JESSE CANNON: The Loudness War, Navigating the New Music Business, Working with Ross Robinson

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Creative Live, the world's best online classroom for creative professionals with classes on songwriting, engineering, mixing and mastering. The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is also brought to you by isotope crafting innovative audio products that inspire and enable people to be creative. And now your host, Joey Sturgis. Joel Wanasek, and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 3 (00:00:23):

How's everybody doing? I'm doing great. Trying to readjust to a morning schedule, which is always strange.

(00:00:32):

Yeah, you guys are night owls.

Speaker 2 (00:00:34):

Joel, I don't understand how you do it. I've been trying to do this my entire life, meaning get up at the same time every day, go to sleep at the same time every day. I just don't know how that's done. How do you do it?

Speaker 3 (00:00:50):

Well, there's two things I could recommend to you. First is children, which,

Speaker 2 (00:00:55):

Well, that's not happening, so recommend something else.

Speaker 3 (00:01:01):

So now that we scratch that one off the list, which was going to be obvious, they say if you want to reset your biological clock how it's supposed to be, what you should do is you should go outside and go camping for a few days and turn off all of your technology That way you'll go to sleep when it gets dark out and when the sun comes up, then you'll wake up and you'll reset your body's natural rhythms.

Speaker 2 (00:01:25):

Have you done that?

Speaker 3 (00:01:26):

I have not, but I have kids, so they force me to get up at the same time every day because of daycare scheduling, so I don't have a choice. So it's four 30 up in bed by nine o'clock every night.

Speaker 4 (00:01:35):

Yeah, I think once you get into a rhythm, especially if you have other people around you to support your rhythm, it works really well. But if you don't have that, I think melatonin is a pretty safe way to go to sleep.

Speaker 2 (00:01:49):

Yeah, I like melatonin, but I can only take it for about two or three nights and then it doesn't work anymore though. I remember being on tour with a few bands that were anti-drug but pro supplement who would take 15 milligrams of melatonin, which is maybe three times above the recommended dose, and they said that they never had any problems going to sleep after flying in from Australia or anything crazy like that. But I'm nervous about taking super high doses of stuff.

Speaker 4 (00:02:24):

Oh yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:02:26):

Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (00:02:27):

I never do anything like more than recommended on the label.

Speaker 2 (00:02:31):

Yeah, it kind of freaks me out, so I get it. Of course, three times the recommended dose makes you sleep, but I mean seriously. Of course it does, but hopefully it doesn't make you sleep forever.

Speaker 4 (00:02:49):

I know you guys, I think Joel, you do a lot of mastering. I'm not sure if you do Al, but not really. Do you like to master early in the day or later in the day?

Speaker 3 (00:03:00):

I prefer in the morning and I do a ton of mastering, so I like to, well, I'm always up in the morning. I'm in a morning person to begin with, so for me it's like I'm up, I'm ready to go. I'm fresh. My ears aren't burned out and I'm not irritated and pissed off yet, so I like to do it first thing in the morning.

Speaker 4 (00:03:16):

Yeah, I actually ended up doing it at night a lot, but I do find that the next day you wake up, you listen to everything and you have a fresh ear on it, and one of the very first phenomenons that I noticed when I was in the studio in the early days was the times you'd fall asleep on the couch or whatever, and then you wake up the next day and you'd go into the studio and you hit play on whatever you were working on last night and it automatically sounds higher in pitch and faster. Have you guys ever noticed that?

Speaker 2 (00:03:55):

Yeah, definitely. And that's actually why I was thinking about the whole sleep thing because I feel like anytime that I've had better results with mixing or mastering, I've gotten a lot of sleep the night before because exactly what you're just talking about starts happening at the end of the night. You do start hearing things slower and lower because your perception is just gone. Do you guys find that your ears die off earlier when you're mastering than mixing? It

Speaker 3 (00:04:28):

Depends on much eq for example. Okay. I was just mastering something this morning when I got in and the mix that was sent over was absolute horseshit. I mean it was terrible and literally every single instrument that came in, so for example, like a vocal or a new guitar part, I feel like it needed to be eqd individually, so I found myself notching out all these little frequencies. I'm messing with the phase too much and I blew up my ears in five minutes and then I had to leave. I went to the doctors, I came back and I was able to restart, but I had to turn everything off before I started because once you screw that balance up and you get too much phase manipulation, I don't do well with that. What about you guys?

Speaker 4 (00:05:07):

I think for me, I'm listening a lot more intently and so I think my ear fatigue happens a lot quicker for sure during mastering, but I'm not necessarily listening to, I think in a mixing session though, you're listening to the song way longer than you would in a mastering session. At least for me, if I'm mixing something, I might be listening to the same song for two hours, but if I'm mastering a song, I might only hear it for 10 to 15 minutes.

Speaker 2 (00:05:37):

Do you normally do just single songs?

Speaker 4 (00:05:40):

Yeah, well, it kind of depends. If I'm getting a mastering project that I had no other involvement with, it usually is a single, but occasionally I get the whole album and what I'll do is I'll just hit play from the beginning and just let it go and just make adjustments as it plays so it's not as fatiguing because most albums are like 40 minutes and it's rare that I would listen to it more than

Speaker 2 (00:06:08):

Once. The thing that I personally don't enjoy about mastering, and this is probably my own personal psychosis, but I always feel like when I'm approaching the end of a mix that my perception and my judgment is gone. And I've also noticed that my favorite mixes of my own, our mixes, that by the end I totally hate. So with that said, I'm really, really uncomfortable about adding the finishing touches when I'm in the head space of hating my own work and being ready to pass it off. So that's why I always giving it to somebody else precisely because of the whole mental and ear fatigue thing.

Speaker 4 (00:07:00):

It

Speaker 2 (00:07:00):

Doesn't seem like that affects you guys quite the same way you guys master all your own stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:07:06):

I think it's a workflow difference because Joey and I mix into a mastering chain and it's kind of part of the sounds that we use. He's ITB and I do mine OTB and the chains that we've both come up with, because I'm familiar with his and I don't know if he knows mine or not, but they're chains that have been built over years and through mastering many, many songs and it's kind of like once you have that chain, you kind of just mix into it and it's part of the sound like it's baked. I don't know. I personally have a weird feeling towards mastering engineers because every time I've ever hired one and I've hired many of them, I always feel like it never comes back and impresses me. I'm always like, oh, that's it, come on. I always want something more. I always feel let down.

Speaker 4 (00:07:53):

I try not to make it a separate process, at least when it's for myself, but for other people obviously it's just a step. But for me, since I've had such a large involvement in the production and the mix, the mastering is kind of just making it loud and balancing the frequencies, but that's it. The other stuff is usually taken care of already.

Speaker 2 (00:08:16):

Well, I understand why you guys would dislike working with traditional mastering guys because they are just coming in at the very tail end of the process and typically it's a one go type of a deal, or maybe you get one set of revisions and that's it, or you have to pay all over again. One thing though that's different in my experience is that some of the mastering guys I've worked with, I've worked with so many times that they do, I wouldn't say endless revisions, but they become part of the process. The very first mix that I have, I send to them and to the band so that they can start working up a master immediately and that way we're tweaking with that in mind and when I make mix tweaks, I'll send it to the guy and he'll send back other versions. So I'm preempting that whole problem of getting something back and hating it by the time the finals are being mastered, we know exactly what it's going to sound like. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:09:29):

I think that's pretty cool. It's kind of like a preemptive process and that you've worked out and it's like any relationship as you get to work with somebody over time you're going to get to know 'em and they're going to be able to predict what you like and vice versa. So I've never gotten that far with a mastering guy. Usually they send me the first pass on something and I'm just like, no, sorry, I could do that myself. I've just always had such high expectations and have wanted to be wowed by something and no matter how big the names are now given, I've never had my stuff mastered by Ted Jensen or an absolute legend, but I've always that innate want to find the guy that just I send him the files and they send it back and I go, holy shit. Now that's what I've been waiting for my whole life and I haven't found that yet.

Speaker 2 (00:10:15):

I have had one of my albums mixed, not mixed, mastered by Ted Jensen, and it was a phenomenal experience. That guy is so amazing.

Speaker 4 (00:10:25):

Did you get to do it with him or was it just like a back and forth over email or something?

Speaker 2 (00:10:29):

No, I flew to New York and attended the session and it was done right then and there, no revisions needed. Wow. Yeah, it was really, really cool. Done in six hours. He's just a total master and now I have to say that Colin Richardson also did the mix, so he was working with something that was pretty phenomenal to begin with. But yeah, there were no revisions needed and also there was no budget for revisions anyways, Ted's expensive.

Speaker 4 (00:11:03):

So what was it about his work? What was he doing that you felt was like the aha moment?

Speaker 2 (00:11:11):

Okay, so first of all, we loved the mix to begin with. We didn't want the mix to really change. We just wanted it a little bit louder and to just have that final sheen thing that good mastering provides, but that's it. We didn't want to fix the mix and we didn't want to change the overall character of it, which mastering will do if needed. And also if a guy's inexperienced, then they'll go to super heavy handed tactics rather than just keeping a great mix intact, making it louder and having it shine a little more and all that. So he respected the mix very, very well. It's like he took the energy we're putting off across and just made it louder and reproducible on modern formats. He did exactly what his job was and I wasn't used to that. And I also feel like by doing what he did, he brought out the best qualities of the mix just a little bit more, where oftentimes when you're dealing also with not so good mastering, you'll lose lots of the stuff that you like about the mix. So it was kind of the opposite of what I was used to at that point. Gotcha.

