JOEY DOHERTY: Scoring Call of Duty, producing I Prevail, and why you should make music you hate

Joel Wanasek (00:00:00):

Welcome to the URM podcast. I'm your host, Joel Wanasek today, and with me is Joey Doherty. Did I say that right, Joey? I hope I didn't.

Joey Doherty (00:00:07):

Yeah. Yeah, that's it. You got it.

Joel Wanasek (00:00:09):

All right, I got it. So Joey, you are a producer. You've done a bunch of work on Call of Duty, you've worked with bands like I Prevail, falling In Reverse, osa. You've also worked on Sonic the Hedgehog, and you worked pretty close with our mutual friend Tyler Smy.

Joey Doherty (00:00:25):

Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

Joel Wanasek (00:00:29):

That's a wild resume, man. How old are you? Yeah,

Joey Doherty (00:00:32):

I'm 29. I'm about to be 30.

Joel Wanasek (00:00:34):

Damn, dude, you're killing it. So tell me, you got started in this game and I would love to hear your story.

Joey Doherty (00:00:40):

Yeah, basically as a kid, I got a guitar one day when I was like 10. And from there I wanted to be the world's greatest guitar player and be in every band possible. But I think growing up with it, eventually out of necessity, started recording my own stuff and really fell in love with it. And then I think around 20 16, 20 17, I did an album with a band under Taylor Larson, and that kind of ignited my whole love for production and being in a real studio environment was really eyeopening for me. And what was your band called at the time? It was called The Violent Noise. Okay. But how bands go sometimes it just doesn't work out. But I think that's kind of what kickstarted me into wanting to produce and work with other people and constantly just work on music and get involved. And since then I haven't

Joel Wanasek (00:01:36):

Slept First Step then since you came from a band, and obviously you probably spent more time in your room playing guitar than just like I did when I was a kid, spreading away playing to it, practicing to a metro, learning music and stuff like that. What was your transition into producing?

Joey Doherty (00:01:53):

Yeah. Well, I think a lot of it just came from wanting to record my band's demos and playing a lot of guitar and just starting out small. I think I started with Logic seven way back in the day or whatever. And then eventually I moved to Pro Tools and got pretty familiar with Pro Tools for a long time. And now I'm an Ableton person. But I think a lot of it is just like when you're a musician, you start playing and you start writing songs and then you want to put them down somehow. And not everybody has the money to just go to a studio and figure it out. And also, I feel like there's a lot of growing pains when it comes to being your first experience when it comes to recording. And so being able to do it on your own and sync a thousand hours into figuring out how to record a guitar properly is something that I think is really important.

Joel Wanasek (00:02:47):

I think working with a great producer is probably the most, I don't want us to use the word humiliating, that's a negative connotation, but I mean it in a positive way. Absolutely. A combination of pain and pleasure where it's like you go in

(00:03:04):

And you learn everything that you've never thought about your entire life. Am I holding the pick angle correctly? Is my drummer hitting in the right part of the drum head, or do they have a tendency to drift? Or is my pedal chain squeak, sorry, squeak free. We have the WD 40. All these little things that a lot of people don't think about when they just get in a room and jam. What happens is you walk into a first producer and I feel like you just get slaughtered in every possible day psychologically, because you have somebody just breaking down all of the relationships and all of the songs and all of that right in front of your face, and then they're breaking down all of your playing and performance. But at the end of it, after you go through that experience, I kind of feel like you've learned your shit and you learn what to do and what not to do. So

Joey Doherty (00:03:47):

Yeah, I think the big thing for me too is speed. If you ever watched Daily roic, that guy is fast and he is so quick to get his ideas down. And I think that was such an appealing idea to me was being able to have such high quality ideas coming out so quickly and being able to produce sounds that are professional that Fast was like, I got to figure out how to do this. I got to learn how to do this. So I really looked up to him and took a lot after him and his camp at the time, and I still have a bunch of friends from that area and that group. And I want to say shortly after that, I got into Nail The Mix, and I did that for a long time. Again, this would've been like 2018, I'm pretty sure I worked on some Papa Roach stuff back. It's called

Joel Wanasek (00:04:34):

G Status Man

Joey Doherty (00:04:36):

In

Joel Wanasek (00:04:36):

The Day.

Joey Doherty (00:04:37):

Yeah, I think even some of the first, the Jason Richardson song and stuff. But I mean, Nail The Mix is such a cool thing for me because at the time when I first started only started with Pro Tools, there wasn't a lot of tutorials on YouTube. There wasn't anybody really teaching much stuff if it was very rare or there'd be one or two videos that everybody is already seeing kind of thing. And being able to have access to high quality stems from professional bands and professional mixes and professional reportings was crazy because that let me just practice so much and get so much better at mixing and make mistakes and fall on my face and figure it out. And I think that trial and error period is so important and being able to have good stems and trying to make them sound as good as the person who produced it is very eyeopening to showing you that it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of ear training and it takes a lot of patience and it takes a lot of understanding of the nuances between every instrument and like you said, the little details that go into every report, a load of preset.

(00:05:44):

And we're getting there though. We're getting a little better. I don't know, man. Some of the technology's trying to get crazy

Eyal Levi (00:05:52):

Yes and no, but hey everybody, I want to take a quick break from this episode to talk to you about URM Academy now. So if you're new here, URM Academy is the best online school for metal and rock producers and musicians. When you join, you get a whole access to a range of content. There's Nail The Mix, which I'm guessing most of, and that's where we bring on a different artist and a different mixer every month to walk through a mix and give you the raw multi-tracks. And we've had on mixers like Will Putney s Borin, Tom Lorde, algae with Artists, bring Me The Horizon, chuga Periphery, opec, even Nickelback and Tons more. If it's under the Heavy Music umbrella as I like to call it, we cover it. You also get our mixed lab tutorials, which are little bite size tutorials about very specific topics.

(00:06:49):

We have over a hundred of those now. So if you don't have the time for a Nail The Mix session or an entire course, you just want to find one tidbit of info to help solve a problem. That's what Mix Labs are for. We also have exclusive members, only Facebook and Discord groups where you can make friends with and talk to thousands of people from all over the world who do the exact same thing as you. And what's super awesome about our community is that it's troll free. We kick trolls out. It's like an Oasis online and also our instructors are part of the community and they interact with everybody. So you can not only make friends, but you can I guess socialize and learn from the best. Also, we have URM Enhanced, which is our more advanced membership tier. The main focus of that is our Fast Track library, which are some very, very, very detailed courses on everything from editing drums to post-production effects, automation, creating impulse responses, working with low tune guitars and more. We have over 70 of these. It's actually insane how deep and comprehensive the fast tracks are. And when you join Nail The Mix or you RM enhanced, you also get access to Riff Hard, our online school for metal guitarists with hundreds of lessons from artists such as Animals as Leaders, spirit Box Ark Spire, Jason Richardson, and many more. So go to URM Academy. Let's get back into this episode.

