GEORGE LEVER: Producer Psychology, Setting Boundaries, Secrets to the Sleep Token Sound

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host, Eyal Levi. This episode of the URM Podcast is brought to you by URM enhanced our tier of premium content. That's everything you need to know to deliver world-class mixes. The core of URM enhanced is our library of fast tracks. Each one of the fast tracks is a video course that dives deep into a specific area of recording, mixing, or mastering in a level of insane detail that you're just not going to find anywhere else. A few of my personal favorites are drum tuning with Matt Brown, creating ambience with Forrester Seve, and recording metal guitars with John Brown. You get instant access to over two dozen fast tracks. That's over 50 hours of content when you join U rm. Enhance, and we're always adding new ones once per month. Actually, URM enhance members. Also get access to our mixed rescue series where we open up one of your mixes performing little surgery and explain what we're doing every step of the way.

(00:01:00):

And last, but definitely not least, URM enhance members have the ability to book one-on-one Skype sessions with us and some of our friends. It's your chance to get a detailed mixed grit, some career advice or whatever else you want to find out more or join URM enhanced. Just go to URM Academy and click the get enhanced link. Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM Podcast. I'm Eyal Levi, and my guest today is George Lever, a producer, mixer and engineer the UK who's best known for productions with artists such as Woven war, sleep token. He is legend and loath. We had a great, great conversation all about workflow. The mindset required to go from the garage or the bedroom to working with great artists and having those artists really take your input and creativity seriously. I've said this so many times, but that trust is so crucial. If you want to move on to the next level, this is all about that. I really think you're going to love this episode and mark my words. I believe that George is going to be making major, major waves in the industry over the next few years. You heard it here first. So without further ado, I give you George Lever. George Lever, welcome to your podcast. Thank

Speaker 2 (00:02:28):

You for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:02:29):

My pleasure. And let's just talk about something that we were just talking about off air, but we're saying that you tried the 5:00 AM wake up thing, but it didn't work for you.

Speaker 2 (00:02:39):

Yeah, so the 5:00 AM thing is something that I desperately, I say desperately want to get into. I just think it's this intelligent thing to be part of my routine. I got really intrigued by a lot of entrepreneurs and how they ran their daily lives. I think it's like GQ or something like that did do a YouTube thing about how they walk through their days

(00:03:04):

And seeing about how much stuff people get done before the rest of the world wakes up made me a bit envious that they had that opportunity to get a head start of everyone. So I tried the 5:00 AM thing. I managed two and a half months, and then it just wasn't summer anymore. So waking up when it's dark just made me feel like shit. So it kind of just stopped. I still get up at six 30. It's fine. It's that's pretty early still. It's just an hour and a half. I could go to the gym in that time and then my day starts and then I'm like four hours ahead of when the band arrives and then I would feel like a king because I'd just had four hours of selfish me time, which is vital.

Speaker 1 (00:03:41):

The thing is, when you told me that you had tried it and it didn't work, I thought you were going to say one week or two weeks. So two and a half months, that's over 66 days. It's said that it takes 66 days. That's the average. Obviously everyone's different, but 66 days to create a habit that's like a real habit, a lifestyle change kind of habit. Not like, as some people said, it takes 21 days to get a new behavior as habit, but to really, really get it to where it can actually become an unconscious habit, it takes about 66 days. So you did it long enough to where if it was going to stick should have stuck. You made it through the threshold basically. Yeah. So maybe it's just not for you.

Speaker 2 (00:04:33):

I am going to make it for me, I need the time basically and probably a loud enough alarm that's irritating. It's just a case of if I know that I can get away with sleeping in and it's not a scheduling thing, then I'm pretty lenient with myself to be like, look, it's not really vital. For example, actually no, when I'm on location, so I have to go at a studio to record drums. I will get up at 5, 5 30 every single day for the duration whilst we're there so that I can have, because bands don't wake up ever. And so I know that I can get all the editing done that I didn't want to do at one in the morning,

Speaker 1 (00:05:15):

But you could have a full workday, like a whole eight hour workday.

Speaker 2 (00:05:19):

Exactly. And they get up and it's like 1:00 PM or something and they're like, you've been up since when I was like, yeah, I saw the sunrise. And they're like, they don't even know what that is anymore.