Speaker 3 (00:12:39):

Hey, Joey, when you master, are you really heavy handed or are you kind of transparent? Because I'll interject and say that what I master stuff, I'm usually pretty heavy handed unless I master something that's mixed absolutely brilliantly, then I try to do as that Al just explain that approach. But I mean I really get in there and try to make it, I don't know, you listen to a mix, you just hear it and you go, okay, it needs this, this, this, and this. So how are you aggressive or what's your approach?

Speaker 4 (00:13:07):

Yeah, I think I am very aggressive with mastering and it's mainly because a lot of the stuff that I'm getting is just not there yet. There's things that should have been taken care of in the mix, but, and they land on my chopping block and I have to cut off the little pieces of fat and stuff, but sometimes I'll get someone who comes along and just wants it to be, they want to preserve everything they have, but it's just not loud enough and I'm perfectly fine with taking a backseat and just making it whatever the client wants, but my first approach will always be a little bit aggressive and then I'll back off from there, especially if they request something different. The other thing that I do with mastering that I think every mastering engineer should do is supply infinite revisions because mastering, I think it is the final step of the process and you have to be flexible with what the changes are. Now of course, if you've got someone saying the guitars aren't loud enough, then that's something you might have to have the mixer go back and make an adjustment, but whatever's within your reach, I think you should be willing to do.

Speaker 2 (00:14:29):

Yeah. Well, I got to say though, you guys are both world-class mixers and are probably going to be better mixers than most of the guys sending you stuff, so I feel like you guys will have input towards the mix that maybe a lot of mastering guys wouldn't have because they aren't also great mixers. They just don't really do that so much. I mean, they know how, but that's not their forte. Right. That's

Speaker 3 (00:15:00):

An interesting point.

Speaker 2 (00:15:01):

Yeah, I think that you guys are so advanced at mixing that in general, most of what comes in won't be as good as your mixes, and so I'm not trying to jerk you guys off or anything, but I just think that's the truth. So I think,

Speaker 4 (00:15:17):

Well, yeah, it's the same thing that we talk about where if a band goes to a good producer, then the song almost mixes itself

Speaker 5 (00:15:25):

And

Speaker 4 (00:15:25):

It's kind of same thing if you go to a good mixer, the song almost masters itself, so it's really just a matter of having good quality work being done in every step of the line and then just makes it easier for the last person.

Speaker 3 (00:15:41):

That whole commentary kind of makes me think of something. I get a lot of mastering work and I end up doing a lot of shootouts with guys and somehow, which is weird because I don't consider myself a mastering engineer, but I get hired enough and I get paid enough doing it regularly where it's kind of like maybe sometimes I wonder if I should advertise it more than I do, which is not very much. Usually it's just managers who kick me and stuff, and something I've noticed is that a really aggressive hands-on approach kind of thinking a mixer almost seems to win a lot of mastering shootouts, and it's really interesting. I've had a lot of clients come back to me and I'm talking high profile bands that have sold very high amounts of records come back where I've done shootouts against a more traditional guy, and they've come in, they're like, there was just something about the way you approached it. It's just so much clearer and more cleaner and wider and aggressive and you took the song and just stepped it up another notch. And it makes me kind of wonder if it's because we approach it and maybe from a, well, I mean learning the master and mix is a different style of listening, but you can come in and use some of your mixing tricks and from a mastering standpoint, I guess, if that makes sense at all,

Speaker 2 (00:16:51):

I think it's similar to how to be a good producer. You should probably play a few instruments so that you can direct properly what's going onto tape or hard drive, and I feel like the lines between mastering and mixing sometimes are blurred, and so to understand from the mixing perspective what's needed to make the master great. I think that's an invaluable tool, and I also think that that's a perfect time to bring on our guest because he's done just about everything under the sun. You want to talk about somebody who can do multiple things and bring in different perspectives. That would be Jesse Cannon, I guess. He's done everything from recording the Misfits and Animal Collective working under Ross Robinson to mastering under Alan Dutchess for years, his own podcast, written books. He's got his own blog. He's been a publicist, a manager, he's done classes on Creative Live. There's a ton of stuff. So with that, I think maybe we should bring Jesse on. All right, so Joey and Joel, I'd like to introduce you to my buddy Jesse Cannon. I know him through Creative Live. Actually, we were two of the first people to go on there and give audio classes.

Speaker 4 (00:18:21):

That's awesome. Yeah. I noticed the mastering class or mastering course that you have with Creative Live. Do you also have fundamentals of mixing rock? Is that right?

Speaker 6 (00:18:34):

Yeah, mixing rock and dance, actually.

Speaker 4 (00:18:36):

That's cool.

Speaker 6 (00:18:37):

Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:18:38):

Do you find that knowing the stuff about mixing and stuff helps you become a better mastering engineer?

Speaker 6 (00:18:46):

I don't know how people become mastering engineers without knowing that stuff. I really, I should say this, I worked for Alan Douches for four years, I believe, and his master house now. I mostly did the recording side and I would just do all his dirty work that he didn't want to do, entering IDs, making parts and everything, but I was really hesitant to ever do my own mastering and really hesitant to it because some people say it's like, you're dead deal work. I don't think it's even that. I think it's like it'd be so hard to understand what to do with these tools if you weren't a mixer already and you hadn't gotten so experienced with and known how to diagnose it. I'm sure you guys as producers have been through this with the bands where you get these bands and they're like, Hey, that's too compressed.

(00:19:39):

You're like, I don't even have a compressor on that. And every week people. Yeah, basically. And so I think that that's one of the more interesting things is that people don't know how to diagnose what's wrong with their mixes. And that's one of the things too, when you see, here's a great example. I could remember Joey, when you started giving away guitar tones and drum samples, people will be like, oh my God, his sound is just going to be gone. Why are you doing that? Or they say to me, for doing a creatively class, why would you give away all your secrets? It's like, well, it's that I understand what I'm hearing. I know how to diagnose problems, and that's the most important thing in my skillset, right?

Speaker 4 (00:20:15):

Yeah. You can have all the same tools, but you won't use the tools the same way as someone else.

Speaker 2 (00:20:22):

Yeah. The map is not the territory when it comes to presets and any sort of skills that you might teach somebody through a class, you might tell them how you did something, but they're still going to need to put in the years of work to be able to properly, like you said, diagnose the problem and then fix it. Same way that I could watch a tutorial on learning how to fly a plane and then buy a flight simulator, but you're not going to put me in a cockpit of an airplane, I would hope.

Speaker 7 (00:20:58):

Please don't fly over whale. Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:21:00):

Yeah, I'll try to avoid that. Okay. I think it's actually kind of interesting that you said that you're nervous about mastering stuff because that's what I was talking about a little while ago before you came on, was that Joey and Joel Master all their own stuff, and I've started to, more recently as I felt more comfortable as a mixer, but traditionally I've worked with other mastering engineers primarily because I didn't feel ready to master my own stuff. So I just think it's interesting that you said basically the same thing.

Speaker 6 (00:21:40):

Yeah. There came a point, so Alan Douches has mastered the probably 95% of my productions and mixes over the years.

Speaker 2 (00:21:50):

Same.

Speaker 6 (00:21:51):

And Alan is a king among men in the music world, and in addition to being probably the smartest human being, I know there hit a point where I got enough control of my mixes that whatever he was doing to it, I was getting it exact enough that I'm like, I like what I had before better, and I appreciate your objective perspective. And one out of three times also he would give me a perspective of like, oh, I didn't think about that. Should have more trouble overall, and then I'd like it. But there's a lot of times I'm like, you know what? I nailed this and there's really no sense in going down this road. I think I want to just use my master, or can you just, I'm going to send you everything except a brick wall limiter. You just run it straight and just put it as loud as you think it should be.

Speaker 2 (00:22:34):

I feel like I'm talking to myself right here because that's exactly what started to happen to me about last year sometime, was I started to get more confident with my mixes and my masters started to get better, and I started, well, not just me, the bands I was working for kind of just liked the originals better, and it's no mark on the guy mastering it on the other end. It just means that we got better at what we do.

Speaker 6 (00:23:09):

Yes. I think what was also interesting, get a chicken or the egg thing that maybe you also experienced this, that I was forced to do my masters, I was doing a lot of records for bands that had no budgets, and especially when the music, when we had the recession around 2009, things got really bad, particularly for all the studio owners I knew in New York, and so I had to start mastering it and mastering my own stuff got me better at mixing, and I really learned to do it. And I was always kind of doing this process where I would put everything on the master bus as if this was going to be the file thing, but then I would rip it off before I send it to out. And I still recommend people do that. I tell all the mixing engineers I have a relationship with, try to get it to work, try to get it to be a final product so you're not a bing things up against records that have mastering on 'em and then trying to compensate in the wrong ways. But then when you send it to me, send it to me without the loudness maximizer and then send me one with nothing on the master bus and let me see what I could do to make it better.

Speaker 4 (00:24:09):

Yeah, I like that approach too. I think it prevents you from making really silly moves, I think.

Speaker 3 (00:24:15):

Yeah. I'll second that. Yeah, definitely second that.

Speaker 6 (00:24:18):

So why did you guys initially just start mastering your own stuff from day one?

