear.

(17:47):

All this greatness is just going to evaporate. That's bullshit. It has to be documented so that the next generation can learn from the previous one, and it needs to be taken seriously because a serious genre, it's like serious art and why should every other genre be taken seriously and this one not? And just because we're showing people how to do it doesn't mean that other people are not going to get work. If you suck, maybe you've got something to worry about, but if you're good, somebody learning how to mix is not going to dethrone you.

Speaker 3 (18:26):

I absolutely don't worry about whether or not I'm going to work. And I'll even go further to say this. I mean anyone, even if it's like a Facebook message or something, if somebody writes me and asks me a question, I'm going to answer 'em. I'm a million percent about sharing the information. I'm not afraid of someone else trying to join this community. That doesn't make me afraid because there's plenty of music to be done. Some people bring different things to the table. I mean, I have a lot of technical skill, but I don't think that's what I bring to the table when I make a record. I mean, yeah, I do mean it takes years to know, Hey, drummer, push on the one pull back, lean in this, that and the other. It takes to be the guy. I tune my own drums. I don't use drum techs.

(19:15):

I tune my own shit. That took years to learn because you're a guitar player, just tuning. Are you in fucking tune on this low tune part? Where are you in tune? These are things that take years and years of skills to develop no matter who you are. And so somebody coming in that wants to learn and wants to go through that process and wants to build those skills or whatever, I'm a thousand percent happy to share anything I've figured out. Because you were talking about how abstract it is to learn how to engineer out of a magazine. I remember early on I read compressed the snare drum. So I had a snare drum on, I recorded and I put a compressor on it and I roasted it and I was like, that sounds like shit. What are they talking about? And it took me a minute by myself to understand attack and release, why a fat compressor?

(20:11):

Why a VCA compressor? Which color of the palette is going to do what I want it to do? What are the variables? All of that stuff took a minute and that definitely was not in the magazine. I was reading it said, compressed the snare drum, and of course I did it the wrong way and it sounded horrible. I went through the process and I learned it. So at this point, the way things are now with all the communication, I think it's fantastic. I mean, people share with me some of my favorite engineers. If I have a question, even now all the way out here at 50 years old still learning, I'll write like, what do you think about this? What's your approach? What's your thoughts? And I have people that I look up to that are good in the same way that have no problem sharing the information. So I think any other concept of what should be going on here, it might be a little bit misguided. I think it's important to reach down and pull up the next generation, just me.

Speaker 2 (21:04):

Yeah, I totally agree that it's misguided plus what you just said, that what you're bringing to the table is far beyond technical, and that's exactly right. The thing that you cannot teach anybody is how to hear things and you can't teach someone taste and you can't teach somebody judgment and making records. Technical aside comes down to taste and judgment, the whole relationship aspect too. But having the right kind of taste the right judgment calls and hearing things the right way for the project, that is a completely unique thing, unique to the individual. And there will always be some people I think, who are more like the same way that some people have more natural ability on an instrument and then they can practice and become even better. There's some people who are just naturally going to be more in tune with understanding other people's intentions or their tastes are going to be naturally aligned with artists they work with or more in tune with, I guess what the collective subconscious of the listening public is into. But I don't think that you can teach people those things. I think that that either is or isn't. And if you have it in you, you can develop it though.

Speaker 3 (22:31):

Well, I think when I was a kid, when I got into, I mean I always liked metal and stuff when I was little and about 1985 or whatever, I discovered punk rock music and I have this emotional connection to the music that I love and I always have since I was little. And like you're saying, figuring out that intention, this, that and the other, being able to listen to what your artist is doing and catch where that's coming from. Because I mean, in many ways music is like the telepathic language. Somebody sits down with an instrument and they feel something and they create it, and that gets turned into notes and then the notes go into the air and then another person hears it and it makes them feel a certain way. I mean, it's an intangible language, but being able to listen to the artists that you're working with and get where they're coming from.

