MICHAEL KEENE: Metal Production Secrets, Getting Tighter Guitar Tones, Avoiding Burnout

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Creative Live, the world's best online classroom for creative professionals with classes on songwriting, engineering, mixing and mastering. The Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is also brought to you by Ernie Ball, the world's premier manufacturer of guitar strings, bass strings, and guitar accessories. And now your host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:00:24):

How's it going guys? How are you doing? Very good. How are you? I'm great. I just got back from Seattle, did a creative live, which was really fun. Those things are always a little bit nerve wracking, probably because I put myself through this. You try to think about it as much as you can and try to wrap your head around what you're teaching. But I always drop the ball when it comes to actually planning the actual course, and I usually end up winging it as much as they'll let me. How did you wing it this time? Well, we had some slides, right? We had like 25 slides for the whole course. Damn,

Speaker 3 (00:01:03):

That's nothing.

Speaker 2 (00:01:04):

I know that's nothing. And I ended up using maybe 50% of the slides

Speaker 3 (00:01:08):

Because you had so much info that you didn't get to them. I

Speaker 2 (00:01:11):

Think it just had so much content to share with people. When I would present an idea, it would take me a while to kind of explain everything about that idea. For example, guitars, a lot of people don't really know what EQ does to a guitar and they don't know how EQ works. So not only do you have to share the different styles of mixing because you've got replacement mixing where you're expected to build a guitar tone from scratch using a di, then you've got creative mixing where you're using the original guitar tone, but maybe you're also adding in your own reamp signal or you're making your own guitar tone to go with it, and then you've got production mixing where you're just only mixing the tone that's given. So it was interesting because I had to convey that idea and then also convey the idea of EQ is notes and frequencies and harmonies and octaves and harmonics and overtones, and then how the tools work. Except for 4K, except for 4K, that's just completely eliminated from the human hearing. Let's just modify our ears so we can't hear 4K anymore.

Speaker 4 (00:02:16):

Told you I'm going to make that iPhone app that allows you to equalize life.

Speaker 2 (00:02:20):

So yeah, you spend a lot of time diving into just one concept and the way that the slides were constructed, they just kind of guide me along and make sure I did things in a certain order, but I spent most of the course just winging it, man, just literally, here's how you do this. Here's how you do that. It was still constructed. It was still structured.

Speaker 4 (00:02:38):

So what happens if you lose your track? Do they throw things at you to keep, you start going off on some tangent and they're like, oh, the slides, do they hold up a postcard or something like that?

Speaker 2 (00:02:48):

I never really lose track of where I am except for when they toss it to the host and he's signing out and you're zoning out at that point like, oh, I'm done. Alright, I'm just going to sit here and zone out for a second, and then all of a sudden he'll be like, what are we going to talk about next? And then they point the camera at you and you're like, oh, shit. Next we're talking about compressors. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:03:11):

See, that scares the shit out of me. I've always had way too many slides, ever creative love I've done. I think on my drum one, I had 180 slides or something like that. Fuck yeah, that's

Speaker 4 (00:03:25):

A lot.

Speaker 3 (00:03:26):

I do an insane amount of prep because my biggest fear is winging it. I mean, I know I could sit there and talk for a long time, but it just, you worry about the outcome. Yeah, the lead up to that creative live session would be so nerve wracking for me that I might die from stress. So I hear

Speaker 4 (00:03:48):

That

Speaker 3 (00:03:49):

I like to have as much preparation as possible so that I can have as much peace of mind going into it as possible because it really is a nerve wracking experience anyways, no matter how much you prepare.

Speaker 4 (00:04:01):

Here's the thing, now that you've revealed your supervi vulnerability, now if you piss off anybody at Creative Live, they know how to defeat you.

Speaker 3 (00:04:09):

Oh, by hiding my slides. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:04:12):

That's it. You want to kill Al now? You know how

Speaker 3 (00:04:15):

Hide his slides? Well, I think I could probably get by with less slides. I've done it before. It's just not as good for me.

Speaker 2 (00:04:24):

I just prefer to kind of try and feel. I'll do a segment, maybe I'll say a paragraph and then I'll feel one way about that, and then that allows me to kind of guide the course. Maybe it ends up going in a direction that's a little bit different than how I originally thought of it, but based on everything that happened, I can kind of steer it in the correct way. Also, I kind of try and vibe out the questions and try to feel, is the audience totally lost or are they with me? And kind of take it from there. We didn't spend a whole ton of time on guitar at this creative life. It was about mixing, but tell me if you guys agree. I feel like a mix is kind of like, it's a lot of different things, but half of it does kind of rely on the guitar tone, especially when you're talking about metal. Absolutely. Guitar and drums,

Speaker 4 (00:05:14):

I'll give you like 40%. It's very important.

Speaker 2 (00:05:18):

Yeah, I would say 40%. 40%.

Speaker 4 (00:05:20):

It's hard to assign,

Speaker 2 (00:05:21):

And the bass kind of is a part of that too, because in the metal bass is not always its own instrument. Depends on the band job for cowboys new cd, lots of interesting bass shit going on in there, but then go to the new Atilla record or something, and the bass is just that low end power

Speaker 3 (00:05:40):

Actually on this faceless stuff and just bringing that up because of our guest coming up on some of this faceless stuff, they definitely have a lot of independent baselines going on. But yeah, in general, I agree with you in metal bass is an extension of the guitar by function, and I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing always. Sometimes that's what it needs to be in order to sound best.

Speaker 2 (00:06:05):

And I'm really interested to hear sort of the practices or techniques that our guest uses in the productions. And the guy we're talking about here is Michael Keene, so some of you might be familiar with him. He's in the band, the Faceless. He also does some producing, what's a couple of bands he's worked with.

Speaker 3 (00:06:24):

It's been known to do work with Veil of Maya, born of Cyrus, suicide Silence, and a whole host of other projects here and there, various bands through the years. He's always had a studio. Since I've known him, I've known him like five or six, seven years, something like that. I also know that he does a lot of guesting work on other people's projects, so he is just one of those talented dudes that kind of is good at a lot of different things.

Speaker 2 (00:06:53):

That's awesome. So yeah, let's bring him on. Let's start finding out some interesting stuff about bass and guitar. Cool. Let's do it. Welcome to the show, Michael. How are you doing?

Speaker 5 (00:07:01):

I'm great. How are you

Speaker 2 (00:07:02):

Doing? Pretty good. We were just talking. I had not met you until a couple years ago South by, so, but Al's known you for a long time, right?

Speaker 5 (00:07:10):

This

Speaker 2 (00:07:11):

Is the first time you met Joel. I'm just curious, how long have you been playing guitar and how long have you been producing music in the studio?

Speaker 5 (00:07:18):

Well, I've been playing guitar for 20 plus years since I was a really, really young kid. My dad's a guitar player, so he got me started really, really young. He didn't really push me into it or anything, but there was always guitars around the house and it was available and I took an interest to it very early. And then same with recording. My dad's also a recording engineer. There was always the gear around for me to record stuff, and when I was about 13, that's when I started recording my own songs that I was writing, and that's kind of what got me into it. By the time I was 16, I was already producing records for my friends' bands in high school and stuff, and then it just grew from there.

Speaker 3 (00:08:05):

How many hours a day were you spending on it when you were a kid

Speaker 5 (00:08:08):

On production?

Speaker 3 (00:08:09):

Well, on music as a whole,

Speaker 5 (00:08:11):

Oh man. When I was in high school, there was days I would ditch school and just play guitar all day, like 10 hours. Wow. I wish I had that kind of commitment. Now I definitely don't. As you get older, you kind of stop doing stuff like that, but yeah, when I was young, I was so hungry for it, I just couldn't get enough.

Speaker 3 (00:08:32):

I think that's a key thing that every young listener to this needs to take away from this, that while you're young, that's the time to bust ass on your instrument. Definitely. You're not going to do it when you get older. So basically as good as you're going to get by the age of 22 is probably as good as you're going to get. I mean, there's some exceptions to that, but by and large, you're never going to have the commitment to give it six to 10 hours a day.

Speaker 5 (00:09:00):

Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:09:00):

What happens is you get a girlfriend and then she ruins everything for you, and that's it.

Speaker 5 (00:09:07):

I'm lucky if I play 10 to 12 hours a month now.

Speaker 2 (00:09:10):

But you do this pretty much as a profession now, right?

Speaker 5 (00:09:13):

Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:09:14):

Yeah. So that's the interesting thing is how much actual prep work and dedication it takes to get to that position and then, oh, okay, now it's just play for an hour or two for my show or whatever, and that's your clock in, clock out day job.

Speaker 5 (00:09:31):

But

Speaker 2 (00:09:31):

Yeah, I've been playing guitar. My dad plays guitar, he's been playing guitar for, I dunno, 30, 40 years or something crazy like that, and I felt like it was really helpful to know how a guitar works. Guitars are not perfect instruments, so knowing how they operate and knowing what's possible with the instrument, good and bad, I think really helps out in the studio. I think if there's anyone that's out there who's not super familiar with, if they don't know how to play guitar, I think they can struggle a bit in terms of recording it, so I'm just curious if you agree with that.

Speaker 5 (00:10:05):

Absolutely. I definitely do. The same goes for I think all instruments really. I've also played drums since I was about nine or 10, and I think actually, I mean certainly when I'm programming drums or especially when I'm producing a band and I'm talking to a drummer, it absolutely helps that I actually play drums and I can sit behind the kit and I know all the idiosyncrasies of what a drummer would actually do or what they should play or what would be cool. That is absolutely beneficial to production. And the same goes for guitar.

Speaker 3 (00:10:41):

So important. Do you ever write parts for a drummer to play in real life? I know you've played with some of the best of the best drummers. Do you just let them write or do you write for them or somewhere in the middle of that?