Speaker 4 (00:24:24):

Well, I have a little bit of an interesting story about it. The very first label project I got, I had no clue what I was doing, but the band trusted me, and so I didn't even know how to do a click track or anything like that. Interesting. But I got to the end and I was like, oh, man, I have no clue how to master. I just don't know how to do that. So I tried my hand at it, and the label and the band were both, we're not too sure about this, so let's get this other guy we know he knows how to master stuff, let's get him to do it. And it really affected me. I felt like I had not done my job and that I was an idiot. So right after that, it inspired me to really learn everything I could possibly find on the internet about mastering, and then I did a bunch of experimentation and I would take the guys master that they had and then take my mix and then try to get it close to his and figure out what he did and ask him questions. And I don't know, about a year later after that, I was mastering everything I did, and I think that that motivation to not suck was what all it took.

Speaker 3 (00:25:33):

That's great. I started out kind of similar where I actually started hiring out when I began in my basement in the very, very beginning kicking out mixes, I started taking 'em to mastering guys, and you'd be sitting there in the room with them, you'd be like, oh, this is fucking awesome. You take it home. And then three weeks later I'd be like, man, why does my snare sound like a pancake? I didn't mix it like that. It just started cuing up with some different issues. So I went through a bunch of different guys and they were all well credited, and I don't know, I started doing it myself just for, I don't know, bands got cheaper and no one wanted to put up the cash. And then after many, many, many years of doing it, I just got to the point where I started getting hired a lot to do it, and then suddenly it's part of my process.

(00:26:19):

It's part of how I work, and I don't even think about it now. It's just, I don't know. I can separate it in my head. I've done both mixing and mastering so many years, and I've done so many independent projects of each where it's like I've been hired to master or then mix one for example or together that I just feel very, very confident about doing it. And like I said earlier, before you were on Jesse, that I've never had a mastering engineer wow me and just send me back something and make me go, holy shit now. That's what I've always wanted.

Speaker 2 (00:26:49):

Yeah. That brings up something interesting. You were talking about how bands didn't want to pay for mastering, and Jesse was talking about how lots of studio owners were hit by the economy and had to start mastering again because bands didn't have the money or wouldn't want to pay the money for somebody else, like an extra thousand dollars or so to have somebody else come in and take it the next step. And I've experienced that as well, and I find that it's because people don't even understand what mastering is in the first place. And that makes me wonder, Jesse, how do you approach it when somebody doesn't understand what mastering is in the first place? How would you define it to them? What's your, when someone just doesn't get it?

Speaker 6 (00:27:43):

I tell them a lot of time that louder, clearer, more consistent. I actually have a chapter in my book where I try to explain this to people. I think one of the other phenomenons we've really experienced is that the old music business from when I imagine we're all in our thirties here.

Speaker 5 (00:28:00):

Yeah, yep.

Speaker 6 (00:28:02):

Okay. So when we were growing up, there was this system in the music business where you basically had somebody who knew things and then passed them down to you. And I think it's actually one of the coolest parts of music today is that that's no longer happening. You're getting a lot of people who are like Joey just said, you go on, you research theater, you talk to people, and that's who one of the techniques you get ahead with. But I think that it's very interesting that now there's not this widespread thing of knowledge on the business and the right things to do as you go. And I think it really is that thing of we're fighting a war of spreading the education of, and I don't think everybody should do the same things that people used to do. I think a lot of the traditions of the music business were fucking stupid as hell.

Speaker 2 (00:28:46):

Well, yeah, look what happened.

Speaker 6 (00:28:48):

Yeah. Or what's still happening, I might say. But I think that is the thing is that we almost do have to be educators at all times about this. And what I often do, we even did an episode on my podcast where I just tried to show people, here's an un master check. Here's a master check. Here's four different volumes of it and how much different a vibe that can make. Especially we did an indie rock track and there is this tendency to slam indie rock records sometimes. And then you see, and I'm somebody who loves loud records. I mean, I grew up listening to heavy music, but there is a point where it goes too far and it goes to, and it's important to have somebody who understands that dynamic and how to give you that dynamic. I do a lot of remastering for vinyl for a couple of labels that do reissues. I'm stunned at how many records I get that were never even mastered.

Speaker 4 (00:29:38):

Really?

Speaker 6 (00:29:39):

There's no brick wall, there's no brick wall limiter, and these are records that are popular enough to get reissued. Wow. Indie Rocky Mo stuff. It's not so much in the Fidelity department.

Speaker 4 (00:29:49):

Well, isn't the Rush some of the rush albums weren't mastered, right? Or were they

Speaker 6 (00:29:56):

I hate rush by. Well, I, I'm on that side of the rock

Speaker 4 (00:30:01):

Area. I always say that because they're kind of unanimous with when people start talking about the loudness war, they say, well, look at this rush album, and they show the waveform image and you can see that nothing's being chopped off. And they're like, yeah, if you put that record in and just turn the volume up louder on your stereo system, it's going to sound better than anything that was ever squashed,

Speaker 6 (00:30:25):

Which is also the stupidest argument on earth.

Speaker 2 (00:30:28):

Yeah. I wish people would stop saying that shit,

Speaker 6 (00:30:31):

This guy who does a blog and he does dynamic range day and every time he posts about that, there's no one I want to jump through the screen of the internet and shake and scream in their face more because he just keeps on with that myth. And loudness is an emotional thing, and it is not the same as not putting a brick wall and turning it up. It physically pushes more sound to the front and you get more clarity, but distortion as well. And it's a combination of two things that feel a certain way and it is not the same to just turn.

Speaker 3 (00:31:06):

It's part of the tone and soul of modern records. I mean, not every record should probably be Brick Wall, but I actually like the loudness more. I love slamming my shit and I like the way it sounds and bring out the pitchforks and come kill me, but fuck 'em.

Speaker 6 (00:31:26):

I always say that he is legend. I am Hollywood record, like part of the vibe of that record. And I don't think that record would've been as popular if it wasn't slammed. Part of the vibe was that that record at the time was the most slammed record there was. That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:31:41):

I think that just guys who don't know how to properly slam records may have put out some records that sound like garbage. And the people who are anti loudness will use those as if they speak for every record that's ever been slammed, which is a normal argument that people with extremist views use is Yeah, you take one shitty example, like a Metallica record and say that this war is evil and it doesn't actually make any logical sense when you break it down.

Speaker 3 (00:32:23):

It's like a gang mentality.

Speaker 6 (00:32:26):

I think you guys know what Godwin's Law?

Speaker 2 (00:32:29):

No.

Speaker 6 (00:32:30):

Okay, so Godin's Law is this internet concept that in any argument containing a fallacy, it will eventually within six comments devolved to somebody saying that you're like, oh yes, okay, yes, I do know this. This is the

Speaker 7 (00:32:43):

Audio version of Godwin. Oh, that's brilliant. That somebody will point to Red Hot Chili Peppers ca fornication within

Speaker 2 (00:32:52):

Six comments. You're actually totally right. And I have read about this, I didn't know that that's what it was called, and I pay attention to this how long into a controversial argument. And it doesn't have to be loudness. It can be Amp Sims versus Amps analog versus digital, Mac versus pc, anything where people have really dumb opinions. Yeah, you're right. Within six comments it devolves into an insult fest because generally people's arguments are not based on any sort of logic when it comes to this and any sort of logic or actual experimentation in the real world, but there are plenty of scientific studies that show that the human brain reacts to loudness in a positive way.

Speaker 4 (00:33:38):

Okay. Well, speaking about behavior and attitudes, you've worked under a lot of awesome producers and mastering engineers. What do you suggest people coming up do to get gigs like that?

Speaker 6 (00:33:51):

Wow. So I put myself where I want to be. So growing up, Steve Everts and Ross Robinson were my two favorite producers growing up. So I was lucky enough that Steve was from New Jersey and I grew up in New Jersey, and so I got the job with Alan Douches through a, I worked at a record label called Go-Kart Records, and the guy saw that I really did not give a fuck about working at this record label.

Speaker 2 (00:34:21):

And you were a publicist for that?

Speaker 6 (00:34:22):

Yeah, I was a publicist and I ran a record store that we had in the front, and I was the buyer, and he saw that that was clearly not my calling. I'm a pretty antisocial person in some ways, and calling people and asking them to post things for me is not my gig. And so publicity wasn't so good. So he got me a job with Alan, and Alan knew Steve and I basically would just bug Steve until he let me align Stare Triggers Firm, which in 1999, now you just get Slate Trigger and most of them are on, but 1999 using Sound Replacer, I think for the Dillinger Miss Machine record, I think it took me 30 hours to align all the kicks and stairs. Holy shit.

Speaker 3 (00:35:06):

Can I throw something in really quick? I'm remixing right now a classic cult death metal band for Century Media that they did it back in 87. They recorded and then they did it with, what is it, Morris Sound,

Speaker 2 (00:35:20):

The big one? Yeah, that sounds right.

Speaker 3 (00:35:21):

Back in 91, and I'm opening the session and I'm like, holy shit. The snares and the kicks, they're all fricking triggered and there's the trigger stuff. I'm wondering how the hell they did that way back in the day in Death Metal. Do you want me to tell you? Yeah, please. Because I was blown away.