(23:19):

And I work with mostly aggressive music, so feeling that lean in that, I don't know, but being able to attach to what they're trying to convey is a thing. I don't think that you can teach. I teach someone how to do that, but it's really helpful because especially working with vocalists or whatever where you can get out there with them in the studio and really bring it out of 'em. This isn't a wall, this isn't a gobo, this is the audience, this is the congregation. That's who you're addressing, being able to catch what they're doing in their song. You're the narrator, you're the creature, you're this side or the other, and it's that weird connection where you're able to hear what somebody's doing in their song and catch their intention. It's hard to explain, sorry, but it's important. It's really important.

Speaker 2 (24:13):

That's why I think that URM now, the mix, this whole thing that we did had to come from inside the metal community and teaching people how to produce and mix metal couldn't come from I guess the traditional academia because it has to come from people who are actually in it and love it. It's the same reason for why if you went to that $1,200 a day local studio with your death metal band, you'd come out with something that sounded like fucking garbage. You can't fake loving the genre, feeling the genre and being so in it for so long that it's basically on an instinctive level. So it's kind of like a for us bias kind of thing. It had to come from within the metal community. There's just no other way. And look, I don't know other genres that well. I listen to all different cousins of music, but I don't have the same connection to other genres.

(25:12):

So I don't know how it works. I don't know how it works in hip hop. I don't know how it works in country. I don't know. I can respect when I hear good stuff, but I don't feel the same thing that I do for metal. It's not as deep for me just because it's been my life for so long. And I think that that's the same way for almost everybody that's professionally in metal. It's like their entire lifestyle is weird. And not to say that they don't do other things or don't interface with the real world or don't listen to other genres, but that metal aspect of people's lives is a very real thing. And it's baked in. You don't choose it, it kind of chooses you and it kind of is what it is.

Speaker 3 (25:58):

I mean, it's also too within metal in general, I mean especially sort of with the production and touring and all this other level, it really is like a family. It's a community. I just did Hell's Heroes a week or two ago. I was doing Hell Hammer Triumph to Death Possessed and Celtic Frost. And my friend, I brought an assistant with me. We were doing some recording and he's not a metal guy at all. And it was so funny to watch him experience a metal fest because he was blown away by the community and how nice everybody is because on the outside of the microcosm looking in, you might be like, I don't know, you might have some weird ideas about what's going on inside heavy metal or whatever. But it's really interesting that within it that it is family. It is a community far more than I think people would think it is with the touring and the professional aspects of it.

(26:49):

I feel like almost everybody sort of knows each other by one degree of separation pretty much. Really generally, most people are cool and fun to be around and professional as hell. Professional is. You wouldn't maybe think so in a genre of music that I don't know at times, maybe has pig heads on stage or this side or the other, but it's amazing. But you have to be. But it's amazing how much it is and it was fun to watch my friend because he's a really good friend and a really great engineer. Watch him experience it for the first time and watch him be blown away at how nice the musicians are at, how the crowd are, like how professionally the show's done. And so when you're involved in it in the metal world and we are a microcosm, it really is a pretty neat little inner circle that's worldwide, but it is something that's just in you. I don't think I could not be involved in it if I wanted to. It's just there. It's always there.

Speaker 2 (27:46):

Yeah, there's no way out. Hey everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast, then you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration and information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you're a member, you already know how amazing it is. The beginning of the month, nail the mix members, get the raw multi-tracks to a new song by artists like Lama, God Angels and Airwaves. Knock Loose OPEC Shuga, bring me the Horizon. Gojira asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others over 60 at this point. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song on the album and takes your questions live on air.

(28:41):

And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jenz Borin, Dan Lancaster to I Matson, Andrew Wade, and many, many more. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, which is our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics as well as Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for use in your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those of you who really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhance, which includes everything I already told you about and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain, staging, mastering low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed.

(29:35):

Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to urm.academy to find out more. That brings me to the Goat Who Record when I invited Sammy and Kurt on, and I think we did a great episode. I would've invited you on had I known you were on the record. I just didn't even know. I didn't know until we were in the conversation and your name came up and I was like, oh, holy shit. That Jared Pritchard, the Jared Pritchard. Then I realized I've been hearing your name a lot more, but I was really, really stoked to hear that you did that record.

