NICK PILOTTA: Breaking Creative Plateaus, Avoiding Burnout, The Psychology of Production

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast,

Speaker 2 (00:00:04):

And now your host, Eyal Levi.

(00:00:08):

Welcome to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we are now on our seventh year. Don't ask me how that all just flew by, but it did. Man, time moves fast and it's only because of you, the listeners, if you'd like us to stick around another seven years and there's a few simple things you can do that would really, really help us out, I would endlessly appreciate if you would, number one, share our episodes with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me at al Levi URM audio and at URM Academy and of course our guest. And number three, leave us reviews and five star reviews wherever you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, thank you for all the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way.

(00:01:10):

All we ask in return is a share a post and tag us. Oh, and one last thing. Do you have a question you would like me to answer on an episode? I don't mean for a guest. I mean for me, it can be about anything. Email it to [email protected]. That's EYAL at m dot A-C-D-E-M-Y. There's no.com on that. It's exactly the way I spelled it and use the subject line Answer me Eyal. Alright, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM Podcast. My guest today is Nick Pilotta, who is the production manager at URM. He's been on the podcast before and I mean if you watch Nail the Mix or are in the community, you know who he is and what he does. He's a core member of the team who has been around for several years now and has definitely helped us innovate and is a complete and total badass at what he does. I figured it was time to bring him back on because last time we had him on was several years ago and his life was kind of in a different spot than it is now. So anyways, let's do this. Nick Pilotta, welcome back to the URM podcast. Thank

Speaker 3 (00:02:25):

You for having me. You're

Speaker 2 (00:02:25):

Welcome. Interesting having you on here. I mean, obviously we work together almost every day, so it's kind of interesting talking to you in this context, but a lot has changed since the last time you came on.

Speaker 3 (00:02:40):

Yeah, a lot has definitely changed since our last podcast. I think at that point we were talking more about my internship with Andrew and everything on that avenue, and now it's more like you said, we're working day to day together here, which is awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:02:53):

What role does audio play in your life at this point?

Speaker 3 (00:02:56):

I think a lot of what audio plays in my life right now is more or less just what I do when it comes to the fast tracks and the content being recorded. A lot of the tips that I learned about how to use compression and how EQ works and everything factors more into how I would process a lav mic or a mic that's being recorded for course, stuff like that. Those are the things that I'm mixing predominantly these days, minus recording some stuff with my quote band with my buddies from home, that we write some music together here and there and that keeps me up to date with what's going on, but also now the mix keeps me up to date with what's going on. I still get to, which I'm sure that's probably similar for you as well, where you're watching people mix who are mixing daily as their main career. So it's nice to see what's actually happening in the scene these days or with modern mixing techniques and everything, and then I sort of take those and bring it into my personal projects, but then predominantly do a lot of the tricks that I see on guest vocals and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (00:04:01):

I have noticed that when doing this URM or I guess anything that's not doing audio or music as the number one creating it, if you're not careful, your skills can get stagnant I guess, or your knowledge of what's going on can get stagnant. I guess a lot of the traditional education or even older online education or those mail order DVDs from years past all had a very stale field to them, and I have always thought that it's because the people involved weren't actively trying to keep up. I guess with the cutting edge and

Speaker 3 (00:04:42):

Innovate,

Speaker 2 (00:04:42):

Even though I'm not mixing anymore, I'm paying real close attention to what's going on out there, and I think that the fact that you keep on making music and you'll take jobs for producers here and there, I think that that really, really helps you keep your head in the game and keeps everything that we do ahead of the curve, I guess.

Speaker 3 (00:05:05):

Yeah, totally. And I take a lot of things that I've learned from now, the mixes and like you said, put it towards work that I do with other producers. For instance, I dunno if I can announce what the project is, but I did work on a really cool project with Sean O'Keefe. He asked me to be his mix assistant and assistant engineer on the project, but part of that was creating the trigger tracks and everything for the drums, and I used a lot of tricks that people at Christian Donaldson have shown on their nail to mix and I use similar tick approaches where a little spike ticks for the actual transient to trigger off of and everything. So yeah, there's a lot of things that I've learned that have implemented better habits in my workflow and hopefully the same is happening for all of our subscribers. I know what the same is happening for all of our subscribers. I constantly see many posts of just like, I tried this thing from blank nail the mix and I'm like, man, that was three years ago. You're still watching that dog. That's so awesome that this is still reoccurring and these tips are still being beneficial for the community. I was thinking about it too. We have, I think we're five episodes away from 100 Nail the mixes.

Speaker 2 (00:06:09):

Holy shit.

Speaker 3 (00:06:10):

Yeah, just the fact that we have this catalog of so many amazing bands and producers giving us their insight, and even if it's the same producer, they're going to show us three new things or five new things about their workflow. At the time of this recording, we're going to be, next month will be Andrew Wade and Wage War, and I'm sure he is going to be showing us a bunch of new crazy things just like he did when he had the atilla nail the mix and all that stuff. So I'm just excited to continue seeing this catalog grow and help everyone including myself.

Speaker 2 (00:06:40):

Well, what's interesting about repeating producers or mixers I think is because the people that we have on are not stagnant. It doesn't get stagnant to have them on because these are people that keep on pushing themselves. But what it seems like I've noticed in the audio work that you do is that even though you're not doing it full time, I mean honestly, I don't know how many hours or days you spend on it, but I know you're not doing it. I know that it's when you can kind of thing or when it comes up kind of thing. I feel like your audio work has only gotten better and better and better, and normally the only way that that happens if somebody is working on it full time, but it seems like every time you go to do audio, whatever that you've been working on with fast tracks or nail the mixes or whatever has marinated in there and then just comes out when you go to work, it's kind of cool.

Speaker 3 (00:07:37):

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for saying that. It feels like I've been improving. I know a lot of producers experience the plateau aspect of things where there's a large steep learning section where you're learning a lot and you're improving really quickly, and then there's a large plateau right after that where you're using those tricks and nothing is really taking the next level, I suppose. And then once you get past that plateau and you're sort of climbing up again a little bit, I think I'm right at the peak of that starting to climb up a little bit more with how fast I'm able to turn things around again and stuff. So my brain immediately goes to this thing for this circumstance or the situation. It's just very, my brain is a lot more fast to pick up on the tools that I need to solve. This guy's mic is close every five seconds. How do we fix that? Or there's a room noise in this mic that I've pulled out before and I use these three plugins to get that done kind of thing. So it's been good,

Speaker 2 (00:08:33):

Man, plateaus do suck. They suck because you don't know that you're reaching one when you reach it because you just basically climbed up. So it feels good when you first get there. Wow, I know some stuff I didn't before. I've got these new skills. But then you don't even realize that time just starts to go by and there's no real improvement, and then in order to break through the plateau, you kind of have to put in the same amount of work in some ways that you did to get to that plateau in the first place, which I think is kind of scary to some people. I think it's human nature to want the hard work to be behind us basically, but I do think that plateau busting is very, very doable. If you keep feeding your brain information and keep trying new things, it's just going to inevitably happen.

Speaker 3 (00:09:29):

You might relate to this a lot because of your entire transformation and everything, but right now I'm plateaued right now with how fast I can run. I've been really trying to change sprints. I can't get slower or I can't get faster than an eight minute 30 mile and I'm trying to get faster. A goal of mine in the next two years would be to do a half marathon. So I'm trying to get faster and improve, but I just can't seem to break this barrier right now of getting faster. But I'm hoping that with more training, it'll just sort of lift itself and I'll be able to improve more.