Speaker 6 (00:35:37):

So there was an Apex unit, I want to say. So I learned this because Eric, Rachel and Steve Everts at Track Cease, they used to do this and Eric still has it, which is hilarious. He keeps it set up. But there was an Apex unit that would do basically what the slate triggers, which translate the audio into a MIDI tick, and then you would take it a Kai S 5,000 or S 2000 or whatever, and you would load your sample in and it would basically put that down and then you would print that to tape. But a lot of the time, because the tape had delays and stuff like that, you'd have to figure out how to do a delay and move things up. It was, it was truly insane. And it also goes to show all those old metal guys who were engineers back in that era, for you to make it as a metal engineer back then, you had to be a fucking rocket scientist. I have the utmost respect for, even though you listened to some of those records, you're like, man, they must've been doing so much Coke

Speaker 7 (00:36:30):

To think that Trump, these titty s Als sounded okay, but those guys were fucking

Speaker 6 (00:36:35):

Rocket scientists and hats off to all of those dudes. They had to do some serious shit to make those records happen. That's what I thought.

Speaker 2 (00:36:44):

I can tell you from having recorded a bunch of those older school bands as well as toured with a lot of them, the guys who were recording Savvy would tell me the stories about how the drums were done, and they said the same thing. It would be a week or two weeks to put the samples on via the MIDI ticks. Oh, sounds awful.

Speaker 6 (00:37:11):

Holy

Speaker 3 (00:37:11):

Shit.

Speaker 6 (00:37:14):

What's all, thank God. We're making music in 2015, I keep a disc from the first recording program I had, which was on an Omega 2019 86. My father, I keep it on the wall to remember how fucking torture it was to make music back then on that thing. Wow. So when I'm mad at the Pro tools for Crashing, I get humbled and remember used to have to insert five different floppy discs to just do a saxophone video.

Speaker 2 (00:37:42):

Yeah, that's good for perspective. But let's get back to talking about working for big shots. I've done the same thing. I've come up under people, but so you said that you put yourself there, you just bugged them until they let you work.

Speaker 6 (00:38:06):

Well, so it's interesting. I bugged EVs to let me work, and then he would just give me the worst shit work all the time. And then every once in a while he'd be like, ah, I got to go to my sister's daughter or something that, and he'd leave me alone with a band and then I would just try to not fuck it up. And even though I'd be scared out of my mind that I'm sitting here with Ben Wyman of Dillinger, who even though was a friend growing up, I'm like, oh my God, am I good enough to record this guy? I don't understand. Died seven weird time signatures. I'm like a punk kid, and I didn't drop the ball and I continued working for him. And then so Steve would engineer and mix for Ross Robinson, who is my other favorite record producer, and I just would bug Steve. I'm like, so when are you going to bring me on with Ross? Hey. And then I got a phone call one day and Ross is like, Hey, you want to come to England to record the cure? And I'm like, this isn't happening. And I got there and when I walked into the hotel escalator the first time that I saw Ross said there, and I hadn't met him yet, I was too scared to even say hello.

Speaker 2 (00:39:13):

Okay. So I see how some people hearing this could take what you just said as meaning just bug them till you let you work. But I don't see what you just said as that. I see it more as earn their trust and stay persistent.

Speaker 6 (00:39:29):

Yes. That's why they pay you the big bucks. I think that that's it. And the other thing about it though too is, and I always tell this a story, so now my co-owner of my studio is Mike, who co-produces records with me and Mike Inger came up as my assistant at first and was the biggest thing with Mike that I always said is also is that he was just able to hang and not piss me off. He didn't turn to the bands. So I had a hundred interns go through me in about 18 months when I hired him, and he wasn't the one doing dumb things like, yo put a reverse symbol at the start of the song. And I think that that's one of the other things is while I'm saying I'm bugging and I'm annoying him, it was really, I would sit and I'd talk to Steve while he was at Alan's place.

(00:40:17):

I'd prove I was a knowledgeable person. I'd teach him things. I'd be like, oh, did you see this dah dah that you should check out this record, dah, this person's doing this thing. And I just knew enough that I was worth it to him. And I also back then, before the Home Studio Revolution came to being, I knew every studio to freelance at because I was constantly freelancing. So I could hit Steve to, you should try this cool new room out. You should try this one out. I just did drums here. You want to hear what I did? You'll do it even better. You're a better engineer than me. I made value for myself.

Speaker 2 (00:40:49):

So how do you suggest people do that now in the age of the internet without coming off as really annoying spammers? And I actually want to know your thoughts on that because just to take a sidestep for one quick second. Your book is all about promotion and the music business, and then you also have your podcast all about the music business. I wondering how you would suggest for younger people coming up now in this totally changed environment, how do you do that stuff? How do you stay persistent without bugging the hell out of people?

Speaker 6 (00:41:31):

This is another great question. I think there's a very big thing that the way internet relationships come about are commonality. And I really don't think you can fake that stuff. So what I'll talk about a lot in my book is that yes, you can go and let's say you're a band that sounds like the Wonder Years, and you go and follow all the Wonder, your Twitter followers, you can't just bug them and say, Hey, listen to our music. What it really is is you watch Twitter and then when they say, Hey, I saw X Macina last night and you did too, you offer your tidbit and then they probably listen to your music because people want to have people who are common. And every study after every study shows that the musicians who fans feel they have commonality with are the ones that fans also support financially. Wow, that's interesting. Very. Yeah. MTV did a really great study about it.

Speaker 2 (00:42:24):

I've seen that study. Yeah,

Speaker 6 (00:42:26):

It was really, really interesting. If you get into the weeds of it,

Speaker 2 (00:42:28):

It works for politicians too now.

Speaker 6 (00:42:31):

It does. And as a political nerd, I see that more and more is that when you sit there and you go, how does anybody fund Ted Cruz? People feel commonality.

Speaker 2 (00:42:42):

Absolutely. That's the way the world works. Now, where

Speaker 3 (00:42:45):

Would you find that study? If one wanted to read it?

Speaker 6 (00:42:48):

Why don't I link it to you guys, but I know I posted it on my blog Muse formation. I will find it and I'll link it to you. If you guys want to share it at the forum, we could do that.

Speaker 4 (00:42:59):

And by the way, if the people who are listening, you should check out his blog, it's muse formation.com, that's MUSF o.com,

Speaker 2 (00:43:10):

As well as his book, which is Get More Fans, the DIY Guide to the New Music Business. And let me just say that you sent that over to us to check out, but I didn't realize it was 730 pages long.

Speaker 6 (00:43:24):

The funny thing is I finished the new edition yesterday for 2015 and there's 40 more pages.

Speaker 2 (00:43:31):

Well, that brings up something that I wanted to ask you about as well, considering that there's a new edition out, there's a ton of music business books that already exist, however, I feel like a lot of them are part of the old music industry. They're based on the structure of a major record label and things like that, that maybe if you're lucky, you'll get to experience life on a major label maybe, but

Speaker 6 (00:44:02):

Or unlucky as most of them feel with that type of,

Speaker 2 (00:44:05):

I was say, yeah, luck is depending on how you look at it, but what made you want to step into that space, I guess the music industry education space.

Speaker 6 (00:44:20):

So I know you guys are a little bit more in the metal world, but do you remember around the MySpace era when there was, so I came up as a punk kid, and I'm very, even though I'm a major capitalist in some ways,

(00:44:33):

And I just really didn't like where it went when bands that looked pretty got more popular than the bands making good songs. And that really pissed me off, which in some ways makes me like a internet metalhead. So I was recording all these great bands and they'd all be like, well, how do we do this? And I knew it all in my head. I'm like, you know what? I'll start a blog and I'll just start writing all the things I see that you could be doing better in the music business. And I kind of knew I'd turned it into a book, and then I managed two bands. One was called Man Overboard and Another's called Transit. They're both on Rise Records, and I just learned a lot, and I would blog about what I was doing to get them places and the theories behind it every day. And then I just took that and assembled it into a book after kind of blogging about it for four years. And it was just really also, there was no good book on the subject, and I read every book of the subject that there's started to be some better ones, but it's a really bad field because most of the people who want to write about social media are the biggest douche bags on the earth.

Speaker 2 (00:45:41):

Yeah, I've noticed.

Speaker 6 (00:45:42):

Yeah, it, it's just a sad fact. There's some things that being to Insane Cloud Posse and having taste and being into social media and having taste, it's just a very rare Venn diagram overlap.

Speaker 2 (00:45:58):

Yeah. Well, there's also a lot of scammers who write about social media, and so you have to be careful when taking any sort of education from these people because you have to differentiate between are these people actually in it to make their industry a better place and hopefully be able to pay their bills at the same time, or are they in it to scam you out of money? You don't know what you're doing. And I feel like it's probably more, it's easier to find scammers than it is to find legitimate information, funny

Speaker 6 (00:46:37):

How good scammers are promoting themselves.

Speaker 2 (00:46:40):

I kind of agree with you, man. I don't really think there's, besides what you're doing, and maybe I really like the Bob Leitz letter just because of its opinions on staying relevant. But besides that, I kind of feel like good music industry information has gone the way of the music industry, which is that it's kind of dead,

Speaker 6 (00:47:07):

It's bad, and Left is a great resource. I think there's times he's gotten a little wacky lately, but he's old too. He's old. He doesn't always see the truth of the youth,

Speaker 2 (00:47:18):

But I think he gets,

Speaker 6 (00:47:19):

But he's great. Yeah, he's aggregated some of the better ideas in the music business for a long time.

Speaker 2 (00:47:25):

Well, for instance, most recently with Title, he came out and called it on its bullshit, and we just saw Joe and Joel, I don't know if you guys are familiar with title, but title is this Spotify alternative that Jay-Z and a bunch of other huge artists put together.