Speaker 5 (00:10:55):

Usually with the faceless, for instance, I write the drums. I have 'em maybe like 85% where I want them to be. If it's going to be whatever, a blast beat this kind of blast beat or that kind of blast beat, I have it there. I have how I want it to be. I have the fills pretty much how I want them to be more or less. And then from there, I let the drummer come in and put their own flavor on it, and we just kind of go through it part by part and we either agree on a part or I'll go, I don't know about that or whatever, and we just get through it until it's done. But I mean, playing drums has definitely been beneficial to that. A lot of people don't have that luxury unfortunately. But I actually even played some drums. I played drums on our demos and I played drums on our first record even. So I always have a hand in that kind of stuff, and it helps with making suggestions for bands I'm producing and stuff too,

Speaker 3 (00:11:51):

And not writing parts that are completely unrealistic like Dr. Octopus.

Speaker 5 (00:11:57):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:11:58):

Yeah. I call them Dr. Octopus drum parts.

Speaker 5 (00:12:01):

I know a lot of people that produce or they program drums or whatever, and you're going, as a drummer, you're just going, yeah, there's no way that that's possible. You can't do that. Oh, I hate that.

Speaker 3 (00:12:13):

You can't hit the snare and the China and a crash and the high hat and a floor Tom all at the same time. It just doesn't work that way. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:12:22):

You're going to do a blast beat on the snare, but then do a tom roll while you're still blasting.

Speaker 5 (00:12:27):

And also aside from the Dr. Octopus effect also, I find it's really, really beneficial. This is the one thing I've noticed big time, people that don't play drums, they don't understand the dynamics of drums, and a lot of times they're very unrealistic in their dynamics of the drums. Like a blast beat comes and it's rim shotting or something. I mean, there's only so much that a drummer can do physically and actually playing drums. When you're sitting there drawing in the velocities, it really helps to go like, okay, I know how hard this little ghost note or whatever would actually be, or I know how hard to draw on the velocities for this fill because I can actually play that fill.

Speaker 4 (00:13:14):

Well, that inspires a question. So when you're dealing with drummers, okay, so if I'm mixing a death metal song or whatever and a guy's doing a blast beat, it's always been interesting to me. I always ask my drummers, I'm like, well, hey, what do you want your blasts to sound like? Do you want 'em really brutal rim shots? Which is not possible. Some guys are like, it's got to sound like metal or do you want it dynamic? Do you ever find you run into issues like that where drummers they want it a certain way and you're like, why? That's

Speaker 5 (00:13:42):

Stupid? Yeah. Oh yeah, totally. I've definitely had those conversations with drummers where they want something quantized a hundred percent velocity's all at 1 27. I'm going that this totally sounds fake. You know that this is not how drums actually sound when you play them at all. You just have to meet somewhere in the middle, I guess.

Speaker 2 (00:14:06):

I think there's entire genres of music based on that sound,

Speaker 5 (00:14:10):

Which

Speaker 2 (00:14:10):

Is really, really interesting.

Speaker 5 (00:14:15):

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of crazy. People just don't care anymore. I mean, I don't know if it's, they're just totally out of touch with what a drum kit actually sounds like anymore, or they just don't care what it is. But yeah, you're right. There is whole genres that are just completely, they don't care at all if all of the velocities are 127 and the drums don't actually sound like a real drum kit in any way.

Speaker 4 (00:14:41):

What else is interesting about that is from a mixing perspective, you'll go out in the forums and then some mixer that a lot of kids will put out something that's a little bit more on the natural side. You can tell the band was like, yeah, we want it mixed, more natural, more real drums, less sampled, and then everybody's like, this mix sucks. Why did he make such a shitty mix? This is bullshit. And you're like, well, as a mixer, sometimes you do what you're told, I mean, right,

Speaker 3 (00:15:07):

Totally. Well, I've had a situation quite a few times, and this is especially with younger bands, bands that grew up with the modern sound of heavy music as their stuff. Not guys like me who came up with older music and grew to newer music just because we like newer music, but lots of these older band, I mean, younger bands will come in and say they want a natural sound, blah, blah, blah, and then you give them that and they think it sounds like shit, and then you throw on the samples and single shots samples and they're happy. That's what they actually want.

Speaker 5 (00:15:47):

Yeah. People have kind of lost touch with what a natural recording actually sounds like, I think. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:15:54):

Definitely. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:15:55):

I agree. Well, we had Kurt Ballou on this month.

Speaker 5 (00:15:58):

Oh, he makes great natural recordings.

Speaker 3 (00:16:00):

Yeah, exactly. I think he's holding the torch for natural recordings, but that's the thing. That's what natural heavy music pretty much sounds like when it's done well, it sounds kind of nasty and grimy.

Speaker 5 (00:16:16):

You're

Speaker 3 (00:16:17):

Not going to get a natural sounding record to be as pristine as some of these people want, and so I think that people need to maybe sometimes ditch the idea of totally natural if they also want it totally clean.

Speaker 5 (00:16:33):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, going back to what you were saying with bands coming in and having sort of a preconceived notion of what they want something to sound like, whatever I find the bands that I work with, a lot of times it's me that's wanting to push it more in the natural direction, and it's them that's wanting it to be a little more over the top, and I usually am kind of catering to their wishes. Well,

Speaker 3 (00:16:56):

You are in the service industry when recording another band, right?

Speaker 2 (00:16:59):

Well, the thing is though is you have a responsibility to keep the craft going in a certain direction, I think,

Speaker 5 (00:17:06):

But

Speaker 2 (00:17:07):

At the same time, like Al just said, it's a service industry, so you get the customer that doesn't want to go that direction, then what are you going to do?

Speaker 5 (00:17:15):

Yeah. In a way, you have to choose to work with like-minded bands that want what you offer. You have to be careful of that.

Speaker 3 (00:17:26):

Yeah. I think that's a luxury that guys who have had some success in their life can enjoy. But

Speaker 5 (00:17:34):

I

Speaker 3 (00:17:35):

Think for a lot of our audience, they're lucky to get bands in the first place. Sometimes at least some of them we're in pretty good contact with our audience, so we've got a good feel for what their challenges and situations are, and a lot of 'em are just happy to be recording in the first place, so they haven't gotten to the point where they can really be turning work away. They're just trying to get work in the first place. So

Speaker 5 (00:18:02):

I

Speaker 3 (00:18:02):

Think it's a lot more of a challenge for them because they can't be turning people down. For me, that seems like an almost impossible situation because what do you do if you're not working with like-minded people? Which way do you go? Do you make them happy or yourself happy?

Speaker 2 (00:18:20):

Yeah. I'm curious if you have advice for people who might be in that situation where they're struggling to find like-minded clients, clients that fit within the overall goal of what they would like to do with their career. Do you have any advice for those people? Where could they look? What could they do?

Speaker 5 (00:18:39):

Well, it's hard to say. I'm very lucky in the sense that I was able to make a calling card out of my own band's productions, which allowed me the luxury of doing whatever I wanted. Not only being able to cut my teeth doing that, but also kind of going like, well, this is when I make a recording the way I want it. This is how it is, so here's what I offer. And people kind of came to me on that basis, which is a luxury that I realized a lot of people don't have. I guess if you do have a band of your own or whatever, I think recording your own band and using that as a tool for getting your work, we'll probably draw more like-minded artists or bands that want to work with you.

Speaker 3 (00:19:26):

I agree with that actually. And I think that most of the people that I know that are wanting to be professional engineers are also musicians.

Speaker 5 (00:19:37):

It's

Speaker 3 (00:19:37):

Very rare these days to have just a standalone engineer. You used to have those quite often, but I feel like nowadays they're musicians slash engineers. I have also been able to get cool clients because of my own music. People liked what I did with my own music, with guitar

Speaker 5 (00:19:57):

And

Speaker 3 (00:19:57):

All that, and my band never got that big or anything, but I guess we got enough notoriety to where it helped my studio career. So I can just echo that sentiment that if you want a certain type of client and that certain type of client would possibly be attracted to the kind of music you make, then one of the things you can definitely do is push your own music as hard as possible in terms of quality and exposure

Speaker 5 (00:20:25):

And really use the recording of your own music. Kind of think about that when you're recording it. Go like, what do I want to present as an engineer, as a producer? What do I want to present as my gamut, as my spectrum as a producer?

Speaker 3 (00:20:42):

That definitely could work for people. I feel like even if they don't get into a successful band or say their band doesn't become successful, they can use that as a calling card via the internet as well, because there are plenty of guys we know Dref, Stalin and all kinds of dudes like that who are just badass guitar players who are pretty good at recording too, who put up their own videos and clips of what they do. And even that alone with the power of the internet can definitely help your career.

Speaker 2 (00:21:17):

So I guess when you're in that unique situation, which I see that as an extremely valuable situation, and I look at my own situation, being able to work with artists firsthand basis and then build audio products that solve problems that are directly faced in the studio, that's a very fortunate situation to be in. So I'm thinking how do you figure out the best way to divide your time between making music and recording other people like your own career, the things that you're doing for your band versus other bands? It is slightly competitive.

Speaker 5 (00:21:52):

Sure. For me, I think all along my band, or at least my own music has kind always been my top priority. And I would say there was a time that I really was driven to do as much production as I possibly could, do as many records for as many people as I possibly could. And then at a certain point, I actually started kind of going crazy. It was just too much, and when I would get off of tour, I'd go right into making a record, and then it was right back out on tour and then home making a record for myself and then another record for somebody else, and it was just like, man, I need some time to just kind of decompress when I come home.

Speaker 3 (00:22:41):

Sounds like make your head explode.

Speaker 5 (00:22:44):

And it was just too much and I was losing it. I was a nervous wreck all the time and just stressed out. And I actually told myself, okay, I'm not going to do any records for anyone for a year, and I didn't. And it ended up being even a little bit longer than a year. And then when I came back to it, ever since then I've just kind of taken the approach that I only do a few records a year. That's it. I'll maybe do one or two records for other bands a year and that's it. And then everything else is just sort of my own music, my band, that kind of stuff. And I feel like for me, that's a good balance.