Speaker 2 (00:09:58):

This year has been a very interesting experiment in the psychology of plateaus because the COVID recovery basically stopped me dead in my tracks, and I think I went up 20 pounds over the course of seven months. Now that I feel great again and all the post COVID symptoms are gone, I'm back on the exact plan that I was on last year when I made all the changes and I'm already totally in the right direction. But what I've noticed about that is that in order to bust through a plateau, yeah, like I said, I've been on one for seven or eight months. What I've noticed is I can't do things gradually, but what I do is I look at things in terms of variables, so what are the variables that I'm tweaking? So variables are length of time between meals, amount of stuff within those meals like macros and calories, water content, sleep amount, time of day that I exercise, length, that I exercise, type of exercise within the type of exercise, is it like if it's cardio, is it a steady state for an hour or is it three minutes run, two minutes walk, three minutes run, two minutes walk?

(00:11:19):

If it's lifting weights, is it full body or is it killing one muscle group and those types of variables. I've been logging everything this entire time going back years, and what I've noticed is I'm going back to what you said. In order for me to bust through the type of thing that you're going through, I need to change multiple variables and at the same time make them more extreme. So if I am having trouble running faster, then what I'll do is I'll look at, well, how am I fueling myself up for these runs and what am I doing that's the same every time that's just leading to these same results? And then I'll change that and be like, okay, so maybe I need to run less time, but try to run as fast as I can in that smaller amount of time, things like that. I'll just be tweaking lots of different variables until it works.

Speaker 3 (00:12:18):

I think that's probably my next step then. I mean, I've taken a lot of inspiration from you in the recent years. Not that I'm saying you didn't do this prior, but I've noticed that in recent times you've been really adhering to a schedule and that's something that in our industry is so hard to do because there's always something to do, right? There's always some project that needs to get wrapped up or worked on or finished, and that's something that I've really tried to put into my workflow as well is I need to back off when it's time to back off and rest myself. I, I think I probably mentioned in the last podcast, but it'd be 16 or 1718 hour days that I'd be working straight and just not thinking about it. But that's not sustainable for any human body, and I think I've hit the age. I'm 25 now, it feels bad getting three hours of sleep.

Speaker 2 (00:13:09):

Yeah, don't do it.

Speaker 3 (00:13:11):

It's not paramount to any success. It will make everything that I do detrimentally worse if I take that time to sleep and that's it. So I've been really working on a schedule.

Speaker 2 (00:13:20):

There's psychology at play with all this is what I've noticed. Our perception of how much work we have to do to feel good about ourselves isn't always connected to reality. That's the biggest thing that has helped me get on a schedule and stop every night now has been when I realized that I could beat myself up over not working past a certain amount of time, but that's not going to change the actual work that's getting done. It's just some mental torture. I'm putting myself through what actually is happening when I stop and what's happening when I stop is that I'm way easier to be around, way easier to talk to, and the quality of the work I do gets a lot better. So maybe between 8:00 PM and midnight or something, I'm no longer working like I used to, but how good was the work I was doing at that point in time anyways, and what were the negative side effects of doing that? And I've come to the conclusion that those of us that overwork need to figure out psychologically why we do that. I'm not saying not to work hard, but to figure out why we overwork and deal with that so that we can be a little bit more reasonable because I actually don't think that it gets in the way of productivity. At least from what I've noticed. Having a stop time has helped me.

Speaker 3 (00:14:45):

Yeah, it's improved me because it now puts a different goal in mind. It's like this project, I need to get this project done by five or something or this thing I have until five to get this thing done. And that sort of changes my mind perspective on instead of like, I got to just spend today to get this project done, it's like, well, let's just aim to focus and get this done by this time and get as much as you can done and it's okay to walk away from it. That was a huge problem for me was sometimes I can't go to bed if a project is unfinished. If I am halfway through something and Mallory's like, let's go eat dinner and watch TV or watch a movie. I'll just be sitting there the entire time thinking about that project getting done, and I'm really trying to change my brain into thinking the world is not going to fall apart overnight because they didn't get this thing that I didn't turn in unless it's a specific due date, which then, yeah, go ham on it.

(00:15:40):

But if it's just something that it is just my mental block is happening where my mental block is telling me this needs to get done tonight even though it's not due for a couple days, it's like, well, why am I killing myself? Why am I putting myself through a rigorous 16 hour day on that? Why am I overthinking? Why am I dwelling on it? I'm just sort of trying to let go of those things now and focus more on focus more on my mental health and my personal life in general, which ultimately will just make the work that I do for URM for any personal projects way more, I guess better is the word

Speaker 2 (00:16:16):

Effective,

Speaker 3 (00:16:16):

Effective, efficient.

Speaker 2 (00:16:18):

I don't think that having dinner with your lady and hanging out with her, but doing that shouldn't have a negative effect on your productivity should only help it actually.

Speaker 3 (00:16:31):

Right. I had that realization. I was like, why? This is supposed to be a nice time. Why am I sitting here stressed about something that does not even not matter, but doesn't matter right now no one has a gun to my head telling me to get this thing done. Just relax, loosen up a little bit.

Speaker 2 (00:16:49):

Well pull the gun away from your own head,

Speaker 3 (00:16:52):

Right,

Speaker 2 (00:16:53):

Basically. So yeah, you're right. I do adhere to a schedule now and I never used to. This has been the first time in my entire life. Even when I was in high school, I didn't adhere to a schedule. I showed up to high school when I wanted to, and I also left when I wanted to.

Speaker 3 (00:17:11):

You badass.

Speaker 2 (00:17:12):

I don't know how I passed. I just did I charm my way through? Yeah, I notoriously sucked with the scheduling and then just started living religiously via the calendar, which I know doesn't sound cool to lots of creative types, but it's been a game changer. Also, my girlfriend is a lot more of a normal human than me, so I've tried to align myself more with that and it's been very, very helpful not in me to be normal. There's this concept I actually learned from Tony Robbins, which is a modeling. If someone is doing something successfully that you want to be able to do, model their behavior. So if there's a guitar player who has this fucking amazing vibrato, you want that vibrato too. Well, it doesn't help to just if you want to sound like them or take in, incorporate what they do. Well, just listening to it's not enough.

(00:18:19):

You should look at how they stand or how they hold a guitar, the position of their wrist, how hard are they playing? What are they actually physically doing? Because odds are that if they've got a super wide vibrato or something, or alternate pick really, really hard thinking of Zach Wild right now, there's a way that dude stands and there's a way that his muscles work, and if you want to sound like even a little bit like him, you kind of need to emulate what he's doing, and I think that that applies for everything. If you want to adhere to a schedule and you're not good at that sort of thing, look at someone who does do that, do what they do eventually it'll just become a part of what you do.

Speaker 3 (00:19:07):

Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me. I kind of did that when I worked with Andrew was I just saw how he worked with bands and just tried to emulate that with the projects that I was doing. How

Speaker 2 (00:19:17):

So?

Speaker 3 (00:19:17):

The mannerisms of how you talk to a band, no one really teaches you that. You can't really learn that, so that's more than paying attention to how Andrew was setting the compressor settings or dialing in the room tone, eq. That stuff can be taught separately at a later time. I can ask those questions when the band's gone, but when a band is there and I'm in the room with them, I want to observe, at least back then, I wanted to observe the interaction with a band and understanding how, at least seeing into how someone like Andrew might tell a guitarist that was a bad take or let them know that this tone isn't great and we need to work on this. Or even with a vocalist telling a vocalist, keeping the confidence up with a vocalist, but still figuring out a way to get the best take possible.

