ANDREW WADE: Pro Production Workflow, One-Pass Stem Bouncing, Bulletproof Backups

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. Go to creative live.com/audio to start learning now. The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is also brought to you by Pro Tone Pedals, the secret tone weapon for guitar experts everywhere. Go to proton pedals.com to take your tone to the next level. And now your host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek, and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 3 (00:00:30):

Alright, what's up guys? Thanks for tuning into the show and thanks to everyone at the forum for all the support. If you have questions or an idea for a topic you'd like us to discuss, visit www.joeysturgis.com/podcast. You can also vote for the current questions and suggestions for next week's episode. I'm Joey Sturgis, and with me as always is Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi. Hello.

(00:00:54):

Hello. Hey,

Speaker 2 (00:00:54):

What's up? Hello.

Speaker 3 (00:00:57):

If

Speaker 2 (00:00:57):

You haven't yet, check us out on Twitter and you can get the links on the website. You can also ask us questions there and we'll try to answer them on the show. So what's up guys? What are you doing? Well,

Speaker 4 (00:01:07):

I just had a band leave my studio that's been here for about 10 days, so I'm catching up on the rest of my life. I've had this strange realization of something that I already knew, but every single time I learn it again, it blows my mind is that I can't do anything else when I'm working with the band. No matter if I'm working nine hours a day or 15 hours a day with them, it takes up my entire life no matter if I have an engineer or whatnot. It just, man, it just gets so hard to focus on anything else. Do you experience the same thing at all?

Speaker 2 (00:01:47):

Yeah, that's really true. It's kind of annoying because life still happens while a band is there and sometimes there's a lot of things to take care of. I don't know. If your car breaks down, what are you going to do?

Speaker 3 (00:02:02):

Limit your hours?

Speaker 4 (00:02:04):

I guess the benefit of not going anywhere is that you don't have to worry about your car breaking down.

Speaker 2 (00:02:11):

Yeah. Bad example, but totally agree with you and can relate. One time back when I was recording at the garage, well, the thing to understand about the garage is that it was like my friend's place, so I couldn't really use their house or anything and the garage didn't have a bathroom.

Speaker 3 (00:02:33):

I remember that.

Speaker 2 (00:02:34):

Oh no. Oh man, this sounds like a bad story. So if you want to use the bathroom, you basically have to get in a car and drive down the street and go to the gas station. I mean, this is like seven years ago or something.

Speaker 5 (00:02:48):

Does this have to do with burden of a day?

Speaker 2 (00:02:50):

Yes, it does. Do you know this story?

Speaker 5 (00:02:52):

I recorded them.

Speaker 2 (00:02:53):

Oh, did they tell you the story? Yes. Yeah, keep going. Keep going. I'm not going to ruin it. That's awesome. So yeah, you could go outside and pee if you needed to, but just pee outside. But if you got to take a shit, you got to go to the gas station. Well, one day this guy, he's got to take a shit and he can't hold it in, so he makes an effort to go to the gas station. He goes outside, tries to get in the van and is just like, oh man, I can't do it. So he gets back outside of the van and decides that it would be a good idea to just shit in the yard and not tell anybody about it. And this is one of my first incidents with band dudes just kind of being a little bit of pranksters that they are.

(00:03:47):

He didn't tell anyone and the landlord comes home from work and walks outside and she sees the shit in the yard and she's like, that's not dog shit, that's human shit. She could tell. So she comes and knocks on the door and I knew something was wrong because anytime she comes knocking on the door, there's definitely a problem. She would never bother me otherwise. So I'm like, oh shit, what? Now? I come and answer the door and she's like, I think somebody's shit in the yard. I'm like, what? So long story short, I took pictures of it and I sent it to the label and they gave me a check. Hopefully it was a big one, a shit check. You got me a shit check. That's

Speaker 3 (00:04:32):

A shitty day.

Speaker 5 (00:04:33):

Even when I had those guys in the studio and they were telling me that story, I was on your side with this whole thing. I was just like, you really did that? The dude who did it was telling me, I'm like, that was your logical choice of action. What is wrong with you? That didn't even happen to me. And I was like, poor Joey, that sucks.

Speaker 4 (00:04:57):

Yeah, that's funny, man. These stories have a way of either repeating themselves or getting around because there's a story that Andrew and I share actually about the piss. Since we're on the topic of human excrement, we could tell the piss story without saying who it is, right?

Speaker 5 (00:05:17):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it started with me, I think yours is a little worse, but there was a particular band member who he said to save time, he didn't want to go to the bathroom, which was about 10 feet away from the tracking room door.

(00:05:34):

So one day I walk into the tracking room, the band's not there, and I pick up this jug and I'm like, is this piss? And I open it up and I'm like, oh my God, it's just a junk full of piss sitting in the tracking room. And I was like, what in the fuck is going on in your mind that you're pissing? Am I talking to you while you're pissing the jug? Are you holding the jug secretly? And I can't tell what's going on. You just talking to me like nothing's going on. You're just peeing.

Speaker 4 (00:06:09):

So it's a phantom pisser, then

Speaker 5 (00:06:11):

The phantom pisser. Yeah, but it gets worse.

Speaker 4 (00:06:15):

Yeah. Okay, so fast forward, what? Two years later? On the same band's next record, they came to my place and KO's place and they were staying in my guest room. So I got to know these guys pretty well, staying with me for about three months. And the same thing came up. The guy didn't want to go to the bathroom. Now this was in the middle of the night and the bathroom, those of you who have been to my house know that the guest bathroom is five feet away from the guest room. So he said that he was too scared to go into the bathroom at night. He was afraid of bugs because we're in Florida and there's lots of bugs. I guess he was afraid of the bugs and afraid of the dark. So he kept two gallon jugs next to his bed. That one was for water and one was for piss. I then learned, and I guess the story goes that one night in the middle of the night, three in the morning, he woke up thirsty and grabbed the wrong jug, drank his piss. Oh God.

Speaker 5 (00:07:30):

Yeah. Hey, I was thinking about this story the other day. Do you think he's ever accidentally peed into the jug he drinks out of? Because whenever you drink, piss immediately, but when you pee into water and thinking it's piss, you may not know.

Speaker 4 (00:07:47):

Whenever you drink, piss immediately you experience with this. I feel like we need to test this empirically.

Speaker 5 (00:07:54):

I don't think you need much experience with it to know that water and piss probably tastes a little bit different.

Speaker 4 (00:08:02):

That's a good point. Have you guys heard about the potential health benefits of drinking piss?

Speaker 5 (00:08:09):

I mean, I heard you can only in survival situations, you can only drink it like two times or something before it's not sterile anymore.

Speaker 2 (00:08:16):

Oh really? Yeah, because it's only you're filtering, you're refiling filtered stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:08:22):

It's actually okay to drink your pee one time. Okay. All if you want to.

Speaker 4 (00:08:31):

Well, okay, so if you only do it once, then it's okay. I guess that's the idea.

Speaker 5 (00:08:37):

Well, I mean I think it's up to two times it's safe. I mean apparently it's clean, it's been filtered out. Like Joey said,

Speaker 4 (00:08:45):

Make it count. You've only got twice.

Speaker 2 (00:08:48):

Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:08:49):

Oh man.

Speaker 2 (00:08:50):

Well, you could probably get Ebola from piss though.

Speaker 4 (00:08:53):

Really?

Speaker 2 (00:08:53):

Yeah, because it's like bodily. If it's a bodily

Speaker 4 (00:08:57):

Fluid, remind me not to go drinking out of the sewer in Liberia.

Speaker 5 (00:09:03):

I'm writing you a reminder right now. I'm sending you an email. Thank you. Just to remind you,

Speaker 3 (00:09:08):

So what kind of compression ratios do you guys prefer on human excrements? Like two to one, four to one. Hard limit.

Speaker 2 (00:09:15):

Oh gosh. The kind that removes the corn.

Speaker 5 (00:09:20):

There's a hard limit for that to go into my mouth. It's very, very hard to get it to go in.

Speaker 4 (00:09:29):

What would the plugin be that would poop out those perfectly shaped poops that require no paper? What would that plugin, what plugin? What plugin

Speaker 5 (00:09:45):

Would kind of a show? Is this? Come on.

Speaker 4 (00:09:48):

I don't know. It just went in a great direction. Great

Speaker 5 (00:09:51):

Direction. Here we are in the bathroom. Let's get out of the bathroom. What do you say?

Speaker 4 (00:09:58):

Alright, sounds good. Talk about some what's more real than human excrement, but sure. We can talk about stuff like recording.

Speaker 2 (00:10:08):

Well, in case you guys are wondering who's with us here, this is Andrew Wade joining us on the air.

Speaker 5 (00:10:13):

Hello.

Speaker 2 (00:10:14):

And he records people who pretend to play instruments and people who actually play instruments too.

Speaker 5 (00:10:23):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:10:23):

Lies

Speaker 5 (00:10:24):

Sometimes they can play and it's so weird.

Speaker 4 (00:10:30):

Does it actually blow your mind when you're around a musician? That's really good these

Speaker 5 (00:10:36):

Days. I'm recording a band right now who is like that and they have a screamer, a separate screamer and singer, and they're both great. And their guitarist is one of the best I've ever recorded. And they're a local band. Wow. Yeah, Jeremy McKinnon is producing them with me. Their name is Wage War. Actually, I don't think I can reveal any more information about it, but

Speaker 4 (00:10:59):

Are they the guys that won your contest?

Speaker 5 (00:11:01):

No, that's Hideouts. They're a pop punk band from somewhere else in the United States. I don't remember where.

Speaker 4 (00:11:10):

Oh, okay. So just if anyone's wondering, could you tell us what your contest was or is?

Speaker 5 (00:11:16):

Yeah, actually I'd love to talk about that. Had this idea, I was thinking, as you guys probably know, I've recorded a data member, blah, blah, blah. That's all anybody ever hears. But one awesome thing about a data member is that they've helped me get where I am in my career because of their success. Now, I started by recording their first album, which was pretty terrible. I mean, they weren't very good musicians, they didn't have super awesome ideas or anything like that. But as time went on, I developed a relationship with them. We were both in bands and we'd play together and they would keep coming back and obviously they're doing great now. And it made me think, I'm like, well, it'd be awesome to get another band to develop a relationship with, but that's a band that probably can't afford to come to my studio. And I thought, how can I get them in here? Well, I sent out the contest thing. This was just an experiment. I didn't even know how well it was going to do. I got 150 replies. There was no push on any media except my own things. AP didn't say anything or anything like that. So I got a bunch of great entries. Actually, Joey, one of the bands you recorded sent me one.

Speaker 2 (00:12:32):

Oh really? Who was it?

Speaker 5 (00:12:34):

Yes, there's a girl in the band. They are, I can't remember the name. I don't think their record is released yet. I think the girl might be a bass player. Do you know

Speaker 4 (00:12:46):

That narrows it down.