(30:31):

I love it. This is no knock on any of their previous work at all. I think everyone they've worked with is great, great people, great engineers, like great and the records, they all work and they're all awesome, but what I'm about to say is in no way, shape or form and knock on anybody. However, I've toured with Goat Horror a lot. I think they're the band that Doth has toured with more than any other band. I think we must have done 200 shows together or something over between 2006 and 2009. So I know what they sound like at their best. I know what they're like at their worst. I know what they're like at their best. I know what they're like in the middle. I am super familiar with them since the first show of that first tour we did together. It was a cattle decapitation tour.

(31:26):

Sammy blew my mind with how incredible his guitar tone is. It's not the type of thing you see on Instagram with this new wave of perfect guitar players. His ability to play metal and to sound sick playing metal and his right hand is just like, it's among the best I've ever encountered and to this day, maybe the best tone I've ever heard out of a guitar player up there with Gaira and this goat who record, not trying to huff your farts or anything, but it's the first record where I feel like the goat whore that I toured with. That's what I'm hearing. Oh, the other records sound awesome, but this is the one where it has the energy I guess, that energy that made me watch them most nights. And dude on tour, you might watch the bands you're not playing with or working with once or twice, but you're not going to watch 'em every night. They're one of the only bands that I watch. I'd say 75% of the nights

Speaker 3 (32:34):

They're something else. I think everything that you said about Sammy is true. I mean, I think everyone in the band is incredibly solid. I think Ben's one of the best front men in metal. Oh yeah. I think that what I love about their shows the most is that they don't really put on airs. There's not like this sort of persona like you're getting the same guys in the van, but the same guys in the van are that intense. That's who they are. Yes, they sure are. That sense of humor that Ben has where he'll crack a joke in between songs because he knows he's about to count for and split skulls. It's an interesting thing that I've seen watching them, mixing them over the years of just that confidence because they are truly a great band. They're truly great. As far as the records go, I did Vengeful the last one and my buddy Chris Common who had done, I was familiar with him because he had mixed Helms of Lee.

(33:29):

I don't think I heard that one. Vengeful Ascension we did at Matt Talbot's spot in Illinois. The lead singer from Hum owns a studio there called Earth Analog. That's really cool. And we did that record there. Like I said, my friend Chris Common mixed it for us and I really like how that one came out. So they said, well, we're going to go and do this studio, and we had the opportunity to go to this place called Studio in the country that I was really, really, really into going to because it's basically, it's an old Westlake room in the middle of the swamp in Louisiana, and it's got 80 series Neve in it. It's just a really spectacular place and it has the only functional, as far as I know, freestanding echo chamber that's out there. So I was really stoked on it. So we just went in and we started doing it and doing the drums. Zach is really solid. He's really focused. He's really consistent. His dynamics are really consistent with just dude, he's great as well as I do. That makes it a lot easier to make a record when the drummers just,

Speaker 2 (34:30):

He filled in for us on a tour.

Speaker 3 (34:32):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:33):

So played with him and he's a severely underrated drummer. He's just as good as any of the top tier of metal drummers. You just don't hear about him as much, but he's fucking great. So his consistency is the part that is so impressive.

Speaker 3 (34:53):

Well also too, with Sammy and Zach musically speaking about that band, it's never flash. It always serves the song. That's why their songs are phenomenal. That's why they're memorable is because nobody's doing the look at me thing. Not that I have a problem with that. I like some really technical stuff, but those two guys, they're playing, they super serve the song. It makes it easy to mix them live. It makes it easy to make a record. And so with Angels doing the guitar sound, which is probably the thing that was the biggest, drums aren't super hard for me. Tune them phase, put good drums in there, put a good guy on it, point the microphone, right? It's not rocket science, but maybe it is. I don't know. Anyway, guitars are a little bit more ambiguous. So we went through, we took apart every single cabinet that he has took the grills off of them was auditioning mics on every single speaker.