(00:20:09):

There were a lot of vocalists that came into the studio like that where, I'll be honest, they weren't the best vocalists, but I think Andrew did a really good job of getting what he needed to get out of them while still making them feel really confident in themselves as a member of the band, and he never put someone down and taking those approaches. Learning that approach really helped me when he started to manage me with the bands that I would work with him. I sort of just try and emulate the same situation, and I don't know if I would've done the same thing if I just started working with bands and hadn't gone through Andrew and hadn't seen how someone works like that, which I think, again, is a testament to the courses that we do, how it's done with Will Putney and how it's done with Chris Crume.

(00:20:55):

We get to see exactly how they interact with bands, and that's maybe the closest thing that I would be able to emulate to actually being in that room like I was with Andrew at the time. So learning how these producers get what we hear on Spotify done not about mixing more about the recording side is super fascinating to me and helps in every aspect of how you handle yourself in any situation, any situation that involves you to be confrontational, which is something that I struggle a lot with is being confrontational. That's something that I'm working on more because I've been kind of a passive human being for my whole life, so I'm really trying to put my foot down more in situations where I need to, but in a way that is commends some sort of respect, but also is not being a dick

Speaker 2 (00:21:47):

Effective conflict resolution. It's actually hard to do.

Speaker 3 (00:21:51):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:21:52):

Yeah. I think a lot of people hear this stuff on Spotify and they might think, oh shit, that mix sounds amazing, but that's usually as far as it goes, they're not thinking about what actually went into taking this from the point where it didn't even exist into something that I'm listening to right now. What were all the steps along the way? I think a lot of people disassociate from the fact that it's humans who made this stuff. Humans had to communicate with each other and go through some hard work in order to make that all happen. I think people are thinking of the skills involved, but they're not thinking of the human side of it too much, and I think that that's actually the way harder part.

Speaker 3 (00:22:37):

Totally. I completely agree with you. I think there are resources nail the mix that, I mean, you can see the direct approach to mixing, but something like a course with Chris or a course with Will, that's where I feel like you're going to learn the most in my opinion. You're going to get the direct insight to how someone speaks to a client that's paying for their time and paying for the work to be done, and when there's labels involved and getting the deadlines completed and everything, it sort of coincides together to make sure that the project gets done. I think a lot of people might, it's a note shame to this, but a lot of people are working with bands that aren't signed or whatever, and the deadlines are whenever the band really wants to release it or whenever the mix is done, but when you look at something where there is a deadline looming overhead, they're focusing on getting this project done and they haven't written any of the vocals yet or they're halfway through with the vocals, it really interesting to watch how they get that process done in a way that they still come out being like, that was fucking awesome, rather than being like, oh my God, that was a nightmare situation and I hated doing this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(00:23:47):

But so hopefully so far I've never seen that happen yet with any project that I've ever done with Andrew or any of the stuff that I've done with URM, so I know that happens, which is a shame.

Speaker 2 (00:23:57):

I think not everyone is designed for the pressure involved with this kind of stuff, which is fine. I think some people just want to do audio that sounds good or write songs and enjoy it, but maybe aren't really after it in the same way because they're frankly not suited for the pressure, which is fine, but I think those who want that really should try to ask themselves how they deal with pressure. Are they the type that cracks? Do they come to life under pressure? Are they able to just keep going or does everything fall apart for them?

(00:24:41):

Their history so far under pressure? One of the ways that I found out about myself that I thought that I was suited for this sort of thing was two things happened in my life where it would just dawn on me that I can handle things. One was a break-in when I was a kid, when I was seven years old or something, or eight years old, my parents were gone. They were at a concert my dad was conducting and the alarm went off and the power was cut and someone cut the power and came in the house and I had to basically grab my brother and escape through a window and all this stuff, and it was pretty dramatic, but it was just going through the motions for me. And then there was another incident where it was on a road trip when I was 17 through Florida on one of those long ass stretches of highway where it's just two lanes and nothing, and car engine kind of burst into flames.

(00:25:50):

There were no cell phones or anything like that. It could have been a bad situation, and my two friends were flipping out and I wasn't. I've had a few other situations like that where shit just happens and I just kind of cool down and handle it. Those types of things happening over and over kind of made me realize that yeah, maybe I can handle a high pressure situation actually calmed down in those. I'm more stressed out in low pressure situations. So I think that people need to ask themselves how do they react, which is fine, the way someone reacts is the way they react, but when something gets hard, do they feel like they're in their element or out of their element? Do they feel like they're in their element, they might be able to handle this sort of thing?

Speaker 3 (00:26:34):

That's crazy, by the way, because that break in story, I would be terrified as a kid if that happened to me. I don't know that I would know exactly how to handle that situation.

Speaker 2 (00:26:42):

It was crazy. I had to go downstairs, figure out what was going on. Once I realized what was going on, then I had to go upstairs and wake this kid up and make sure he wasn't loud. Then I had to get the kid downstairs so that we could go through a window that was on the ground floor and yeah, a total stealth mission too with alarm fucking blaring and no electricity.

Speaker 3 (00:27:08):

It was nuts. Damn. I'm always calm in my brain, but I think sometimes I show that I could be stressed out when in all actuality I have full control of the situation. I think I do thrive in pressure, but sometimes I can come off as anxious when the entire time I'm focused, I know what I need to get done. But that's one thing that I'm trying to work on is I guess the poker face element too, where it's like, I know that I have this, I just need to just be chill and knock it out. And there are times where I can, it's similar to resting bitch face when someone seems like they're upset, but not, it could be a similar thing that I could say with this. Thinking about things like the summit, it might seem, if you've gone to the summit, you might see that I'm running around frantically.

(00:27:54):

I just, I'm walking fast and I know exactly what I need to get done and I'm pursuing the thing that I need to get done and I'll execute it. But to someone just walking by me, they'd be like, oh, shit, he's running. What is he doing? I'm like, I'm just trying to get something done. I just want to make sure the live event goes smoothly. That kind of stuff. Pressure to me, especially in a situation like the summit, I really do thrive in those elements because it's like we got one shot to get this done, and then it comes out and when it comes out, cool and when it comes out perfect. It's so rewarding.

Speaker 2 (00:28:23):

Do you feel at home in those situations

Speaker 3 (00:28:26):

Scarily enough? Yes, I think I do. The reason I say it's scary is because it's similar to adrenaline junkie, when they just got to keep jumping out of planes, they got to keep flipping dirt bikes and all that stuff, chasing that endorphin. I chase the, once this project's done, it's going to be so rewarding to sit back and feel like I accomplished something. The end goal, the end goal is to sit back and be like, yes, I did that, and it worked out really, really well. And then you sort of go through a three or four day stage of that was awesome, and then you're just constantly chasing the, alright, what's the next thing that I can do that's going to be awesome that I can be like, yes, that was awesome. You know what I mean? It just sort of a constant loop for me. So I think what I would love to call my home state is that endorphin period of this is done. It went really smooth. I'm really happy about it, and then there's the pressure builds back up of to what's the next project. That's my circle of life currently, I guess.

Speaker 2 (00:29:20):

Do you get a depressed lull?

Speaker 3 (00:29:22):

Totally. In this year from March to the middle of May, I was in a slump mentally. I wouldn't say I was depressed, but I was just in a funk, I would say, and I can't really pinpoint why we were doing some really awesome content then still. So it's just one of those things that everyone sort of goes through. I would say

Speaker 2 (00:29:43):

You can't always be at a high point.