Speaker 5 (00:12:47):

Well, how many bands do you record with girl bass players? Al, come on.

Speaker 4 (00:12:51):

Well, if there's going to be a girl in the band, it's generally going to be a bass player though. That's

Speaker 5 (00:12:55):

The thing. Well, actually I feel like I worked with more girl drummers than bass players for some reason.

Speaker 2 (00:12:59):

That's cool.

Speaker 5 (00:12:59):

But Joey, do you know who I'm talking about?

Speaker 2 (00:13:02):

The only thing I can think of right now would be maybe as we walk, but they have a girl singer, and that's actually pretty recent, so I'm not sure who it is right now. It's not ringing a bell.

Speaker 5 (00:13:12):

It was kind of recent and I don't think they're on label. That was part of the contest. They couldn't be signed,

Speaker 2 (00:13:21):

But

Speaker 5 (00:13:22):

I made notes about every single band and I listened to the stuff they sent and I'm just like, this band is done. What else could I do for them? They just recorded with Joey. It sounds great. What do you want from me? I'm looking for people that didn't have any money. You know what I mean? They didn't have a chance to get into a studio, but they have great ideas and that's who I'm trying to get in here. So actually Jeremy from a day remember actually really liked the idea and he was thinking maybe on the next time around that me and him could produce an album for free for somebody and develop that relationship.

Speaker 4 (00:14:00):

Wow, that's a huge commitment.

Speaker 5 (00:14:03):

Yeah. Well, it starts, I actually didn't say all the details about it, but it starts with a five song ep. I'll produce and write on that completely for free, mixed for free, submit it to labels. And one of the stipulations is they really kind of have to fall my advice as much as possible because I'm trying to get them signed. So then they come back for the next five songs or however many to record the full length after they've been signed if they get signed, and then the label will pay for that half or whatever. But in the meantime, I'm getting producer points developing a relationship. That's number one to me, getting producer points, percentages and all that other stuff, which does add up over time. But to me, I like to think in long-term and I day remember has been huge for me. So I'm trying to bring in another band like that and I can't think of a better way.

Speaker 4 (00:14:58):

I think that's a great idea and it just seems like a modern spin on the spec deal, really. Yeah,

Speaker 5 (00:15:07):

Well that's exactly what it is. The band is still working on a spec deal with my manager for the most part. That's basically what it's,

Speaker 4 (00:15:16):

Yeah, I think, I mean, spec deals exist for a reason and if anyone listening to this doesn't know what a spec deal is, it's basically what Andrew's describing that you do something on speculation that is going to get big and you're then contracted to do the thing after this, we'll call it demo version, even though it's not a demo version,

Speaker 5 (00:15:42):

It's like fully produced. It's

Speaker 4 (00:15:44):

A fully produced demo.

Speaker 5 (00:15:45):

How many times have you guys had people in your bands or in your studio, I know this is happening to you and you're just working on the band thinking these guys, I hate to sound like an asshole here, but sometimes I'm thinking, these guys don't deserve to be here right now all

Speaker 4 (00:16:01):

The time.

Speaker 5 (00:16:02):

I'm working my ass off. I'm rewriting all of your choruses. You guys are getting signed from this and you can't play your shit live to me, all that. Maybe the band doesn't look very good, maybe they can't perform live, et cetera, et cetera. So it's almost a waste of your time. And Al, we talked about this before, but whenever I have a band who needs help in the studio, I can't not help them. You know what I mean? If I have an idea, I'm going to say my idea. I'm going to write a part that I hear immediately, especially if it's bad. Anything that comes out of my studio, I want to be excellent. I mean, I'm sure all you guys agree with that.

Speaker 3 (00:16:44):

Well, at the end of the day, you got to put your name on it. So what I mean it has to be topnotch period despite how good the band actually is.

Speaker 5 (00:16:51):

Exactly. And if I feel like it's a waste on some of these bands that are coming in here, I figure, hey, I may as well handpick one that's going to last that can be successful, that I think has a shot in the industry. A lot of these other bands, they'll get signed, there'll just be a flash in the pan and they'll disappear. So

Speaker 4 (00:17:08):

Now do you vet them in any other ways? Are you looking at how they market themselves

Speaker 5 (00:17:14):

Or

Speaker 4 (00:17:15):

All that stuff?

Speaker 5 (00:17:16):

Well, yeah, but right now that's not that important, but as I work with them, I will give them every suggestion I possibly can because I've seen bands go from nobody to be signed and doing well, so I'm going to give them every single suggestion and I'm really going to drill into them. And that's why what I'm talking about, the relationship is really important because that's where I can help them sustain their career in more ways than just their music. And it comes down to promos, videos, artwork, design, and I can send that stuff to other people to get professional opinions. You know what I mean? Yeah. In any way I can help their band, it's helping me even if I'm not getting paid from it right away, Hey, if somebody else just hears a success story, that's going to help. And the more bands like that, the better.

Speaker 2 (00:18:15):

Don't you think that there's a little bit of a age factor in what you were saying, how some bands get a deal, they come in the studio and they kind of suck and you kind of give them a little extra boost by rewriting things, playing some things for them. Time goes on, that band gets better, they blow up. You and them both take off at the same time, but there's an age, almost like an age factor in there where they were just too young, but that was the right time for them. What do you think about that?

Speaker 5 (00:18:48):

Yeah, I mean that could happen too, but to me that seems a little more rare. But I do think about that sometimes. It's like it's cool that these smaller bands are coming in here and maybe they learned from me being in the studio. Maybe they learn how to structure their songs or hey, a chorus actually has the hit and be catchy. It sounds like really simple stuff to us. We do it every day, but to some of these bands, sometimes like a light switch and some people will get it, but that definitely does help if the bands are young and maybe nobody really cares about them until they do get more talented and maybe change out members so they can sound better live and all

Speaker 4 (00:19:30):

That stuff. Yeah, I've had that experience quite a bit of getting baby bands in here where the members are just, they're just not mentally mature enough to do this. Right. Just for maybe because they're 17 or 18 or whatever. I mean, I know there's some 18 year olds who they're like nine

Speaker 5 (00:19:50):

And

Speaker 4 (00:19:51):

10. Oh God, I hate recording kids. But no, I've definitely experienced that a few times where I'll record a band and give them the Gordon Ramsey approach of just destroy, erase and prove basically. And I can't say that that necessarily builds my relationship with them in the long term, but I haven't had a single person who has stayed in the music industry come back and say that it didn't help them tremendously.

Speaker 3 (00:20:23):

I've had kind of a similar experience, but a little bit different Al, because I do a lot of band developing and some of them really need that. Gordon Ramsey kind of destroy and rebuild type of psychology, and I find the bands that actually get through that and survive it and don't hate you for it, they learn and they grow from it and they say, Hey, this guy really gives a shit about us and it makes the relationship, at least in my experience, closer, you can always go in with a hammer, but then rebuild them up with a feather and be like, listen, don't take it like this. I'm actually trying to help you because I really do care and I want to see you succeed. And I've had some of my bands, for example, the Vinyl theater, which we were talking about a few weeks ago, those guys, when they came in, I hammered the crap out of them the first time and they came back a month and a half later and it was like the whole band was three times better at writing, singing. It's like they did nothing other than I'm going to go home. We're going to show Joel wait away. You get in the studio, we're going to knock that guy on his ass. And they did it.

Speaker 5 (00:21:17):

That's great.

Speaker 3 (00:21:18):

And that's why they got signed to a major because they took it right. And they really took that and not to heart, but passionately as a constructive criticism and they knew that I cared. We have an incredible relationship today and we're great friends and I'm always a phone call away with a band like that and we just, Hey, what's up? How are you guys doing? What's going on on tour? What are your numbers? Blah, blah, blah. It's good to have those types of relationships with the bands because they will eventually take you with if you develop it.

Speaker 4 (00:21:48):

Yeah,

Speaker 5 (00:21:48):

Definitely.

Speaker 4 (00:21:49):

I mean I've definitely had that happen and seen it happen a number of times. I guess in the situations that I was referring to the Gordon Ramsey approach, maybe I came on a little too strong about it, but who knows really?

Speaker 5 (00:22:12):

What did you do al? Did you physically abuse them?

Speaker 4 (00:22:16):

No, I didn't. And you know what? Actually I just had a band here who recorded with somebody that I know out on the west coast who I'm buddies with, and they did some EP with him, and apparently he was really mean to them and told them that they sucked and that his band's way better than their band and that told the guitar player that he's the worst engineer he's ever met and stuff like that. It's like, wow, I never do that. I guess I could get brutal about the quality of what we're working on. Yeah, there's strictly pro. There's

Speaker 3 (00:22:55):

A fine line. Absolutely. That's too brutal. You can't be mean, but you have to be tough sometimes.

Speaker 5 (00:23:01):

Yeah. I don't think I've ever actually told someone they were untalented. I kind of let that be revealed to them through the process. Give them the ropes to hang themselves with if

Speaker 3 (00:23:13):

They can actually see it.

Speaker 5 (00:23:15):

Yeah, I mean there was one time so many years ago, probably the worst vocalist I've ever recorded. I don't remember the name of the band, but I ended up singing the lead vocals.

Speaker 2 (00:23:30):

Holy crap.

Speaker 5 (00:23:31):

It was that bad.

Speaker 2 (00:23:33):

Is it out there with your voice on it?

Speaker 5 (00:23:34):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:23:35):

Hope you got points. Oh wow. I want to hear it.

Speaker 5 (00:23:37):

Yeah, it's me. And then we auditioned everybody in the band because I'm like, this isn't working. The dude was literally tone deaf. He was also the screamer, so he mostly screamed, but they had singing choruses so original, but we tried everybody out in the band and it turned out that the drummer was close to being the best singer. Well, he was the best singer, but he could hardly hit notes and stuff, but he had never sang before or recorded before or anything like that. So it's like a mixture of my voice with his underneath it a little bit, just so they could have at least somebody from their band

Speaker 2 (00:24:16):

Actually performing their music

Speaker 5 (00:24:18):

Session

Speaker 2 (00:24:19):

Producer. But

Speaker 5 (00:24:19):

That was brutal. But I didn't tell the guy he sucked. I mean, I was like, well, this isn't working out, and everyone in the room kind of knew it wasn't really a big mystery.

Speaker 2 (00:24:30):

Sometimes you have to be the bearer of bad news, but you don't have to be a dickhead about it.

Speaker 4 (00:24:35):

Right, exactly. I'm thinking the only times that it's gotten personal from me has been when I think that the band member could die within the next six months if he doesn't change his drinking or something like that.

Speaker 5 (00:24:52):

I have had those talks for sure.

Speaker 4 (00:24:54):

Yeah. I mean, look, if you've got a 19-year-old that's drinking 24 beers a day and half a bottle of vodka and is fucking up and you know that they will be dead within 10 years because people that have been dead from the same thing, you have to say something about it, but as far as someone sucking a guitar and me being like, man, you shouldn't even be playing an instrument. Go back to school and do something else with your life. You have no future at this. No, I not going to. That's for Simon Cowell.