Speaker 4 (00:47:45):

I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (00:47:46):

Yeah, it was supposed to basically be a luxury alternative to Spotify that was more expensive actually, and didn't offer a free level, and Madonna was in it and Beyonce and Jack White and a bunch of top artists, and I guess they thought it was going to do great, but it tanked. And a lot of people who know about this stuff were saying that it was going to tank because it's all about the people who were putting it lining their pockets, which is opposite of what we know about making money online, which is that you have to provide value for people, and it wasn't really providing any value beyond Spotify. And it tanked fast. I'm talking within two weeks to three weeks, it fell out of the top 700 app store downloads and just gone, but he called that out. So I think that's pretty cool.

Speaker 6 (00:48:51):

Well, so I wrote an article today actually that I think is actually one of the more important things I've written about the music business out of the 5,000 posts I've written about it over the years, which is so title claims that they're going to compensate artists better, and as we all know, record budgets have kind of died from over the years, from the lack of compensation in music. I think they're getting a little bit better now as the economy's coming back. Music piracy is a little better. Have you guys felt like your budgets are getting a little better compared to a few years ago? No. No.

Speaker 3 (00:49:25):

Interesting. Yes, for me, but everything has been growing logarithmic for me, so I'm still on the upswing, so I haven't peaked out or anything like that so far so good. But we'll see what happens. I'm not expecting them to get any better though, if that helps.

Speaker 2 (00:49:38):

And I can just say that yes, I make more money than I used to, but a lot of guys who used to make a lot more money than me are making less than ever

Speaker 6 (00:49:50):

Interesting. I have friends of varying things. So anyway, what I was going to say is, so Spotify, you have to listen to a song 84 times on Spotify to compensate for the money you would make from one download from iTunes. I wrote an article on this, and the problem is right now where streaming is is it's just like, I think about this, I love music, but I'm sure it's probably the same for you guys, is it'd be pretty hard to think of a song that you listen to 84 times in a year.

Speaker 3 (00:50:20):

Can I make that song play bot script?

Speaker 6 (00:50:24):

Yes. There you go. So I think we have to start seeing this as how many listens should a musician become safer? We did have this bad era that we all grew up in where you'd buy this $18 cd, get it home, and you don't even like it. The band made a terrible record and you never listen to it after three lessons, and we need a happy medium between that. I think that particularly our generation had a lot of animosity towards that era of the music business and didn't like being ripped off all the time just to hear a song. And that's dead no matter what because the internet. But we have to figure out how many listens it should be before somebody we say is listening to this for enjoyment and is consuming it, and then how we compensate an artist for that.

Speaker 4 (00:51:08):

Absolutely.

Speaker 6 (00:51:09):

I should also say I'm building something to do this now, so I should give full disclosure that when I disit on Spotify for this, I'm doing it for my own personal benefit to kind of capitalist of you. Yeah. Well, opportunist, I'm doing a nonprofit, so technically, oh, well, there you go.

Speaker 2 (00:51:27):

Wow, that's kind of amazing.

Speaker 6 (00:51:30):

Well, that's how we get money back into the music business is somebody has to be an advocate for it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:51:36):

Well, I think that while they were saying that it was about paying the artists more, I think that the grand perception of the listeners is, well, Jay-Z's worth $500 million and he's going to line his own pockets with this. So it's bullshit.

Speaker 5 (00:52:00):

And

Speaker 2 (00:52:00):

I don't think it's that sophisticated of an opinion, but I don't think it was thought out that quickly. But I feel like people react instinctively to this kind of thing in music the same way that they reacted to Metallica talking about downloading back in the day they rejected title, in my opinion, partly because it is people that are beyond rich talking about making more money, and that was kind of like what it was sold on was putting more money in artists' pockets. I think that doing it, the way you're talking about doing it is probably the best way to gain any sort of credibility for it.

Speaker 6 (00:52:45):

Yeah, I think wonder is, we can't believe squeeze blood from a stone. People are only going to pay so much money for music. And now granted, when Urban Outfitters has $30 pieces of award vinyl, you get a little like, well, can't you pay that much for every song ever for a month? But inherently in the profit system, there's only so much money you can get to spread artists out of $10 a month, and those prices are going to have to go up over time, and they all know this and that will happen, and that will help fund the music business again. And we've seen that in every country. As Spotify type services get popular, piracy does begin to disappear. And even in some of the more progressive countries, there's basically under a 1% of piracy now of music.

Speaker 2 (00:53:29):

Really? Yeah. I think Sweden

Speaker 6 (00:53:32):

Is as well. Yes. Sweden and Norway. And another one that I get confused when I think about, because that area is just weird and it's just weird. Metal beds chopping people heads off

Speaker 2 (00:53:41):

True metal making necklaces out of them.

Speaker 5 (00:53:43):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:53:45):

So let me take this back to Facebook real quick, since talking about people's immediate reactions to things and something that had huge star power and maybe was a cool idea, just falling flat on its face on much smaller levels, I'm seeing artists complaining all the time about how Facebook changed their organic reach rules. And so it's now impossible for them to get their message across or promote their band. And my response is that the rules on Facebook now are super effective if you have viral content. So actually what's, in my opinion, these artists are not taking advantage of Facebook properly. But what do you think of that?

Speaker 6 (00:54:38):

I think you're definitely onto it. I do think that promoting on Facebook is a little bit of a sucker's game. So one of my best friends is a very high up at Facebook advertising, and it is in their best interest to keep letting your posts not be seen. So you buy advertisement for your big events, but you are right that when you do viral things and people are commenting on it and you get people excited, your message will spread. The problem with that though is becoming, is that we're all kind of desensitized to these viral things at this point. You're not seeing as many like, oh my God, look at chocolate, rain and these internet phenomenons of, isn't that crazy? Because we're all getting a little desensitized to it. And as that paralysis keeps happening, I think we're going to really see the thing of that.

(00:55:29):

It's going to be very hard to be remarkable enough that people are sharing your stuff and then Facebook is just going to get their pockets lined. And they're smart people over there. They see that and they're profiting from it. What I always tell every band is that email is, and maybe not always, but is still very much king for all of your marketing. And if you're not trying to get mailing lists and you feel like an idiot putting out that board at your concerts and you're not trading a song download for an email or something to get people's emails, you are a total sucker.

Speaker 2 (00:56:03):

And also because you don't own the Facebook platform, even if you are willing to spend money on Facebook ads, which I was going to say that my understanding of how to make the most of Facebook involves spending money on it. I don't think that if you go the free route, you'll ever get what Facebook does in 2015, you'll never get the full benefit without spending money and it's just reality. But yeah, that said, I think that the problem for bands and artists is that they just don't really feel comfortable enough actually taking the step into promoting themselves properly. And a lot of them just don't take the time to learn how to do it, and so they end up spamming people and getting blocked or deleted or unfriended or whatever. But also, you will never own the Facebook platform. You'll always own your email list and Facebook. They could ban you for whatever reason. They could change their terms of service, and suddenly everything you were doing is no longer allowed. There's any number of reasons for why Facebook could become problem. If you don't have your own email list, you could be up shit creek without a paddle.

Speaker 4 (00:57:28):

Well, one of the biggest problems I see is there's tons of people going around thinking it's okay to, for example, if you're in a forum and somebody posts about guitars, it's perfectly fine for them to put in a comment to the guitar post a video of their newest song. It's like what are, it's kind of like the thing where the annoying people stand outside the door of a concert venue. They didn't play that night, but they have the flyers for the next week that they're going to play and they're kind of shove it in your face.

Speaker 6 (00:58:03):

It is the thing. I mean, I think that that's another thing is that we're going to see, sadly, people imitate all the worst things. And the other thing is too is people imitate huge bands and what works for you two does not work for your unknown ban that's in the suburbs of Georgia trying to get a 20 likes on Facebook. But I think there is a thing too, though that I think is interesting though is while you are, and you were right about the flyer getting pushed to your face, but when I think about it, when I was somebody who was really passionate about going to shows, and I imagine we're all past that point, the last thing we want to do is go to a show after listening to guitars at 82 DB all day. When I was young though I loved those flyers. That's how I'd find my next favorite band. And you do see these bored kids on Facebook. That is how they make friendships and find that stuff. I wonder if we're just all annoyed by it. We're never going to listen to that song when it's posted. That's how I made most of my, I always say all my best friendships were made on the internet being on Rec Audio Pro when I was younger and meeting other engineers on music. I

Speaker 3 (00:59:13):

Remember that.

Speaker 6 (00:59:14):

That's how I met. Yeah, that's how I made all of my friends that I'm still friends with to this day is alt punk and alt music hardcore.

Speaker 2 (00:59:25):

Yeah, but I don't think there was the same, I guess sheer volume of material out there back then. I feel like nowadays there's so much just music and content and clickbait and distractions that it's that much harder for bands to get discovered in that way. I think that's part of it too.

Speaker 6 (00:59:53):

It takes one person who thinks you're really great that hears you and then spreads that to another person who also thinks it and that is how it goes. Or you get one right influencer and you get music, spread it if people really do enjoy it. That's the great thing about how much we've democratized music these days is I believe, and I keep seeing it more and more, that the good bands really are the ones coming out.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):

I actually agree with that. So I guess that basically, I feel like the big takeaway from what you're saying is that bands or producers, if you go back to what we were saying about getting a good production gig, it goes back to targeting the right people. If you're going to target an influencer to spread your music, that's going to get you way further than spam bombing a bunch of people who aren't going to care.