Speaker 3 (00:29:45):

You can't always be on,

Speaker 2 (00:29:47):

No. If you were, that would just be a plateau. So by the nature of things being high points, there's going to be a contrast to that. But one thing I've noticed is the hardest part for me is right after a project is accomplished, then it's like, now what

Speaker 3 (00:30:06):

Is the purpose of my life?

Speaker 2 (00:30:07):

Yeah, my life means nothing now. I never really celebrate wins or anything like that because the moment it happens, I mean, it's cool. Obviously you don't want the other option, which is for something not to go well, but once it happens, it's like, now what is life?

Speaker 3 (00:30:26):

I think I learned that the hard way with one of the first bands that I worked on when I was working with Andrew. He had made a post that was just like, Hey, my assistant's looking for some projects. He'll take on projects right now at an extremely low rate, emailing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I got a bunch of emails. I got a band from Arizona. I gave them such a cheap rate. It was so exciting to me because a band from out of state was going to drive to Florida to record with me, and we were going to do a full length album, and I was so excited. It was my first full length album that I was doing all on my own. So excited. They drove, they took a school bus and transformed it into a place that they could sleep out of and basically use as a caravan.

(00:31:07):

Drove all the way to Florida, stayed with me for two weeks. We did eight songs. They went back home, and then we sort of talked about what if we did a couple more songs? They drove back out to do a couple more songs, and it was a lot of fun. I was having the most fun I've ever had producing music. The music was fun to me, and they were letting me write music with them and helping produce the songs, and I was writing lyrics and writing parts, and it was just a really cool synergy. And then after that second trip, they went home and then one of their band members just quit the band without even telling them, just got in their car, drove from Arizona back to the other side of the country where they lived, and just didn't even tell them that he was quitting

Speaker 2 (00:31:49):

Just like that.

Speaker 3 (00:31:50):

Just

Speaker 2 (00:31:51):

Ghosted his own band,

Speaker 3 (00:31:52):

Ghosted. His own band just left completely. And in my brain, I'm like, I just spent upwards of a month on this project that I was so stoked on, and now it's just fallen through the cracks and it's never, I mean, that was 2017 maybe, and that album has never been released. Nothing has ever been released from that project, and that was some of the stuff that I was the most proud of. So to piggyback off what you're saying, where it's trying not to celebrate too much the victories, I like to still be happy with myself that I accomplished something and bask in that for a little bit to appreciate the work that I did in the project, but for something like that, that was so gut-wrenching to be the cool. So all this time on this project just up in Smoke Vanished, great. Yeah, we had gone through the final masters and everything while they were at the studio. We figured out the rest of the album, the album's done, like Go Home, break Up Band, dismember completely from that point. And then, yeah, they're no longer a band anymore, and now we have 10 songs sitting in a Dropbox folder.

Speaker 2 (00:32:56):

Well, I think that that speaks to the, I guess, wisdom of doing your best to be present, and not to sound cheesy, but in the moment when you're doing the work and trying to get your satisfaction in life out of that more so than the actual goal, the act, I don't actually believe that a hundred percent. I can't honestly sit here and say that I've figured out how to disassociate from goals or anything, but I do find that it is important to find pleasure in the work itself and find meaning in the work itself because the goal, the outcome's never guaranteed, and you don't want to feel like you wasted your life on something.

Speaker 4 (00:33:42):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:33:42):

That's a shitty ass feeling. And I think that the solution is if, well, did you really waste your time? I mean, it didn't get released, but what did you get out that project?

Speaker 3 (00:33:53):

Right? Yeah. And in hindsight, now, that's where my brain goes now. I think about, well, I learned a lot about, similar to what I was mentioning, where I would watch Andrew work with bands. I learned a lot about how I can personally communicate with bands and how I can convey the ideas that I have and convey the options that we need to do to make the song sound better in my mind. And I was able to learn a lot about how I can produce bands in general, and that project really helped shape how I did further projects with other bands, which they would then proceed to release those albums and actually see the light of day, which is exciting. But while it does sound like such a gut wrenching thing to be like, all that work was for nothing. It wasn't actually for nothing.

Speaker 2 (00:34:37):

It wasn't for nothing.

Speaker 3 (00:34:38):

I have a whole bag of tricks that I took away from that that I then took into the next eight or nine projects that I did while I was there. Well,

Speaker 2 (00:34:46):

I think to clarify for the listeners, I'm not suggesting that people act delusional, so when something goes wrong, you don't get the outcome you want. I think it is important to say That sucks or Fuck, that didn't go well, God damn it, or whatever. I think it's perfectly natural and honest to admit defeat or disappointment or whatever. But the thing is that that's not the whole story. And so it's also, it's incomplete to only feel that, to be able to both recognize the disappointment, but then also recognize all the good stuff that came out of it. I think it's the complete way to walk from a situation that didn't turn out because impossible, that you got nothing out of a situation.

Speaker 3 (00:35:31):

Yeah, there's

Speaker 2 (00:35:32):

Always something,

Speaker 3 (00:35:32):

Especially in a situation where the pandemic happened last year, I, I don't even know how I would've if that happened during a pandemic, let's say they sent me songs to mix and we spent a lot of time mixing the songs, and then after we approved the final mixes and everything, the band just breaks up and they don't release the tracks or whatever. I don't know how mentally I would've been able to handle that in the fucked up situation. The pandemic had everyone's brain with how crazy times were happening and how people were feeling stir crazy, being stuck at home and all that stuff. On top of that, putting something negative from your work on top of that too, and I'm sure it's happened to someone, I'm sure it would've been hard to try and look at that in a positive light, but that's really the only thing you can do at that point to sort of keep going is, well, here's what I did learn from this experience and hopefully trying to move forward. But

Speaker 2 (00:36:26):

Well, the reason that it's difficult is because it's the most recent thing. So you don't have that next project where you took the lessons from this one. So you don't have evidence yet that you actually learned good stuff from it or that it was useful

(00:36:43):

In the future, but this is just from living a while, I've noticed that I have not had any disappointments yet that don't end up someplace better. It just hasn't happened. Every single time that something goes wrong, it clears the path for something better without fail. There are things that have gone wrong that suck, but regardless of how bad they sucked, something better always came next. So when something goes wrong now, it's not like I enjoy it, but I guess I have enough of a backlog of this stuff getting better that I can talk myself down. And I guess if someone doesn't have that or they haven't realized it, it could be a lot harder. But I think if you just realize that your life has just taken an upwards trajectory and there's been disappointments the whole time, always without fail, then are they really so bad?

Speaker 3 (00:37:50):

I honestly, that's a really good outlook on it.

Speaker 2 (00:37:51):

Well, you can't avoid 'em.

Speaker 3 (00:37:53):

No, you can't. Especially when something like, let's say a mic breaks or you drop a mic by mistake, the symbol cracks or something. It's disappointing and it's a setback, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's just one of those things that think of that happening like a symbol breaking. It's just, okay, well, it's just a misstep. We'll get it replaced and we'll move on. Give that mindset.

Speaker 2 (00:38:13):

I try to think about it. If I was hearing the story from somebody else, what would I think? So this is something that I realized with breakups, when someone else tells me about that they're going through a breakup, my initial thoughts are always Just get over it. You'll find someone else, and when you're going through it, you don't feel that way, but much in a similar way. If someone is like, God, we had the worst day at the studio. The symbol stands cracked in half, and then the drummer had a temper tantrum, and then we finally got everything working. He starts playing, and then he punches a hole through the snare and is so stressed out and it all sucked. And hearing that is a cool story, but not that big of a deal or hearing that a record didn't turn out well from an outsider's perspective, it doesn't sound like the end of the world.