Speaker 3 (00:25:29):

I got a McDonald's application on my wall and I just turn around and I point at it. I'm like, you see that? That's your future now don't fuck up next time.

Speaker 4 (00:25:38):

Amazing.

Speaker 3 (00:25:38):

Three points. And then the kid just gives me the guitar and I play it for him and be like, that's how you do it. And they go, okay, now go home and fucking practice wasting my time and embarrassing yourself.

Speaker 5 (00:25:47):

Dude, here's one that I say to bands whenever someone starts arguing with something that is obviously a good idea, I'll just say, look, I'm trying to make us all as much money as possible here. I'm not just trying to make a change for no reason. I'm trying to help all of our success in this situation.

Speaker 2 (00:26:06):

Yeah, I mean if you really put it into perspective, they kind of get it.

Speaker 3 (00:26:13):

A had a funny quote the first week in metal. It's the only genre where it's stupid to have any sort of commercial acceptance or try to make money playing music.

Speaker 4 (00:26:23):

Well, it's more like the community. The community online is against any form of capitalism by the people who make the music. But that said, metal wouldn't be a genre if it didn't make money.

Speaker 2 (00:26:43):

It's almost like the artist is supposed to suffer or something.

Speaker 4 (00:26:47):

Well, I mean, the people who say this stuff generally don't make a living off of their art and wish that they did and generally are just kind of bitter about the whole thing. It's not usually people who are employed making a living who have a problem with people being employed and making a living. It's just people on the outside who don't understand, who have a very loud voice on the internet. But that said, that very loud voice on the internet is a very real part of the community now in 2014. So yeah, I definitely do think that in metal. It's very, very interesting that being entrepreneurial in your approach and thinking about profit and those types of cool things can get you in some trouble, but what are you going to do? Fuck it. Yeah. So with that said, I want to talk about some stuff that Andrew and I had talked about making profit and having a good experience in the studio and trying to take it to the next level and all that wonderful stuff.

(00:27:56):

I think that one of the ways that people prevent themselves from moving into the next step is how they organize their recording lives, both schedule wise and on their computers down to how they organize folders and track names all the way to how they back stuff up. There's ways that you can tweak your recording life to make it a very, very efficient and organized system to where you can only be worrying about the important stuff or you can spend hours per day finding stuff and opening files that don't work or load correctly and losing data and

Speaker 5 (00:28:37):

Regretting how you set things up in the past.

Speaker 4 (00:28:39):

Well, dude, I remember before I got a lot better at organizing my sessions. I calculated how much time was wasted per day on it, and I realized somewhere in the 45 minutes to an hour range, and if you factor that over the course of an album like 30 days or something in the studio, it's 30 hours. It's almost an entire work week spent on bullshit.

Speaker 2 (00:29:04):

Yeah. Organization. I'd say that that's one of the first things, if anyone is asking me a question, how do you make awesome mixes or how do you do this? How do you do that? Step one organize.

Speaker 4 (00:29:18):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:29:19):

Very true.

Speaker 4 (00:29:20):

I guess Joey, one thing that I think is interesting about your method of mixing, which I agree with and I just think it's cool, is that you mix pretty quickly but have a huge amount of time spent on getting the prep and the organization of the session Perfect. So that the mix itself can be just that mixing and I think that's cool and I think more people focused on getting everything organized, they could actually spend a lot more time well or a lot less time depending on how you look at it on the stuff that matters. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:29:57):

I'm just curious actually, how many of you guys have somebody else organize your sessions? Do you do it yourself or do you have somebody else?

Speaker 4 (00:30:04):

Both, but we're on the same page about how to do it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:30:07):

I have a full-time assistant who preps literally everything that I touch, so I don't do any of that stuff anymore. He's amazing at it and he speeds up the amount of songs that I can mix per day to I would say by about one and a half to two times as fast. It's pretty awesome. Can't live without 'em.

Speaker 4 (00:30:24):

Wow. I do it sometimes if I'm trying to I guess forge new ground with sessions set up or whatever, then I'll start doing it myself. But I guess as a general rule, I try to not do it just, it takes a long time.

Speaker 2 (00:30:40):

I don't want the song to get in the way. That's the biggest thing. So if I'm trying to mix the song and the vocals aren't tuned, then I don't want to stop and have to edit the vocals. So

Speaker 5 (00:30:53):

That's

Speaker 2 (00:30:54):

Why you got to have it is just like you were saying on your creative live class, you got to have everything prepped before you actually sit down to mix the song or it's going to get in the way.

Speaker 4 (00:31:07):

Absolutely. But I think that that applies, that thinking applies across every single aspect of your recording life.

Speaker 3 (00:31:17):

I think that it's really important to have a well-organized system of templates for starting. For example, if you're tracking drums, having all of your routing and stuff preset where you can just drop in, I use Cubase and they have a function called track archiving, which means you can set up a bunch of tracks and routing and Es or group channels, or I only use Cubase, so I don't dunno how Pro Tools or any of the other daws what the correct terminology would be, but so you could just drop in an entire routing and set up and it's already going and you can just hit record. So yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:31:45):

Imagine if you had to spend 30 minutes every song setting that up,

Speaker 3 (00:31:49):

Right? Yeah. And then after you do the first song for the session, then you already have the template for the other nine or 15 songs or whatever on the record. So same thing with mixing, having a basic setup where you can plug it in, having all of your routing ready to go and you can hit play and it's already routed where you need it. It makes a huge difference in the amount of time spent, and you can just start mixing and being creative instead of like, oh man, hold on this kick drum. We didn't check the phase on it, or this is why are the vocals out of tune? You don't have to focus on that stuff.

Speaker 4 (00:32:23):

Yeah. In Pro Tools Land, we use session data transfer or transfer session data. Actually, I was thinking was thinking

Speaker 5 (00:32:36):

Import

Speaker 2 (00:32:37):

Session data

Speaker 4 (00:32:37):

In language. Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:32:39):

Joey, what do you use? What DAW do you use?

Speaker 2 (00:32:42):

I'm in Cubase too.

Speaker 5 (00:32:43):

Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 (00:32:43):

Yeah, so actually one of the things that's really annoying about cubase is whenever you do a drum session, sometimes it doesn't save all of the inputs, so Oh

Speaker 5 (00:32:54):

God.

Speaker 2 (00:32:55):

Yeah, so if you've got your kick on input four and then your snares on Input one and then all the shit, every time you open the song, you have to reset it by it manually.

Speaker 3 (00:33:06):

That's interesting. And it really sucks. I've never had that problem before. That sucks. It always works for me. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:33:11):

That's really annoying. That must be something that they fixed in one of the versions, but the version that I was using at least last year was doing that every time, and so it sucked so much

Speaker 3 (00:33:22):

I would kill,

Speaker 2 (00:33:23):

Here's what I did is I got my assistant to actually remember it just off the top of his head and every time it needed to be done, I was like, get in here, do it. I don't want to get out of my head space of the drum tracks or whatever I'm trying to accomplish, so I would just step out, grab some coffee, come back in. It would be fixed

Speaker 4 (00:33:47):

In Pro Tools, there's a little just a, I call it a really little but big annoying thing that has to do with routing and io, which is when you bring in a session from someplace else.

Speaker 5 (00:34:01):

Yes, I know what you're going to say.

Speaker 4 (00:34:03):

Yeah, it'll bring in their IO stuff. Oh my God.

Speaker 5 (00:34:07):

Even if you tell it not to, have you done that before?

Speaker 4 (00:34:09):

Yes. You

Speaker 5 (00:34:10):

Tell it not to and it does it anyway.

Speaker 4 (00:34:12):

That's why once you have your IO routings the way you like them, you have to save them

Speaker 5 (00:34:19):

And you have to save them, get this in a different folder than the default folder because sometimes Pro Tools will just delete them.

Speaker 4 (00:34:26):

Wow. I've never had that happen, but

Speaker 5 (00:34:28):

That's

Speaker 4 (00:34:28):

Scary.

Speaker 5 (00:34:29):

I've had that happen several times, so I always back up my bus routing on my Dropbox or something because my shit is really complicated.

Speaker 4 (00:34:38):

Your shit is really efficient. I've seen how you work.

Speaker 5 (00:34:41):

Thank you.

Speaker 4 (00:34:42):

Actually, I'll just go and say that Andrew's session organization has influenced me greatly when I had him mix something for me back maybe about a year ago or something, or no, it was January 1st, wasn't it? What? When I went to your house to you mix that one song that was driving me insane, I think it was literally January 1st and you showed me your mix routing and it blew my mind and it actually changed how I do things.

Speaker 5 (00:35:19):

I feel honored.

Speaker 4 (00:35:20):

Yeah, it's great. Do

Speaker 3 (00:35:22):

You want to elaborate, Andrew, on your setup? It'd be interesting, I think probably for the listeners, if you could give a tidbit on how you have your stuff organized.

Speaker 5 (00:35:28):

Yes. I might be putting some people out of a job after I explain this too. Oh, well,

(00:35:36):

It falls, whatever. One of the most annoying things to do now, I know Pro Tools and cubase are different, and I actually use Cubase for a little bit. I actually was trying to get more organized and Pro Tools didn't have enough buses because of how many I use, and so I was trying to switch to cubase and I saw a bunch of cool, this is beside the point, but cubase has a bunch of cool output options that Pro Tools doesn't have for bounces and stuff. However, this same concept will work for cubase or any doll that you're using, and it's just a simple logic here. So the most annoying thing that I ever have had to do is make click tracks, make stems, make a master, make an UN master, make an instrumental, all those really annoying things that we always have to make. So the way I use it, I make all of that stuff with one bounce, and I don't know if you guys do something like that or not, but

Speaker 4 (00:36:42):

Yes, now I do.

Speaker 5 (00:36:44):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:36:45):

So what I do is this is a great example of extreme organization that allows you to really make your workflow really efficient.

Speaker 4 (00:36:53):

Yeah. Well, yeah, you can bounce stems for an album either in one full day or one full hour

Speaker 5 (00:36:59):

Or that's what I mean, because you can hire someone to do this or you can literally do it all with literally one bounce,

Speaker 2 (00:37:06):

Make the computer do the work.

Speaker 5 (00:37:08):

Yes. So like click tracks. We all know how annoying that is. But anyway, I actually called up this dude, this archiving dude who all he does is talk about archiving, like how you send files, and he gave out some checklists to me about how he wanted the sessions and files organized. He does stuff for major labels and indie labels and stuff, and I actually had some problems with the list he sent because it wasn't efficient enough, and I called him to tell him what was wrong with what he was telling everyone to do because it was a eventually failing system because it had a time limit on it. It was not a classic solution, if that makes sense. I'll tell you more about that in a second, but the way that I bounced down all this stuff at once is it's really simple. Let's talk about mastering for a second.