Speaker 2 (00:23:22):

We always speak about balance on here because it is so easy to get completely encapsulated in. You can record band after band after band, no days in between, no weekends, no holidays, and that's bad. Yeah, tell me about it. You'll burn yourself out.

Speaker 4 (00:23:38):

I'll give you a perfect example. So last week I took off for four days plus the weekend, and every single day I came in at 8:00 PM and I worked till two in the morning, even though I was off all day getting up at 5:00 AM and some vacation. Well, you have deadlines and sometimes you bite off more than you can chew and you don't realize it's going to be so much work and then you're like, holy crap.

Speaker 3 (00:24:00):

Yeah. That was my basically 2011 through 2014, I think there was an 11 month stretch where there were no days in between bands staying in my guest room in my house.

Speaker 4 (00:24:15):

Oh, geez.

Speaker 3 (00:24:16):

Yeah, it got insane. I definitely had to pull back a little just for sanity's sake, so I totally understand that. So with these two records a year you do now, I bet you can approach those totally fresh and with maximum creativity and enthusiasm.

Speaker 5 (00:24:32):

Absolutely. I think it actually improved my production in a big way because I didn't have, for one thing, I was on a nervous wreck and I didn't have a million things going on in my head. I could just kind be relaxed and focus on the one record and I don't know, just everything just started kind of coming together a lot better when I started approaching it that way. I

Speaker 4 (00:24:55):

Think that's a great point for people that are interested in having optimal peak performance when doing something, if you have too much shit and too many things that you're multitasking, it distracts you. But when you only focus on one thing at a time, you're usually a lot more creative and a lot more involved, and every time I have 10 things going on, when I'm mixing a record, working on a product, producing another record, it's too much. You go nuts. It's hard to jump from back and forth, but when you only have one or two things going on, usually you're a lot more focused and a lot more creative and productive at the same time.

Speaker 3 (00:25:29):

It's both an intellectual strain and an emotional strain because if you get behind on something, anybody who's a high achiever doesn't like being behind on stuff, and so you feel that internally and either you feel guilty or you feel pissed, but it's never a good one, and if that piles up, those negative emotions are going to spill into the work you are doing, which will lower the quality of your work. There's no real winning scenario to overloading yourself like that.

Speaker 4 (00:26:00):

I agree.

Speaker 3 (00:26:01):

In my opinion.

Speaker 4 (00:26:02):

It's hard to do too because when you're running a business sometimes you're like, all right, well, I want to take everything and anything I can. So you want to keep your book to make sure you have something going on four to six months from now and it's easy to take on too much, and like you said, all of a sudden you have no gaps and then you're behind two weeks, then you're behind a month and then everybody's freaking out and you're freaking out and it's just a dark cyclone of terror

Speaker 5 (00:26:26):

And it gets harder. The more successful you get. It doesn't get easier. It gets harder because then everyone is on these time schedules with their labels and touring schedules and you're on your own schedule. If you have a band of your own and everything has to be done faster, and also then you're dealing with bands flying in from other places a lot more, so you don't have the luxury of days off when you're doing that. You get a band that flies in and they go, okay, well we're going to come out for 15 days or something. Okay, we're working for 15 days straight, no days off, 12 hours a day in the studio until it's done, and that's a whole other ball of stress to deal with.

Speaker 4 (00:27:13):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:27:13):

That's

Speaker 4 (00:27:14):

Brutal. Well, you need breaks to be productive

Speaker 3 (00:27:16):

With 15 days, I would definitely be taking no days off.

Speaker 4 (00:27:19):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:27:20):

God, yeah. That sounds stressful in and of itself, just having 15 days.

Speaker 5 (00:27:25):

Yeah, I mean that's not a good example. Usually if I was doing a record, I would tell 'em, no, you need to come more than 15 days, but you know what I

Speaker 1 (00:27:31):

Mean? Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:27:31):

Those situations do pop up where a band goes, we have 15 days to do this or whatever, and sometimes you go, well, okay, let's do it. And you get yourself into these crazy situations, whatever, because it's a good opportunity or because you want to stay booked or whatever it may be.

Speaker 3 (00:27:48):

It's very hard to say no.

Speaker 5 (00:27:49):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:27:50):

I have a very, very hard time with turning anything down. It's

Speaker 4 (00:27:53):

Like self-inflicted pain, it's going to suck, but you do it anyways and then you keep doing it and you're like,

Speaker 2 (00:28:01):

I think I've been through enough bad situations to where to say yes is a very heavy thing for me. You know what I mean? Sounds

Speaker 4 (00:28:12):

Like someone needs time off. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:28:14):

I definitely weigh it very carefully.

Speaker 5 (00:28:16):

I do too now the same thing after making some monumental errors that got me into a situation where I was hating life and just driving myself and saying, I definitely learned to say no.

Speaker 3 (00:28:31):

I think learning to say no is one of the most positive things you can do in your career, but at the same time, I think that saying no too early in your career is a career killer.

Speaker 5 (00:28:47):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:28:47):

For instance, that band that won the battle for Sumerian last year or this year and then turned down the deal and went public about why they didn't like the deal and just made asses out of themselves, I've known bands throughout the years who get an opportunity and turn it down because they think they're smart, and then that's the only opportunity they ever got. Or producers who get too big for their britches and turn things down, they really shouldn't be turning down and then they don't get those opportunities again. So I also think that while saying no is one of the best things you can do for the longevity of your career, you also need to be keenly aware of where you're at in your career and assess whether or not saying no is actually an intelligent move. Because I think that one thing that we all share and that everyone who's experienced any success shares is that there is a point in time where you do need to book yourself solid.

Speaker 5 (00:29:46):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:29:46):

And just grind it out just like on guitar. Yeah. You don't practice much anymore. I don't practice much anymore. Lots of dudes don't practice much anymore, but you still grind it out when you were young, so everybody does. You do have to put in the time at some point while you're coming up.

Speaker 4 (00:30:03):

Yeah. Speaking of guitars, it is guitar month. Maybe you want to talk about your guitar recording process maybe?

Speaker 5 (00:30:09):

Sure, yeah. On the last faceless record, I actually ended up using an amp sim, which is sort of uncharacteristic of me, but I've gotten more into it lately. But generally speaking, I usually always track with an amp sim. It makes it so much easier dealing with getting a tone or whatever. And then also with editing, obviously it's easier to just record one di track than to have pull up a guitar tone and print an amp and a di line for editing on top of it. So I usually always track with an amp sim and then I go back and re-amp after the fact unless there's some special circumstance or something. I've got a collection of cool heads and I used to have a lot more cabinets than I have now. I had to get rid of a lot. I used to have almost 20 guitar cabinets. Holy

Speaker 2 (00:31:01):

Crap.

Speaker 5 (00:31:02):

Yeah, it was a storage nightmare and now I'm down to about four, which is plenty.

Speaker 3 (00:31:08):

How many of those would you actually use though?

Speaker 5 (00:31:10):

Well see, a lot of 'em were duplicates of the same thing, but realistically I was always pulling out the same three or four, which is why I've narrowed it down to four.

Speaker 4 (00:31:21):

What are your favorite ones and which speakers are in them?

Speaker 5 (00:31:23):

One of my favorite cabs that I record all the time, and it's a cab that I've used live a lot as well, is it's a Randall cab and it's loaded with Eminence one hundreds. Something about it, man, it just has so much headroom, it never gets nasty, it never bottoms out. It seems to work well with whatever heavy tones I throw through it. And I also have a great two 12 EVH cab. I always have good luck tracking two twelves. I don't know if you guys find that at all.

Speaker 4 (00:31:52):

I've done both.

Speaker 5 (00:31:52):

Something about two twelves, it just kind of tightens things up and I don't know, it just sits really well in a mix for me.

Speaker 4 (00:31:58):

There's less low mid range. I am trying to think and compare. I have a Mesa two 12 and a Mesa standard rectal four by 12 in the other room, and the difference between those other than the small speaker variance is usually a little bit of 200 ish in that area. There's a little bit of more of a low mid weight.

Speaker 2 (00:32:16):

Yeah. I've played around with two by 12 impulses versus four by 12 impulses in it. I've found even in the impulse realm, that could be tighter sounding.

Speaker 5 (00:32:28):

Yeah, absolutely. You know what? I think it's actually exaggerated in the impulse realm and with amp sims and stuff, I think that characteristic of the tightness of the two 12 really, really is evident there, and especially when I'm doing any kind of amp sim stuff or I'm using any sort of speaker emulation, I always seem to gravitate towards the two 12 for some reason.

Speaker 2 (00:32:52):

Now, I heard you don't play with super high gain. I'm curious, do you find that that's crucial for the tight sound? There's a lot of people with the misconception out there that think more gains heavier guitar tone and it's kind of opposite really.

Speaker 5 (00:33:05):

Right? I agree. Yeah, I think especially if you're looking for clarity, tightness, control, if you sound all that stuff, that definitely comes through lower gain. There's a threshold with gain, you get to a certain point and it's not really going to get any heavier by adding more gain, all it's going to do is maybe it'll add sustain, which then in turn makes it a little bit easier to play. But that usually is kind of like a sloppiness thing. If he can play it right, then back off the game, and it's going to sound a lot cleaner, a lot more controlled.

Speaker 4 (00:33:43):

I call it guitar center syndrome, where you walk in there and the kid's raging on the line six insane mode and it sounds like he can shred, and then you hand him, you walks over to the Marshall and starts playing and you just start laughing. You're like, dude, you're missing 80% of the notes. Right?

Speaker 3 (00:33:58):

Yeah. I think that even when you add more gain to get that sustained, there's still a threshold beyond that to where all you start adding is to the signal.