Speaker 1 (00:05:29):

Well, they see it when they're going to bed,

Speaker 2 (00:05:31):

Right. So yeah, no, I tell a lie. I do stick to the 5:00 AM thing, but it's just because when I'm away from home, I just don't sleep anyway. I get maybe five hours, six hours if I'm lucky because my brain will always be ticking over on the project and trying to problem solve all the time or something cool will have happened. And I'll be trying to think about how we then exploit that cool thing further for the rest of the session or for more songs, man. So

Speaker 1 (00:05:57):

Five or six hours, that's the problem I'm having. Okay. Because doing this for the first time, if I'm being honest, I've never had a real wake up schedule in my entire life. Just about 40 years of never sticking to a schedule because I've never had to. My parents didn't really have to either.

(00:06:20):

It wasn't in my upbringing really. Even when I was going to school, it was kind of loose. And then I never was really a part of the real world. I mean, I had one job for six weeks when I was 19. I've been in music the whole time and have never had a real schedule and was a notorious night owl for a long, long time. And so recently I decided I'm doing the 5:00 AM thing for so many reasons I had seen the same thing that you saw. But also I know a lot of people that are very successful and there's something that they have in common, which is that the majority of them wake up fucking early, early, early, some at 4:00 AM

(00:07:13):

That GQ article is not bullshit. I know so many people that are just crushers who wake up like this. And I will say that the exception, I know some exceptions who wake up late, but I think the rule is that the crushers wake up super early and I've had this idea in my head that everything I've accomplished in my life, I've accomplished working at 30% capacity. And that what's missing for me, what's getting in my way is not having normal people habits. I feel like if I could develop some normal people habits that 30% would spike up to who knows, maybe 50% or 60%,

Speaker 2 (00:08:06):

Right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:08:07):

Who knows? I just feel like I've been held back by not having normal people habits, and so I'm trying really, really hard to create them. And so the 5:00 AM thing, I've been doing it for a little bit now, and the hardest part for me is the getting five or six hours because man, sometimes my brain is just activated at night. You have to go to bed at 9:00 PM or 10:00 PM It's this to

Speaker 2 (00:08:36):

Work, 10:00 PM 10:00 PM on the door. I'm normally fucked by 8:00 PM I want to be asleep by that point in time.

Speaker 1 (00:08:43):

See, that happens to me sometimes. When I was first doing it, I was getting tired at 7:00 PM

Speaker 2 (00:08:48):

And

Speaker 1 (00:08:48):

I was like, holy shit, 7:00 PM But now it's harder to get tired at eight or nine or 10. And so man, going to bed at 11 or 12 and waking up at five is kind of brutal day after day after day. So the hardest part for me is getting tired in time to have a full night's sleep, and that really, really matters.

Speaker 2 (00:09:13):

Well, I guess that's probably affected by the fact that you don't, neither of us have office hours. You wake up, you start working, you get home in the evening, you are still working and you need that sort of gradual decline of responsibility in order to tell yourself it's time to be selfish. Now you need to tell everyone to get lost, and you need to have, it's basically, you just need to tell yourself how and when to be selfish, and then people need to then learn to respect that. I think that's what I found.

Speaker 1 (00:09:44):

Yeah, it's hard when you're the CEO of a company that's like an international thing and lots of people are relying on you. And the thing is, I don't know where that line is because part of me is like, yeah, I agree. You have to have that me time where you just shut it off. The other part of me is like, well, the world doesn't stop turning just because I'm taking me time and there's some serious shit on the line here. So yeah, this is just like, I mean, we're here to talk about you. You're not my therapist.

Speaker 2 (00:10:20):

Okay, I'm here, dude. It's all right. We'll get through this one. It'll be fine. Yeah, just invoice me. Yeah, I'd probably earn more that way anyway.

Speaker 1 (00:10:30):

I mean, therapists make a lot of money, but yeah, the shutting the brain off thing, I know that that's got to, like you said, it's hard to do. How do you wind down? What do you do to get the brain to stop the hamster wheel?

Speaker 2 (00:10:45):

I tell you what, the biggest contributor to having a routine was ending up in a committed relationship. I'd tell you, if I was single, I'd be ruined. I probably wouldn't be successful just because. Interesting. Because I'm married to my wife, Bethany, which is awesome, and we've been together for cheers, Bethany. Yeah, thanks. Thank you for not letting me die. So yeah, we've been together for seven or eight years now, and it's been that point in time where she works normal nine to five. So if I wanted to spend time with her and be around her, I had to set my clock to her clock, which meant if I wanted to see her before she went to work, I had to get up when she got up and if I wanted to see her in the evenings before we would go to bed, I'd have to be back to cook dinner.