(00:39:04):

It just sounds like, well, that kind of sucks, but no big deal. So I think that one of the ways that I've gotten better also about handling that stuff is to try to think about what would it be like if someone told me this story? What would I think as an outsider? Would I think, holy shit, that's a big deal. Or would I be like, kind of sucks, but whatever. And I started doing that because of the URM group, when people will post stuff like your story about a band ghosting them, or they've been strung along by some client and then the person just disappears, or they did 17 mixed revisions and tried so hard and then they got fired, all that kind of stuff. Or they were in the running for some project and then the competition got it. All that kind of stuff, reading that kind of stuff, none of it sounds like the biggest deal in the world to me.

(00:40:05):

I know that to the person who's going through it, it seems like a big deal, but as an outsider, I see that stuff and to me it's just like, well, that's just a regular part of this happens to everybody. It's not that big of a deal. And so I started to apply that kind of thinking to my own disappointments, and it's helped. I don't get, there used to be a point in time where I would stress out about what if something went wrong? What if I wasn't able to book this thing? Or what if we didn't get this tour? Or what if the record deal, what if they offered us the deal, but then they took it away before we signed? That kind of stuff. But now it's like, well, what if this thing, for instance, this thing that we're about to go do at the end of next month, what if it fell through? That would suck, but I don't think that I'd get depressed over it or anything like that. It would just be like, okay, well, what's next?

Speaker 3 (00:41:07):

What's next? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:41:08):

Yeah. It took a while to get to that point though.

Speaker 3 (00:41:10):

Yeah. I think one of the main problems that I'm experiencing or that I experience occasionally is we talked about confidence in stressful situations or confidence when the pressure's on and everything, and having that confidence. But one thing that I do a lot is I tend to overthink a lot of small things that mean nothing. I've had that since I was a kid, where I'll think of just a minor, minor, minor, minor detail that doesn't even matter, and it'll irk me to be like, is that resolved? Did that thing get resolved? It's like, does it matter? And I'm coming to terms with that myself that a lot of these things that I put myself through, a lot of these situations that I put myself through, they just don't matter.

Speaker 2 (00:41:52):

Do they ever though?

Speaker 3 (00:41:53):

What do you mean?

Speaker 2 (00:41:54):

Okay, so have there been situations where you are sweating the small stuff and the small stuff actually does turn out to be important, where it was a good idea that you were hyper-focused on this little detail because that little detail ended up

Speaker 3 (00:42:09):

Well. I think that's probably why right now I have that in my brain because at some point in my life, probably I stressed about the small stuff and thank God I did because it saved blank from happening or you know what I mean? So I'm sure in my brain at some point that subconsciously triggered this thing in my brain to be like, well, then now you got to stress the small stuff because it fixed that one fluke problem once. You know what I mean? That's going to happen every single time now. And so I'm working now on rewiring my brain to still care about it, but at the same time realize that it's not detrimental. You know what I mean? One small fluke situation like that is not the case for every single time, I guess is my point.

Speaker 2 (00:43:00):

No, and even a small fluke situation happening, it's not the end of the world either.

Speaker 3 (00:43:05):

But

Speaker 2 (00:43:06):

I do think it's important to try to develop a system for understanding or trying to understand when that voice is serving you

Speaker 4 (00:43:15):

And

Speaker 2 (00:43:16):

When it's not, sometimes it is serving you. I can get kind of paranoid about things sometimes, not in a conspiracy theory way, but just for instance, when I get my mindset set on someone's not right for a job, or I don't trust this person's intentions or something like that, I cannot get it out of my head. It's like the switch has been flipped, and there's been some times where I've been wrong, and so I know that I'm not always right about this, but the thing is, I've been right about it so many times and have saved us or previous situations from bad things happening of that voice that one thing is I need to understand when am I just being an asshole and when is this real? Because both happen, and it's tough to figure out when you're not being a psycho, when you're gripes or the thing you're focusing on is legit,

Speaker 3 (00:44:21):

We're coming from the same cloth in that regard. I feel the same exact way. There's a lot of times where I'm thinking about am I being an asshole about this? Does it actually matter or is it a pride thing for me? Or is it a genuine, I think this person will do blank that's detrimental to blank. You know what I mean? Or is it just not matter and I'm just being picky or something?

Speaker 2 (00:44:42):

Yeah, it's tough because of the times that you are correct,

Speaker 3 (00:44:47):

And then that makes your brain go, well, this formula worked, so input this formula every single time and you will get the same results or whatever.

Speaker 2 (00:44:56):

Except it's not true. It's not the case at all, because what happened with somebody in the past does not equal the future, especially if you're dealing with a different person. So you can't superimpose somebody else's personality and character onto this totally independent third party who's got nothing to do with what happened five years ago

Speaker 3 (00:45:19):

With

Speaker 2 (00:45:19):

This one person,

Speaker 3 (00:45:20):

Or it's the same person, but five years later and they've grown and they've matured as a human. And you can realize that as you've grown as well as just an instance, maturity as an instance, as an example, anything else could be fill in the blank for that. But yeah, I think you nailed it on the head there.

Speaker 2 (00:45:38):

So how do you distinguish between when it's just bullshit in your head and when it's real

Speaker 3 (00:45:44):

Gut feeling, it really is Just right now how I'm handling it is my gut feeling aspect of things where if it's something that it is 4:00 AM and I cannot sleep because I'm thinking about this, then I'm going to act on it. But if it's something that is stressing me out during dinner, and by the time I'm done eating, I can sort of relax about it and calm down over it, then I'll let it just sort of roll off my back and move on to the next thing. Because trust me, you can't sit and worry about every single thing or else you'll go insane. I did that when I first moved to Florida. I was so in my own head, I knew no one. I was starting a whole new life in a different state by myself. I overthought everything. Am I going to make friends if I do this thing or what does this person think of me? All that shit. But I mean, also, I was 18, so of course you're going to be more conscious of that stuff, but it's of no positive benefit to sit there and dwell and make decisions on every single small thing. I wrote a book recently called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, and it's all small stuff, and there's a lot of good insight on that book to sort of help calm down my brain when it comes to that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (00:46:54):

The thing you said about Are you up at four 30 thinking about it? So last night at about 11:00 PM something really pissed me off that somebody did.

Speaker 3 (00:47:05):

Sorry, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 2 (00:47:06):

No, it wasn't you. You're all good.

Speaker 3 (00:47:08):

I'm

Speaker 2 (00:47:08):

Just kidding. Something really irked me, but I'm getting ready to go to bed. I have to wake up at six to go run. I need to go to sleep. Is this worth getting worked up over? I made the conscious decision to let it go, and if it bothered me in the morning, then we'll deal with it. I woke up and didn't give a fuck. So that to me is actually, I think your 4:30 AM test is a really good test. I was able to let it go. If it was so important, I wouldn't have been able to let it go. I would've stayed up and dealt with it, and then I would've woke up pissed, but I was able to go to sleep and I woke up not caring. If we're just going to go off a gut feeling, that to me isn't my gut feeling telling me it's not that big of a deal.