Joel Wanasek (00:08:21):

I think there's one thing that I really want to jam on that you said that I think is important is that I said this the other day, I had a little reel about the importance of getting it right at the source and how that relates to mixing. And a couple of people, anytime a reel blows up just were roasting me. They're like, this is terrible advice. But I'm like whole lot. It's such a waste of time to move the microphone. And I'm thinking to myself, hold on a second, hold on a second. I don't know. These people clearly don't do this for a living. That's the first thing that goes through my head. But the second thing is that I'm just thinking if you're recording a guitar and let's just say you're not using a sim in a preset, but you're actually miking it or whatever, this is an art and it's an art that takes, you can load a preset and get a C, but if you really want to do something unique and special, you've got to really take the time to learn the art.

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You got to learn which amps go with. For example, if we were just talking presets, how many people just sit there and they're just like, I'm going to go through and learn what a V 30 versus a 75 versus a greenback versus a fill in the blank sound bite and really learn the sonic signature of every possible speaker. And then where would I want to use a tone like that or when would I want to use a tone? So the people that are really great at guitars, for example, or drums or even vocals, those are people that have spent an insane amount of time perfecting their craft, and that's why they can get the tones that they get, which ultimately makes mixing a lot easier and a lot more fun. What's hard is when you get somebody, I mixed something recently where I haven't done home brew stuff in a while, but I kind of had a gap in the schedule and somebody was like, do this. And then I opened up their drum tracks and I was just like, oh my God. And then I got to their vocal tracks and I was like, oh my God. And I got to guitars and I'm like, okay, it's been a while. Everything is unusable. I'm used to working with really, really good producers at this point. So the salvage jobs are always really brutal and I think eyeopening and I think necessary for anybody doing this. So

Joey Doherty (00:10:23):

Yeah, absolutely. You

Joel Wanasek (00:10:24):

Kind of learn that early and you understand the value of just getting good tracks to work with and how important it is to seek after that.

Joey Doherty (00:10:32):

Yeah, I mean once I felt a little more confident, I started doing local stuff. I had lived in Florida at the time, so I was doing little local projects here and there and everything was basically I'm the captain of the ship of whatever, I'm in an apartment or whatever, and we have some guitars and a microphone or whatever, and we're trying to make music with superior drummer and stuff. But I think being able to work on music that is to a certain extent, low quality or low budget, I guess is the way I would put it, is really boundary pushing for yourself because you have to make it sound as good as everybody else, but you have such limited tools or access to things. And then like you said, even your knowledge is pretty small at that point when you're starting out, because there's guys out there spending hundreds of hours looking at all those speakers you're talking about.

(00:11:25):

You're like apps and stuff. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's companies who are out there just making IRS every single day. They just eat and breathe that stuff. But it's important, and I think that hyper specialization is really important, and it's key to finding out what makes you as a mixer and a producer so you can translate that into your music. And like you said, having some of those jobs that can be a little rougher than others is always an eye-opening experience, and you get some tracks that are mislabeled and you got to rebuild some skeleton or whatever, but it's all part of the job. It's highs and lows.

Joel Wanasek (00:12:02):

Well, I'll see people online get really frustrated and angry when they have to deal with that, which again is, I would say if you were to put your career in thirds, and obviously everybody's timeline and trajectory is different, but maybe the first third of your career, you're kind of doing the salvage stuff where it's like you're in less than ideal, then you get something that kind of blows up a little bit. You start getting some better high quality stuff, and then you're really get established and then you're working on awesome top tier stuff almost all the time, and you kind of forget what that world is like. But going through those different stages I think is very important. If you just jump right to the top, what can happen is my good friend, my Applebaum is a very, very successful, famous world class mastering engineer.

(00:12:48):

I can't say enough accolades about him. He says that there's two kinds of mixers. There's mixers that are good salvage mixers and mixers that are good at just taking what they're given. And so what I see is that it's really easy to basically just write off that kind of stuff with a bad attitude when you're sitting there be like, oh, I don't want to work with bands like this and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I always kind of looked at it as an opportunity when I was there because I'm glad that I know how to salvage mix really, really, really well

(00:13:17):

Because it's helped me now that I work with way higher caliber producers, their stuff is easy to mix because it's kind of just like you're just taking it and giving it a little bit of enhancement. They've already taken the mix to a b plus or an A minus, and they just need a mixer to finish it. Where it's like when you're salvaging, you learn all these crazy little ticks tricks and techniques that are not necessarily obvious at first. Like, oh man, I cannot get a guitar tone. The guitar player cannot play. And oh, I can EQ match the guitar to my favorite record and now it's listenable magically. There's all these little things you learn when you're doing salvage work. So I think there's a real value and a real opportunity there.

Joey Doherty (00:13:57):

And I think the apparent thing too is whether it's a salvage job or it's a high quality, super high budget job, I think the goal is always the same. Sonically you always want to achieve the same goal sonically. So to me, it's more impressive if you can get to the same goal with two different standards of recording quality. And yeah, like you said, you learn all these little tricks and I think that that's almost more important than working on some of the high caliber stuff because when you get to that point and you're working on that high caliber stuff, you're going to know all these little tricks that you can do, or maybe one thing that you learned earlier on is really going to help you with the current thing that you're on because exactly how to fix it, exactly how to get to the goal you're trying to get to. So it's definitely important to have a balance of both. I feel that for sure.

Joel Wanasek (00:14:44):

Yeah, a hundred percent couldn't agree more. So I think a good takeaway for people is just when you get those projects that really make you question your life, you want just bang your head into the wall 70 times and then just run your face over a cheese grater. I can't think of anything more Bria right now. When you're working on those types of projects, try to find something to embrace about it, and that is the challenge. It's forcing you to get better at what you're doing and those skills are going to matter later in life because again, I mean just in the real world. So I've probably mixed 30 songs in about a little bit less than a month here, and I did a couple of salvage mixes that were referred over from some people where they're like, Hey, I got this to master, but I just can't, this guy just needs to mix this song.

(00:15:31):

And then you've been able to take that and just when you get it back from that person, they'd be like, oh my God, this is just night and day I can't believe. And you look at their tracks and you see it's frustrating. It's hard. It's not easy. There's no linear path, especially a lot of the younger people coming up now, it's like they come in through say, YouTube, but the problem with YouTube is you're getting a bunch of random pieces of a puzzle and you're laying them on the ground. You might see how they connect because you can't zoom and there's no linear path. And the people that are really should be teaching you generally aren't on YouTube, and it's like you're not getting the guidance from the people that are like, oh yeah, I've been doing this for 30 years, and here's what you need to learn and focus on. So anyways, okay, so you kind of got going, producing your own stuff and started working with some bands. So what's next? Where did that take you? I

Joey Doherty (00:16:21):

Mean, after that I moved to LA when I was 22 and I had $500 in my pocket. I knew one person, I stayed on his couch. And then I ended up through Facebook groups meeting up with other people who were like-minded and trying to make music. And at the time I actually went to LA because I wanted to do pop and I wanted to do EDM, and I was really looked up to Seban and a bunch of these really big name mixers and stuff. And so that was kind of my interest was I want to do some EDM, I want to do some pop. I really want to just throw myself into that world because for the last 10 years of my life, I've just been a metal guitar player who wanted to play as fast as possible as, so being able to just completely step outside out of my comfort zone was really interesting. And getting to work on so many different cool little pop projects and EBM projects and just meeting a bunch of people in LA and putting myself out there was such a life-changing experience because

Joel Wanasek (00:17:18):

VUCA gives somebody watching. Let's just say I moved to LA today and I am just getting started and I'm sitting on my friend's couch and I've got $500 in my pocket, which in LA I feel like that buys you a couple of lunches and some gas and an Uber or two. What is your advice for linking up with people and getting started?