Speaker 6 (01:00:45):

When I released this book, the Biggest Common People Made, it was like, oh, well, you just need to make great music and it'll spread. I don't think that's entirely true. I think you do have to do some legwork still and some smart things to capitalize it because odds are you're not going to be so great that it just spreads. You're usually going to be good enough that a lot of people will spread this if they hear it. And so now the book I'm writing now is about how some creative process about how you get to be a great musician and how you creative tools that you use so you don't make the mistakes. All three of us or all four of us watch in the studio every day of when we see bands making terrible decisions for their music all day long. I've joked that I wanted to call the book My Life watching bands make Dumb Decisions a Recollection,

Speaker 7 (01:01:41):

Man, that could be like 18.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):

I'm sure volumes

Speaker 7 (01:01:43):

Do a week long podcast of just the stories that we could all come up with after each

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):

One. And when do you think that that book's going to be done?

Speaker 6 (01:01:51):

I will have it out in the fall early winter of this year. I'm in the process. I want it to be 250 pages. It's 375 right now. I'm trying to get it to be as not 750 pages of me rambling as possible.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):

So you're just nonstop. I

Speaker 6 (01:02:09):

Don't know how to not work. I always say, I imagine with seeing how much you guys do too, the same.

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):

Oh yeah. We talk about it all the time. So you're actually perfect for this show.

Speaker 6 (01:02:19):

Yeah, we're terrible. Yeah. I'm always stunned when I see, yeah, you doing the courses, Joel, I saw you did a book on the guitar and Joe, you're doing a million cool things. I think that's the thing though. That's another thing that people miss about this era is that obviously we see so many kids going to recording school and wasting this money and thinking they're going to get a job at a studio. And it's really that thing of if you're not an auto didact and you're not motivated to bust ass all the time and do this harder than everybody else and even record bands for free at the beginning, you're never ever going to be able to compete unless you're the most talented producer of all time against everybody else who's willing to work this hard and never stop.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):

That's such a great point.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):

And even those super talented guys work hard.

Speaker 6 (01:03:08):

Yeah, I mean it is funny then every once in a while, then you do get, and that's very off-putting is I'm sure we all have had the thing of when somebody comes into our studio and you see this guy is really successful, you hear like, oh yeah, he went for a jog and out to the Cheesecake Factory with his girlfriend every night and left me to record my vocals by myself. And you're like, what the fuck? I think I've heard that story before. Actually. I think we all know who we're talking about. We're just not going to say his name.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):

Well, I think that I've known very few people who are talented enough to where they can get everything done that they need to for whatever they're working on in three minutes or four minutes of input, and then everything's just magically better. But I think I've met, and even less than that, I've met maybe two guys in my life who have that kind of level of talent who actually don't work their asses off as well,

(01:04:18):

But I have definitely seen that. So let's go to some questions we have from our listeners about mastering. We basically put out questions to our private forum of what they've basically been wondering about mastering wise, what's giving them problems, what they'd like to hear us talk about, and so I just want to ask you some of these questions and get your take. We can just start with the first one by Jason Laine, which is ideally, should the mixing and mastering be handled by two different people and what do you think about that? We did talk about it a little.

Speaker 6 (01:05:08):

I think when you feel you should always be mastering your stuff along the way, then you should send your mastering engineer something with nothing on the mix bus and then everything you add on except for loudness maximization, ideally you'll have six to 12 DB headroom even on both of those. And when you feel confident, like you're killing it more that mastering engineer, I think you should trust yourself. I think one of the big things, and one of the reasons I got into production was I went into the studio and I said, make my band sound like Appetite for Destruction. And we were 12. I had one of those drum sets that didn't have bodies on it. It was just flat things. I was like, these drums sound like shit. I'm never going to this guy again. But then later on I'd say, take the reverb off of everything.

(01:05:57):

I don't want huge reverb, and the engineers would never do it. It was the metal era and I was making punk and I didn't want that eighties snare. And you got to know your own vision and your own style listening to all of you guys stuff you guys all have, I wouldn't say it's like you're Steve Valdi. That is a one trick point, but we have our things and as you develop your taste in your things, you should trust that and not let a mastering engineer trample on that just because you defer to him that he's more trustworthy than you. I always say it to my engineers that if I'm not doing something that's with your taste, trust yourself and let's hear it another way and make sure we develop your taste as we go.

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):

I like that. That's awesome.

Speaker 6 (01:06:41):

Fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):

Yeah, I agree with that a hundred percent. And I guess here's another one, a little bit more technical, which comes from Mr. Shane Mayer, but how loud is too loud and any hard rules on max RMS?

Speaker 6 (01:07:00):

This is actually funny. This came up in my mastery class in the chat rooms. The kids got super mad about this. I very, very rarely look at an RMS meter or any of the loudness meters. I trust my emotions on how the song feels. I audition lots of levels of loudness and I trust how I feel when I listen back to that song. Now, admittedly, if I'm on my way into work and would say I'm blasting Joey's no Captain Chunk record as I do on a bike ride to get psyched, sometimes I might be biased that day because I've been listening to a record at that volume. I try to up against a couple records I see and try to get an objectivity about what would feel good for this record. And I just, at the end of the day, no one's looking at an RMS meter, they're feeling a record, and I try to feel how that record feels when I work and find something. Right. I would not look at the RMS meters. You need to learn how to emotionally react to music because all the best music is just an emotional reaction to what you hear it. I know that sounds like a total hippie thing, but it's really how I feel.

Speaker 4 (01:08:05):

No, it really makes sense. I think the only time I ever check it is if somebody says, Hey, I'm not sure if this is as loud as something else. And then I'm like, oh, well, I'm going to go compare it now and see what the numbers are. But prior to that moment, I had never known what the RMS level even is.

Speaker 6 (01:08:25):

I think what you're saying here is another great saying to impart on people, which is meters are really good to confirm what your ears are hearing,

Speaker 4 (01:08:33):

But it's not. You don't want to mix on the meter and you don't want to use your ears, don't use your eyes.

Speaker 6 (01:08:41):

And I think it's, the other thing is questions like this and not to be insulting to the person. I've asked this question a million times when I was coming up, but you're always looking for that. Like, oh, this is how I do it, which RMS dah if I follow these guidelines, every record's going to be so different. And you just got to learn how to train your ear to compare things and learn to do it. And also, we should also say, since this is recorded, get a good relationship with your monitors.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):

Absolutely. And I feel the same way about questions like these. I feel like lots of times it's people digging for that golden nugget that's going to make all the difference in the world, and I really appreciate having people back me up on that. You can't be approaching audio with any hard rules like these. I think you've been talking about the golden nuggets to mastering this whole time understanding how to react to the music, having a proper skillset to go into it so that you can diagnose problems not sticking to some arbitrary number that you read on a Facebook comment

Speaker 6 (01:09:55):

Or a chain that you see is the right thing. And now granted, I should also say this, my chain is usually the same, but I'm diagnosing a problem. I know how within that chain to, for example, if a record's not as punches, I think it should be how to make that happen. Then when it's too punchy, it's the same chain, but it's a different setting.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):

So let's talk about your chain real quick because we had a question talking about what's the proper order of stuff within your chain? Does it change often or you stick to one order of things?

Speaker 6 (01:10:29):

So I always talk about how you had a great thing I read the other day that said it better than I even said. I kept remembering to say it the way you said it. You have that 85% thing you wrote about the other day and that nailed it completely

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):

85%

Speaker 6 (01:10:45):

Of the time EQ to start with an overall color and to fix whatever's going wrong in the track, usually I'm going to find some frequency that sucks that you're like, why did this person do this? Then an overall trouble in base balance. Then after that, if I'm going to use a compressor, 90% of the people I get are using too much two bus compression as it is, so I'm not always going to do a compressor, but if I'm going to do it, that is just where it's going to happen usually, mostly because another great rule that I think gets under discussed that actually is a good nugget of information is compressors sound worse with they're working too hard on base. Usually I'm going to do a low or high pass filter on some of the base so that the compressor won't have to work as hard. So EQ compressor, multi-band compressor, and then any saturation and tape stuff I'm going to do will come after that. That's the one thing that changes in order if I'm going to do some exciting or some saturation or some tape, those can be interchanged in order. And then lastly, loudness maximization and I use a few different loudness maximizers. There'll be that if something really sound,

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):

Which ones do you like? Which ones do you like?

Speaker 6 (01:12:05):

Oh, I really like the L three multi from Waves. The Pro L from Fab Filter I think is a really interesting polish to it. It's really the sound of dance music these days. Everybody uses it for that polish in it. It has a few presets that really the second I put it on, it's so funny to me. It's like, yes, that's how dance music sounds now. They all abuse it on every track too. So those are the two main I go to. I also should say this, if there's anything I impart whenever I talk about recording is that you should be experimenting for at least 10% of your day every day. Without that, I don't think I'd be somebody, anybody cared what they were saying. In this world, I'm very, very adamant that you should try new things for at least an hour a day if you're working a 10 hour day. That's

Speaker 4 (01:13:01):

Actually a really good point. I think a lot of people are always asking questions but not experimenting enough because I feel like when I was learning how to do stuff instead of asking people what they did, I would just ask myself like, oh, I wonder how that works. And then I would go and spend four hours playing around with it rather than go online and say, how do you do this? And then wait for a response. I would be so eager to know how to do it that I couldn't even wait for a response. I'd rather just experiment.

Speaker 3 (01:13:33):

There's a quote I read somewhere about how your progress in anything is directly related to the amount of times or degrees you'll go out of sight, your comfort zone.