(00:37:59):

I have all of my main buses, every single track in all my sessions go to a bus. Nothing just goes to the master, nothing. So everything is going to a bus in some way except for the buses. The buses go to the master, they don't actually hit the master first. They go to what I call pre mains one, which is before the mains one. Everything is routing to this one bus and I can do anything with it. I can put mastering effects on it or I can not, for instance. So I have all the buses going to Prema one, and then I have Prema one, go to Prema two, and then Prema two goes to the master. And let me explain why I do this. Say you set up an audio track within Pro Tools or whatever you're using, and you set the input for prema one. That means all your buses are just going straight to that audio track and it's just unmastered. Now. You can put stuff on Prema one, which is going out to prema two, set up an audio track with prema two as the input. Suddenly you can record a master and an UNMASTERED at the same time.

Speaker 2 (00:39:12):

Right

Speaker 5 (00:39:13):

Now, this gets more complicated. Whenever you talk about stems, all the vocals will have, the bus will go out, it'll just be called STEM lead singing. I'll put that on the send and that bus will go out to an audio track and I'll record that.

Speaker 4 (00:39:27):

And you do that for, and you do that for every instrument?

Speaker 5 (00:39:30):

Yes. The keys get all that acoustic lead guitars, rhythm guitars, bass drums, whatever.

Speaker 2 (00:39:38):

Do you actually use those as the mix or are they just muted, turned down stem holder? They're

Speaker 5 (00:39:45):

Muted. They're always in the session, but muted. I just have the way I organize, everything's just way up at the top and I have the tracks really small and just muted.

Speaker 2 (00:39:55):

So you still have control over the actual mix that isn't affected by the stems. For example, if you wanted to group, let's say you group five different vocal tracks as your lead vocal stem, but somewhere else in your session you have control over all the vocal volume without having to access that stem fader, right?

Speaker 5 (00:40:19):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:40:20):

Okay.

Speaker 5 (00:40:21):

I would just group the buses to change that volume.

Speaker 2 (00:40:24):

Gotcha.

Speaker 5 (00:40:25):

And then for the instrumental, I literally just have, everything has its own bus and the thing is, except for the vocals, and it's just called the instrumental, that's what I named the bus.

Speaker 2 (00:40:37):

Oh, cool. So you're printing instrumentals too?

Speaker 5 (00:40:40):

Yes. Everything

Speaker 2 (00:40:41):

Imaginable. Yeah,

Speaker 5 (00:40:42):

So once you have your setup like that, you just arm all the tracks and record it all at once.

Speaker 2 (00:40:48):

It's like God mode.

Speaker 5 (00:40:49):

Yeah. And then for the click I have, and this is in Pro Tools, I have a click that's muted all the time, but I have a bus going out from the click, so I can mute the click, but enable the click and it will be recording onto the click track. The click track is called click L samples R, just so the band knows what side the click and samples are on, and the click is just going to the left. And then let's say the keys are what we want for the samples, and that will all be panned hard. When I'm done, my click track is done. I have two click tracks set up because one goes to the master and one doesn't go to anything. It only goes through the click track that's being recorded, so I can turn the click on and bounce the song down. I could even hear the click if I wanted to, and it wouldn't be in the master track. It would only be recording to the click track. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (00:41:49):

Yeah, that's really cool. I think that's kind of the dream setup that everyone wants, but can't figure out. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:41:58):

It's

Speaker 5 (00:41:58):

Very awesome. Andrew,

Speaker 3 (00:41:59):

Are you mixing all ITB or hybrid or OTB or what's your setup?

Speaker 5 (00:42:02):

I'm mixing all in the box. So I mean, I'm sure if you're mixing out of the box too that make complicated, but you can still send all those things to buses. You know what I mean? There's no excuse to not have that as an option.

Speaker 2 (00:42:16):

And you can print all the out of the box stuff.

Speaker 5 (00:42:19):

I don't know if you guys have ever a all you may have run into this, but sometimes you're bouncing down a song and it'll get to a certain point in the song and it will error out every time I've had that happen and I don't know why it happens.

Speaker 4 (00:42:33):

That's why I don't bounce to disc. That's why for the past few years I've been recording back into Pro Tools. Exactly. And then exporting and apparently not only for that reason that it could drop out in the middle and then you got to do it all over again. I've heard that the sound quality diminishes during Bounce as opposed, I've heard that. I don't know if it's true.

Speaker 5 (00:42:58):

Well, I mean it's obviously exactly what's happening in Pro Tools. If you're recording, it's pro tools

Speaker 4 (00:43:03):

And

Speaker 5 (00:43:04):

Whenever you do it like that, you can also, if a band wants to change one small thing, you highlight that part in the mix down and just bounce that down, consolidate it all, and you have the new mix in faster than real time.

Speaker 4 (00:43:16):

Yeah, you can punch into your own mix basically. And you don't have to rebound, I mean, yeah, rebound the entire track through the length of the track. And that's actually one of the things during mixed notes that used to take a really long time before I started recording back into Pro Tools was you do the notes and then you had to bounce out the whole song. And if you're doing six to 10 versions of a song times how many songs there are on an album, just the bouncing time is pretty tremendous.

Speaker 2 (00:43:52):

Yeah. Can we get the vocals one DB louder on the whole record, please?

Speaker 4 (00:43:55):

Yes. That never happens.

Speaker 5 (00:43:57):

Yeah, let's arbitrarily change the volume of things for no reason. Sounds great.

Speaker 4 (00:44:03):

I bet. See, I don't have this set up. Have you ever considered adding a vocal up bounce to this setup?

Speaker 5 (00:44:09):

No, but you could.

Speaker 4 (00:44:11):

Yeah,

Speaker 5 (00:44:11):

You absolutely could do that. You could do. I'm also thinking about making it a master and Unmastered instrumental. I just haven't set it up like that. No one's ever requested it, and I think that might be a little over the top because when I give bands their files, they get all this stuff, I just do it whether they ask for it or not, they get an automatic click track and all the stems, and it's just a nice little package for them whenever they're done. So if they do, I've been thinking about it like this, if they do want a mastered instrumental track, I may just charge extra for that because I feel like that's not a common thing to ask for. So that's why I haven't set it up.

Speaker 2 (00:44:52):

It takes extra time,

Speaker 5 (00:44:53):

But if I did have it set up like that, I could just bounce down everything except for that and then when they want it, I could just send it to 'em. So either way, I'm all about saving time and this has saved me so much time. I used to have an intern to do this stuff for me, make stems and shit, and now it's all

Speaker 2 (00:45:10):

Automated. Do you cover this anywhere in your creative live classes or anything like that?

Speaker 5 (00:45:16):

No, but I love this shit, so I am glad that we're having this podcast because I want to talk about it, but I don't have this covered anywhere and I would even share my template I use with people, but I haven't had anywhere to talk about it. And I don't think it would fill up a two day class on Creative Live.

Speaker 4 (00:45:36):

Probably not, but I will say that for anyone who watched my mixing class on Creative Live with, which actually two of you guys were guests on that, there is a template that I gave out on day one that has some of that in there. It's kind of similar because day one was all about session prep and all that, so there's a good amount of routing stuff in there. So anyone who's listening to this who bought that class and has that template, you can listen to what Andrew is saying and look at the template I gave you and put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Speaker 5 (00:46:13):

Yeah, it's a simple idea. It sounds complicated when you say it, but it's a really simple idea. It just takes time to set up.

Speaker 2 (00:46:20):

Yeah, once you set it up, just save it.

Speaker 5 (00:46:23):

I modify my thing too. My template all the time. I even have some base drops and stuff I use all the time in my template, so I don't have to go search for those or anything. It just saves so much time. If I could really quick talk about how I like to send files out to be mixed.

Speaker 2 (00:46:41):

Oh, this is huge. We get songs all the time that are fucked up

Speaker 5 (00:46:45):

And this is just my opinion. If you guys don't agree, that's fine, but this is basically what I called that dude about that I was telling you

Speaker 4 (00:46:52):

How

Speaker 5 (00:46:52):

To send out files and what exactly to send out. What he wanted was like sessions with the files bounced down in 'em or something really weird that I've never even done before, but they wanted the sessions for, I don't know, whatever MIDI data or something. But what I do is I try to think in long-term, like we were talking about earlier, if you had to open your session in 20 years, you probably wouldn't be able to open it. You know what I mean? So if I'm sending something out, I think in the same way, what is this person using? I don't know. It shouldn't matter. They should be able to work with what I sent, and this is what I sent. So I sent out all the things that are expected, like all the DI and all, just the regular audio files that vocal tracks, all that stuff that you have already consolidated. It's very organized, labeled in a way. I actually want to talk about a quick organization thing that I do with vocals because I like whenever you look in the audio file folder, I like to organize them alphabetically and almost see my session in the audio files, if that makes sense. Totally,

Speaker 2 (00:48:07):

Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:48:08):

What I do is some people will just put for vocals, they'll put Vox in front of it and then main singing one, main singing two, but I went a step further and I will put Vox a main singing for singing and then Vox B for backups and then Vox C for screaming, et cetera, et cetera. So you have all the vocals in the same spot in the audio folder, but they're all organized according to singing, backups, screaming or group vocals.

Speaker 2 (00:48:43):

So when you sort by alphabetical,

Speaker 5 (00:48:46):

It's all perfectly organized for you. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:48:49):

Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:48:49):

Cool. It's like here's the vocal section and each different vocal style is organized within the section.

Speaker 2 (00:48:58):

That's how I like to do it too. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:49:00):

I love to see files just super organized. There is no question about what is what, and that saves everybody time. So if in your template you are labeling your tracks like this already, you don't have to do it later, it's already labeled. That's why I love to use templates, so I'm not having to rename very much stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:49:22):

Andrew, I wish everybody thought like you.

Speaker 5 (00:49:25):

Yeah, really. Okay, so let's go back. So we will organize the audio files like that, super organized, super clear, deleting, unused regions only bouncing down things that you want mixed. I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but when other people mix your stuff, they mess it up really bad no matter what you try to do.

(00:49:45):

Except actually Joey, one of the mixes you did for me was one of my favorite mixes that anyone's mixed for me, which was the air I breathe. Thank you. Just so you know. You're welcome. I had a blast with that. Awesome. And I probably wasn't as organized back then, but anyway, the easiest way that I can think of and that I've done to keep people from messing things up is for instance, if I absolutely love the way the group vocals came out with my processing on them, I will bounce down the group vocals with the processing on them. Same thing with backup vocals. If we have some really awesome reverb and delay on it, and I love the way it sat in the mix and it's not like a main thing, you know what I mean? Main vocals, I'll print that just like that. And if they need those separate files, I'll send them.

Speaker 2 (00:50:30):

Yeah, if you have it as a send, it is on its own thing. So if they didn't want to use your delay in reverb settings, they could just not use that track, right?