(36:00):

Then we went through every pickup in every guitar We went through probably six, maybe more guitar heads using game chokes on eight hundreds. Everything you can imagine. And the funny thing is, and he'll kill me for saying this, but I'm going to do it anyway. We go through all that and we always come back to the same thing. It's his pedals bad monkey, bad monkey. And the Michael Klein bad monkey. We had two pickups. He used a blackout on one. We used the Lawler on the other track, and it's because it's the dude. The sound is there, the sound is there. You don't super have to fuck with it. It's there. It's him. I mean, it's the guy. He's not going to let anything else happen. You can get as adventurous as you want to and start throwing all these weird things out. I'm going to put an HM two in there and see how Sammy sounds to you.

(37:02):

It doesn't matter because he's not going to let it happen. He knows what he sounds like. My job just becomes to reproduce it, right? Microphones, I ended up using a cabinet from a company called Warlock in addition to one of his Randall cabs. The Weber Gray Wolf and Silver Wolves were in it and X pattern. I liked the gray Wolfs the best. So that was one of my, and it was basically that and his Randall cabinet. And then switching off between two heads, two different guitars, two different overdrive pedals. And then your inclination, I think a lot of times, especially if you have an idea when you've done a lot of records or whatever, is to do things a certain way or you have your go-tos. And I would say that that guy recording that guy is the guy where you kind of got to throw all that out.

(37:55):

It needs to be what it is because he really, he's picky. He won't start recording until it's right, which I super appreciate that somebody that's willing to put the time in to get the tone when we're tracking, we're not going to fix it in the mix. We're not going to reamp it. We're not having that discussion. We're getting it now. I'm going to hear what I want now, and then we'll start. That's Sammy a million percent. So once you track it, you don't have to do anything to it. It's just there it is. Put the faders up because that's what the guy wants. You might control some low end. You might do a little multi-band compression on your low low mids. You might do a little bit of a roll off. Amplifiers to me tend to, will have a que, I call it a squeak in 'em, usually up high somewhere around two to 4K that I usually will just get in my ear and I'll want to go just get that tamed down.

(38:50):

But for the most part, that was his tone. And we did that record at Studio in the country, and then we had some vocals to pick up and we had some little acoustic guitar things and this, that, and the other that we needed to do. So then I came home, I got all the editing done. I got it off to Kurt so he could start getting his part wrapped around what he was going to do with it, start working on the drums and all this other stuff. And then those guys flew in here or they drove here to Florida to this studio, Sammy and Ben, and we finished it up and we looked at the guitars again and brought the faders up and made sure that everybody was on the same page and then finished up the vocals. And then from there we just gave it to Kurt and Kurt. He did a fantastic job. There's no two ways about that.

Speaker 2 (39:41):

Yeah, I love Kurt's mixes. I just felt like it was like a, whatever you did production wise with Goat Whore and then with Kurt's Mix, it was just a great pairing. I thought. It sounds phenomenal. And the thing that I want to talk about a little bit is what you just said about that tone. That is Sammy, he knows what he sounds like, and I think that's a very important thing for people to realize. I was fortunate that I learned that thing at an early age. Now I've talked about it before, but my dad conducted the orchestral inve record in the nineties, and so I got to spend a week with Inve in 1996 or seven or something. And so I heard him playing through his big setup. I heard him playing through a little Practice Amp. I heard all kinds of versions of inve, and they all sounded like inve.

(40:38):

And no matter what he was playing on, it just sounded like him. He knew his sound, he knew his style. He was him, and he was himself no matter what. And when you have these players with an iconic or recognizable sound, what a lot of people don't realize if they've never been around it is that this is what they sound like when they're just in a room plugged into something. This is not something that the producer creates yet. Like you said, the producer, you capture it, but musicians like that coming out of their guitar, obviously the gear makes a difference. So the Randall thing does make a difference, but still, when you're listening to a player like that just play outside of a mix just on their own, that's what they sound like that's coming out. So that does not get invented in the studio.