Speaker 6 (01:13:43):

That's

Speaker 4 (01:13:43):

Good.

Speaker 6 (01:13:43):

Yeah, that's really good.

Speaker 4 (01:13:44):

That's awesome.

Speaker 6 (01:13:45):

Yeah, I think that's the other thing too is it opens up the possibilities of how you get to somewhere. It is funny because I do feel like there's very set in my ways plugins, but most of the memorable moments I've had on records are because I went outside of that comfort zone and found something cool and unique that not everybody's doing. And that's not a tutorial that Pensato is doing that now. Everybody's imitating.

Speaker 4 (01:14:15):

We've talked about that before as well.

Speaker 6 (01:14:19):

I'm shocked when I open mixes these days that every time I'm like, oh, that was on SDO last week.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):

Yeah, yeah. I got lots of questions about that. The one that seems to come up the most is putting a white noise clip underneath a snare. I guess he talked about that eighties method of making a snare sound bigger once.

Speaker 6 (01:14:47):

So have you guys done that one? Because that's my top. You can use pink noise. Yes. But that's my top 10 tips. I think that's another interesting thing to always impart on everybody is that everybody has a trick that they do that when everybody else does it. It doesn't work for anybody but them. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:15:04):

Yeah, yeah. By

Speaker 6 (01:15:05):

Coming up under Ross Robinson. Ross Robinson is the king of doing crazy things that no one else is doing that only work for him.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):

Well, because it's also dependent on everything he does leading up to that point.

Speaker 6 (01:15:18):

Yeah, I think it's that. And then what he does with it in the end too is always a little bit different. Another one of those things is like Ross is a very unformally trained person who works with lots of formally trained people to balance 'em out and it gets a certain result because of that.

Speaker 4 (01:15:38):

But Ross isn't the type of person to go around and say, well, check out this thing that I figured out or, you know what I mean? But there's other people that do that and don't realize that the stuff they're preaching isn't really going to help anyone. They just think that it's useful, but a lot of times it's not. But I think a lot of the information that we're trying to share in our circle and with our audience is just fundamental core things that will, if you carry them with you, you're going to succeed in some way.

Speaker 6 (01:16:10):

Yes, much less the, I can remember coming up with gear slots would be everybody writing down the way they EQ a snare and going, you guys EQ the snare the same way every time? No, really weird to me website. I love

Speaker 5 (01:16:26):

That. Really, really

Speaker 6 (01:16:26):

Weird. Yeah. What a spool.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):

Yeah, it's kind of unbelievable. I definitely think that there's a big difference between wowing people and I guess feeding their ego versus actually trying to help them get better. And by relying too much on tricks like you talked about that are specific to one guy who knows exactly how it tweaks it every time and exactly what went into the trick and when to use it is all this understanding of the entire production and then a bag of tricks on top of that to show people that trick in isolation is the same thing as watching Gordon Ramsey on a TV show and thinking that because he made a pasta sauce in three minutes using this, this and that, that you're just going to be able to make one as good as he does.

Speaker 3 (01:17:32):

Oh, I screw that up all the time.

Speaker 6 (01:17:37):

Well, so you guys are having Alan Douches on that. Alan I think has one of the best sayings, which is everything in somebody's record and their repertoire is an accumulation of subtleties. It's a thousand little bits of knowledge that you've then learned how to put together in one way, and that's your kind of collage of what makes you and what you do. You, and the key is, and I think this is the worst thing, is that to relate it to like a shitty metal band is when you're 15, all is dumb. A avenge sevenfold drifts and that's all you can do. So it's very boring to listen to you do a bad version of a bench sevenfold, but then when you've learned a thousand cool records and you've gotten into ABBA on down to some crazy rock band, you're able to make something interesting. And that's the same thing I think for learning recording techniques is you learn all these ones.

(01:18:24):

I think actually one of the most important things in my upbringing was I worked from the time I was 17 for nine years after at the nation's largest freeform radio station that had tons of different style of music. I would learn so many things because I'd have to learn how to make a jazz record sound good and performance sound good. And I'll be honest, listening to jazz is putting a nail in my ear. I have no fucking interest in that shit. I hate, yeah, I like compositional music, but learning those techniques made it so that when people throw weird kitchen sink things at me, I am always, I know how to mic a trash can to get a certain amount of impact because I did a band called Gas Tank Orchestra that was mostly gas tanks and trash tanks, and I did a record with them for two days. And I think that's the other thing is we talked about getting out of the comfort zone, but also learning so many of these little recipes like Gordon Ramsay knows a particular temperature to roast that garlic at and he may know which type of olive oil to put in there. And learning that in the recording way, that's who it gets you to be a badass engineer.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, we have time for two more questions and we got to wrap up. So lemme just ask you, because this came up a few times, do you do any MS mastering? Because Phil Scota asked if you see any benefits to Ms Mastering and then a few other guys asked about it as

Speaker 6 (01:19:50):

Well. Yeah, I do a lot of the time in my multi-band compressors. So my old multi-band compressors, I use Flux Alchemist. I'm a very big fan of flu's products, and with Flux, you can choose whether to process the mid or the sides are all on each band and the multi-band, and particularly when somebody has just bought their Steven Slate plugins and they're turning that kick drum up very loud as they do, I will just process the bottom end in the center because the kick is so much louder than everything else there. And oftentimes they've taken out everything below 200 on the guitars to get that kick to be just that big and what else

Speaker 3 (01:20:36):

Would you do?

Speaker 6 (01:20:38):

Yes, exactly. So yeah, Ms I think has its place, but I think this is another one of those kind of like to get into the Sato weeds again, is I think there's a lot of fringe techniques that get tossed now onto videos and then everybody's doing a tutorial like

Speaker 2 (01:20:54):

Parallel compression

Speaker 6 (01:20:54):

That are very Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. That are techniques that you're using in that, as you talked about Yale, that 85 compared to the 15, that's the 15% that's saving or fixing something that's fucked up. And I think that MS is something, while it's great and it's the same thing even for side chain compression. Like God, everybody who comes in to watch me mix that records their own stuff, they're like, why aren't you side chaining this, this, this, this and this? And it's like, don't fucking need to. I

Speaker 7 (01:21:25):

Know how to fucking mix. I've watched Andy Wallace fucking mix before. He wasn't side chaining. I don't need to fucking do it. This is a fucking acoustic ballad with brush snares. What the fuck do I need to side shade things for? I'd clamp if I could.

Speaker 2 (01:21:41):

That's exactly how I feel about all that stuff because people ask about that all the time. The side chaining parallel compression ms, all that. It's like, well, do you know how to even correctively EQ this in the first place?

Speaker 3 (01:21:56):

We stress the fundamentals a lot. We're really big on just getting it right from the beginning and using basic techniques whenever possible and being really awesome at them. And if you got to pull out something obscure out of the toolbox, then absolutely do it. But most of the time you're not going to need anything super crazy to achieve what you want to achieve.

Speaker 6 (01:22:17):

If you learn how to get a dope guitar tone with a 57 first, then get wild and start using 17 mics like Dave Jordan used to do back in the day, then you can get there after you've mastered that SM 57 through a good preamp and you've gotten a killer

Speaker 3 (01:22:33):

Guitar. Oh my God, that pisses me off so much. I get all kinds of 15 mic combinations when I mix and it's like not one of them sounds fucking good. It's like, can you please just get one positioning on one microphone to sound okay so I can use it in the mix instead of 10 shitty ones?

Speaker 6 (01:22:50):

Well, I'd be curious with this. So yeah, I know I see you with the Kemper and Joey, I don't really know many of your techniques, but I've listened to a lot of your records. Are you guys big on committing?

Speaker 4 (01:23:02):

Oh yeah. Yep.

Speaker 6 (01:23:03):

Okay. I think that that's another one of the ones. We have a joke on my podcast, the things that are lost on the kids. Steve Evans particularly, I could always, there's a certain sound he makes when he calls me and I know already that he's going to be like, there's 24 bikes on each guitar track and he gets so bad about this. And I think that is the thing. I was probably the last generation to come up on tape and then switch over to Pro Tools. I switched to Pro Tools in 99 and you had to learn to get it right with that thing and so many options at the end and all the amping all the time. And while I think amping is a great place in a mix, it's just like when it's always that you're guessing whether you got a good guitar tone or not, and you should really be trying to learn what a good guitar tone sounds like at the beginning.

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):

Well, let me just let you know about the Kemper. To me, the Kemper is there kind of for backup. A lot of the time you capture a really killer sound on a record and you want to make, if the mic gets knocked or something, you're fucked. The Kemper will help you get around that. Plus the band can sound like themselves live, well, like the record live and here and there you make great profiles that you can reuse, but generally the profiles don't sound good with anybody but the guy you made it with. So to me, it's more of a backup kind of thing.

Speaker 6 (01:24:42):

Interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:24:44):

But we talk about committing all the time. I personally think that that's one of the quickest ways to get better is make yourself commit.

Speaker 6 (01:24:53):

And it really is. It's so hard to convince somebody when it's in their mind that they shouldn't, but you do have to learn to commit.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):

Joey, you talk about that all the time.