Speaker 5 (00:50:39):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:50:39):

Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:50:39):

Well, I don't send it on, I send it exactly how I think it should sound finished. You don't even have to touch it. You just put it in your mix and it will sound great, but if they don't like it, I'll just send 'em the individual tracks. The send thing is cool too, but it's not as exact.

Speaker 2 (00:50:57):

Gotcha.

Speaker 5 (00:50:58):

Because they will probably mix the effects in differently than you did. But if you really like the exact wetness of the reverb, you know what I'm saying, then they'll just leave it. And usually, and I'm sure you probably like this Joey, the bullshit like that keys and stuff that you didn't program, it's really fucking annoying to mess with that stuff because you don't know what was going through those people's heads. They're sending you a hundred tracks of keys. I don't know how exactly you mix this stuff and you listen to the bounce down they sent. Sometimes they don't send one and then you just try to match what they had. You know what I mean? It's just like, to me, that's bullshit. And that's not what I want to mix when I'm mixing. I want to mix the drums, the guitars and the main vocals and the bass. That's the beef of the song in rock. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (00:51:49):

And

Speaker 5 (00:51:49):

If you can make that shit sound good, you've got a good mix. If the other stuff already sounds fucking sick when you're doing rough stuff, chases are, it will still sound sick in the final thing. So I like to think of it from the mixer perspective when I'm sending shit out, I want their version of their drums on my mix. You know what I mean? So that's just kind of what I do.

Speaker 4 (00:52:12):

I can tell you that times that I've had people send me stuff like that where it's already sounding pretty finished. I feel like it could go either way. If they really suck at recording, then obviously you don't want their sounds.

Speaker 5 (00:52:26):

Exactly. It depends. Yeah, it always depends.

Speaker 4 (00:52:28):

Yeah. If I was getting something from you or whatever from anyone of you guys or somebody else, that's good. Of course, why not? Why not?

Speaker 5 (00:52:38):

Yeah, I can't recommend this technique for everybody, but I've had enough people mix my stuff that they really mess things up that I thought were special and had a cool feel to 'em. And so to me that's a way to prevent it.

Speaker 3 (00:52:53):

And a big problem with virtual instruments with that. Sometimes you get a piano or whatever it sounds like absolute fucking dog shit. And then sometimes people will use really good sounds and you'll be like, wow, that sounds incredible. And you'll just be like, there it is done. So it's really all over the board, especially when you're mixing people that home record that aren't necessarily audio professionals, but they dabble enough and they want you to kind of mix their stuff professionally. It's really hit or miss. I mean, sometimes you get sounds and you're just like, what synth creates something that horror sounding

Speaker 5 (00:53:27):

Mind blowing in those situations. I would request something different. Sometimes if I'm mixing something for another band and they literally have over a hundred synth tracks, I'm like, Hey, can you just send me all these bounced how you had them? And then if I need to tweak a certain thing in there, I'll just ask for it without that because I already have all these files and all I have to do is tweak this. One thing

Speaker 2 (00:53:50):

We should say that there's one thing that people should stop doing, and this is really annoying, is they'll send you the meat and potatoes like you're saying, and then a shitload of mini files with no sounds that go along with it.

Speaker 5 (00:54:05):

Oh

Speaker 2 (00:54:07):

Yes, that

Speaker 5 (00:54:07):

Happened to me last week.

Speaker 2 (00:54:09):

Yeah, like what the hell are you doing? I can't read your mind. I don't know what you want.

Speaker 3 (00:54:14):

I don't like that piano, bro. That's hilarious. Different piano, bro. Well, why don't you fucking send it the first time how you want it.

Speaker 5 (00:54:20):

Okay, so really quick, actually, let's talk about midi. We mentioned that a few times. That's another thing that I send out. So I send out the audio files, like how we talked about, and then the other thing that I send out is a MIDI track. Now in Pro Tools, I don't know how this is for other programs, but all you have to do is go to file export midi, and it just exports a MIDI file that has all your MIDI files in the session labeled how you had them, and the markers and the tempo changes all within one file. So whenever the mixer does import all of your audio tracks and then they open the MIDI file, they can also get the tempo and the tempo changes and the markers within the song. And all of your MIDI tracks just in one file that is very small. So you don't need a session to get the MIDI from anybody. I hate opening other people's sessions,

(00:55:16):

So I figure other people feel the same way and I send a MIDI file and it has all that information in it already. So that's why the dude that I was talking to, that was one of the reasons he wanted the sessions because of that information. But that's not always going to be something you can open. MIDI has been around since 1983 and it hasn't changed. They've been talking since about 2005, like a new version of midi. I don't think it's out yet, but it's called HD MIDI or HD Protocol, something like that. And it's going to have more features, but it's backwards compatible and all that stuff. Anyway, long story short, MIDI is a classic technology and it seems like they have plans of keeping that around for a while. So that's what I'm investing in. Whenever I send stuff out to mixers and archiving my own stuff because that's what I can open later, that's what they can open. So that's the way I think of that stuff. And I also send out a really good rough mix

Speaker 4 (00:56:17):

That's super huge. Before we talk about the rough mix, let me just add something about MIDI for non-pro tools users, because I've had to do some stuff in Logic and it was very tough to send out tempo tracks and sometimes there's been problems transferring those tempo tracks between songs. And a good way to get around that. I just noticed this is a, somehow this worked is if you're a hard time loading in a tempo map from somebody else on a different DW or vice versa. What you do is create a MIDI track and put a note at the zero point and then a note, any random note past where your music ends, and then export that as a file. And then once you import that into the other DAW, all the tempo information should work out and line up in case things aren't lining up for whatever reason. I've had that happen sometimes.

Speaker 2 (00:57:25):

Yeah. Another backup is to do an audio click, because at least at the bare minimum, if none of the special files, none of the mid data, none of that stuff works at the end of the day. You can just import the audio click and I mean, if you really had to just manually line up the grid to the audio,

Speaker 5 (00:57:47):

Yeah, hopefully you never have to do that. But

Speaker 2 (00:57:50):

Yeah, it's good to get in the habit of having that though, just as a backup.

Speaker 5 (00:57:54):

Yeah. Well, with the way my template's set up, that could be done in a single click.

Speaker 4 (00:57:59):

Totally. I'm wondering about this. I always try to add at least four bars of silence at the beginning of every song for things like what I'm talking about, just putting a single note on the MIDI tracks at the very beginning of the track so that no matter what DAW is importing the midi, that all the tracks are stems so that the MIDI exports as a stem as well. And I think that that's very important. If people think about MIDI tracks as something that needs to be stemmed like audio, I think that makes much more sense. I don't know, have you ever imported MIDI and it just doesn't line up or the tempo data is not attached and it's like, what the fuck is going on?

Speaker 5 (00:58:49):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:58:49):

I tried an experiment once because I've got both logic and pro tools here. I wanted to see for myself for once, where does this get lost in translation? Why is this always a problem and are these people who keep fucking this up stupid

(00:59:06):

And I'm, or am I just being an asshole or do I just not understand? So I took a song, I recorded and mix and Pro tools and I exported the MIDI with the Tempo map, and I just figured I could just load it into logic and it would all be there, but none such luck. It didn't really import the data properly and the MIDI file started where the first note was, but since I didn't have a first note as a STEM at the beginning of the file at the zero point, the MIDI just started at the beginning.

Speaker 5 (00:59:40):

I see what you're saying. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:59:41):

Yeah. So it was all messed up.

Speaker 5 (00:59:44):

That's a good note.

Speaker 4 (00:59:46):

So I've experienced this firsthand of switching dws, and I've seen that the way they interpret MIDI coming in from another DAW can get kind of weird and I don't know why, because MIDI is midi, right?

Speaker 5 (01:00:00):

So as long as you have that marker at the beginning, then you're

Speaker 4 (01:00:02):

Good,

Speaker 5 (01:00:03):

Then it should be fine. That is a good tip. Thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):

You know what the worst is, is when you get a drum, if a band uses program drums and you get a drum midi from fucking Guitar Pro or some shit like that, and you try to drop it in and it's just completely fucked up and it adds all these modifiers and all this stuff, you don't even know what's going on. You're like, why is that dropping out right there? And then you find some modifier that's on after touch or something like that and you're like, what the fuck? It's supposed to just be a bass drum. It's just C one. It blows my mind how complicated importing MIDI can be and how much time I spend personally, like I said, especially the kids who bring in program drums and things like that, just trying to sort out what the hell is what and what's supposed to be routed. Why do you have five China hits on the China thing, but then all of a sudden the note changes for three random hits and then goes back like, what the fuck?

Speaker 4 (01:00:56):

It's strange. Also, I got to say that I have noticed, I've noticed that the tempo is not consistent from DAW to DAW one 30 BPM in Pro tools is not necessarily one 30 BPM in something else.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):

Well, I think what it is is some dolls will show 1 29 0.99999 as one 30.

Speaker 5 (01:01:21):

Oh God. That's disgusting.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):

And so when you import it, it's not the right, I mean, they don't line up. By the time you get to the end of the song, there's an extra two seconds. And it's weird. So

Speaker 4 (01:01:33):

Well, whenever I've imported MIDI from a band's guitar Pro, for instance, to get their pre-pro up on my rig, weird tempos will show up 1 32 0.57982. Do you guys really pick that tempo for this part? So I've just noticed that when you get MIDI from different places, it can be kind of strange. So don't just accept it for what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):

Yeah. Don't trust other people's midi either. At least. I mean, if it was coming from Andrew, I would totally trust it. But if a band is sending me something, the very first step I do with any of the MIDI is clean it up, remove all the bullshit, make sure that the, you'll look at a pattern, a kick pattern, and it looks like it's pretty much on the grid, like 16th notes, and then you zoom in and realize, oh, they just drew it with a pencil and they didn't even snap it to. How does that happen? You can never really trust it.

Speaker 5 (01:02:35):

How does that happen? I just don't understand. It does. I don't get it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):

I have a rule that helps is when you have a band actually in the studio with you and they bring you midi, if they do their production work on a laptop, which at least in my experience is most kids. I say, bring your fucking laptop. Because if you don't bring it

Speaker 5 (01:02:52):

Always, always, and

Speaker 3 (01:02:53):

I import your midi, I am screwed. But I can say, oh, okay, you screwed up in Guitar Pro. Here's how you actually export the midi. Click this, click that. And the kid goes, oh, I didn't know that. And you're like, I will kill.

Speaker 5 (01:03:06):

Yeah, our jobs are really like that movie 51st dates we're like, every band is the same band, but they just lost their memory and they don't know what the fuck they're doing. But you already told 'em how to do it. It could drive someone insane.

Speaker 4 (01:03:22):

Could or has. It does. Sure it has. So I cut you off when you were about to start talking about rough mixes. Yes. But yeah, we talked about MIDI a little longer.