Speaker 3 (00:47:53):

My girlfriend is my role model when it comes to that because if something bad happens to her, say something at work, pissed her off, and she's so frustrated in the moment, she can just turn it off and be like, it's whatever. An hour later, and I'm like, where I come from,

Speaker 2 (00:48:08):

How

Speaker 3 (00:48:09):

Exactly I would've fallen asleep, woken up, still been pissed about it, figured out how I could go through a bunch of scenarios in my head as to what this outcome could be if I do X, Y, and Z to get this situation resolved that I want it resolved. But for her, she's like, this shitty thing happened. I'm really mad. And then she'll just take a shower and then be like, yeah, I'm good. I'm like, damn, I'm so proud of you. That is it. Say that you could do that. And then it's something that I really wanted. I'm jealous. I'm jealous. Yeah. I'm like, teach me your ways. I'll be Luke Skywalker, be Yoda here. Help me help out. How do I do that? I've never been able to do that even in high school. I was never able to do that. But again, it's just one of those things that I think it's good to talk about the things you want to improve in your life often so that you can remember why you're trying to improve yourself or why you're trying to get to the next level or the next goal, which is all I really want to do is just continue to improve and try and be on as many the least amount of plateaus that I can be on in every aspect of my life.

(00:49:13):

If I'm in a plateau when it comes to mixing, if I'm in a plateau with how creatively I can make video editing, if I'm in a plateau with how my headspace is, if I'm in a plateau, can I stop overthinking this stuff? And I'm really trying to just constantly be improving myself to just make me a better person, to not only be around, but to work with our professional relationship, you and I, I'm constantly just, I want to make sure that I'm just dependable. And that's really important, I think, to be thinking about at all times, but at the same time, still focusing on getting the work done. You're pretty dependable.

Speaker 2 (00:49:50):

Hey, everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast, and you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration and information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you're a member, you already know how amazing it is. The beginning of the month, nail the mix members, get the raw multi-tracks to a new song by artists like Lama, God Angels and Airwaves. Knock loose OPEC shuga, bring me the Horizon. Gaira asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others over 60 at this point. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song on the album and takes your questions live on air.

(00:50:41):

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

(00:51:35):

Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to M Academy to find out more. I remember one of the things that was so hard for me about producing bands was when they'd piss me off, not being able to let it go, and just waking up pissed and just starting to hate them, and just not being able to let that, just not being able to get past that. It made me think that I wasn't suited for it eventually, but I wasn't able to overcome that. And I think at the beginning of URM, I still had some of those traits, but I've learned how to let, to a degree, I've learned how to let those feelings go. It took a lot of work though, and it was way worse.

Speaker 3 (00:52:38):

Did you have the realization while you were still producing, or was it more like year two or so into just working full-time? URM is when you had the Oh, I used to get so mad, and maybe I wasn't cut out for that.

Speaker 2 (00:52:51):

No, it was before I stopped. Before I stopped. I was looking for something else for years. For a few years I was thinking, this should not be this much torture for me to do the thing that I worked hard for. This shouldn't be so painful. I should not hate everybody that I work with. I shouldn't hate everything about it. Something's not right here. And then I just figured out that it's me because a lot of people I know are cool with those kinds of things. Maybe they don't love it. Maybe they don't love bands not being ready. Maybe they don't love labels taking forever to pay. They don't love those things, but they're cool with it. They tolerate it. It's just fine with me. It was causing constant hate. I could not handle that shit. It's not for me. So I realized it before I stopped. Part of why I wanted to create URM as much as I believed in what it was going to be, it was also for my own sanity. I don't think that what I was doing before was going to lead to anything good. So I do think it's important also, if you find yourself sweating the small stuff too much and find yourself making it too big of a deal and you can't stop, well, maybe the situation's wrong could be, or maybe you're not cut out for that thing.

Speaker 3 (00:54:27):

Macio has helped me out a lot with that too. Macio has helped me out with a lot of just learning to let it play out how it needs to play out, but still being in control of it. How so? I mean, there's a lot of things he has to do with sponsorships and everything, and that's a whole different discussion, but just seeing how he handles stuff too is let's use this sponsorship as an example or something. Let's say I was doing something and I wanted URM to sponsor something or whatever, and we're having a back and forth discussion. I'm using URM as the example. I don't want to use any sponsored companies as the example. This hasn't actually happened, but let's say there's a company that is just being either unresponsive or five or six email delays. I would be super stressed out in that situation, but I think you and John both have showed me, you just got to let those things ride and eventually we see the success.

(00:55:14):

We see it takes five years to get X person on to nail the mix, but once it happens, it's so rewarding because it was that five-year grind for me. I'd be so stressed that entire time trying to make that thing happen because in my brain it's like this thing has to happen and I need it to happen now or I want it to happen now. The five year grind, or not even five, but maybe three year grind or two year grind to get that thing to come to fruition can be extremely daunting, but I mean that goes for any project or any specific thing you want in your life in general anyways, but

Speaker 2 (00:55:49):

Well, the thing though is that, yeah, you might want it to happen now, but it doesn't all depend on you and no matter how hard you push yourself or stress yourself out, it's not going to change the aspect of the project working out that's got nothing to do with you,

Speaker 4 (00:56:07):

So

Speaker 2 (00:56:07):

It's not worth the mental effort and the brain ram and the energy if it rests on somebody else's. Now, the part that does rely on you, I definitely agree with going hard on and this has to get done having that kind of attitude, but it's pointless when it comes to other people. You can't control what they're going to do if they're always late to respond or flaky or anything like that. I mean, yeah, don't have to love it, but there's nothing you can do about it, so why get pissed, which is easier said than done.

Speaker 3 (00:56:48):

Totally, and again, it's one of those things, it's a learning process. It's something you have to develop the ability to do rather. You can't just flip a switch and be like, yep, this is how I think now. But again, it's the small subtle changes that you do in your daily life, like you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, that can help shape the mindset that you want to have. I suppose for instance, just by going on a run, even if it's just a calm 10, 11 minute mile run and you go for a few miles that can release so many endorphins that can shift your perspective on something like that. My dad used to, he was a huge runner before he had a problem with his knee and he would just say, I crave the days of the times that I was able to just go out and not think about anything and just run, and then I come back and my headspace is so much better. Working out man is a huge proponent to your mental headspace, which I think a lot of producers might neglect for a, I would say a majority, maybe

(00:57:53):

A majority of us are hermits that sit at a desk and then we go to bed and everything, but focusing on, hey, just get outside and walk three miles and breathe in some air, put on a podcast and sort of not focus on anything but your breathing and enjoying the area around you can do wonders for the work that you're doing when you come back into your little cave. Isn't the cave that I'm in right now and the cave you are in right now, we're both in dimly lit rooms that are just vibey what we do.

Speaker 2 (00:58:26):

So when people are like, how do you deal with working in a cave? The working in the cave part, it's not the bad part if you're only in the cave, that's the bad part. This line of work has kind of the same pitfalls as say a programmer or something. I'm sure that people who code encounter the same kind of thing where they just can get trapped in a dungeon for all day every day and never do anything and just lead an ultimately a sedentary lifestyle, but I don't think humans are designed to be sedentary. It fucks with our mental health and our ability to think clearly throughout the day, so I do think that more producers should think about this stuff and the ones that I know who do think about this stuff and do take an opportunity to exercise some and try to be somewhat normal. Functional humans somewhat tend to do better. Absolutely. They tend to have happier lives and they tend to have less stressful careers it seems like.

Speaker 3 (00:59:31):

I used to not let myself have a vacation. I'd bring my entire rig with me to the beach, always something to get done. I've learned that no, there's 52 weeks in the year and I think you deserve at least one to just sort of chill and reset your brain a little bit.