(41:39):

And so to people who are working with bands that don't, I would say this, especially for people working at a local level, if you're not getting, because I know this was frustrating for me when I was first working with bands was like I was trying to get it to sound like stuff that I wanted it to be like it was just not getting there. And then I had to remind myself, that's not what these dudes sound like. They kind of sound crappy and they're never going to sound like this record that I look up to. They're never going to sound like this iconic guitar player because they don't sound like this iconic guitar player. It's a very simple and self-evident thing, but if you've never seen it, I think some people might not realize just how real that is, that iconic musicians sound like themselves.

Speaker 3 (42:38):

So you and I both have had a lot of experience with probably Mixes being flown into you where you're going to do the amping yourself, right?

Speaker 2 (42:46):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (42:46):

And so you can have a wall of amplifiers. I got one right here. And it can be a guitar tone that has worked a hundred times on a hundred different things because a di signal basically is what it is. Where's the variable right there?

Speaker 2 (43:01):

For people listening, he was saying hands

Speaker 3 (43:04):

In their hands. It's a lot of times it's in their right hand if their picking hand be it left-hand or right-handed.

(43:11):

And so for people that are starting out and recording themselves or they're getting ready to go in the studio, the thing that I see on this topic where guitar is concerned, that I think needs to be addressed practice, because so much of it is in your hands. I mean, if we take icons, I was a big morbid Angel fan. I think Trey as thought is a great guitar player. I loved Alterer Madness. It's in the guy's hands. Oh, yes. Yeah. When I was a kid, I was friends with them and I went over to the warehouse and he had his amp set up or whatever, and he is like, Jared, play this for me so I can stand back here and listen to it. So I took the Explorer. He was on Black Explorers at the time and went for Maza Torment, and I hit the thing and it's like Blink.

(43:56):

There's not much gain there. I was expecting it to be super easy to go. It was like because his grind, his distortion is his picking hand. He has that thing. So when it comes to good guitar tones and things like that, or why Sammy is what he is, all I'm doing is long windedly backing you up. It's here. It's a million percent here. It's the way that these guys play, the amount of practice that they put in, and then it starts to go into the electronics of them reproducing themselves and actually putting some thought into like, well, what do I sound like? What does a microphone sound like when you put this on my amplifier? Or whatever. Yeah, but it's the hands. So much practice. Please practice

Speaker 2 (44:45):

On the topic of tone in the hands. So it's an interesting debate. Well, not debate, but it's an interesting topic because I have seen people ask this question, and it's a valid question. If tone is in the hands, then why do people care? Great guitar players too. It's not just shitty ones. Why do great guitar players care so much about the gear? Obviously it's not just in the hands and there is some truth to that, but at the end of the day, there's lots of variables. That's the most important one. That's the X factor.

Speaker 3 (45:21):

Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. Why do they care about the gear? Well, because everybody wants to sound good, but I assure you that if it's not being played well, you can have the most expensive amplifier known to man, and it's still going to be garbage. You know what I mean? It's got to start there, but sure. I mean, good gear, good pedals, knowing how to dial in a tone, knowing how to point a microphone, mic preamps. I mean, there's a lot there, but it definitely, I feel like it starts with the hands, for sure.

Speaker 2 (45:51):

Yeah. I guess it's the same way. A great drummer who hits right can make a kit that's badly tuned, still sound better than a shitty drummer on a well tuned kit. And I've experimented like, do you know Matt Brown? Maybe the dude that used to drum tech, all my records back in Florida. I don't know if you ever met, but anyhow, he's phenomenal. We experimented with this a few different times actually for a URM course where it was like, awesome kit, really well tuned. Not as good drummer versus shitty kit, badly tuned. Great player. Dude, the difference was not subtle.

Speaker 3 (46:31):

I bet.

Speaker 2 (46:32):

Yeah. It's not subtle. So of course, great drummer on the great kit, well tuned is ideal, but at the end of the day, out of all the variables, the most important one is the human.