Speaker 5 (01:03:34):

I kind of want you guys as feedback. Lemme just tell you how I feel and then I would love to see what you think. So anytime I'm doing a production, I mean maybe it's just because I am where I am in my career, but when I'm doing something and producing a band, there are a lot of parts in the songs, let's say transition wise. They need to feel a certain way. And so I feel like it's really important to convey that feeling to the mixer, but what is the best way? To me, the best way is to actually do it and show them. So I try to get that kind of stuff in the rough mix, like some kind swells or I don't know when a chorus hits and you want it to pop out a little bit more or how loud a lead is when it comes in or all that stuff. To me, I go through, we're in the studio, we're writing stuff, we're vibing on this stuff, and we're getting it to sound a certain way on purpose, and I want the mixer to kind of copy that feeling, at least for how parts will hit or transition. So that's my logic behind doing a really good rough mix. What do you guys think when you mix other people's stuff? Do you like getting a rough mix? What do you do when you send stuff out? What's been your experience?

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):

Yeah, this is something that Al and I talked about in detail. Basically it comes down to this. I think the mix itself comes out the way it should when a rough mix is involved. Because the mixer, there's two sides of this too. There's people who think a mix comes out better when somebody approaches the song cold

(01:05:19):

And blind. And then there's other people who think that all the time spent between the band and the producer, making that rough mix is kind of the mix. I tend to lead towards the ladder because I know that I wasn't there during the session. I didn't have all the conversations required to figure out how loud that lead should be and does it fight with the vocals? And when you listen to the rough mix, you're going to hear what you can improve, but you're also going to hear what they sort of set up as the scene,

Speaker 5 (01:05:53):

What they envisioned.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):

Yeah, what they envisioned, originally envisioned. And that's super important to the mix because you're not going to take a hundred files and put 'em in your DAW and figure that out on your own. The only way you're going to figure it out is to hear how they wanted it to be, and then your job is to facilitate that and make it better.

Speaker 5 (01:06:14):

Right? Yeah. That's how I look at it. I feel like when I was sending stuff out for, I don't want to talk about this too much because I probably already know what you guys are going to say, but when we were getting rough mixes for the Ghost Insides new album, which comes out November 17th, called Dear Youth that I produced with Jeremy McKinnon. We were getting test mixes for that from a bunch of different mixers. And I sent out what I thought was a great rough mix, and I could tell when I got the mixes back that nobody listened to it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):

Oh my gosh,

Speaker 5 (01:06:50):

Nobody. And I'm just blown away. Transitions are completely wrong. A vocal will be way louder than it should have been, and a lead will be way quieter or missing completely, just totally ruining the vibe. And I feel like most mixers that we worked with, at least for that stuff, I mean Randy Staub was one of them. They just didn't get the vibe. They didn't match anything at all, and there were definitely parts that were worse. That's

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):

Disappointing.

Speaker 5 (01:07:27):

Yes. I don't understand it. What do you guys think about that? Why

Speaker 4 (01:07:31):

If someone like Andrew is sending you a rough mix or any producer of note is sending you a rough mix, you should probably listen to it. Probably a reason they're sending it to you. And I think that these days, especially with the fact that bands do pre-pro on their own and do synth work on their own, and a lot of 'em have a guy who can do some kind of decent stuff, maybe good at electronics or whatever, bands will have a vision for how they want things to be mixed. And to ignore that is to ignore the band's vision, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):

Absolutely. I think it helps to, when you sit down with the band and you're going to mix their record, I always like to just get on the phone and be like, okay, what do you guys want this to sound like before I listen to any roughs? Because I kind of take the rough mixing process more towards the end of the mix. So when I hear the tracks, I want to get inspired by it, listen to the song and be like, okay, I'm going off that field of that track. What inspires me? What am I hearing? What am I feeling? And then as I've got everything framed and kind of like, I want this drum sound and this and that, then I kind of go in and I listen to the rough and be like, okay, what kind of balances are they looking for? Are they guitars up band? Are they a bass and drums band? Are they a vocals? And everything else needs to be completely an audible band. And that's where, like I said, I like to get my basic framing and EQ and stuff like that and just the vibe of the track really first because if you hear the rough mix, it can influence the decisions you make. And I don't know, sometimes I feel like that can be detrimental as well as, I mean there's the positive side

Speaker 4 (01:09:10):

I guess. Point is though that you're still using it, whether they're using it at the beginning to set the mix up or you're using it at the end to then refine things to match their vision, you're still using it. It's not like

Speaker 5 (01:09:21):

The point is you should use it. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:09:23):

Totally.

Speaker 5 (01:09:24):

At least I think so. Otherwise,

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):

Why was it made?

Speaker 5 (01:09:28):

I know. Why do you think I sent it? And then when bands don't send it, I get really mad because I'm like, what? There's no notes, no rough mix. What am I going off of here? I have no idea what this is supposed to sound like at all.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):

Yeah, I totally agree. There'll

Speaker 5 (01:09:43):

Be a band that doesn't even speak English, so the only thing I can do is listen to a rough mix. Really. They can't communicate what they want to me. Please. Why are you doing this? To me,

Speaker 3 (01:09:56):

Mixing foreign bands is so challenging because, well, for a multitude of reasons, but the communication and language barrier is one, because sometimes they'll say something and then you'll give them what that you think they want. They're like, no, no, no, no, this is wrong. It's supposed to be like this. It meant this. And you're like

Speaker 5 (01:10:10):

Said the opposite.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):

Oh, I guess I could see how that could mean that. Oh, damnit,

Speaker 5 (01:10:14):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):

I mean, it's never a big deal. I mean, some people make such a big deal out of revisions and balances and things like that.

Speaker 5 (01:10:20):

People need to chill out.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):

They don't understand that you can just go boop, boop, boop, poop on the faders and it takes two minutes and you're way more in their head. You have to give them something to go off of at first to get a, okay, guys, here's where I'm at. What do you want to hear? I can take it any way, but I've got a solid mix now I need to know what your preferences are. This

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):

Is another important part of being organized is when you have your session set up in such a way that you can actually approach notes in, I guess a sane way. Because I know how notes can drive you insane, but when your session is clean and fucking organized and people are telling you to turn this up and turn this down and fix this, fix that. If your session is organized and everything, it's going to be really easy. And that's super important, at least for the final product.

Speaker 5 (01:11:15):

And especially with importing track data, if you have the same name tracks from session to session, I know some people like Will Putney record everything in one session for an album, but whenever you're importing between session to session, if you don't have the same names of the tracks, that could be really, really annoying

Speaker 4 (01:11:36):

And

Speaker 5 (01:11:36):

A big mess to figure out.

Speaker 4 (01:11:38):

It can take a long time. I got to say also that mixed notes and making that a more pleasant experience for everybody. There's ways to get the band to communicate the mixed notes or for you to communicate mixed notes to a mixer that make life way easier. And I think when you're dealing with a band, it's important to state how you want them upfront and to have a good way of going about things. So

Speaker 5 (01:12:12):

Yeah, communication is huge

Speaker 4 (01:12:14):

Too. Well, one thing, but you got to show some people how to do it. You can't just tell them because they won't necessarily understand. So for instance, I will, I tell people, don't text me mixed notes. Mixed notes have to come from one person only and they have to all come at once for a song. It's not like one day you give me half the mixed notes for that song and then two days later, oh this and three days later, oh, that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):

Oh, that's horrible.

Speaker 4 (01:12:48):

Oh

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):

My God, I hate that.

Speaker 4 (01:12:50):

So yeah, they have to come from one main contact. They have to come at the same time, meaning they listen to it long enough to get their notes actually together. And three, I like to do it in Google Docs because I've noticed that if you don't do it in Google Docs, you end up with email chains that are like 70 emails long and you miss some or you forget certain things because it's like, you remember what I said about the kick drum like five emails ago? Did you do that? It's like, what? So yeah, if you are in a Google Doc, then the mixed notes are there. You check 'em off as you do 'em in real time. Even write notes about the notes. I don't understand what you mean. Please rephrase. I

Speaker 5 (01:13:42):

Just had a note. Nightmare. Oh my God,

Speaker 3 (01:13:44):

I think that's a great idea. I really like the idea of having a Google Docs because you can, Hey you guys so many times you get a mixed note that's completely undefined and not clear. It doesn't make sense. Turn up Steve's vocals and you don't know the band. You're just the mixer.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):

It's not labeled as Steve.

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):

Yeah, who the hell is Steve? I mean, there's three guys singing and they're all kind of sound the same. So who's Steve? You didn't give me a time. You just turned Steve's voice up. We want it to be lo-fi here. Well, great.

Speaker 4 (01:14:14):

Yeah. Well, another thing I do with that, as far as the Google Doc goes, I take it a step further and I will first of all organize their whole album on the doc. I'll put every single song on there so that they don't need to try to make an outline or whatever, so they don't need to worry about trying to organize the document because sometimes these skills escape band people. Then I will add sample notes at the top. So I'll tell them that if they want me to understand what they're saying, this is the best way to do it. So I'll say time section of the song instrument, or if it's a general note, then put general at the front, and it's a lot easier if they're like 1 0 8 snares need to come up for the blast beat or whatever. That's way easier to understand and very easy to execute rather than something about the snare just doesn't feel right. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:15:23):

I'm sure you're aware that that snare is a little bit

Speaker 4 (01:15:26):

Off. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:15:27):

It concerns me greatly. That snare drum isn't quite how I envisioned it.

Speaker 4 (01:15:32):

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:15:34):

I think I'm in denial about bands and their knowledge. Sometimes I just think, oh, they'll figure out what they need to do for the notes and then I get scarred, and so I just have to go back to explaining, because sometimes you'll get along with a band really well, you know what I mean? And you think, oh, they get it, and I don't know, it's just so annoying. It's that 51st dates thing, man, I just feel like it drives me so crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:16:02):

Whatever. When we say being organized, we're not just talking about what order your tracks are in. We're talking about the whole business, the whole thing. How do you handle notes? How do you communicate with the band? How do you communicate ideas from the song to other people? All those kinds of things are wrapped into a big organizational package,

Speaker 5 (01:16:28):

Even

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):

Down to when you wake up, how do you get to the studio? How does the band get to the studio? Where are they staying? All that stuff. And really will change outcome of the project for sure. Super important.

Speaker 4 (01:16:42):

And it's up to you really, man. You can't expect, I don't know. I've fallen victim two to expecting the band to

Speaker 5 (01:16:50):

Just know certain things,

Speaker 4 (01:16:52):

To know certain things, and I now blame, I totally blame myself for that mistake because I have definitely caused myself problems by assuming that they would just know a certain thing. So I feel like it's on us as the guys running the sessions to have all that stuff figured out and just assume that they don't know anything.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):

I mean, it would be nice to be paid just to be creative, but you're being paid to be a lot more than that. Yeah. There's no escaping that the label is going to hire you and pay you because they know the band is basically a bunch of children running around with their heads on fire and that you're going to be the parents to whip them into shape.