Speaker 2 (00:59:46):

Yeah. I don't know that I could ever take a actual fully disconnected vacation, but it's a goal. It's a goal to be able to do that at some point, but still, even if you might have to take a couple phone calls, leaving the rig at home and committing yourself to the vacation is a really important thing to do

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):

And that's exactly, yeah, that's where I'm at right now. When I say I'm taking a vacation, I still did a q and a with John in the Discord and we still had our weekly meetings and stuff like that, so that stuff I don't avoid, but bringing the computer and everything to edit on and everything like that, it's like I can wait.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):

I used to do that shit when I was in high school on up to when the band got signed and I had my own studio, I had portable rigs, and if the family went on vacation, I took it with me and I just kept working the entire time that I was there, and it's not like I was getting paid for anything. I just

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):

Felt

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):

Like I needed to practice and I needed to compose X amount of time and record X amount of minutes to whatever I was working on. I remember we went to Italy when I was 17 for three weeks. Florence, my dad was doing an opera there, and we got this apartment from the 15 hundreds overlooking the river, the most gorgeous thing you can imagine. Amazing. And I had to have my rig there with me and work six or seven hours a day

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):

And you probably put it in the room with the least amount of windows and

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):

Yeah, of course, of course. I don't do that kind of shit anymore. I definitely try to take the time off, but there's something that happens when you are able to disconnect that. It's almost like your ability to do work regenerates.

(01:01:38):

When I see people who never take a break, especially people who are trying to come up in this, they seem to be the worst about it. I feel like that's part of what's getting in their way is they're so wound up and so unable to disconnect that they never get any real perspective or time to think about what they're doing, and so if they do experience success, which is cool, it's more of a product of chance. It's like a product of chance and momentum that kind of just unfolds a certain way, but more often than not, that doesn't lead to success. I think the ones that I've seen who have had the most success tend to be more calculated and tend to take more breaks and think about things a little more,

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):

Especially

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):

Those who keep their success,

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):

But there is also the person that just loves work. Work is their vacation to some regard. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):

Yeah. Well, I'm jealous of them.

Speaker 3 (01:02:41):

Me too. Someone will Putney. When I was there to film the course, I thought I worked a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):

The dude is a machine,

Speaker 3 (01:02:47):

He never slept. I was there for two and a half weeks and he was just working the entire time. He was happy to be doing it and was stoked and was enjoying it, and I was like, damn, this work ethic is insane. And from conversations I've had with him, that's sort of the entire year for him, which is just, I mean, hats off to you, man, because the work you do is phenomenal and you're constantly doing it, and that's just amazing to me.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):

The thing is, I don't think that he has to, I mean he's working very hard, but I don't think that he has to prime himself to get there. I think that that's his natural state.

Speaker 4 (01:03:22):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):

I think he's just in his element, his element happens to be very high RPM compared to a normal person. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):

That's crazy to me.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):

Yeah. Well, okay, so that's another thing is when you take these hyper achievers like him, when people want to do what they've done, I don't think that they always understand what these people are like. A lot of the hyper achievers,

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):

What do you mean? Who do you mean? People

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):

Who want what Will has in terms of career and skills. Got it. Or you see that with when people look at an Elon Musk or something, not comparing will to Elon Musk, but just look at hyper achievers that people want to be like. I don't think that they understand what these people are like. Oh, what it's like to be around someone who goes 20 hours a day and doesn't get tired

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):

And highly efficient.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):

It's weird. It's not normal. I don't think that these people are trying to be that way. That's the thing. It's like either you are that way or you aren't.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):

Right. It's just how they're wired. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):

No, I don't think that if you're not that way, that means that you're going to fail at life or anything, but you're going to be up against people like that, which is just reality.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):

There has to be extremes in every direction. Will is someone who constantly works, but then there's also someone who doesn't, I guess well,

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):

Who has a more relaxed approach. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:04:44):

Let's call it that. It's a life.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):

Well, I've met those who have a lot of success and have yes, a life as well, so I don't think that working 20 hours a day is a prerequisite for success. When people look at hyper successful people, they're not taking in the full picture of what it means to be them. Yeah. I'm just curious. I want to talk about going remote with now the mix. I don't want to talk about what we actually are doing technically, but I want to talk about the process for figuring out how to do it. So at some point last year when we had postponed four nail the mixes and it seemed like we're not going to be traveling anytime soon, you started working on a way to do them remote, and what I'm wondering is what planted that idea in your head to actually do it? Not like a shitty ass live stream, but just as good if not better than if we were in person.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):

What initially planted it was I want to keep my damn job, so I got to figure out how to make this happen. Not that I'm saying that I'm saying You wouldn't fire me or whatever because this isn't happening. I'm just saying in general from the COVID experience, I want to make sure that I can still do my job,

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):

That this still exists.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):

Yeah, that this option, this nail the mix show can still happen.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):

It doesn't become a COVID casualty,

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):

Which unfortunately so many things have, which is just heartbreaking, but that was the main first goal was that I don't want this to crash and I don't want it to be my fault. I don't want to be a part of the shit. It's not happening because I wasn't able to figure something out or something. That's when I started to really dive into the research of, okay, what are the three main components that I need to get four main components, I need to get camera sources, I need to get microphone sources, I need to get the do screen and I need to get do audio. Those are the four main things that you need in order to make the show run. Now at that point, you then break that down further. Okay. Let's talk about camera quality wise. What's the best way to get the best quality remotely?

(01:06:57):

What's the best way to get the microphone quality remotely? What can the producer, what can you al do on your end as well to send me audio that is already more processed so that it's easier for me to work with when it comes to me to work on? Because a lot of people when I tell them how we do the show and everything, they think, what's the big deal? Just run the stream from the computer and you're good to go. But they think of that as if the producer is the one that's running the stream. They think of it as the nail of the mix comes from the computer that they're mixing on, which is normal for most people who stream to Twitch or stream to Google or YouTube. I mean, if you are streaming on your own computer and working on your own computer, it's a lot easier to get all those elements into a streaming software because it's all right there.

(01:07:46):

You have display capture options, you have video capture card options for doing that all, but when you incorporate the elements of the show, that involves you talking to the guest, the guest working in Pro Tools, you asking a question halfway through him working or the he or she working and someone has to switch that someone has to be switching those things. You can't ask the producer to do all those switches and also mix the show. That's too much work for one person, especially if they have no idea how to do any of that stuff because why would they? It's not their skillset. That's not their job.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):

Their job is to make it sound awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):

Their job is to mix and their job is to mix the band that we brought them on nail the mix to do. So looking at those four elements, you just break down further and further what are things that I can use to get the highest quality to make sure that it is the lowest latency so that I can still switch for in most parts in real time, there's obviously going to be some sort of latency in most parts, even in a call that we're having right now, Al, there's latency with the conversation. That's normal, especially on a phone call. Everyone gets that, but it's pretty damn near close to real time. What are the best options to get the highest resolution at still real time? A lot of people might say, well, why don't you have the producer set up on their stream and then they stream that stream to you or something?

(01:09:14):

Well, a lot of times that inherently adds 10 to 15 seconds of delay and then there's no way that I can live switch that in real time just because I am predicting for the most part, when you're going to ask a question or if you ask a question, I'll pull your fade up really quickly and quickly transition to you because I'm able to do that in real time. I did that when we were all in the same room together where I'd be riding faders and I'd be riding the switcher on video just to make sure that I know when it's time to cut to you and everything like that, but finding these solutions was the trickiest part was finding the live show itself now is made up of a bunch of different pieces of software and hardware that can make the show happen as is, and I am pretty proud to say that you can read everything on the DAW.