Joey Doherty (00:17:40):

Well, the biggest thing I can say is relationships are important, and I think relationships matter first before anything else. Obviously when you're first starting out, you don't have any money and you make money doing music, especially if you're at a point where you've cut your teeth doing your own stuff for a long time and you're like, Hey, I'm actually pretty good at this. I think I deserve to be paid X amount of dollars, whatever. It's more important that you meet people first and you build a relationship with them first. Because even if you go to meet someone and you go to a meetup essentially of producers and stuff, what I did is I was in a Facebook group called Make Pop Music, and I ended up going to a bunch of these little get togethers that they had at different bars and stuff, and it was literally instantly I started hitting it off with certain people and just started producing stuff for singers and writers.

(00:18:32):

Obviously it can be scary and daunting to put yourself out there, but I think having that little push and being able to just go and find any kind of meetup or any kind of socialized group of people who are like-minded, and I think a lot of the people that I met had also just moved to LA at the time too, so they were also brand new and you're brand new, so you guys have that relation of you're both in a new city trying to make it work. But yeah, build that relationship first always, because if it doesn't work out with that person and the project that you're trying to do, if they need the swallowing mix and it doesn't work out with you as the mixer, but you have a good relationship with that person, it can always come back to you. That person will always be like, Hey, this guy was cool and it didn't work out that first time, but three months, six months, a year from now, I'm going to give him this thing that I'm working on and see where it goes. So it's always important to put people first, in my opinion.

Joel Wanasek (00:19:27):

That's such an important lesson, and I'm so glad to hear you say that because this is something I preach a lot. People always ask me like, oh, how do I get started? How do I get clients? How do I do this? How do I do that? I'm like, okay, first problem is you're calling 'em clients, people, let's focus on building relationships. I think what happens, and I think a great analogy is Tinder versus marriage. So

(00:19:47):

If we go on with the mentality of Tinder or speed dating where it's like we're just swiping through people and trying to find who's going to say yes versus, here's the analogy, I say, okay, if you and I walked into a bar today and I'm said, okay, two scenarios we're going to play out night. One, your goal tonight is to get laid. I don't care what you got to do, you cannot go home until you've achieved that. That's it, Sarah. You're going to act totally different. The way you're going to approach people is it's going to be a straight number, of course going to go for it. Now, if I say, okay, now we're going to go into the bar and you're not leaving this bar until you find your future spouse, how are you going to approach people then? And now it's going to be a totally different interaction because now you're like, okay, well who in this bar am I even interested?

(00:20:35):

And who in this bar now that that's, do I even connect with? Do I like their personality? You're going to start totally framing things. So I always say go in and build relationships and the work will follow. I still live in Wisconsin, but I fly to LA a couple times a year in Nashville and I just go and hang out with people. You know what I mean? And it always needs to work because it's like, of course people like you, they'll send you work and you send 'em work back, and that's kind of how it works. So I think just going in with a long-term relationship, you're there to build a relationship. You're not Tinder, okay, no more sweat mentality towards artists, producers, bands. We got to get rid of this mentality. We got to build that.

Joey Doherty (00:21:14):

Having that bias is really important too. If you're going in the mindset of making money, people aren't going to want to work with you. You're trying to get paid. You're not trying to develop an artist, you're not trying to work with someone and bring them up and bring the best out of them. You're just trying to get your money. And honestly, as someone who was there with no money, I know exactly how that feels and I know how tough it can be being in that line between, well, I kind of made some money this month, but now I'm not making any money this month. And you kind of have to have this balance of like, alright, well now do I have to get to a nine to five job and try to do this on the side? Do I quit my nine to five? And I know that a lot of that can be scary and you're going to go through a lot of ups and downs, but it's important that you keep your head high and that you always put those relationships first and you try to come from that place first.

(00:22:05):

Because in my mind, I always think about it, if someone is going to pay me a thousand dollars to work on a song, I would want them to be treated the way I would if I was paying someone else a thousand dollars. I would want premium care. I would want someone who's really responsive. I would want someone who's very in depth and shares my vision and is not someone who's just like, oh, give me the money and let me mix it and finish it and send it off, or whatever. So having that care and that personal touch to your work is very important, especially in a production sense because you're going to be injecting a lot of yourself into someone else's music. So to me, relationships always king no matter what

Joel Wanasek (00:22:47):

The thing is. No one likes a grifter, okay? No one likes you can feel when somebody's not genuine. And I think

Joey Doherty (00:22:55):

It

Joel Wanasek (00:22:55):

Was a very cutthroat mentality when you walk into a major market like that because it's like the problem with being in LA is you walk down the street and it's like the five best people in the world are in this room, in that room, in that room, in that room, in that genre. And then you walk down the other street and they're in that genre. And it's like you're surrounded by people who are at the top of the game. You're surrounded by people who are in the middle of the game, and then you're surrounded by people who want to get in the game. And it's tempting to just think that, oh, being cutthroat, and I just see this all the time, it's so hard to build a relationship that's authentic and that's reciprocal. And even if it goes one way, you're just trying to be nice and kind and help people out.

(00:23:33):

And yeah, people are going to take advantage of you and a lot of people will, but there's always those scenarios. Some of the biggest cuts I've ever got, or some of the biggest relationships I've ever got that have resulted in the biggest financial gain would be people that I just went all in on who had talent and I helped develop and I worked, and I didn't really ask for much. I mean, of course I got paid to record the band for the song for that day or whatever, but just developing those relationships and all of a sudden it boomerangs back 10 years later and you get on the one song out of it, you get a 50 mixed thing from a producer you've always wanted to work with or

(00:24:08):

So being cutthroat, I think never really works out. And what happens is people that are super cutthroat, they don't last. You can screw a couple people over and you can be shady and you can get away with it for a while, but what ends up happening is it always ends up burning you, and it's like you just got to always find another sucker. So I've watched so many people burn out that way and burn up quickly. And it's always the people that last, I mean, yeah, there are people who are not the best people in this industry that are very, very successful and very high up, but of course most of them you will find are actually really, really great people and they care. They're super driven. And when they see that you're not a grifter and you care and you're really sincere in your passion, you can't fake passion.

Joey Doherty (00:24:49):

Yeah,

Joel Wanasek (00:24:49):

Exactly. That's fake caring. And when they see that you've got that, they latch onto people like that because they want to work with somebody like you because they know you're genuine. And that's a rare, rare, rare find.