Speaker 5 (00:34:10):

Yeah, just noise, white noise. And

Speaker 2 (00:34:12):

I think with recording though versus live, there's definitely a point where you're trying to just make the performance presentable and get the tone to a point where you can kind of counterbalance your ability to perform the part perfectly to just getting it presentable and having it not sound like shit, but in the studio everything has to be perfect because that shit's in there recorded forever. So for me, it'd be trivial to be like, okay, let's increase the game because we need more sustained. No, hold the cord better with your hand, right?

Speaker 5 (00:34:45):

Yeah, yeah. It's like try it again. It's not a live situation, so it's like if you fucked it up, do it again. That's the luxury of the studio. Do it again and turn the game down a little bit. You

Speaker 4 (00:34:59):

Guys are making the assumption the musician can even play it in the first place.

Speaker 3 (00:35:03):

So yeah, that brings up the question when you're recording, I mean obviously you know how to play guitar, so that's not an issue when it comes to your own music, but when you're recording other people, at what point do you decide that you're going to just play the guitar for them? Always? No, he records some pretty good guitarists. So yeah,

Speaker 5 (00:35:24):

When the editing gets to a point where it's taking so much longer than just getting takes, because obviously we all know that if you play it perfectly, it's going to be faster than editing it, but you kind of cater to other people and you sit there and you do editing whatever to get their part perfect. When it gets to the point where it's like, man, even with editing, this still sounds like shit. That's usually where I kind of draw the line and I'm like, you want me to take a stab at this? What about

Speaker 4 (00:36:03):

Palm muting? Because for me, that's the one I always get absolute batshit crazy over.

Speaker 5 (00:36:09):

It's

Speaker 4 (00:36:09):

Pick attack for me because the way the kids, they're not picking hard enough or they're not picking with their hand in the right position on the bridge and they're not getting the optimal tone. And sometimes they can get away with being a crappy guitar player on the cord stuff, but when they start chugging away and a riff with, I go nuts, I'm like, give me the damn guitar. I'll punch in all the chugs. Here you go. Get out.

Speaker 5 (00:36:27):

Totally, totally. I

Speaker 4 (00:36:29):

Get so angry with palm

Speaker 5 (00:36:30):

Muting. Palm meeting can be such a fine art too. You can sit there and palm mute the same thing 10 times in a row and go, okay, this one is how I wanted it to sound. And each one is different in its own way. Exactly. You really have to, one, you have to know what you're listening for. You have to really know what you're wanting. And then two, you have to learn how to actually achieve it.

Speaker 4 (00:36:54):

Now if you don't play guitar, how do you actually convey that sort of thing? Because it's like I'm a guitar player, we're all guitar player to some degree, and imagine if you just like sang, right? And then you started being a producer, how do you know what a good palm mute sounds like? I often wonder how challenging that must be.

Speaker 5 (00:37:13):

Yeah, it really must be. I don't know, man. I don't have the answer to that. I think it goes without saying that you're going to be a better producer if you're a musician, especially if you play the instrument you're producing. Do

Speaker 3 (00:37:26):

You guys know any heavy music producers that don't play some guitar? I know Colin Richardson is not a guitarist.

Speaker 5 (00:37:34):

Yeah, I was actually going to say Colin Richardson is the only one I can think of.

Speaker 3 (00:37:37):

That's the only one I can think of.

Speaker 4 (00:37:39):

So he just has superhuman powers. He's a statistical outlier, so he doesn't count.

Speaker 3 (00:37:44):

Yeah, he is definitely a statistical outlier,

Speaker 4 (00:37:47):

Genius,

Speaker 3 (00:37:48):

And he's also from another era where stuff wasn't recorded the way it is now. I think that's a big part of it, but I'm trying to think if any of the modern dudes that I know personally or that I know of don't play at least some guitar to some degree, and I can't think of anybody.

Speaker 5 (00:38:07):

I can't either.

Speaker 3 (00:38:08):

I've always said that to be a good producer, you need to learn as many different instruments as possible. You don't need to be a virtuoso, but enough to where you have some understanding of how they work and how to sound good on them. Otherwise, how are you going to do it? Especially for music like this where it's highly technical and highly specific, how on earth are you going to understand it? I don't know how I would approach understanding it without playing guitar.

Speaker 5 (00:38:38):

I agree. And also the idiosyncrasies of the instruments, aside from all of that, just how a pickup's going to interact with a guitar cabinet or how your symbols are going to react with your drums when you put a mic on the drum, all those things. Actually being with the instrument and playing it gives you so much more insight into all those things.

Speaker 3 (00:39:03):

Yeah, absolutely. So let me ask you this. Do you play bass much? I

Speaker 5 (00:39:07):

Do, yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:39:08):

Do you usually track the bass on records you record?

Speaker 5 (00:39:12):

It depends. I mean, I certainly have. I recorded bass on a veil of my album and actually, I don't know if they wanted me to say that too late. No, actually no. Yeah, there was no one listed as playing bass on this side. Yeah, I mean there was no bass player at the time and I've certainly done it. And then of course there's the countless times that I'm sure we've all encountered the shitty bass player that is buried live and you have to go back and replace everything they did or most of what they did when they leave. Oh my God.

Speaker 4 (00:39:46):

I feel like that in itself could be a podcast of stories.

Speaker 3 (00:39:50):

Well, I feel that that's the most common instrument that I end up replacing personally.

Speaker 4 (00:39:55):

Right, absolutely. And me too.

Speaker 3 (00:39:56):

Yeah. Based beyond everything else, but I mean you've had some really, really killer bassists in your own band, right?

Speaker 5 (00:40:04):

I've been really lucky in that regard. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:40:06):

When you're working with someone who's just like a shredder on base and wants to keep things busy, how do you keep their parts

Speaker 4 (00:40:16):

Musical?

Speaker 3 (00:40:18):

Yeah. How do you keep it from overtaking everything? I'm looking for an answer that's talking about mix wise, but also arrangement wise because we've all heard that broad local band that has the bass player who wants to be a guitar player

Speaker 5 (00:40:32):

Who's

Speaker 3 (00:40:33):

Sweeping constantly and it just sounds like total shit. But on the other hand, we've got your stuff where you've had crazy bass and it still sounds cool. Yeah,

Speaker 5 (00:40:42):

I've been pretty lucky that when I started the Faceless and all through high school, my partner in crime was always Brandon, our bass player, and we kind of cut our musical teeth together. He's such an amazing bass player and such an amazing musician, and I always felt like we really got on a wavelength together that was really in tune and he, he always could play real busy, but it was always tasteful and he wasn't trying to play guitar. He always played bass, which was really important to me. And I've played with other bass players who play busy and I always go, that's a really cool part, but who's going to play bass? And I kind of always go back to that. I can't tell you how many bands I've said that to also. I go, yeah, that's really cool, but who's going to play bass if you're playing that?

(00:41:32):

What do you mean, bro? Bro, it's definitely an art in itself coming up with musical bass parts that they can be busy, but their bass parts, a lot of bassists want to play guitar and they play the guitar part or they play something that's a lead or whatever, and it's like you can play busy, but you still play bass. The whole concept of playing bass is you're outlining the key centers, so outlining the key centers and do it busy if you want to play busy, but play bass and that's definitely something that I have made a strong point to be aware of so that I can tell bass players, this is kind of where you need to go if you want to play that busy or whatever. As far as mix is concerned, I think a big part of it is leaving room for the bass.

(00:42:33):

A lot of people have a tendency to put too much, I feel like anyway, they put too much low end in the guitars, which doesn't leave room for the bass or a lot of it is sculpting your bass drum and stuff to where there's room for the base. And also personally, I dunno if you guys would agree with me on this, but I kind of feel like there's a low mid area in the base that a lot of times is taken for granted or actually cut out, which is really detrimental if you want to actually hear what the base is doing clearly.

Speaker 3 (00:43:04):

Absolutely.

Speaker 5 (00:43:05):

Base is, it's definitely an afterthought in most metal unfortunately. It's sort of just there as a, because it has to be, I guess more so than because it's really being highlighted or anything.

Speaker 3 (00:43:19):

I want to make a distinction though, because I feel like there's a difference between an afterthought and something that's a lower extension of the guitars because sometimes it makes perfect sense for the bass to play the guitar line and just be like the, basically the sub and the growl of a guitar sound like if it's a pattern part, there's just tons of parts where playing the same thing as a guitar is the right musical decision.

Speaker 5 (00:43:47):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:43:48):

So I want to just make the distinction between that and bass as an afterthought because I think bass as an afterthought is where you play the same thing as the guitar because you can't think of anything else.

Speaker 5 (00:43:59):

No, yeah, you're absolutely right. There's lots and lots of maybe half the time even on some songs where playing what the guitar is playing is the right thing to do. Absolutely. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do that because that's obviously the right thing to do a lot of the time. Sure.

Speaker 3 (00:44:14):

But it definitely is an instrument that it just gets the short end of the stick in this genre a lot, but I feel like it's the hidden weapon to mixes.

Speaker 5 (00:44:25):

Absolutely. Yeah, man, if you've got a killer base tone, it can really bring a whole production to life in a way that makes it very unique.

Speaker 4 (00:44:34):

It's always baffled me how metal real metal guys make metal records with bass because I'm a rock guy predominantly, so for me, bass is everything. I am going to name Drop Nickelback, so if everybody plug their ears and pretend I didn't say that, but imagine a Nickelback record without base, there's literally 60% of the mix, all of the balls, all of the punch, everything comes from that low end or a breaking Benjamin, or it's all about base. So it's like sometimes when I hear metal records, I'm like, dude, it sounds really wimpy and thin.

Speaker 5 (00:45:09):

Yeah, I agree, man. I agree totally. Going back to what we were talking about, busy bass parts and metal, another thing that I've had to talk to bassists about is when you play real busy on bass, it's inherently going to get lost easier in the mix. When you simplify your base parts, they're going to stand out more. I mean, if you actually think about it on a sequential level, when you're dealing with frequencies that are so much lower, they're moving slower, so it actually takes more time to get to your ears than the other things, and because of that, if you're playing double the speed, it's just going to get lost.