(01:10:01):

The DAW plays back in a really nice frame rate, so when you see meters aren't jumpy, and if they are jumpy, it's normally from the guest side, it's because they haven't order a computer or something and it's too much taxing power to send me the resources and stuff, but we still make it happen. That kind of stuff. I'm proud that the show has evolved into this new version that honestly, I think just feels better than where it was when we were doing the show in person. I'm able to do more processing on the vocals and I have more control of the independent aspects of things because it's all coming to me in different feeds that I have complete control of, so I mean it, that's somewhat of a technical explanation, but in general it was figuring out how to make this happen so that I still have a job, but then finding the right person to do the testing with for the first nail the mix, and that's where Dave Terro came into play

(01:10:56):

Because Dave understands video fairly well. Dave is a good friend of mine, even though we act like we're not friends on the internet, and he was able to really help me troubleshoot these things of let's try option A, let's try option B. We will go all the way down the list until we find the one thing that was stable for that computer and worked well and seemed to be running smooth. We do the show, it comes out good. There are things that I can improve. We do the next show, oh no, Dave was on Windows and then the next person's on Mac, so now I have to figure out all new solutions to get the same assets that I was getting from Dave, but on a Mac unit instead of Windows. So I have probably four or five different paths I can take now from troubleshooting just based off of what computer do you have and what equipment do you have?

(01:11:45):

Okay, we're going to go option C route to still get that same high quality, oh, this person's at a different, okay, we'll go option A because they have this stuff. This is now a full year of remote. I think Dave was either July or August, so at this point we're coming up to a full year of running the show remotely, which is great, and obviously to anyone listening that's still wondering about the ones that we haven't made up yet. There are specific reasons obviously as to why we haven't done those yet. Whether it's the producer is moving studio and still getting their new place sorted out or the internet connection is not strong enough to be able to do the show remotely from where they would like to do it. So those kinds of things, we're going to, once more restrictions are lifted and everything, we'll be able to travel and set up those times to make those up. But just so everyone knows, at least because I'm sure you get this question a lot Al is these are still happening. It's not like we're just making, these are still going to happen

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):

If they haven't happened. It's because of a reason. The reason isn't that we forgot. Right?

Speaker 4 (01:12:44):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):

There's a technical reason, whether it's the government not allowing us to go to a certain place and we have to be at that place in order to do it, or person's rig sucks or person's internet sucks or they just have zero understanding of even if we explain things to them, it's just not going to work. We have to be there. It just is what it is. Not everybody's studio and skillset is compatible with us doing it remote, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:13:16):

Absolutely, but those will get resolved. The main part of why I pushed so hard to do the show Mobilely or remotely is when I'm super passionate about something, I want to be the best at it. That has been another one of those things that's always been my situation. If I'm passionate about singing, I want to be first chair, I'll stay choir. If I'm passionate about musical, I want to be a lead actor. If I'm passionate about my band, I want to win Battle of the Bands. That stuff. That's always driven me to just be, I want to try and be the best that I can be. If I'm in a cycle class, I've been taking lot of cycle classes and it's nice to see your name on the wall and you're competing against everyone else. I want to be number one. Sometimes it's in my detriment, but in most cases it pushes me to get the best quality product possible, whether it's a better healthy lifestyle or it's winning a trophy or I'm competitive.

(01:14:18):

I like being competitive and I take great pride in making sure that nail the mix is still cutting edge when it comes to a smooth show that people can watch and not have hiccups whilst watching it. It's as smooth as it can be for the situation that we're all in currently, because a lot of companies too in the pandemic have realized how poor their infrastructure was for work at home environments, so things like Zoom, the options in Zoom have elevated tenfold because of all of these people having to work from home and stuff, so it's nice. In a way, it was a decent wake up call to the world to realize that people can work from home, but at the same time, we need the tools to match what we actually need to get done because a lot of people were just used to working. If they need to talk to someone, they'll go over three cubicles and talk to that person.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):

Yeah, exactly. It's almost like we were already set up for it to a degree

Speaker 3 (01:15:22):

In a way. We did have the infrastructure set to where we didn't have to redesign from ground up a way to communicate with everyone. It sort of just kept going, and the only thing that really changed was it wasn't me filming anymore for Fast Tracks and stuff. It was me teaching producers how to film or just working with producers who predominantly know how to film themselves more, which luckily so many talented producers that we know are film savvy, and I think that plays into the next thing, which is take video seriously. I think that's the next step in audio production is being able to offer video services as well.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):

I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:16:02):

People are going to want studio updates or play through videos, and if you can be the studio in your town that offers a badass mix and you're also giving them all this rad footage that a few tutorials of understanding how a camera works and you can create something that's usable, you're off to the races when it comes to clients wanting to work with you more.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):

Yeah, I totally agree. I also think musicians too should take video seriously. Basically, anybody in these fields should take video seriously. It's not to say that they need to be on the level that we're at or try to do it for a living or anything like that, but they should have it in their bag of tricks. Absolutely. You should be savvy enough to be able to do some basic streaming, basic filming and not have stuff look like a shitty disaster basically.

Speaker 3 (01:17:00):

Yeah. What I would say is, and I'm running into this problem too, where I want to start Twitch streaming. I like playing video games, and if I can have a reason to play video games by doing it on a stream, then that's great. Then I'm growing my name whilst also doing the hobby that I like to do,

(01:17:19):

But one of the problems that I'm having is the fear of the fear of starting. I want the first, again, my perfectionist aspect comes into play. I want that first stream to be so perfect. It's not going to be, but exactly in my head. I already know it's not going to be, so I need to just do it, and if that's any consolation to someone who's listening, who is also thinking about starting that, just do it and then in four months you'll watch it back and you'll cringe and it's okay that you're going to cringe because you've figured out how to make it better in that timeframe, and then in four months from that, you'll figure out how to make it better and better and better, and you'll constantly be improving yourself. Obviously, there's a huge fear of just releasing that first thing because it's new and it's scary and you don't know how it's going to be perceived or just basically how people are going to actually take it and you're afraid to be rejected or neglected or people dislike it or something. Just do it. I got to take my own advice and just do it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):

Do you remember Finn's first YouTube videos? Like the first two?

Speaker 3 (01:18:16):

I remember Finn talking about this problem as well where he was like, I just had to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):

Go to his channel and if they're still up there, just check out the first couple he did. That might give you the inspiration to just do it,

Speaker 3 (01:18:30):

The drive to just do it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):

Yeah. It's come a really, really long way, dude. Stuff's going to suck at first. If it doesn't suck, that's already a huge accomplishment.

Speaker 3 (01:18:41):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):

Just it not sucking completely.

Speaker 3 (01:18:44):

Yeah. The content in general,

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):

Yeah, it being the most amazing thing ever is a little ambitious, but just not sucking is already a huge accomplishment, but there's no way to get to episode 50 or a hundred without doing episode one, so all the improvements that you'll have by episode 50 or stream 50 or whatever, you got to get through streams one through five first.

Speaker 3 (01:19:09):

Exactly, and again, that piggybacks off to the previous conversation we had where if it's a quote failure to you, there's still things you learned from that that will make the successes why they're successes.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):

Yeah. It's not a failure

Speaker 3 (01:19:24):

In your mind. That's what I mean by that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):

Yeah. It's weird because part of me thinks that that whole saying of it's not a failure unless you quit, is not entirely true. If something failed, it failed whether or not you quit, but there is some truth to that, whereas it is kind of true where it's not a failure. You've learned from it and then got better.

Speaker 4 (01:19:47):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:19:47):

Well, I think this is a good place to end the episode. I want to thank you for taking the time to hang out. It's been awesome catching back up, even though I talk to you every day.

Speaker 3 (01:20:00):

Yes, it has been absolutely amazing to be able to chat with you like this. Thanks for having me back on. It was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):

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

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):

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