Speaker 3 (46:46):

You're right. The human is the variable. But I wanted to bring this up on this, and I only touch on it for a minute. There are a lot of shortcuts to making records and things nowadays that maybe you didn't have back in the day. You have cab IRS and you have lots of sampling and this, that and the other. I just wanted to say that the thing that I think is the most enjoyable about this is that if you do the work and you learn the technical part of it, why affect compressor? Why an optical compressor? Why this EQ versus this eq? All of that thinking gets out of the way and you start to be able to make records. You're painting a picture once you jump over that hump where you kind of build your palette by having an understanding of your equipment and what it does and all the various things that are engineer specific, how to point a microphone, how to get your drum kit phase aligned. That's one that gets by people a lot, especially on the records I get sent. Once you do the work and all that crap gets out of the way, that's when it starts to become art. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (47:57):

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (47:58):

Absolutely. Once that's not the forethought of your mind. Once you've gotten past that, that's when it really, I think that's when it got really fun for me, when it got to be painting a picture with a band. It's fantastic. You're playing a band. That's basically what you're doing when you're mixing. You're getting to play the ultimate instrument. That's a kind of a crucial thing. That's why you do the work.

Speaker 2 (48:22):

Yeah, I mean, it's the same with having technique as a player. All it does is allow you to do more and not have to struggle or think about it as much. Exactly. Yeah. It's a very, very important thing. One last thing I want to talk to you about before we get off. I have to bring this up. I told you I was going to, but I have to bring this up just because every longtime listener of this podcast knows the Bobcats episode. We did an episode with Tim. Maybe it's like episode number five or six. It was when we were brand new. It was an interesting guess. It is one of the only times, actually the only time that I've ever had a tense episode, and that was in 2015, almost 400 episodes later, that one still sticks out in my minds listening back to it, I listened back to it and was like, wow, this is a funny listen. And I couldn't tell if he just didn't like us or what, but he was not very nice to us. So you worked under him. What was it like working under him?

Speaker 3 (49:39):

It was okay. I didn't have a, I don't know. I kind just did the tasks. I met him when I first moved to Florida. I knew who he was. I was aware of his books. I just called him up. I was like, Hey, I'm in Florida. My name's Jared. I'm an engineer and I'm going to come visit with you. I want to meet you. I want to hang out. And I did. I just went to his house and he showed me into the studio and he sat down and talked to me and he played, he actually was mastering Neph phages at the time and played that for me when I met him the first time.

Speaker 2 (50:08):

Oh, that's cool.

Speaker 3 (50:09):

And I met him and he was cool, and sometime went by and he gave me a call and he's like, I need an assistant, a mastering assistant, basically to code. He would make the files and I would code 'em. I would do all the PQ code and build the DDPs and quality control and all that shit. So I went and did it, and he was always very nice and agreeable to me. We've always been friends for a long time. I know that he has some strong opinions. I know that I'm aware, although I didn't pay a lot of attention, I'm aware that he's certainly at times has rubbed people the wrong way. I think Bob's smart guy.

Speaker 2 (50:46):

I don't have a problem with him by the way. It's just an episode that just comes up over and over. We don't have very many other episodes that to this day people just list in their top five of episodes of ours ever. Just because it was, I don't want to say explosive, but it was something. It was definitely something. But I also know that he's phenomenal and his books are the gold standard.

Speaker 3 (51:16):

I feel like knowing him and everything, I learned a lot about coding, but I didn't learn a lot about mastering. I felt like that was very separate from my job. I wish I'd have been able, I would ask him questions and his answer would be, well, you're asking me how to become a world-class mastering engineer, and I'd be like, no, I'm asking you how much parallel compression you slipped under that. I know what you're doing. So I didn't really learn a lot about that, but I learned a lot about coding and I learned a lot about qc. Like I said, we've been friends for a long time. I don't see 'em as much as I used to or whatever. Some people have strong opinions and have strong personalities, and that can sometimes be a good thing and sometimes it can be an abrasive thing. I think we've all experienced it, but as far as I go, I worked for him for a minute. I got an opportunity to do cynic. I got the cynic tour. That's when I worked for 'em. It was in 2010. I had written Mafi Dal and said, I love cynic. I want to mix cynic. They wrote me back and they said, okay, well, what they said to me said, someone as cocky as you is one of two things. They're either really good or really full of shit. So why don't you tell us how you will mix

Speaker 2 (52:26):

Cynic? That's what they said to you.