Joey Doherty (00:25:00):

Yeah, I mean even that mentality is so important when you're physically working on the music too, being able to give it your all for the sake of the music and not for the sake of the check is so important. And I think even when I was in la, I did so much work either for free or on spec or whatever, or for royalty percentage, no upfront money kind of thing, where it was me trying to make the best possible music I can, and you always got to put the music first. It's regardless of however much money you're going to make or who's working on it, it's make the best possible music you can first and then figure it out later. Because if it's good, then money will come and like you said, it'll come back 10 years later and now it's number one or whatever. Especially in this day and age with things like TikTok where songs that are 10, 20, 30 years old are just resurging like crazy, and you have all this volatile situations where something you might've worked on 10 years ago can just come out of nowhere and just really benefit you a

Joel Wanasek (00:26:00):

Hundred percent. I mean, somebody once said to me who was very wise, they're like, if you want to get money, don't focus on getting money,

Joey Doherty (00:26:09):

Which seems weird.

Joel Wanasek (00:26:10):

It seems it's not a relationship. Focus on your skills, your business, the money comes later. The money is kind of like a byproduct of the relationships you build, the skills that you have. If you work hard and you're awesome and you put in your time, the money will come and then you'll have to not worry about money. So if you sit there and you obsess about money and everything's a money game, you're thinking short term and yeah, you're going to have to go through sometimes mid to long-term pain to get there. I mean, is ever being in the music industry not painful? You know what I mean? I don't care what level you're at or who you are. I mean even at the highest thing, everybody has their days where you're like, man, am I getting washed up? Am I losing? Am I falling off? So you see all kinds of different problems. It's always a grind, but if you focus on money, what happens is you're focusing on the wrong thing. And

Joey Doherty (00:26:59):

Yeah, absolutely.

Joel Wanasek (00:26:59):

That's more successful if you focus on music and you focus on relationships. So now that you've gone into LA you kind of established yourself and you've really worked hard to network and give value and stuff, where does the next step look?

Joey Doherty (00:27:12):

Yeah, I mean, eventually I was doing my own thing for a long time, but at some point I met Tyler on a project that I was working on, and we just hit it off crazy and we've just been close friends, texting friends, and I'm the type of kid that sits in my bedroom every day and just pumps out songs, whether it's for artist or it's for myself, I'm going to write music whether I'm working on a job or I'm not working on a job, I'm going to make music. So in lieu of that, I was always sending Tyler like, dude, check this thing out my mate, or Dude, you would love this song, or I'd send him a Spotify link. And we just had this relationship going back and forth for a long time, and eventually he called me one day and he was like, Hey, I think I'm going to need your help on, I prevail.

(00:27:54):

And that was like, there you go. Two years before it even happened too, which is crazy. He called me when they just started writing and he was like, I don't know how, I don't know what capacity yet, but I think I'm going to need your help for some of this stuff. And then yeah, two years later he called me up and he was like, Hey, I'd love to have you come down and check out some of the stuff and see if you want to work on it. And so yeah, I flew down, I went to his house and it was cool. It was getting to hear, I worked on True Power and getting to hear those songs for the first time before they were even finished was crazy to me because he showed it to me and I was like, what do you need me to do? I was like, this sounds like man, yeah. I was like, this is insane. It sounds so good. What am I supposed to do? And he is like, no, no, no, it needs this and it needs this and it needs this.

Joel Wanasek (00:28:41):

Tyler insane. I remember being at Joey when Joey got married. We were sitting there in the hotel room and Tyler opened up his laptop. He's like, dude, check out this project I'm working just wrote for. And he starts playing it, and I'm like, dude, this is insane. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I wrote that last week, but I don't think it's any good. I'm like, whatcha are talking about? That song's amazing. He's like, well, check out this one. And he just run through 10 songs and we're sitting up for Joey's brushing his teeth and all that shit, and we're like, and I'm just like, dude,

Joey Doherty (00:29:10):

That's how I am. It's funny. The same way. And every time I get with Tyler, all we do is show each other 150 tracks that we've made over the past year or whatever. And we're always talking about the dirtiest of techniques and stuff. But I think what's really interesting is, like I said, I went to LA to do pop and EDM, and so I made a lot of EDM stuff and I put music out under my own alias under Clyde. And so I was doing EDM stuff for a while and I didn't really, at the time, I was putting stuff out, but it was mainly just to be like, Hey, just show my friend a song on Spotify or whatever. It was never meant to be a business or I didn't expect it to do anything. I didn't put any marketing or any money into it. It was just to put songs out.

Joel Wanasek (00:29:53):

I mean, that is a great way to work. You go, you face shows and you just like, oh, check off the song I just did. And then like, oh, awesome, you did this, Bob, can you do that for us? And you're like,

Joey Doherty (00:30:03):

Yeah. And then all of a sudden, and then you do it, and then that song gets playlisted and now it's at a hundred thousand plays, and you're like, oh, okay, I can actually do this. But in lieu of that, I spent a lot of time learning a DM techniques and sound design, and I got really into it, and I got really nerdy about all the little nitty gritty details and even sound design for video games and movies and that kind of stuff was so interesting to me and the way that people make all these super sci-fi futuristic sounds. So at the time when Tyler had asked me to do I Prevail, that's kind of where my role was, is to do a lot of the sound design that's on that record. And there is a lot of gaps. And obviously being producers we're very multifaceted.

(00:30:46):

I know a lot of people who play drums and then they get into producing or they play guitar and get into producing. So you have a lot of these different facets you can choose and have. And so I ended up playing some guitar on some songs. I ended up doing a lot of sound design for impacts and risers. Everything was completely handmade on that album. We wanted everything to be perfectly in key, perfectly in tune, perfect speed, no artifact thing. We wanted it to be as cool as possible, and just trying to make it sound as expensive as possible was really the goal for us. And it takes a lot of work to understand the difference between a cheap sound versus an expensive sound when it comes to doing the EDM kind of production. And

Joel Wanasek (00:31:26):

How would you define that? So because obviously there's a lot of rock and metal people that are listening to this and that world I feel like is, I mean, I've mixed a decent amount of stuff in that world and I've done a lot of programming like yourself or post as we would call it in metal, and I've always loved that world. So what advice would you give them on what's a good sound versus a bad sound or anything you can elaborate?

Joey Doherty (00:31:50):

I think the first thing is go listen to some really good stuff. Go listen to some crazy EDM stuff that you really like or go listen to stuff that sounds super expensive that you're super into and start there and start to, if you like a certain EDM artist look up tutorials or whatever and kind of start to build this library of understanding how you start with something like a sine wave or whatever, and you end up with something that's really nice sounding. And I will say that it's not always one-to-one, right? You're not going to get this tutorial that's going to show you exactly the sound from this song and it's perfect or whatever. But I think you can get a really good basis in a really good starting point. And then as far as the expensive stuff goes, it's usually high end is usually the trick is you need a lot of really fancy high end and you need to get it from somewhere, whether that's distortion or a lot of EQing and stuff.