Speaker 4 (00:45:53):

Let me ask you a question based off that, because I'm thinking about things like breakdowns where you have 16th or 32nd notes where you got a burst. Usually I'll tell the bass player to play eighth notes there. If the kick pattern goes and the bass player goes, I only plays three notes instead of five or whatever it is. Usually I feel like it sounds like the bass, even though the bass part is playing half of the hits, it sounds like

Speaker 2 (00:46:17):

I do the exact same thing. I

Speaker 4 (00:46:18):

Do the exact same

Speaker 5 (00:46:19):

Thing as well. Same

Speaker 2 (00:46:20):

Here. Well,

Speaker 4 (00:46:21):

I'm glad that we all agree because that's something I've always done. I'm like, man, when the base plays along with it, it just sounds like muddy because you lose that low end movement. So

Speaker 2 (00:46:30):

I take it a step further because the way my base tracks are set up, it's two tracks. So there's one track for all the low end and one track for all the mid-range and the high end. The low track will sometimes be a little different than the high track.

Speaker 3 (00:46:43):

I do that too. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:46:44):

The high track might play all of those hits, the hits, but the low end just maybe plays a single note or two notes or whatever to just make that, because when the base note starts and ends, you might have an envelope. So more envelopes mean less base, so it all depends on what you're trying to capture.

Speaker 3 (00:47:06):

I do that as well because in some mixes I find that the top end of the base where I distort it with a sand amp or whatever or just kind of want that growl to come through, I need that to be playing along with the kick or it'll sound incomplete if it doesn't. So I do have that part of it, play the pattern, but then if you do that for the low end, you run into that same problem that you guys were talking about that it sounds like mud and there ends up being less low end. So actually I've done that exact same thing. It's a great way to achieve the goal. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:47:42):

It's always interesting when you talk about stuff like this and certain techniques, you're like, you come up with some technique and then you don't know if anybody else does it. Then you find out everybody else is doing it and everybody came to it organically.

Speaker 3 (00:47:55):

Yeah, I've never heard anyone else talk about that. I just thought I was the only one who did that and that it was wrong.

Speaker 4 (00:48:02):

Cat's out of the bag now it'll be all over all the forums.

Speaker 5 (00:48:05):

A lot of the times I tell bass players rhythmically do right hand stuff, do half of whatever the bass drum or the guitar is doing, and it definitely tightens everything up. Who, I actually had a conversation with that about a long time ago, and he was the one that actually pointed out that the frequencies move slower, so it takes more time to get to your ear. It's actually your buddy James Malone. We had a conversation about that years ago.

Speaker 3 (00:48:29):

Oh, dude. Talk about a brilliant motherfucker.

Speaker 5 (00:48:33):

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (00:48:34):

God, he's so good at guitar.

Speaker 5 (00:48:35):

So yeah, it's kind of an interesting idea.

Speaker 2 (00:48:38):

So what do you use live? What are you playing through live and what are you playing through in the studio like HeadWise and Cab Wise,

Speaker 5 (00:48:46):

Get a little of this. Actually the last, I guess almost two years now, so many bands we're all using computers in our setup now to run click tracks and backing tracks and stuff, so I kind of took it to the next level and some bands, they even have MIDI running to change the channels on their amps or whatever and whatever else, light shows, whatever. And so I kind of decided to take it to the next level. I had used Amp Sims on our most recent record, and so I took all the sounds that I had made for the record, all the different patches, and I loaded them into the sessions that I was running for our backing tracks and our click and everything, and I sequenced everything out so that I wouldn't have to hit any pedals, wouldn't have to do any changes or anything. I was actually using Waves, GTR, I don't know. I have all the major ones, revolver and all the stuff, whatever. But for whatever reason, I keep going back to GTR. I just really like it. It just sounds good for me.

Speaker 3 (00:49:52):

It's interesting that you bring that up because we asked in our subscribers only forum if they have any questions for you. And so we have some questions here from our crowd and a few of them asked why you use Waves. GTR one guy said, why waves GTR? I think it's a pretty cool plugin, but would personally never rely on it during live shows. Another person, Terry Thornton has said waves, GTRI really enjoyed the guitar tone on the last album. I have that and it's actually pretty cool, but I haven't really been able to get that sound out of it.

Speaker 5 (00:50:24):

What's interesting is I've talked to quite a few people that say that, and I don't really have a solid answer for them. I've actually talked to some guitar players that are in touring bands that they said, Hey, what's the deal with GTR? Man? I'm trying to get a tone pulled up, but I can't seem to get it sounding the way that you got it sounding. And I'll actually send them. I sent a couple friends a preset and when they pulled it up, they went, oh wow, that sounds way different than what I was doing. I think a big part of it is using the big boy one with the two heads and everything, because I combined two sounds on top of each other. I think that's a big part of it, and going through all the different cabs, also turning off the cab and putting your own impulse responses actually can really make it sound awesome as well.

(00:51:17):

So that's another thing I would say try, but I don't know, man, for whatever reason, I just got some sounds out of it that I really liked, and I'm sure we all know this, and we all have told people this a million times, obviously, but there's no right or wrong. It's just you find things that you like and you just start gravitating towards them. And we all have our things that we just use consistently because you know that you can work with them well and they work well for you. And for whatever reason, I just got some good tones out of GTRI liked and I used them for the record. Once I used them for the record, I figured, well, if I'm going to do this live, I'm going to use the exact same sounds from the record, so it sounds exactly the same. And all I did was I just dialed a little bit of the high end off so that it would translate to live a little bit better and just dropped all my presets right into the session and it worked out really well. It's cool.

Speaker 3 (00:52:15):

I totally understand what you're saying. I feel the same way about Line six products. I've used them for ages and even when everybody thought they sucked, I always managed to get really good results with them. Ms. Sugar used to use them and get great results with them, and that was always what I would say to people was, look, if they use it and sound great, I'm getting great results with it. It's not the gear, it's the brain

Speaker 4 (00:52:44):

Using

Speaker 3 (00:52:44):

The gear. And I'm not saying I'm great or anything, I'm just saying that for some reason I figured out how to make it work for me and it may not work for everyone, but I don't think that there's anything wrong with the particular gear. It's just whatever you make work for you. I don't know of any actual amp sims. Well, I know a couple that suck, but I don't think that too many of them that are out there suck so bad. I think it's just a preference thing. Which one is going to work best for you?

Speaker 5 (00:53:14):

Talking about line six, I've heard records that I've listened to 'em and gone, man, this sounds really good. And then somebody goes, yeah, they did this on a pod and I'm really a pod. Wow. And you would never guess. It's just like you said, it's the person working and it's not the gear. People can pull up their signature tone with just about anything. I mean, obviously there's exceptions to that rule, but for the most part, you can kind of get your tone out of anything.

Speaker 3 (00:53:40):

Here's a great example is John Brown from monuments. He's a phenomenal guitar player and he is got great tone and he's a PO HD Pro dude. That's all he uses. Yeah, there you go. With very, very low gain. And a lot of people don't understand how it's possible. And I think a lot of it also has to do with the kind of stuff that we were talking about before. It's the nuance of being a good guitar player. If you got your hands right, you can pretty much use any piece of gear. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:54:12):

Totally.

Speaker 5 (00:54:12):

I agree.

Speaker 3 (00:54:13):

Hey,

Speaker 4 (00:54:13):

I love waves. GTR, I think it's actually not terrible.

Speaker 3 (00:54:17):

Joel, you use GTR?

Speaker 4 (00:54:18):

Yeah, I do sometimes. I've never used it in a mix, but when I was doing some impulses and stuff back in the day with Joey, I used GTRA lot actually. And I kind of like the interface and it's really easy and fast, very fast. I love pod farm. I hate to say it because one of those two ban dickhead purist guys, but I really do like pod farm. I've used it a ton, but I hate the interface of it. The interface really irritates me. I really like the interface of GTR. It's just simple. I don't know, maybe it's a workflow thing.

Speaker 3 (00:54:48):

I've actually used it too, and Jay Rustin likes Waves GTR as well, and he's pretty great.

Speaker 5 (00:54:56):

To answer the question of why waves GTR in the simplest way possible, most of the other amps Im stuff that I pull up. Sometimes I'll sit there and I'll mess with settings for 45 minutes or something and I completely lose touch with whether it even sounds good. I'll go, does this even sound good? I don't know. My ears are fatigued. I step back and come back to it. I'm like, no, I'm way off base with this. For whatever reason, I could just pull up GTR and in like five minutes, have a cool tone and I'm ready to go.

Speaker 3 (00:55:32):

That's how I feel about ax effects. It's like so many parameters. You can sit there for hours and make it different, but not necessarily make it better.

Speaker 5 (00:55:42):

I agree.

Speaker 3 (00:55:43):

And after 90 minutes you're like, wow. Yeah, that definitely sounds different than how I started, but it sounds like shit

Speaker 4 (00:55:51):

Selection, paralysis, you get stuck. Too many options. You sit there and you tweak and you tweak and you tweak, but when you have something that's really simple, you're just kind of like, okay, cool. Alright, sounds good. Moving on.

Speaker 3 (00:56:01):

That's what I like about the line six stuff as well is the simplicity. And just to take that a step further, when I'm using plugins for instance, the plugins that I find myself going back to the most typically are very simple in their GUI because I get scared of plugins that are too complicated stuff where there's too much going on where I have to think about it too much to get the result, I end up just not gravitating towards those. I like things that you can dial quickly and get the result quickly and move on with your creative experience.

Speaker 5 (00:56:38):

Generally as a rule, I would say that the longer I spend messing with something, it usually doesn't make it better. It's usually actually diminishing, if anything after a certain point.

Speaker 3 (00:56:52):

What like five to 10 minutes?

Speaker 5 (00:56:53):

Yeah, around there.