Speaker 4 (01:25:03):

For me, it just became an issue where I was doing records and always getting to the point where I was really stressed out at the end because I would have all this vocal editing to do and then I would be trying to mix a song and I would have to print stuff because I basically couldn't, the session wouldn't run properly, it used too much processor. I'm completely in the box. So

Speaker 5 (01:25:32):

It

Speaker 4 (01:25:32):

Adds up really quickly. And I think one thing I've discovered, I was getting frustrated and I discovered that if you just print a lot of the stuff that you're doing, a lot of the times it doesn't really end up changing in the end in your mind you think, well, I'll leave it so I can, maybe I'll go in and compress it a little more later, or maybe I'll add some distortion or maybe I'll do this or do that. And you never really end up doing any of that stuff. The moment that you make the sound, like if it's a keyboard sound or it's a weird guitar effect or a vocal effect, that's going to be the most valuable moment when you're creating that tone or that sound. So you might as well just print it. Yeah, later on you might have to end up adding a little bit of treble or adjust the EQ or whatever. But I mean, that's a simple move that you can do after the fact to the stem itself. So I've noticed that it just makes the workflow a lot easier and it makes the whole process like the recording session and the record and getting things done on time and meaning deadlines, it kind of relies on committing really.

Speaker 2 (01:26:45):

Yes. All right. So let's go to this final question. And we've kind of said that we're not into the whole giving pointless tips out and all that, but either way, Jonathan Nas was asking, are there any things that you personally can achieve with multi-band compression that you can't achieve with just regular compression, a EQ in a mastering setting?

Speaker 6 (01:27:14):

You can probably achieve all of them, but does multi-band get you there faster? Absolutely. I tend to find that a lot of what I'm doing in multi-band is a general, I should say this, most of my use of multi-band is usually very light ratios, and I'm generally just trying to get a more smooth upfront palette that's clearer and making the mix a little bit more controlled and not having some tone. Particularly the thing I notice all the time is people neglect the 600 to 2K range. I'm trying to just get whatever instrument they've let that just be horribly out of control to be a little bit more tamed. But no, I don't think there's anything you can't do. I read something gear sluts wisdom that was actually good I read is that somebody said that there's two things that you can't do in the modern era that you couldn't do in the tape days.

(01:28:18):

Even auto tuning. People used to take an IDE nine 10 and control it with a CV lever via MIDI and tune vocals back in the day. There's a video of Prince doing it on YouTube and there's not much you can't do with these things. But I think it's also about, Joey was just talking about the deadline and the commitment thing. There's so many of these things too of that. I think we all get a paralysis point where we're so done and uninspired by this song. And some of this is getting good at tools and finding tools that you can work fast with and get great results while you still have a good vibe towards the song. And you don't hate it and just not want to fix that. The snare is too loud when you get that mix change from the band because you're so fucking sick of that song and you're so sick of this record and you want it out the door and you've now only made $5 an hour because you've been working on this record for so fucking long.

Speaker 4 (01:29:11):

Yeah, that's why it's important I think, to once you get to a certain level, of course, to involve other people because more brains are powerful than one. And it's also a matter of, I think, diverting stress levels to different people. I like that.

Speaker 2 (01:29:33):

Well, Joe, you're a big proponent of delegating and doing the classic producer role of proper project management and delegation, and I think that that's one of the best ways to keep yourself from getting that burnout factor.

Speaker 4 (01:29:56):

Absolutely. I noticed that my records, at least from my perspective, I think my records got better the moment I started involving more people for more tasks. And sometimes the quality performance of the other people being involved wasn't a hundred percent there. It wasn't what it needed to be, but it still helps the process overall because it allowed my brain to be clear minded and to make better decisions. I don't know how long it might take a guitar player to get a riff, but if I come in and they've been recording this riff for six hours and I think, well, this riff still sucks, you need to do it again. I wouldn't say that if I had been sitting there for those six hours, I would just keep it because I'd be so sick of the riff and frustrated with the whole process. So sometimes I think having that perspective and having other people that just have to do tasks for you in order to make the product better is actually the smartest thing and the best thing for the artist.

Speaker 6 (01:31:04):

I agree, wholehearted and for the past 10 years, so as I said, Mike, my assisted co-owner, what we do when we produce records is we co-produce and I cut the drums with the drawer. I have a great drum, a much better drum mind than him, and he edits the drums, which is also a check at a balance. So if I missed anything, sometimes I'll be like, that fills kind of stupid there. Why don't you guys punch that in? And then he cuts all the guitar and bass and I come in and check it, and I don't even thought about that. Yes, this kid can't fret for his life, and I don't have to sit there and go, well, this still isn't good enough. And I cut the vocals and mix and then Mike comments on my vocal stuff and he tunes it, cleans it up, and then also tells me if I didn't kill it at something. And that checks and balances is very important. And it's also, incidentally, a lot of the way, if you think about not that who's the most successful is something we should measure, but this is what Rick Rubin does too, is everybody always jokes that Rick Rubin isn't around the studio. He comes in and he lays down and sits on his smartphone and just listens, but he comes in and says, Nope, still not good enough.

(01:32:15):

I know this is take 50, which was apparently a lot of the Mars Volta record. You guys got to still keep playing this song until you get a better performance and figure out some of this arrangement.

Speaker 2 (01:32:24):

Well, it's funny, a lot of people talk shit about the Rick Rubin method, and most notably would be Slipknot because after they recorded with him, mind you, the most successful album of their career, they came out and talked a lot of crap about how he wasn't there enough and blah, blah, blah. Anyways, on comes the next record and doesn't sell nearly as well. And within I'd say four to five months of that next record coming out, I read interviews where they were saying that they didn't appreciate how good they had it with Rick Rubin.

Speaker 6 (01:33:01):

Interesting. I did not know that. Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:33:04):

Yeah, they said that they have a newfound appreciation, and I'm paraphrasing here.

Speaker 4 (01:33:10):

I'll just say that I always wanted to follow up on that, and I think it fell through the cracks, but I'm very happy that that did happen because I love Rick Rubin and I think that he's a genius and he is under appreciate it. Yeah. And I run into the same problem. A lot of my clients are like, yeah, why isn't Joey always here and why isn't he listening to every take? And it's like, well, because I want your album to be good. And that's why

Speaker 6 (01:33:43):

I think it's very hard for people to get that. And I think that's the other thing too, is I always make this joke of Michael get really disappointed when a band doesn't come back to us for a record. And I'm like, dog, I didn't marry the first girl I lost my Virgin to. I had to go out there and find it. But some of those girls along the way were pretty awesome, and some of them sucked along the way. And there's a reason I'm still single at 37, I'm still out there looking and there's a lot of us out there, and sometimes there's just a part of you that says, I haven't found my match yet. And then there's some bands I've made 14 records with over 17 years. And you sometimes find it, you sometimes don't. And I don't think that's the end of the world, but it also is a thing of that bands aren't The first thing we said to bring it all around is bands are not always educated in what they should be getting from a producer. And they don't always see all the nuances and tiny little details of why we do things the way we do when particularly, I'm sure we've all been through this when the band's like, why can't we just play all Live in the room? And you're like, because you guys play fucking terribly together. I punch St 60,000 times to the Click Track. And trying to get you to not Text Between Takes is going to make me want to tell myself,

Speaker 4 (01:34:59):

You're not the Foo Fighters. That's why.

Speaker 6 (01:35:01):

Yes. Now that's the other thing is that that show he did now has all these kids thinking that's the way they should make it, and that record, we need to do it to tape and dah, dah, dah. And as much as I loved watching that show, I think it really is poisoning the waters.

Speaker 2 (01:35:19):

I agree. It's a bad influence. It's a bad, bad influence. When Dave Grohl gets on there and says, all bands should play together and do an analog because we just did it in our garage. It's like, I've said this before. Yeah, but you've got a multimillion dollar garage and have all the best people in your

Speaker 4 (01:35:38):

Band. They're all legends, everyone.

Speaker 6 (01:35:40):

I mean, pat smear the germs. I mean, he was making great records when we were three.

Speaker 4 (01:35:48):

You can't touch that. And I think just they make it look so easy, and that's why everyone wants to latch onto it.

Speaker 2 (01:35:56):

And honestly, it probably is easy for them at this

Speaker 4 (01:35:58):

Point. That is the beauty of it though, is that they're just so damn good that everyone wants to do what they're doing.

Speaker 6 (01:36:04):

I mean, I would love for there to be more multimillion dollar shows about recording studios, but I wish that that was not the only perspective being shown in.

Speaker 2 (01:36:13):

Yeah, I agree. Totally. And I guess with that said, we've got to wrap this up, so I just want to ask if there's anything we didn't cover that you've got coming up that you'd like to inform our audience about?

Speaker 6 (01:36:28):

I think the only thing I will plug is I do that music business podcast called Off the Record, if you're interested in things like why Spotify doesn't pay artists or how to promote your band, my co-host Zach, who runs Jade Tree and Bad Timing Records and manages a bunch of bigger pop punk bands, we just every week for an hour discuss kind of a version of this, but about music promotion. I want to also say what you guys are doing here is really awesome to see because I was shocked how good your form is. And the podcast I listened to are really good, and you're the exact opposite of what we were just saying about the Foo Fire. So I really am glad you're doing this.

Speaker 3 (01:37:12):

Thank you. We appreciate that.

Speaker 4 (01:37:14):

Hell yeah. Thanks a lot for being on the show, and thanks for just sharing your mind with us for a couple hours. And if you guys are listening, please check out his Creative Live courses as well. He has a do-it-yourself mastering course and also the fundamentals of Mixing Rock and EDM, which is really awesome as well. So thanks for being on the show, and thanks for your time. Thanks so much.

Speaker 2 (01:37:38):

Thank you, Jesse. Thank you very

Speaker 1 (01:37:40):

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