(00:32:40):

But I think a lot of it just comes down to really paying attention to how it sounds and how it fits in your mix and go and explore. Even if you don't like that genre of music or whatever, go force yourself to make it for a week. And I always find that whenever I'm like, oh, I don't like a certain genre of music, it's always because I think that I could do it really well or I think that I could do it. It's easy to make. I always think about Rap Eats or whatever. Rap eats always sound really easy to make, but then it's like, okay, well now I need to put myself in that situation and I need to go make 10 or a hundred of the best possible rap beats I can make. And then you learn, okay, so it's not exactly as easy as you think because you have to use such little pieces, or you make it kind of scarce and it has to be good with just the scarcity that you have.

(00:33:30):

And so doing so, you end up learning so much, you end up learning so much about that genre. And then it's like, alright, you just spent a hundred hours working on rap music and now you're going to go work on a new metal project and you're going to have a little rap section and you're going to know exactly what to put in there because you just spent a hundred hours trying to emulate your favorite rap artists. And so it works the same way for me when it comes to EDM or pop or country where I will just dive in and try my hardest to make it as cool as the people that I listen to. And then when I go to work on something that has some sort of blending of genres or sound design or whatever, I'm going to have all these experiences and tricks and tools that I'm ready and prepared to throw with this and see where I can take it.

(00:34:14):

And so the I Prevail record was a lot of that. And being able to just do stuff that, even for Tyler, he wasn't aware of a lot of just crazy spectral automation and stuff that I got into and just doing stuff with Vocoders and just being really crazy and out of the box to get something that just sounds super cool. And that's the other thing too, is just do it. That's kind of the tough part too. It's like you just got to sit down and do it for a bunch of hours until you get it, but you'll learn. And even if you make mistakes too, your mistakes is going to teach you something that will take you somewhere else. If you're trying to do one sound and you don't get there, but you made something else that was cool, you're going to have that little nugget of information for a different project and a different technique and a different song. So to me, it's always important to just explore and be a sponge.

Joel Wanasek (00:35:08):

Yeah, that's amazing advice. It's like you definitely need to study. For example, we were talking about guitars and guitar speed, it's the same thing. It's just sitting there and going through sub hits and impacts and different types of risers. For example, if you listen to 2012 pop, like the Dr. Luke stuff, it had a certain type of riser versus the types of risers people use in 2020 or now in 2025. So you got to really put your time and your homework in. I think one of the hardest things that people underestimate, I see this all the time because this is the genre type casting elitism where it's like, oh, that's easy. I could write a four chord song. And I'm like, nah, you don't get it. It's not necessarily coming up with the four chords. It's coming up with the hook. And I don't mean the hook in terms of the melody or the words, I mean the difference between a beat where everybody hears it and they're like, oh my God, that's sick.

(00:35:56):

And you're like, damn it, I wish I would've thought of that. You know what I mean? Yeah. Coming up with that thing that's just pure creativity that just pushes the edge forward that people recognize is brilliant versus something that's just kind like, oh, I mean, yeah, that sounds like a trap beat. You know what I mean? That's really just finding that one, that little stick, that little thing that kind of progresses the genre for, and being able to come up with that. And that's a thing that really separates the geniuses from everybody else, is the people that can sit down in a room and they can just come up with that next thing and then just hit everybody with that. And it's just like, whoa, why didn't I think of that? It's so obvious, but there's the brilliance, and that's really, really hard to do. I mean, that's

Joey Doherty (00:36:38):

Again,

Joel Wanasek (00:36:39):

20,000 hours, 10,000 hours, whatever. It's absolute passion towards one thing, whether that's right hip hop beat, whether that's doing country stuff, whatever. Every genre has got its experts and its little sticks and what's cutting edge in that genre at the time and what's not. It's always moving. It's moving to our base.

Joey Doherty (00:36:59):

Yeah, exactly.

Joel Wanasek (00:37:00):

Either you're the one moving it forward or you're catching up behind

Joey Doherty (00:37:02):

Everybody. I also think it's important to not be afraid to wear your inspirations on your sleeve too. You are always going to be the best combination of your favorite things, and I think that that's always going to bleed through into your music. And I don't think there's a right, you can't really avoid it, so I think it's better to embrace it. If I have certain favorite artists in Medium, I'm definitely going to be using presets that they've made, or I'm going to make stuff based off of their sounds, and I'm going to try and inject that into whatever I'm working on because that's something that influences me that I really like. And so having that inspiration and reference a lot, don't be afraid to reference your stuff. I know a lot of people don't like doing it because they don't want to get in this mindset of comparing, but I think it's important to have a baseline of if you reference a bunch of songs, you're like, okay, well, all these songs are kind of sitting in this aspect, whether it's production wise or mix wise. They're all sitting at this point. And it's like, how can I make sure that my song is either at that point or beyond it? And so I think referencing and having those inspirations, it's really important. And don't shy away from having those and definitely embrace them and explore them as much as possible.

Joel Wanasek (00:38:16):

What's interesting to me now is I feel like there's more room in today's art for everything instead of smaller groups of concentrated things. What I mean by that is I think about 30 years ago, 20 years ago and early 2000, for example, when you had the new metal wave, it was like, that was it. All the bands sounded like that. And then if somebody would come out and they would come out with something different, and now it's like, you've got butt rock and then all of a sudden you've got dubstep and you've got, it's like the world would hyper focus on one or two new things for five years and then move on. But then those things kind of went to the graveyard of history and no one wanted. But now it's like you see bands, for example, creed just had a huge number one, and it's like the fact that Creed is cool again and Massive again is crazy because it's, I remember when Creed was one of the biggest bands on earth, and now here they are again 25 years later, just destroying.

(00:39:10):

And it's amazing to watch the fact that new metal is cool again, or all these different sub genres and things that would've traditionally been put on the scrap heap of history as like, oh, eighties music. Oh, eighties pop. It's like I get stuff all the time where it's like, oh my God, that is so eighties pop or focus or that. And it's cool to see people kind of take those things and move them forward. So I feel like we're kind of in an era of ever expanding where it's like there's so many different niches and things that weren't cool are still now not only cool, but timeless. And that's kind of exciting.

Joey Doherty (00:39:45):

And I think for the mindset of people who, let's say they don't like Creed and they're not into it and they're like, why is it number one? I think it's really important. Even the things you don't like that are popular have merit, and you have to respect that, and you have to be aware that there's a reason that it's popular. Even if you don't like it, even if you're not into it, there's a reason that it sounds good. There's a reason that people like it. There's always going to be a purpose. And I think you can always look at that and always have the respect for it and take something away from that too.