Speaker 3 (00:56:55):

Joey, what's your threshold with that? My

Speaker 2 (00:56:57):

Threshold I think is pretty short for me. I'm very impatient when it comes to that, so I'll also, I like to come back to things

Speaker 5 (00:57:06):

I do too.

Speaker 2 (00:57:07):

I like to get somewhere and just be like, it's good enough for now. Come back to it. And with fresh ears or with a different perspective, you find that you can make it even better. I think I describe my process as more of a molding. I'm not fabricating it, I'm doing this a little this way. Okay, a little less that, a little more this, and over time it becomes the final sound.

Speaker 4 (00:57:32):

Yeah, yeah. It's more objective that way too. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:57:35):

Absolutely. But Joey, I understand the molding part and definitely I mold stuff for a while over the course of the week or two that I'm mixing something or the course of the whole album, but I just mean in that initial getting the tone this first 10 minutes with the tone, I feel like if you don't have it even decent within five to 10 minutes, maybe it's time to change the plugin or the sound altogether or something. For me at least, that's where I start to lose my mind

Speaker 2 (00:58:10):

And I think that goes back to the concept that we say it starts at the source.

Speaker 5 (00:58:17):

Right? Totally. I was going to say the same thing.

Speaker 2 (00:58:19):

Yeah, it's like if you choose a kick drum and it's just not, let's say you're doing sample replacement, you choose a kick drum, it's not working out in your song and you just keep trying to EQ it more and more and you keep putting stupid compressors on it and stuff, just pick a different kick drum. It's not the right one. Right,

Speaker 5 (00:58:35):

Totally.

Speaker 2 (00:58:35):

And it might take a while to find it. And same thing with guitar tones. You can produce the first four songs and have a guitar tone that you love and then you get to that second half of the record and you're like, ah, it's not the right tone.

Speaker 5 (00:58:48):

So

Speaker 2 (00:58:49):

It could take you 10 songs to get to that place where you're cool with it and then you go back to song one and you try the new tone out and you're like, ah, okay. This is what was missing.

Speaker 5 (00:58:58):

Totally.

Speaker 2 (00:58:58):

And I think that just takes more content. You need to hear more riffs and more notes and chords being played through the tone and you experience that at different tempos as you go from song to song, which allows you to construct the ultimate guitar tone for what you're doing.

Speaker 3 (00:59:14):

Yeah, that's a really, really good point. That's another reason that I don't like to sit there and get carried away with a tone for too long because I have also noticed the exact same thing that within a few songs it's going to evolve anyways. It's just going to naturally happen.

Speaker 5 (00:59:31):

I totally agree.

Speaker 3 (00:59:32):

Yeah. As you do a few more songs, you're going to add a few EQ changes, this and that, tweak the tone and it's going to get better. More likely than not it's going to get better just because you've been working with it, going through different material with it. So yeah, that's another reason why it's just kind of chasing your tail to sit there for too long on the same tone. But I've definitely done it and driven myself nuts. I

Speaker 4 (00:59:57):

Think at the core of this is the fact that you have to really just trust your gut when you're onto something and it's sounding good and you just got to go with it and move on because a certain amount of tail chasing usually can lead to sidestepping or detrimental results, but more importantly, you lose time and unfortunately in the professional world, time itself has a very high value as opposed to tweaking out the little last 0.2%. It's more important to be quick and to be able to make good decisions creatively so you can accomplish more.

Speaker 5 (01:00:27):

Yeah, there's definitely a point of diminishing return on just sitting there and tweaking forever, and I don't know if you guys do this at all, but for me, I definitely find in my process of getting a mix to where I want it to be, a lot of times I'll dump general settings across a bunch of mixes and then as I'm working on one song or I go to another song and I'm doing this or I'm doing that and I start tweaking things differently from song to song, it kind of helps me in a way when going back to what you were saying about hearing a lot of different notes, a lot of different riffs, a lot of different tempos with certain settings of whatever it may be and an amp or a drum sample that you're using or whatever. As I go through different songs and I start tweaking things individually, I'll kind of get onto something with one track and then I'll go, oh, that sounds really cool, and I'll apply it to another track and I'll go, oh, maybe not. And as I sort of go from track to track to track doing that for a while, I start to kind of get ahold of general themes of what's working and what's not and start applying that to everything.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):

Yeah, absolutely. So let me ask you this because we've been talking about Amp Simms, but I know personally that you like Real Amps. You said that earlier. So what is it you prefer about Real Amps and what is it you prefer about Sims? How do you decide?

Speaker 5 (01:01:54):

Well, there's things to like about both. A lot of times if I pull up an amp sim, it might just be because it's easiest in reality, it's just fast and it's easiest. If I'm doing something where I'm maybe just doing a few songs for somebody, I'm probably going to use an Amim because it's fast and it's easy. If I'm doing a whole record where you want everything sort of in a format so to speak, a lot of times I'll gravitate to spending the extra time and getting a really unique micd up amp sound. It's also a matter of what you have in terms of selection for amps as well. I mean, if you have one head to use, you're going to allow yourself some variety by trying out Amp Sims because one sound isn't going to work for everything. We all know that there might be some piece of gear that you gravitate towards a lot of the time, but it's never going to work for everything. And I'm lucky that I do have a cool collection of heads. I'm a Randall artist, so I have a bunch of different Randall heads that are all really awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:03:00):

Do you have the modular ones?

Speaker 5 (01:03:02):

I used to. I actually got rid of it a while back, but I used to have it and I used to have a bunch of modules for it and it was cool, but it actually wasn't my favorite Randall Head of all the ones I had.

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):

I'll echo that because in Florida I've had experience with the modular ones and never quite felt as strongly about it as some of the other models for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:03:27):

Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:03:27):

Did

Speaker 4 (01:03:28):

You guys ever try the mod modular ones, for example, like Salvation Mods?

Speaker 5 (01:03:33):

I actually did try some other company's mods and I don't know, there was definitely some cool stuff. Part of it for me was the power amp. I wasn't crazy about the way the Power Amp sounded for it. It was almost too, if you know what I mean. There was too much sag, not enough mid range, that type of thing just for my taste. A lot of people that works for 'em, whatever. But I like the really fast attack and I like a lot of mid range, so it wasn't quite what I was looking for I guess. But I kind of always gravitate towards the more Marshall kind of sound, the more mid rangey real growly fast attack and I have like a EVH 51 53 and

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):

Love that thing.

Speaker 5 (01:04:14):

Yeah, it's great. Oh, that's a great hunt. Yeah, especially for leads. I really love it for leads. It's awesome. So I have some cool stuff to choose from. I'll try different things and obviously kind of know after you've used your gear for a while, what might work best for something, so I'll pull up whatever feels right. And a lot of it too is what mics you're using and obviously it doesn't affect it as much, but even your preamp choice or mic pre choices, all that stuff. What kind of mics and pres are your favorites for Miking? A guitar, a lot of times it's kind of an experiment for me and sometimes I'll actually throw up six mics on a cab all close and I'll kind of just run through all of 'em and move them all until I decide what I like. But I have definitely kind of gone back to the few that I always seem to narrow it down to, and it always kind of seems to be mainly there's three mics. Sometimes I use different things, but most of the time I end up with the SM 57, a lot of times a 4 21, which are obviously two very obvious choices that are workhorses. Yeah, total workhorses. And then the third one I end up using a lot is a pretty inexpensive condenser Mike, the blue baby bottle, but for whatever reason, it sounds great on guitar cabs.

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):

It sounds good, close

Speaker 5 (01:05:39):

Right up on it. It has a really, really high SPL and it's like 1 28 or something and it sounds great. It's got a ton of mid range that a 57 and a 4 21 don't have. It's got this sort of dark, really strong mid range and when you combine it with the 57 and the 4 21 for me, I don't know about you guys. I really don't like putting EQ on distorted guitar tracks. I feel like it sounds super colored the second you put an EQ on your guitar tracks, so I try and get them right going in so I don't have to add, I definitely don't want to add anything that's for sure. Even when I cut, I feel like I can really hear it. So I kind of take those three microphones and I kind of almost use them as a low, mid and high EQ in a way because you can get the lows from the 4 21, the mids from the baby bottle and the highs from the 57 and just sort of finesse those three mics if I need more high or more low or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):

I have definitely had kicks, and I know that some guys that I've worked with have also had kicks where it's like, if you need any EQ on these guitars, the guitars suck.

(01:06:55):

And I mean these are on records that have been released that people like the tone on, so I stand by it, but I can't say that I've always liked that. Sometimes I find myself having to EQ guitars with great extremity basically to get them to sound good, but I do feel like with my own stuff, especially if it's me playing guitar or a guitar player that I think is really, really good, then I can take the time to achieve an ideal like that where you have a guitar tone that doesn't need eq. But it's definitely not a rule that I subscribe to a hundred percent of the time, but I definitely understand it. I have been through those kicks. It's a great feeling when you achieve it

Speaker 5 (01:07:38):

Well. Sure. I don't think that there's any rule that you can subscribe to a hundred percent of the time besides

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):

That. Besides that, there's no rule that you can, that is the one rule that there is no rule,

Speaker 5 (01:07:48):

But I've found more often than not for me, when I add EQ to a distorted guitar, I can usually hear it and it bothers me when I'm working on stuff. I don't know, maybe it's the EQ I'm using or whatever, but I just feel like I can hear it. It bugs the hell out of me.

Speaker 4 (01:08:05):

Yeah, that's interesting. I've had a couple records where I've really, not eqd very much, but usually they're not metal records, metal records. For me, no matter how sick of a tone, I feel like I, I always just EQ the living shit out of my guitars, too many things I hate and that exist in nature.

Speaker 5 (01:08:21):

I think that's another reason why I kind of always tend to do all the tracking with an Amps sim and then go back and reamp is so that I have the luxury that if I get a tone and I get three songs in and I'm like, man, this sounds like shit. This is not working at all. I can go back and kind of just reevaluate and pull up a different tone and just reamp it again.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):

So do you sum those three mics together on the way in?