Speaker 4 (01:17:38):

Even in a session full of 40 year olds that I just had here recently. It's the same thing. I feel like that parent child relationship between producer and band is true. It's not just with 18 year olds. It is what it is. I'm wondering also, if we could talk about this for a second, because I guess a lot of people are confused about this. They don't understand what, well, let me rephrase. A lot of people don't understand how to communicate with a mastering engineer, and I know that, Joe, I know that you master your own stuff, Joel, do you master your own stuff?

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):

Yeah, I hate mastering engineers. They always screw my shit up.

Speaker 4 (01:18:27):

Okay. Andrew, I know that you've had that problem of having your stuff mutilated.

Speaker 5 (01:18:33):

Yeah. Yeah. I am in search of new methods recently.

Speaker 4 (01:18:38):

I think we all have had our stuff mutilated at some point, but I just want to cover real quick. I see that you and I have talked about this before too, is how if you're going to be using a mastering engineer, how to get them their stuff in a way that makes life easier for them. And I think that it's important to just note that mastering is not a creative process. And have you ever had a band send mixed notes to a mastering guy?

Speaker 5 (01:19:15):

No, I haven't.

Speaker 4 (01:19:16):

I did once. Just a quick side note, I was sending a mix to

Speaker 5 (01:19:22):

Actually, yes, that did happen. I just remembered.

Speaker 4 (01:19:24):

Okay, so yeah, people don't understand what mastering is or what.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):

Well, I've had people try to, and this drives me crazy, that'll be like instead of sending you just a stereo wave file, can I send you the kick snare toms and symbols, and then the bass and then the guitars, and I'm like, wait, are you paying me to mix this or master this because I don't want that much control.

Speaker 4 (01:19:51):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):

That's

Speaker 4 (01:19:54):

Kind of fucked up. The situation I was talking about was mixed a record, and then we were getting masters back from the dude to decide a direction to go on, and we were on an email chain, and the band writes to him at two minutes, 30 seconds, can we have a crowd chant in this park? We want it to sound super epic. So

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):

This is amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:20:27):

I quit. I couldn't believe it, but it just goes to show people don't know what a mastering engineer is.

Speaker 5 (01:20:35):

I've gotten mixed notes like that though before where there won't be group vocals and they'll tell me, Hey, it would be cool if you added them here. Yeah, let me go outside right now. Call you're producing. Lemme go out. Yeah, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. You send them and I'll mix 'em in. That's it.

Speaker 4 (01:20:51):

Well, that's amazing. By any chance, have you ever indulged a request like that?

Speaker 2 (01:20:58):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Depends on what it is. If

Speaker 4 (01:21:00):

It's a good idea, and you can do it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:02):

If someone is like, Hey, can you add a bass drop here? That's not hard to do, so just fucking put it on there. But when they're like, Hey, can you go through the whole song and add choirs? You want fucking strings and stuff? I'm like, no.

Speaker 5 (01:21:17):

Yeah, nothing that's really involved. But I have had a band, some bands were, when I first started doing mastering, I would get really terrible mixes from bands and there was nothing I could do really to make it sound any better, so I would just add bass drops or something. And they were really excited, really excited.

Speaker 3 (01:21:41):

Bass drop mastering. It's a new

Speaker 5 (01:21:44):

Trend.

Speaker 3 (01:21:44):

Yeah,

Speaker 5 (01:21:44):

I thought it was so amazing that I could do that.

Speaker 4 (01:21:47):

Well, I guess the thing with making a mastering engineer happy and also making a label happy and making your own life easier is that if you send different options to your mastering engineer, then you can counter whatever issues come up without having to rebalance your song generally. And that's having a template like the one we've been talking about, and maybe even adding in, vocal up, vocal down,

Speaker 5 (01:22:23):

Bounces

Speaker 4 (01:22:23):

To your template, all that. You can then send that to your mastering guy, bounce everything out at once, and then he gets instrumentals, vocal up, vocal down, drum up, whatever. And that can usually solve all the problems and all the errors in translation and also solve the bands. I mean the labels needs.

Speaker 5 (01:22:50):

Yeah. Yeah. I actually, I was definitely thinking about putting a vocal up in this template.

Speaker 4 (01:22:56):

Well, that's a common mix to deliver to a label is a vocal up, so it makes sense to me to have that in a template

Speaker 5 (01:23:08):

For sure.

Speaker 4 (01:23:09):

Also, one of the things that comes up in mastering a lot is what level do the drums need to be unmastered? Sometimes if you don't have your mastering chain figured out on your own, sometimes it can be a little bit of a crapshoot. You don't know. Who knows what the mastering guy's going to do to it? Is the snare going to disappear or not? And so sending him two versions to work off of what you think sounds right and maybe then a version with drums up a DB or kick and snare up a DB or something. That's very helpful. At least give him the option depending on how crazy he wants to go.

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):

That would be kind of complicated to set up, wouldn't

Speaker 3 (01:23:53):

It? You could turn in a reference master too to avoid that.

Speaker 5 (01:23:56):

No, all these vocal up, drum up, that's all really easy. That's just another audio track and another bus and that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):

Yeah, it's simple.

Speaker 5 (01:24:07):

That's all you got to do.

Speaker 2 (01:24:09):

What were you saying about a reference master, Joel?

Speaker 3 (01:24:12):

I mean, for example, if I know somebody else is going to master my stuff, I always mix into a mastering chain that I'm comfortable with, so I know how the levels are going to translate better, but you can always do a reference master. Here's my master. Okay. Beat the crap out of it. This is kind of like what we want this to sound like in terms of like, are you clipping or are you limiting, for example, to get loudness and the different downstream effects that those create? Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:24:35):

I agree with that. This is something that's happened to me a couple of times, and I want to know if it's happened to you guys. I don't like it when a band says like, oh, hey Joey, we want to get you to master this song. Here it is. And then I send it in. But unbeknownst to me, they hired three or four other people to master the same song, and then either one of the four guys gets the job and they didn't tell anybody that that was going on. If you're going to do shootouts, at least tell that sucks. At least tell people about it. That's

Speaker 3 (01:25:10):

Such a dick move. I dropped the band a few weeks ago for doing that to me. I sent in the first mix and he's like, oh, yeah, by the way, I've got four other guys doing a test mix. I'm like, had I known you were giving me a test mix of one, I would've charged you three times as much money because it's a waste of my time to do a test mix at the deal that I'm giving you. And two, thanks for telling me, asshole, I just wasted a half a day of my time and now I don't even know if I'm going to get the job. Whereas I could have sat here and we could have worked out a mix through maybe two or three more revisions that you'd be loving. That irritates the shit out of me. I literally just turned those down immediately when I find out somebody,

Speaker 5 (01:25:47):

A paid test mix is the way to go,

Speaker 2 (01:25:50):

For sure.

Speaker 5 (01:25:51):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):

Do you experience that Al? Have you ever had competition things without knowing about it?

Speaker 4 (01:25:58):

Yeah, all the time. Well, not all the time, but it definitely has happened. I mean, that exact same story that Joel just told has happened to me. And then also say that there's a band that you're working with where they have the one guy in the band who wishes he had your job. Oh, God. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, okay. Oh, yeah. So I've had strange ish kind of experiences where I wasn't told that the band had always intended on trying to have the guitar player mix the record, but they just wanted to see if my mix would be better, but they weren't going to tell me about that. Yeah, I've definitely had that happen. It's not cool. Well,

Speaker 3 (01:26:55):

Here's the thing. Bands and artists have to realize is that if you're hiring a professional, you could be very, very, very busy and have a lot of people that want to throw you a lot of money for your time, and you get a new project. Yeah. Do you want to do a mix on this? Yeah, absolutely. I've got time because paying and you hear the band, you like the song, but then all of a sudden they tell you, oh, yeah, well, this is a mix off by the way, and every mixer is going to turn in one revision. And then you're like, well, dude, I could have, instead of sitting there and speculating, I could have made the same rate or maybe even more mixing another song from somebody who wanted to pay me instead of wasting that time. So it's kind of really frustrating for guys sitting in our shoes because it's just not fair to us because just be upfront, be honest, be like, Hey, we're going to do a test mix. Are you interested? Yes or no?

Speaker 4 (01:27:41):

Well, especially if you're more than one song in. Yeah. Oh my God. I would kill.

(01:27:49):

Definitely had that happen. But let's, because we've been on here for a while, and I think there's one more topic we should cover on this whole organization thing. We haven't mentioned it, but I have seen people's lives get ruined like this. And I'm really, really thankful that this hasn't been a problem for me in over 10 years. But I did fuck up a session once for a band by not backing up properly and not archiving my files correctly. And maybe 10 years ago it was a little bit harder to get it done and all the ways that you can now, but now there's no excuse. There's absolutely no excuse right now. Every single one of my computers, not only do I back up my sessions manually to an external hard drive, but also they back themselves up to a cloud backup at 4:00 AM every night, every computer including my laptop. And also I have an internal drive in these computers that backs up everything to this drive every night. And so between those three methods, I never lose anything ever.

Speaker 5 (01:29:10):

Yeah, that's important. I think I've had to actually dig out an archive only one time, fortunately, actually. What about you guys? What's the worst losing session data that's ever happened to you?

Speaker 4 (01:29:27):

Lightning strike,

Speaker 2 (01:29:30):

Lightning struck. I have an interesting one. I went to a studio to record drums, and they were all Mac based, and I wasn't using any of my computers. I was just using all their stuff. So anyway, we go about recording the whole record, doing all the drums, everything looks fine, everything's great, and put it on a hard drive. And I think that process of actually putting it from their computer onto my hard drive and then taking that home somewhere in that process

Speaker 5 (01:30:02):

Was this pro tools, by any chance,

Speaker 2 (01:30:04):

It was cubase to Cubase, but Mac to pc. So anyway, I take it home. I open up some songs and there's entire sections of songs that are just not there on some drum tracks. So the kick would be all the way through the whole song snare all the way through the whole song. But then the room mic is just missing the verse, and I'm like, what the fuck?

Speaker 5 (01:30:29):

Damn,

Speaker 2 (01:30:30):

What would even cause this? So the solution to the problem was to hit up the studio who had deleted everything already.

Speaker 5 (01:30:40):

What

Speaker 2 (01:30:42):

Hit up the studio that deleted everything, already run this program that recovers fucking deleted files, deleted files that are still magnetically on the hard drive or whatever, and dig through all of those audio files looking at date and time. I figured out what was missing and where I had to grab those little takes and put 'em into the song manually. Wow. But dude, that was so lucky by the skin of my teeth. I'll say that. If you aren't backing up, that's just fucking scary. The studio actually didn't back up either, so we pulled that off without a backup. We were just using that software that recovers the raw data.