Speaker 3 (52:28):

Timone said it to me basically. Yeah, amazing. I love that. Oh, it's fantastic. So I wrote them like a three page step by step processing, patching, gain, staging, everything about what I would do with cynic, and I got a one sentence response back. It said, yep, you're the guy. And then I got the job and then I left working with Bob and them. That was a long time ago in 2010, I guess it was. And then I went and did Cynic, which was really fun. Lemme tell you what, I'm going to nerd out for a minute. I went to San Pedro and I sat down in a little tiny room and put on some headphones and cynic proceeded to play Focus front to back with me sitting there. Wow. And you want to talk about Mind Blown? Like mind fucking blown. Yeah. It was pretty amazing, man. Amazing.

Speaker 2 (53:14):

Yeah, that's really, really great.

Speaker 3 (53:17):

It was great. They were really fun to mix, fun to tour with. Cynic was amazing.

Speaker 2 (53:22):

I agree with what they're saying is when someone is that forward, yeah, it is one of two things.

Speaker 3 (53:28):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (53:29):

They are either full of shit or they know that they're the right person for the gig and you got to find out somehow, right?

Speaker 3 (53:38):

That's right. Exactly. I think that they were right to ask and it was really funny. And there are even YouTube videos out there of those shows from that time, like ones from Rock and Roll Arena and Sya in Italy that I still listened to the version of textures from that night. I'm like, God, it's crazy. That was that. I was a part of that. It's such a trip.

Speaker 2 (54:04):

It's

Speaker 3 (54:04):

History for sure. I mean, it really is,

(54:07):

In closing as far as I go, it seems like when you get the idea that I'm going to go work and rock and roll, that this is going to be easy and this, that and the other, and I don't think that it is at all. I think it requires a lot of love and a lot of dedication, but I just want to tell anybody that's starting, and it is hard to start, and you're going to go through it for a minute. The rewards that I've gotten from being an engineer, I mean, I have Edar from 1349 in my kitchen right now, shipping his beer. He flew over to see me. Those guys are some of my best friends. The experiences that I've gotten to have for doing this, for putting in the work, for not giving up for caring about what I'm doing, I can't even express how amazing they are. So whatever you have to do, if you really care about this thing, I promise you it's worth it. It is the most rewarding life I can possibly imagine.

Speaker 2 (54:54):

Yeah, I'm with you. If you actually stick it through, there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow basically. It's worth it in my opinion too. It's just you got to go through the dark times at first and sometimes in the middle too

Speaker 3 (55:09):

Sometimes. Sure.

Speaker 2 (55:10):

Yeah. That's just a part of it. But Jared, it's been awesome catching up. It should be less than 10 years before the next time we catch up.

Speaker 3 (55:21):

Definitely.

Speaker 2 (55:22):

But thank you very much for coming on, and thanks for being open with all your answers and great work with that goat whore

Speaker 3 (55:31):

And everything. Thank you, man. It's great to see you. And thank you very much for having me. I was really excited to be a part of this, so thank you. It's a pleasure, man.

Speaker 2 (55:39):

Alright then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post some of your Facebook and Instagram or any social media you use. Please tag me at Al Levi m audio at M Academy and of course tag our guest as well. I mean, they really do appreciate it. In addition, do you have any questions for me about anything? Email them to [email protected]. That's EY L that urm. Do AC A-C-A-D-E-M-Y and use the subject line, answer me a. All right, then. Till next time, happy mixing.

Speaker 1 (56:19):

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