Joel Wanasek (00:40:20):

That's amazing advice. And I think it's important because I rewind to many, many years ago when I really was getting established, we'll call it mid two thousands, early 2000 tens for me, I remember the one thing that always got me work compared to with all the local studios around here was the fact that I was always on the cutting edge. So I remember when it was all new metal and stuff like that, but then it kind of switched and it was like the metal core stuff came in and no one knew how to do it in town but me and I was into it, and Joey and I become friends, and I kind of knew how to do the sound. So I got all the work, and then it was all of a sudden, now all of a sudden we have that emo pop core, I don't even know what you call it. It was like emo kids with auto tune playing acoustic guitar. Never shout, never that stuff blew up a crunk core. There we go, breathe Carolina and shit like that. And all of a sudden I got these kids showing up and I'm like, what the fuck? Kids would walk into my studio and I'd be like, I couldn't figure it out. Like, okay, if I dressed like that in high school, I would've gotten my ass beat. Second, I don't get this music at all. Or when dubstep came out, I'm like, this is just fucking noise and dumb sounds. And

Joey Doherty (00:41:31):

What

Joel Wanasek (00:41:31):

You have to as a producer, figure it out. Because if you can figure out why people like it and what's cool about it, you'll one, stop hating it because if you don't understand it, two, you'll start enjoying it and three, so you'll start getting all the clientele from it because people are looking for somebody that knows how to do that. So that was really transformational for me when I was younger that I was able to figure that out because it was like, first I'm like, this is dumb. And then my second dub stock project came in and I'm like, okay, I better figure this out. So I sat down, I went down the rabbit hole for two weeks. I couldn't figure it out. All of a sudden one day I just woke up. I'm like, I get why this is sick. This is really cool. I can't stop listening. And then I'm working on the techniques and all of a sudden I'm starting to get hired to do all these dubstep remixes and stuff. Yeah,

Joey Doherty (00:42:15):

There you go.

Joel Wanasek (00:42:16):

And then all of a sudden it was like whatever the next thing came. And then it was like alt rock, where all of a sudden people are doing eighties throwback that wave in 20 12, 13, 14, like Walk the Moon and stuff like that.

Joey Doherty (00:42:27):

Hey dude, I still jammed that vinyl theater record all the time. That was a, I love the drum sound on that record so much. I think it's so cool.

Joel Wanasek (00:42:34):

Thank you. It's straight up drum forge wand, dude.

Joey Doherty (00:42:36):

I know, I know. I remember hearing the song as the trailer for Drum Forge way back in the day, but you love it. I think it has such a cool mid range. I think the drums on that record are just so interesting. And honestly, I think a lot of the songs were ahead of its time too. I think a lot of the writing and Catchiness are so cool. And I mean, I think even today a lot of the fat styles still holds up. It's just now we just have the same thing with Octave Guitars down and you get issues in the home team and that kind of band. So to me, it's cool. And I love anything that has character, and I think that Vinyl Theater record has so much character to it, and I love it. It it's such a neat jam.

Joel Wanasek (00:43:22):

Well, thank you. I think anytime you do something like that, in that case, we kind of took a risk where it was like the band walked in and I used to have what I called the chat with them. Maybe I'd be like, all right, how serious are you guys? What do you guys want to do? And they would tell me what goal, and I'd be like, all right, you want to go major label? Here's what we need to do. And then I just destroyed them. And they were like a deer in headlights. Now most bands don't come back and they don't progress. No, they just do the same thing. The band came back like a month later, they rebranded. They did everything I told them to do, and they started really focusing on, what's your sound? What's the next sound? We got to have a hit, but we got to have something that's unique and how can we do something different than everything else that's out there?

(00:43:54):

And we really just focused on that. And what ended up happening is we just wrote the right song and the band exploded, and they got calls left and people are flying out to see 'em. It just overnight, it had the right sound at the right time, it got the right numbers. It blew up on SoundCloud. And what was interesting to me, looking back at that is again, when the band showed up from a producer's point of view, I didn't get it at all. I was like, well, I've never done anything like this. I've been doing Metal Core the last four years,

(00:44:23):

Worth's Kick 10, bro Spot guitar. But again, I just embrace it. I started listening to the bands and I'm like, I really don't like this genre, but I have to figure it out. And then I figured it out after studying it for two or three weeks, and then I'm like, okay, this is great. So I mean, that's kind of like the catalyst. You kind of just a, to always be thinking about what isn't anybody doing right now? How can I be different? What is the next thing? And it's risky because it's easy to just do what everybody else is doing and play it safe, but you'll never blow up, blow up, blow up, blow up. You'll never have that record. For example, sleep Token last year just came out of

Joey Doherty (00:44:55):

Nowhere, of course,

Joel Wanasek (00:44:56):

And it was so different than everybody else in the genre that it just exploded to a point where everybody was like, whoa, this is amazing.

Joey Doherty (00:45:03):

And it's still super unique and really cool. And I remember being like, I've never even heard of the guy who produced it, and it's so neat. That'ss so useful. Yeah, I literally never met the guy. I don't know anything about him, but here's this really awesome sounding record, and it's so impressive. I think one thing too is you brought up the dubstep thing, and it's like, if you hate that stuff, put yourself in it for a week. Go make it for a week. Go make it for two weeks or whatever. If you hate something, dive headfirst into it and figure it out. I always find that it always comes from a place of like, oh, well, I can do it better than what this guy's doing. So it's like, okay, well then do that. Prove it to yourself at the very least that you can do that. And I think you'll learn very quickly how hard it can be, especially with pop music growing up, playing metal my whole life, I was like, oh, it's probably so easy to make pop music a four chords or whatever. But it's actually super hard because you're so limited and you have to do things in such a sparse way. And being able to pick the right ingredients with making sure that it's less, and writing something that is incredibly catchy is so hard to do,

Joel Wanasek (00:46:11):

And it's almost something new, just constantly.

Joey Doherty (00:46:14):

And I think people have to understand too, when you listen to someone like Ariana Grande, there's a team of people who are behind that. It's not one producer, it's not one writer. It's a whole team of writers and producers who are the top of their game that makes sure that those songs come out the way that they do. And I think it's important to understand that you can be one of those people. You just have to dive into it and work really hard and figure out how to make those nuances and how to make those rifts and hooks and everything that you want and be unique, be you, be everything that inspires you. It's so important.

Joel Wanasek (00:46:52):

A hundred percent. I mean, that's a really good point too, is a lot of people when they're producing, they kind of have this lone wolf mentality where they feel like it's money out of their pocket, and understandably so if it goes to somebody else for a mix or et cetera. But you got to understand you're competing against teams. You go to la, it's all teams. Every producer has 10 people on staff, or they rotate in and out. They're like, oh, I got this band coming in. I've got these four top liners. I've rotated in and out, or I had this or this or that. Or, I'll give you an example. A buddy of mine is Andrew Bayless, and he's just had an unremarkable career in the last five years, and he's just

Joey Doherty (00:47:25):

Shout out to that original band because Life on Repeat was sick.

Joel Wanasek (00:47:29):

Bayless is incredible. He's a great guy. And when I was hanging out with him in Nashville, we were kind just chatting and he was telling me his story about how he kind of blew up and he said to me, he's like, in the last couple of years people are like, Bayless, man, your production's getting better and better and better. And he's thinking, he says, dude, it's not me. I just hired better people on my team to come in. I'm just working with better people and it makes me better.

Joey Doherty (00:47:50):

Yeah, absolutely.