Speaker 4 (01:31:26):

You're lucky. You are very, very lucky. Well, the thing is with backing up, the reason to do it to a cloud and have it automated is because there are some situations where you won't get that lucky. Like what I was just saying about the lightning strike, it took place at my old studio in Atlanta when I was backing up. So this was in 2004, 2005. So I had my two backup drives connected, and I was backing up to both of them, and lightning struck and everything exploded, and so I lost some gear, but also everything on those drives, the drives were fried. If I had been sinking to a cloud backup, then I would've at least kept all my files.

Speaker 5 (01:32:23):

I actually am doing it to a cloud now because of you. Good. By the way,

Speaker 4 (01:32:27):

Crash plan,

Speaker 5 (01:32:27):

Cloud

Speaker 3 (01:32:28):

Service, are you using

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):

To

Speaker 5 (01:32:29):

Backup

Speaker 3 (01:32:29):

Crash

Speaker 4 (01:32:29):

Plan?

Speaker 2 (01:32:30):

Crash

Speaker 5 (01:32:30):

Plan?

Speaker 4 (01:32:31):

Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 2 (01:32:32):

Basically, for anyone that doesn't understand what the concept here, a cloud is like a data center that's in a fucking fortified building somewhere that's got backup generators. So if the power ever goes out, the whole data center just comes back online instantly. And I'm sure that they also have data redundancy and lots of backups of their backups because they're a backup company and that's what they do. So it's huge to use that service because all of the headaches of having to worry about the stability of that system are gone. All you have to do is just use your internet connection. I'm not so lucky. I live out in the country. I'm using a hotspot for my internet, so I can't use a cloud backup right now.

Speaker 5 (01:33:25):

Oh, shit.

Speaker 2 (01:33:26):

That's scary. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:33:27):

Well, you can always hook up a drive and Well, you'd have to do it manually and then unplug it. That sucks.

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):

I'm thinking about switching to, what is it called, network backup, something like that.

Speaker 5 (01:33:41):

Yeah, I actually, I had a server that I had my friend build for me that I had in my studio, and all my stuff would back up to the server in the studio, but even that was still plugged into an outlet in the studio, even though it was way on the other side. But I guess it's better to have it at a different location.

Speaker 4 (01:34:06):

Sorry to interrupt you. No, I just got excited. It bears mentioning that Andrew and I both live in Orlando, which is the lightning capital of the United States. So this electricity issue is very real. People's stuff can get fried between the months of April and September when the storms are going and you have a lightning storm almost every single day. It's a real consideration. But the thing is, even if you don't have a cloud backup, at least if you have both your manual backups and then one sort of automatic backup like a server or an internal drive with time machine for Mac users, that's very important.

Speaker 2 (01:34:59):

And at the very least, a flashback because that flash can be unplugged.

Speaker 4 (01:35:06):

And also I have this program called Carbon Copy Cloner that everybody should check out. What Carbon Copy Cloner does is when you are copying files, like say you're going to your manual backup, it will sync. It'll sync what you have on your main drive to your backup drive. So the actual copy time is way less. It's not going to keep on copying stuff that's already there.

Speaker 2 (01:35:41):

Oh, cool. That's a really cool program. Is that for Mac and pc?

Speaker 4 (01:35:47):

I have no idea, but it's called Carbon Copy Cloner. You

Speaker 2 (01:35:51):

Have to check that out.

Speaker 4 (01:35:53):

Yeah. What a cool idea, right?

Speaker 2 (01:35:54):

Yeah. There's an old program called Norton Ghost or something like that, and it had a utility built into it where you could just copy the zeros and ones of the hard drive, but not quite as fancy as what you're talking about. If you wanted to do it multiple times, it would just start from scratch every time. So that's cool that somebody finally figured out a way to, what is that called? Isn't it

Speaker 4 (01:36:22):

Just sinking?

Speaker 2 (01:36:23):

What's the word?

Speaker 5 (01:36:25):

Yes. It usually adds

Speaker 2 (01:36:25):

To it.

Speaker 5 (01:36:26):

Usually. I mean, I've known it as sinking. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:36:30):

Yeah. It's S sinking. I think that's what it's called.

Speaker 5 (01:36:34):

CrashPlan does the same thing.

Speaker 4 (01:36:35):

Yes, it does.

Speaker 5 (01:36:36):

Yeah. Whenever I first upload all my stuff, it took me about a week.

Speaker 4 (01:36:40):

Oh shit. Yeah, same here.

Speaker 5 (01:36:43):

And then now it only runs for a half hour or an hour every night, and that's it.

Speaker 4 (01:36:49):

Yeah, it is literally only

Speaker 5 (01:36:51):

Putting the new stuff up.

Speaker 4 (01:36:52):

Yep. Anything that's changed or whatever. So I feel like CrashPlan is one of the most valuable services that I'm paying for out of all the,

Speaker 5 (01:37:01):

It's so cheap too. Yeah, it's unlimited storage, by the way. What does the cost unlimited? What is it like $5 a month or less?

Speaker 4 (01:37:10):

Something like that. It's no excuse level of cheap. Basically the cost is no excuse basically. Basically free. Well, I mean, lots of people will make excuses. I can't go out and buy drives or because I don't have the money or I can't afford some expensive cloud service. It's like, well, dude, it is $4 a month. I just went and looked. Yes, $4 a month. You got to get that.

Speaker 5 (01:37:43):

Just don't buy a soda every once in a while and you'll be able to afford it. Done.

Speaker 4 (01:37:49):

Yeah. Forgo to Cokes, you'll be fine.

Speaker 3 (01:37:54):

Oh boy. That's a trade off. I don't know about that one.

Speaker 2 (01:37:57):

Okay. We've got a question from Daniel Joseph Bush, and he asks, it seems like Andrew uses a lot of guitar compression, but it doesn't sound weird. Can you explain more about that?

Speaker 5 (01:38:09):

Yes. It's actually not a lot of compression, but it might seem like that it's really easy to overdo compression on guitars. The way I like to do it is just enough so that say after a really short gap, as soon as you play the guitar, you hear this nice little like explosion of the guitar just for a few milliseconds. There's an attack on it, if you know what I mean. And if you put too much compression on it, I'm talking about if you're putting over four DB or, I mean, even four DB is a lot for what I'm talking about. It's just going to sound like a pop or something. You got to make sure you keep it under four DB of compression, and you got to make sure you're not compressing the low end because that can make guitars completely lose their beef. But I'll use side chaining to avoid compressing the low end for things like that.

Speaker 4 (01:39:12):

Just to take that a step further, because I get asked about side chaining all the time, that's like a big myth, not a myth. It's just a big mystery to people out there.

Speaker 5 (01:39:26):

I know why It's a mystery. It can be complicated. I think the word side chaining when I say it is I'm using it. I could be using it in a couple different ways.

Speaker 4 (01:39:35):

Same here.

Speaker 5 (01:39:36):

Now, please guys, don't lose respect for me. But in Pro Tools, they have a built-in compressor and it has side chain filter built into it where it has a high pass and low pass. So you can choose what frequencies. It's almost like a multi-band compressor. So you can choose which frequencies it's actually compressing. It's a really simple version, but that is a basic side chain. You can also use a side chain by routing, let's say the kick drum. Let's talk about electronic music for a second. So like you say, you have a synth and a kick drum, and you want the synth to pump. Every time the kick drum hits, you would select, or you would send the kick drum out, maybe on the send track of Pro Tools, you would select which bus it was going out to, and then on the plugin you would select the key input, which is what it's called, and you would be able to select the trigger

Speaker 2 (01:40:32):

Effectively.

Speaker 5 (01:40:33):

Yeah, the trigger also. And you'd be able to use that to compress, say, the synth track. So the synth track would have the compressor on it, but you would send the kick into the compressor that's on the track of the synth, and every time the kick hits, it's compressing the synth in the certain way that you want it to compress. And this can go, people use it for snare drums across a master or something like that. But if you do something that extreme, you're going to have to make sure that it's really light, otherwise it's going to sound crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:41:12):

So as far as guitars go, can you elaborate on how you would

Speaker 5 (01:41:16):

Yeah, the side chaining for guitars? So I would probably compress everything above. Let's say, I don't know, 500 hertz or so, and there's some flexibility there, but I would compress everything above 500 hertz where the attack and stuff of the guitar is 500 up. So that's the part that I would actually use to compress with not the low end, because I like when you have chugs, it's nice for those to kind of, sometimes they get louder and it sounds good. So if you're compressing that low end, you're squashing the guitars and it'll almost sound like you took the low end out. So you want to make sure that can still go through.

Speaker 2 (01:42:03):

Cool. Okay. I got a question from Seth Renick. Sorry if I pronounced your last name wrong. He asks, at what point in the recording process does Andrew start thinking about layering and harmonizing vocals, and how does that affect the way he approaches the rest of the project? Has he found himself in a situation where a project had to be restarted or rethought because once the vocals came into play, they changed the structure and feel of the song to something that wasn't necessarily expected?

Speaker 5 (01:42:33):

Yeah, this is a great question. Vocals are a huge topic. I did do a two day class in Creative Live about vocals, and I kind of wish it was a three day class because there were some things I couldn't get to. But as far as vocals go, the way I look at vocals, especially when we're talking about melodic vocals, to me, a song is good. If it's super basic, say you have the chord progression and the vocal and it's strong. If both of those two things are good, then you start adding stuff around that, and that's how you have a really solid song. So I start thinking about layering after we've gotten a great melody, great lyrics and all that stuff, because until you have that stuff in place, it's not going to feel right. So after I put that stuff in there, then I add the magic is what I call it. But I haven't had to restart anything because I try to think of it from the start. And that's why I do pre-production with bands and writing sometimes from the beginning. And if they did have something written, and let's say it is a little bit further along into the project, I'll just rewrite the chord progression or something. It usually doesn't end up being a big deal.

Speaker 2 (01:43:53):

Another part of being organized is being able to, if you do have to redo a chorus, being organized allows you to just fucking delete the whole thing and plug it back in if your session is set up to do that. So it's not necessarily as crazy of a scenario as you might be thinking it is, Seth. I mean, I've definitely gotten to the point where the song is like 80% done and we just redo a whole fucking part of the song, so it's not that crazy.

Speaker 5 (01:44:24):

Yeah, good question though. I think that's something a lot of people should think about more actually than they would actually come out with some good music.

Speaker 2 (01:44:34):

Well, that about does it. I want to thank you for coming on here and just being open and honest with us. I think we really enjoyed it. It's been a pleasure. Thanks guys. Thank you, Andrew.

Speaker 1 (01:44:44):

Thank you so much, Andrew. See you around. Be Unstoppable. Recording Machine Podcast is brought to you by Creative Live, the world's best online classroom for creative professionals with glasses 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 Proton Pedals, the tone weapon for guitar experts everywhere. Go to proton pedals do com to take your tone to the next level. To ask us questions, suggest topics and interact, visit rm academy com and subscribe today.