Speaker 5 (01:08:52):

I do. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:53):

So you're committing?

Speaker 5 (01:08:54):

Yeah. Yeah, usually.

Speaker 3 (01:08:55):

That's cool. We advocate committing to tones

Speaker 5 (01:08:59):

Quite a

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):

Bit. Is that part of your methodology when recording, committing to tones early and running with them? I mean, you definitely did just say that you like to have the safety net of being able to reamp, which is just smart, but do you like to commit?

Speaker 5 (01:09:16):

I do, yeah. But yeah, I like to have those safety nets as well in case there's this situation where I just hate something, I can go back and change it. I always allow myself those safety nets when I can.

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):

Speaking of that, I notice that you've started to add more and more orchestration and things like that. Is that something that you do or do you hire that out?

Speaker 5 (01:09:35):

I do it, yeah. It's something that I have a really, really good time doing, man, that's probably my favorite thing, man is doing big arrangements, so, so fun. Just sitting there for however long I could sit there for hours just adding string arrangements and adding all kinds of industrial post-apocalyptic bullshit into the songs. It's just so much fun

Speaker 3 (01:09:59):

And I mean it sounds really good, so you're doing a great job of it and that's rare. Thank

Speaker 5 (01:10:04):

You.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):

Most people absolutely fucking suck at it, but okay, so when you're working with that kind of stuff, do you find that you need to commit with that or do you leave your virtual instruments on throughout the mix? How do you have a super complex metal mix with all that extra stuff on there and not kill your

Speaker 5 (01:10:26):

CPUI do is the answer. I guess I just do kill my CPU. I don't usually commit, well, a lot of times what I'll do is I'll work with all the stuff actually running, all the instruments actually running until it's like, okay, things are starting to run pretty squirrely here. Let's take some of the more draining stuff out or whatever. And obviously you leave the midi tracks and stuff so that in the event that you do want to change something, you can pull it up and redo it or whatever. But yeah, then it's not until I start seeing the effects on the CPU that I'll print stuff. A lot of times when I actually bounce a mix, the final mix still has the instruments running. I don't even print them. Then

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):

You must have a pretty powerful computer.

Speaker 5 (01:11:18):

Yeah, I mean it's powerful. It's not anything crazy or anything, but it's definitely it's a good computer.

Speaker 3 (01:11:24):

Do you have any tricks for getting that stuff to work in a mix or is it more about arrangement or a mixing thing? How do you get it to work? I know that that's one of the toughest things in mixing metal is getting strings to work.

Speaker 5 (01:11:38):

It's really hard to find that balance where it's either totally burying everything or it's completely buried and it's really hard to get it to pop out. I find that EQing can obviously help a lot and what mastering tools you're using can help a lot and stuff and assuming you are mastering, I think you're right. I think a lot of it is the arrangement itself. A lot of times for me, I'll have some really cool idea, maybe a string arrangement or maybe something really bombastic, a really big sort of percussive thing or something, and I'll drop it into a sound and it is sort of burying everything and I have to make a decision in terms of the arrangement and go, well, you know what? As far as the mix is concerned, this isn't working. And you can either sit there and you can carve stuff out in the eq, which sometimes I'll do or I'll just go, I just need to cut this. It's too much here. In terms of the mix, it's too much.

Speaker 3 (01:12:39):

Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like if the arrangement isn't good when it comes to adding orchestra or keyboard sounds that, well, synth sounds that full range, full spectrum. If the arrangement's not solid, it's going to sound like garbage.

Speaker 5 (01:12:57):

Yeah, yeah. I've also kind of learned to write for the arrangements that I eventually am kind of envisioning as I'm coming up with a guitar part. A lot of times I'm hearing the strings and all that stuff before I even finish the guitar part, and I kind of will write my guitar parts or I'll write the songs with more open parts that breathe a little bit more for those sections. So I can sit there for an hour just adding layer after layer after layer because it's fun.

Speaker 3 (01:13:34):

I've always thought that EQing and arrangement are kind of the same. They require the same mentality in that EQing is all about highlighting what's good and leaving space for what's good in other instruments, and I feel like arrangement is the exact same thing, is highlighting what's good while leaving space for what's good in all the other instruments so that everything can work together.

Speaker 5 (01:14:00):

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):

So we have some questions from our audience that we'd like to go through before we wrap this up. You got time for a few questions? Yeah, totally. Cool. So we'll start with one from AJ Vianna, which is how do you keep yourself from going office space if a particular riff or section of a song is giving you a really hard time?

Speaker 5 (01:14:22):

I don't. Sometimes I do go office space. I guess that's just something that comes with time really. I don't know. I think the simple answer is stepping away from stuff. For me, it's like Joey was saying, I'll toy with something for a while and I try not to sit there and maybe mess with a riff or whatever, anything. I try not to mess with anything until it makes me crazy. Once it starts making me crazy, it's time to step away and I'll come back to it in whatever, a few hours in the next day and work on something else and come back to it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):

Sounds reasonable. Well, Sean O'Shaughnessy is wondering, does your writing process involve recording the song as you write it for demo purposes, or do you normally write the song and then record it?

Speaker 5 (01:15:11):

I usually sit at my computer. I usually will have some sort of riff that I've noodled out, and then from there I will sit at my computer with my guitar. I actually usually practice guitar sitting in front of my computer and I do it half because it's easy to just plug into my console and pull up GTR or something and just sit there and noodle and half because as I come up with cool ideas, I like to record them and I'll just continually do that. I just keep recording ideas until I have a substantial chunk of something and then I'll start kind of looking at it with some perspective and kind of trying to come up with more parts for it or whatever. But yeah, for me, I think recording is sort of integral to my songwriting process now.

Speaker 3 (01:16:00):

Yeah, that makes sense. I don't understand how you could possibly write super complex music that's modern as well without recording it at the same time. Too much going on. Music has gotten way complicated.

Speaker 4 (01:16:13):

Yeah, I don't know how I ever did pencil and paper. Well,

Speaker 3 (01:16:16):

Yeah, there's that too.

Speaker 4 (01:16:17):

Pencil and paper, you got to score

Speaker 5 (01:16:20):

It out. Yeah, I don't know how, when I think about it now, I don't know how I did that before.

Speaker 3 (01:16:26):

I used to score things out before I had recording technology. I would record it on a four track cassette recorder and then I would literally score the shit out. It took so long.

Speaker 5 (01:16:38):

I'm

Speaker 3 (01:16:39):

Really glad that I went through that.

Speaker 5 (01:16:40):

Me too, man. Big time.

Speaker 3 (01:16:42):

Yeah, there's definitely something to be said for doing it the old school, old school way it, I don't know, puts hair on your chest or something as a musician.

Speaker 5 (01:16:51):

Totally. Yeah. I think that there's definitely values to all that stuff that a lot of people will know about. They'll never understand it because I mean for me, I dunno about you guys. For me, like I said, my dad was a recording engineer and when my first recording rigs were hand-me-downs of his stuff that he didn't use anymore. And when I was 13, I think I got a Fostex E 16 reel to reel machine with a 16 track console and I had two hardware compressors and a hardware multi effects unit, and that's what I was making my first demos of my first songs on and I'm really glad that I learned to record that way and to write music that way. It definitely has values that I think to some degree have been lost.

Speaker 3 (01:17:47):

Yeah, I feel like the new technology is phenomenal when used, used properly, but when you're learning it can be a total crutch. So Mr. James Alexander Boyd is wondering, do you take a similar approach to tracking guitar as Joey and many others? IE comping multiple takes punching in for single eighth notes or 16th notes, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):

I got to ask you on top of that question too, have you ever sat down and recorded a guitar part one note at a time and then constructed all together in the computer? I definitely have

Speaker 5 (01:18:25):

To some degree I have. I wouldn't say I've put together a whole riff one note at a time, but I've definitely, to answer his question, yes, I do do that. And a lot of the times it's for the sake of writing. It's kind of like what you're talking about with the pencil and paper sitting there and writing out the music or whatever. It's sort of a trial and error process. A lot of times I'll actually record a big chunk of something and then I'll go, oh, you know what? These two notes are a little behind. Let me punch in those two notes or let me drop in those two notes and then I'll do that and then I'll go, you know what? This might be cool with this note instead. And rather than redoing the whole thing, you just drop in that note and try it out and then before it, maybe a third or half of the notes have been changed.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):

That's awesome. So it's not to make up for a lack of being able to play something that you are capable of writing but aren't capable of playing. It's more of a creative tool to help you write the song in the way that you want to write it or make the part sound in the way you want to make it sound

Speaker 5 (01:19:28):

Generally? Yeah. I mean, of course I'm not sitting here saying that I'm some badass and I can play everything that I record, the way I record it, like the first try or whatever. I generally try to only put things in my music that I'm capable of playing obviously, which that's actually something I would just like to take a second to say is very important. People, I think we need to get back to that to some degree

Speaker 2 (01:19:59):

There's a responsibility. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:20:00):

Yeah. There's bands that are just getting ridiculous with this shit. Putting shit in their songs is like, come on, you can't play that.

Speaker 4 (01:20:12):

That's all right. We get to be the cross arm dickhead guitar player in the front row. When you go see him live, then you just look and shake your head when he screws up and then the guy feels the heat, he keeps messing up. But yeah, of

Speaker 5 (01:20:23):

Course, to some degree, of course, there's parts where it's like, well, I'm not going to put something into a song that's so absurd that I can't even come close to playing it. But if it's like, oh man, this is tricky. It would be a lot easier to do it in a couple pieces. Of course I'm going to do it that way. Well,

Speaker 3 (01:20:42):

And sometimes I'm sure there's stuff that you write it because it's awesome to you and you may not have your muscle memory totally wrapped around it yet. You might need another couple months before it's ingrained to that level where you can just rip it out without warming up.