Joel Wanasek (00:47:51):

You know what I mean? It's so true. I used to be, you'll remember this from early Nail The Mix days, but I miss the master all my own stuff mix. I can't find somebody that's good. Well, now I'm totally the opposite opinion and you're allowed to change your opinions on things because you'll rise. And I'm like, look, when I mix a song, I push it as far as I can, but I need somebody who can make it even better than I can make it. And I found the person who does that for me. And now it's just like I just force everybody to use that because I just don't want to have mixes come out. And it happens sometimes, but it just makes you worse and then it lowers your batting average and then it lowers your rates and then people don't view your stuff as important.

Joey Doherty (00:48:29):

Yeah, it's definitely tough, especially with finding the right mixer for your stuff is always going to be tough because if you are producing it and you're writing it and you're doing everything that's essentially your baby. And so giving it to someone else and having to have that trust that they're going to bring out the sound that you are looking for is really tough. And usually the goal that you're trying to achieve is so specific that I find that most people who are mixing or mastering, they're not going to hit it nail on the head first try.

Joel Wanasek (00:48:59):

Yeah. You got to put it together. It's like a,

Joey Doherty (00:49:00):

Yeah, you have to figure it out and you got to make your little sacrifices here and there, but you're always doing something for the betterment of the song. It's better for the music if you have Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Your

Joel Wanasek (00:49:14):

First date. It's not going to be the same than if you've been dating somebody for 10 years.

Joey Doherty (00:49:19):

Yeah,

Joel Wanasek (00:49:19):

Absolutely. Just not. It's impossible. Same thing, you mix for somebody or you produce for somebody the first time. You need to develop that relationship. You need to lay the boundaries of it, and then you will grow into a synergistic team that far exceeds the output capacity and quality of the individual. Exactly. Exactly. Still worth it. So you've done a lot of stuff. We should talk about Call of Duty on the video game. I don't know much about that world, but man, the crowning, one of the coolest things that ever happened to me in my life is I got to do two songs. I got to make two songs that were for Final Fantasy. Now. I think the game updating scrapped and never came up or something, but for me, dude, that's what I grew up playing and just the fact that I got paid for doing it and I got to do the stuff and I got to make the battle. It was the coolest moment of my life. I was like, I can't do

Joey Doherty (00:50:04):

That. That's my number one goal right now, actually, the Funnel Fantasy.

Joel Wanasek (00:50:08):

So how did you get

Joey Doherty (00:50:08):

Into That's the was, yeah, it's kind of crazy, but essentially I got a mixing job for this band called Six Sense. Oh yeah, okay. And I ended up,

Joel Wanasek (00:50:20):

I know Vicky, she's great.

Joey Doherty (00:50:22):

Oh yeah, yeah, she's sick. And so essentially I got a job that I did some test mixes or whatever and I ended up winning and then it quickly became like, oh, they're looking for a producer. They're not looking for a mixer. They're looking for someone and is going to actually help on the album and add some stuff and spice it up. So I ended up doing that and I had this working relationship with Vicki and the band for about a year, and she actually does covers on YouTube and she was doing covers of Kevin's songs from Call of Duty, so she would do covers of one on five and whatnot. And Kevin just hit her up and was like, yo, I'd love to do a song, yada, yada, yada. And I guess they got to talking and she was like, who do you have mixing and who do you have producing?

(00:51:07):

And even though Kevin at the time had already had his team and already had his people picked out, he was curious. So he was like, well, who do you recommend? And Kevin ended up DMing me on Instagram and I had some chats with him back and forth. And originally it was like, I'm going to mix one song. It's going to be the song that Vicky's on and that's it. And I wasn't going to write anything. I wasn't going to produce anything. It was just a purely mixing gig for this project. And then after talking to Kevin, it became very clear that it was like he needed someone to help him because he is working on the game for his nine to five, and then he's also got a family and kids and he has to make the Easter Egg songs in his free time. And that got him working 14 hour days at Call of Didi because that stuff is every year it comes out.

(00:51:55):

So he just didn't have the time to be able to sit down and just pump out all these tracks. And so that's where I came in and I was like, well, I can help you do that. Send me all your riffs and ideas and I'll put them together. And so I ended up being enlisted to mix more than just the one song. And then now I'm also producing, and it's kind of a really interesting job because number one, it's very corporate. I'm getting paid very corporately from Activision and it's through contracts and I had to sign up under their employee portal and that kind of stuff, which is nice for me. And it's nice for, in a freelance world that's really nice because you have very consistent W twos and everything all taxable and very nice in your life. Yeah, a little bit. But it's interesting because the job is essentially, I got hired on to do X amount of songs over the course of a year essentially, because they put out a new map every 90 days when there's a new season for the game and every map is going to have an ER song.

(00:53:01):

So it's this weird kind of reoccurring thing where I work on a song every three months. And so it's kind of interesting and it's definitely very different for me, but I'm super into it and I love it and it's so cool.

(00:53:16):

I think something that's really interesting is I get to produce for a song that's actually playing while you're in the game. It's not like a trailer, it's not background music or whatever. It's literally something that plays while you're mowing down zombies and everything. So that's something that I try to keep in mind when I'm making it and I'm mixing it, is I want to make sure that it slams. I want to make sure that the guitars are cutting through all the noise of the guns and everything that you're playing through. And that's kind of an important perspective for me when I'm working on it. But yeah, essentially Kevin DM to be on Instagram and the rest is history. It's been really

Joel Wanasek (00:53:51):

Cool. That's awesome. So what is the fee structure, not the amount that doesn't matter, but is it a royalty? Is it a fee? How do you get paid when you work on a project like that as a producer?

Joey Doherty (00:54:03):

Currently it's a little bit of both, but I think it's mainly fee, and it's mainly the way it's listed is I get paid X amount of dollars for mix, and I get paid X amount of dollars for production on one song. And so essentially we work on a song for three months and then I shoot an invoice over and then that gets sent back to me.

Joel Wanasek (00:54:24):

Cool. Well, that's amazing. There's a lot of politics when you're working on label stuff. It's insane the level of political things that can happen that can affect the outcome of a record or who works on something or whatever. You can get yanked off something just because they want somebody else's name or somebody else is managing this and that person and they co-op the project. So do you see any politics on the corporate side like that ever?

Joey Doherty (00:54:54):

No. For this project at least, it's been very tight knit. It's basically just me and Kevin hopping on a call and go on over what we need to do for the next track or whatever. So luckily I'm very out of the loop when it comes to anything regarding the politics of the company or anything that has to do with Tray arc and Activision and that sort of stuff. I'm very much essentially contracted to just mix and produce, but it's fun for me because I just get to sit here and make something that sounds really cool and fit zombies and I get to take Kevin's rifts and just blow 'em up and make 'em huge. And so it's been a really interesting job, but I've definitely been on projects where I've gotten removed for namesake like, oh, they don't want you because you've only worked with so-and-so and you haven't done this credit or that credit, and they want this person on it. And it happens all the time. And I think it's one of those things where it's like you're always going to have projects that are not going to work out. It's always going to happen.

Joel Wanasek (00:55:57):

Even the best mixers lose test mixes.