Speaker 5 (01:21:01):

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think that's actually one of the cool benefits of all the technology and all the tools that we have now is it can actually make you a better player. You can come up with these things that actually push your playing. You can't play it perfectly when you lay it down, but you'll get yourself there because you have to hopefully. Well, yeah, the problem is a lot of people aren't getting themselves there or they're putting things down that it's like they're not. It's one thing if you're 80% there or something and use a little trickery to get it a hundred percent of the way there, but it's another thing if you're not even half of the way there and you just can't even come close to playing it and you're not going to be able to come close to playing it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:49):

Yeah. It's like, get out of here, man. Takes a little bit of self-awareness for sure.

Speaker 5 (01:21:53):

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 3 (01:21:54):

So that brings up this question by Finn McKenty and Hello Finn, we love you. This is part of, it's a statement, part of it's a question, but he says tracking, so you need to do minimal editing, which is maybe just how to play guitar, but the idea being how do you get a sick tone without recording one note at a time?

Speaker 5 (01:22:16):

So

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):

I guess he means getting more performance oriented takes that still sound cool.

Speaker 5 (01:22:23):

I kind of feel like it's the reverse of that. I feel like that is the way to get it to sound cool. I feel like when you piece something together, it doesn't really have the nuances of playing guitar.

Speaker 2 (01:22:36):

I think. Yeah, try to compare it to something else. Let's say maybe just cooking, for example, let's say you're creating a complicated dish and your question translated into cooking is how do I create this complicated dish without waiting for this thing to marinate for two hours and without having to chill this for 40 minutes? Well, that's part of the process.

Speaker 5 (01:23:04):

Or you could kind of look at it. How do you get this to taste good without putting the ingredients in and then tasting them? It's throwing everything in and just hoping that it sounds right. It's like I feel like there's just natural tendencies when you play something on the guitar that aren't going to be there if you do it one note at a time. So generally speaking, I try to play something and then if it needs this note or that note fixed, you go in and you do that, but it's going to get the personality of the part and make it sound like a guitar part by actually playing it.

Speaker 3 (01:23:46):

That makes perfect sense. I agree with that too. It's like how do you make it sound sick without playing it at one note at a time, well play it right,

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):

And if you can't, then maybe it has to be constructed. I think as long as people are being responsible and they're doing it in a creative way and they're not doing it to make up for a lack of talent, then I think it's completely warranted because it's being creative and we're using our tools in new ways and people are starting to open up their minds to accepting those forms of art, I suppose.

Speaker 3 (01:24:19):

I agree. Well, if there's a way to do it and there's a way not to do it, in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:24:24):

Yeah. I mean, a person that paints paintings with a brush and classic old oil paints or whatever the hell, versus somebody who builds a robot spends six months building a robot that throws an egg at a piece of canvas. Those two are going to have completely different outlooks on art. That's a great way to put it. Robot egg

Speaker 4 (01:24:46):

Canvas.

Speaker 3 (01:24:47):

Here's a question from James Zan. One problem that happens to me every time is that I get this killer guitar tone and what's in the mix. It's all drowned out by the other instruments. So my question is, do you get your guitar tone while having other instruments going on, or do you commit to the tone and mix the other instruments based on the guitar tone?

Speaker 5 (01:25:07):

Usually I find that the guitar tone is sort of the basis of my mixes. That's kind of where I start generally. I mean, when I'm working on my own music, for instance, when I start out working on a demo of something that kind of generally ends up being the same skeletal concepts in the final version, and usually for me it's drums and guitar that kind of lay that foundation and it's kind of building a guitar tone that fits around the kick and snare primarily. And of course the symbols because of the high end sort of has to blend with the symbols. But I guess to answer the question, what I do, like I said, I work with the amim first, so I kind of get a tone that is working for me, and then I'll go back and I'll re-amp stuff later. And sometimes if I have an amp sim tone that I like, I'll actually stay with that. But I guess to answer the question in the simplest way, I do generally go back and sort of do the guitar tones to fit for the mix and for the song. And I don't know about you guys. I don't usually find that it's my guitar tones that are getting drowned out. If anything, I usually find that they're too dominant and I have to kind of back 'em off.

Speaker 3 (01:26:32):

I actually found the same thing. It's usually they end up swallowing the drums.

Speaker 5 (01:26:38):

Yeah, same here.

Speaker 3 (01:26:40):

And I find that I have to then do things to the drums to get them to poke through the guitars. That's more my issue.

Speaker 5 (01:26:49):

Yeah, I think maybe part of the issue he may be having that I find with a lot of people that when they're guitar tones aren't cutting through, it's usually kind of a lack of mid-range it seems like.

Speaker 3 (01:27:03):

Yeah, I would agree with that. Or maybe it's down to the plane.

Speaker 5 (01:27:06):

Yeah, it could be a two.

Speaker 3 (01:27:07):

Maybe he's not picking hard enough, maybe his left hand isn't pronounced enough with the vibrato or whatever. I'm sure you've recorded guys where their hands aren't there. And so no matter what you do on the settings of the amp or the amp sim, there's going to be not enough note information coming through that tone to where it can stand out.

Speaker 5 (01:27:30):

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3 (01:27:31):

Okay. So do you ever use multiple amps, and how do you decide that you're going to be blending tones together? What about a tone makes you say, I could use another amp on this?

Speaker 5 (01:27:45):

Generally speaking, I try and go with the simplest thing possible, and I'll build from there. If the simplest thing possible isn't working, then I'll add to that as needed. But generally speaking, I start with whatever's easiest. If the amp sim sounds great, I'll leave the amp sim, I'm done. If I need to re-amp, I re-amp. And if one head sounds awesome with one microphone, then I'm done. If it needs more microphones, I add more microphones. If it's lacking some quality that I'm looking for or whatever, it's got something that I like about it, but it needs something else, that's when I will explore adding another head, adding another cab and throwing more mics up and trying blending. Generally speaking, how often do I blend numerous amps together in terms of miking, live amps? I would say maybe, I dunno, less than 20% of the time, but sometimes that's what it needs. And I've definitely done it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:55):

One way that you can get a better grasp on knowing when to utilize some sort of technique is knowing more about the results that come from those techniques. And I think if you spend more time experimenting, a lot of people will go into the studio because they have to. It's like, we have a song to record, so let's go to the studio and record it. But what about going to the studio to experiment? It's something I used to do when I started out always just hanging out in the studio, trying dumb stuff for no reason, just, oh, I wonder what it would be like if you, I don't know, put a microphone over here for some reason, just what does that sound like? And the more you try things, I think you start to build an inner understanding of like, oh, okay, that's what two amps sounds like, or that's kind of the vibe you get from two amps, and then one day you'll be working on a song and you're not able to figure out what you need. A light will go off in your head and, oh, I remember when I hooked up two amps before I got this cool sound. Let's try that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:03):

Basically it would be crafting your musical instincts. And I feel like that's very, very important because

Speaker 5 (01:30:09):

There's

Speaker 3 (01:30:09):

Plenty of stuff that you might read about people doing. You'll think that the description that you read informs how it sounds, but it doesn't, for instance, a lot of people think that quading guitars sounds bigger, and it can sometimes, but sometimes it can actually sound smaller depending on the situation. And same way that some people think that you might get a richer tone with multiple amps, but in reality, yes, that's true sometimes, but sometimes you can get a really phasey shitty tone and it's not the answer. So by taking the time to actually experiment and putting this into your repertoire and developing your instincts further, and you're just bag of tricks, you'll know when something is appropriate and when it's not, and you won't just be gravitating towards it just because you're Reddit somewhere. I definitely get a lot of clients who want to use multiple amps and quad stuff and all that kind of stuff just because somebody they listened to did it, not because it's the right thing for their music

Speaker 5 (01:31:11):

Or because people think more is better, it's cooler or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:31:15):

I mean, the same thing is true with layering samples on drums. Sometimes you add too many, it starts to sound smaller because of phasing and weird frequency masking issues.

Speaker 5 (01:31:27):

Yeah, that's all really good advice. That's another interesting thing, bringing up phasing with guitars. I feel like the less opportunity for phasing issues that you can bring into a scenario, usually the better.

Speaker 3 (01:31:43):

I agree with that. Yeah,

Speaker 5 (01:31:44):

Totally. But you never know. Sometimes. Sometimes it's like you were saying, just trying things and I can't tell you how many cool techniques and different things I've stumbled on by accident, and then you put it in your repertoire of things that you will think of when you need something to grab. And there's a part printed on a record I did where we were doing a lead and then we wanted the lead to change, and I was going to put some filter on it or something. And then as we were tracking guitars, there was a vocal mic on the other side of the room that was live, and I just soloed that and I went, wow, that sounds really cool. It's like 20 feet away from the amps, and I just cranked the amps and just tracked through the vocal mic and it just sounded cool. It was total accident. So you never know.

Speaker 3 (01:32:37):

Those happy accidents make rock and roll history, loss of the time. Totally.

Speaker 5 (01:32:42):

For

Speaker 3 (01:32:42):

Sure. Yeah. Love that. Absolutely. Well, Michael, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 5 (01:32:46):

Thank you for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 (01:32:48):

Yeah, you've been a great guest.

Speaker 5 (01:32:49):

Yes,

Speaker 4 (01:32:49):

Definitely. It's been awesome. Cool.

Speaker 5 (01:32:50):

Right on. Thank

Speaker 3 (01:32:51):

You, and we'll talk to you again hopefully at some point. Awesome. I'd love to have a good one, man.

Speaker 1 (01:32:57):

The Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is brought to you by Creative Live, the world's best online classroom for creative professionals, classes on songwriting, engineering, mixing, and mastering. Go to creative live.com/audio to start learning now. The Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is also brought to you by Ernie Ball, the world's premium manufacturer of guitar strings, bass strings, and guitar accessories. Go to www.ernieball.com to learn more. To ask us questions, suggest topics and interact. Visit URM academy.com and subscribe today.