Joey Doherty (00:55:59):

Oh yeah, all the time, dude. You have to cut your losses and you just move on to the next thing. It's not worth your time. And so it's important to not get discouraged. And I also think it's important to keep a very levelheaded mindset. When you get something really exciting and you get something that's really cool before you have it, don't freak out about it. Make sure that you're under the assumption that it might not work out because stuff just doesn't work out all the time. I can't even begin to tell you how many cool projects that I've worked on, but just never saw the light of day.

Joel Wanasek (00:56:30):

I'm always afraid to jinx it. I remember when I did Stab and I'm like, until it came out, and even though I knew it was confirmed, but until I literally heard it on the radio and opened Spotify and hit play and AED it with my mix to confirm it was mine, I wasn't sure that, you know what I mean? When you have high level stuff, I don't know. Like I said, unless you're like the flavor of the weak thing, the label is kicking everybody. Everything too. You're always like, am I going to lose it? Did it get yanked from me? And nobody told me, you have no idea. You just got to look at it like this. It's all experience. It's all fun. You got to, I think having a positive mindset towards it, like, oh, that's cool. I got to mix this and that. Nobody will ever know, but that's insane because that person just won three Grammys and this and this and this and that, and I wish my version of the song would've came out, but hey, I'm glad they at least told me to work on it. So it's opportunity because again, sometimes you do get lucky on those things and the politics work out where you get to get on it and then you get a couple more. So

Joey Doherty (00:57:33):

Yeah, I think what's important is just giving it your all in. Not to be cliche, but the music literally speaks for itself. If you do a good job, it's going to show. And if they choose someone else who's higher than you as far as credits and reputation or whatever, and it's not as good, it's going to show. People are going to notice, people are going to, the band is going to know. Everybody involved is going to know. They're like, damn, this other guy really killed it. But like I said, bringing us back to that very first point, relationships so important because maybe you get kicked off this project this time, but they're going to remember that you kicked the ass on that mix. They're going to remember that you gave it all the attention in detail that it deserved. Maybe the other guy wasn't as hands-on because he is too busy or whatever.

(00:58:16):

So it's always going to come back to you. I think it's always important to just keep your head high, and even when you lose, still win on your side, still have that attitude of going forward and giving you your all no matter what, because it's always going to come back to you. It's always going to come straight back and tenfold. I think Tyler is such a perfect example of, I worked on something with him for one of my bands when I was really young and I was very new, but I kept this relationship with him and then he literally called me to work on, ive out of the blue and I didn't have any credits and I wasn't like anybody at the time. And now from that, it's been eye prevail and falling in reverse and Skillet and a Rosa. So I started and ended up going down this big line of credits, and now I'm working on Call of Duty. And it literally just happened so quick and it's been such a cool experience and I've been so grateful for it. And I think it's important to just have those relationships with people, keep that relationship solid before anything else. And then secondly, put the music first. Make the best pops of the music. You can do your job as hard as you can to the best of your ability and the rest will follow.

Joel Wanasek (00:59:34):

It's like a boomerang. Sometimes you throw it out and it doesn't come back or you throw it, I don't know. I guess a boomerang probably always comes back, but I don't know. You know what I mean? You're throwing things out there and sometimes they come back and they bring surprises with them and you're just like, wow, I can't believe that happened. And the other thing that's kind of crazy is it's like a logarithmic function or whatever. I'm not a math person, but it goes and it's a slow grind that all of a sudden there's an inflection point where then it just goes like that.

Joey Doherty (01:00:01):

And

Joel Wanasek (01:00:01):

It kind of feels like that, where I remember a very specific point in my career where I was just doing all local stuff. Then I got three vans signed to Badass Labels. Then Joey hits me up and he's like, bro, come mix all my stuff. And then all of a sudden I'm like, wow, I guess I'm a mixer now. Last week I was a producer and now I'm making twice as much money and my booking schedule is insane, but it's always like that. It's like you work really hard for something at a long time. It seems like you're going sideways or getting marginal gains. And all of a sudden it's like one day it hits and then in three months it's changing.

Joey Doherty (01:00:33):

So it's always like that. And I think it's hard too because you're not employed in a business. There isn't a set of rules that you're following. You're completely freelance, you're completely on your own and you're just like you said, boomerang spaghetti at the wall kind of thing, seeing what sticks. So it can be kind of hard because there's not a lot of guidance out there other than URM Academy and Nail The Mix and stuff like that that can help you with the finer details and the techniques and practicing with high quality stems. It's so important. So the best thing I can say is any advice you get, good or bad, always take it. Just take it with a grain of salt, no matter what it is. Any criticism. If you think you're really good at your stuff, take your song. Go show it to a friend that doesn't know it's you and wouldn't know that you made it or whatever. And just ask 'em what they think, because you're going to get one of two answers. They're going to be like, yeah, this is diet. Or they're going to be like, nah, I don't like

Joel Wanasek (01:01:29):

This.

Joey Doherty (01:01:30):

And I think that's going to be very clear, very eyeopening to you to have a perspective. You can sit there and move your snare five DB up and down or 0.5 DB or whatever, but nobody's going to care. Nobody is going to notice is the song good? What matters? Is it good? Does it sound good? That's what matters. So always keep that perspective in mind. Always try to come from a consumer perspective of like, is it good or is it bad? And just sometimes you have to be that black and white to really understand what you need to do to improve the music. And I think it's really important. A

Joel Wanasek (01:02:08):

Hundred percent. Okay. We're about out of time here, so do you want to do some rapid fire answers?

Joey Doherty (01:02:13):

Sure, sure, sure.

Joel Wanasek (01:02:14):

Alright. First thing that comes to mind. Okay. What's a record that inspires you?

Joey Doherty (01:02:19):

Inspire you? That inspires me. This is kind of recent. This is like a hyper pop record, but I'm going to say hypochondriac by Breakins. That record. It's one guy. He does everything himself and it's insane. The production on it alone is just sync. If

Joel Wanasek (01:02:35):

You could give one arrangement tip,

Joey Doherty (01:02:36):

What would it be? Cut more, do less, make your versus shorter. Get to your chorus faster. If you can get to the chorus and under one minute you're in a good spot.

Joel Wanasek (01:02:47):

If you could give one mixing tip, what would it be?

Joey Doherty (01:02:50):

Reference more reference. More reference. More reference more. Especially stuff that you really like and really look up to reference more reference. More reference for.

Joel Wanasek (01:02:58):

What's a trend in mixing right now that you think people are doing too much of?

Joey Doherty (01:03:03):

Well, I don't know if it's too much of, but Zach SSI is kind of the king when it comes to a lot of these metal core bands at the moment. So I feel like I'm hearing his drum kit everywhere I go, but I don't think it's too much. I think it's just a current trend.

Joel Wanasek (01:03:17):

And last question. What do you think is a common denominator or common denominators of hit songs?

Joey Doherty (01:03:25):

Ooh, that's kind of a good question. I feel like short and sweet, catchy and exciting, explosive, expensive stuff like that. Focusing on the details of making everything as clean as possible. Well, Joey, you've been amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

Joel Wanasek (01:03:45):

It's been an absolute pleasure.

Joey Doherty (01:03:47):

Thank you for having me. I.