(00:11:33):

So that kind of kickstarted everything off. I ended up with a routine because I ended up with a girlfriend. Had that not happened, I'd probably be a mess. I would have forgotten how to speak by this point. I think by the amount of time before then I would be up at 11:00 AM and awake five in the morning just, and I wouldn't get anything done. And that was the biggest thing that would change or did go on to change, is that by condensing the amount of creative time that I had within a day, it just kind of meant that, I guess it's the equivalent of thinking, oh, I either have to work out for an hour really hard, or I work out at the gym all day every day, and you'd get lazy, you'd get inefficient. That's kind of what I think is kind of how it works.

Speaker 1 (00:12:20):

Imposed limitations make a big, big difference. I've noticed

Speaker 2 (00:12:24):

For me as well, especially not just with working with audio, but anything where you have to be creative knowing that it starts here, it stops there, you get a break, alright, for this period of time, it's just do this one thing. So it is not multitasking, is it? It's just solo tasking I guess.

Speaker 1 (00:12:42):

I actually don't believe in multitasking.

Speaker 2 (00:12:44):

Oh, thank God.

Speaker 1 (00:12:46):

I think that that is one of the most destructive ideas that the productivity influencers infected people's heads with a couple decades

Speaker 2 (00:12:58):

Ago.

Speaker 1 (00:12:59):

I don't think we're really wired to multitask. I know that it's possible, but the thing is that focus is a finite resource. This is a proven thing. Focus, willpower, creativity, they're all finite resources. You only have a hundred percent, the amount within the a hundred percent decreases over the course of a day. And if you're multitasking, whether you like it or not, you're not putting a hundred percent of your available focus into whatever you're doing. That is it. There's no way around that. So if you want to perform at a really, really high level, I mean shit, maybe if your capacity is way, way higher than lots of other people, then you could multitask because your 60% is higher than other people's. A hundred percent. But I think that multitasking is a dangerous myth. And by the way, what you just said about the committed relationship, I've seen that with a few people when we stayed at Will Putney, well, we didn't stay at his place, but we were in his town for about three weeks in December, and he's at the studio between seven and 8:00 AM every single day. And no surprise there's someone that's that accomplished is

Speaker 2 (00:14:22):

Yeah, he's got loads going on.

Speaker 1 (00:14:24):

Yeah, no surprise. But his wife goes to work at a certain time, he takes her to the train and then goes to work. And that's not to say that because of her schedule, he's successful or anything, but he integrated his schedule to part of his husbandly duties and it really, really works out. So I get that. What interesting to me is I've never ever been with somebody who's part of the normal working world either. I'd like to, it's never happened. Everyone I've been with has had weird jobs, whether they were in the music business or entrepreneurial on their own or one was like a professional artist, an actual artist in museums and stuff, but no schedule with that. So I actually do better when I'm single compared to these girls I've been with because these girls are bad influences on my schedule.

Speaker 2 (00:15:24):

I see. Yeah, no, I guess when someone else is, as I'm going to say, free in life to do what they want with their time, wild and free, it can be a hazard I suppose. It's not a nice way of putting it, but it is hazardous to being productive.

Speaker 1 (00:15:41):

No, it is. I'm actually in a super productive time period now and it coincides with being single.

Speaker 2 (00:15:48):

Alright, well I guess just never get hitched. That's your calling now. I know. Sucks. You're going to just have to be like, oh, I can't do this. It's like, oh, is it me? It's like, no, I need to go and work. Its not just you're great, but my job's better, so I'll

Speaker 1 (00:16:08):

See. Yeah, man, I'm going to have to figure it out. But I think that the solution is to find somebody who works in the normal working world. I know lots of people, like I said, who have a significant other who is in the real world and that helps them establish a mock real world type of lifestyle.

Speaker 2 (00:16:34):

I also expect, well I suppose having kids also does the same thing because they end up in a really rigid schedule anyway with school.

(00:16:41):

So I think it has to happen at some point. If you end up on that life path, I think you end up being helped with a schedule, I suppose, or a thing that comes into play that is out of your control. But it's kind of useful being that way where it's just like it's not a choice, you just have to go and do it. It just has to happen and then everything else has to fit in around that. I know for sure that knowing that my day stops at a certain point and the bands that I work with, knowing that means that we all know when we have to be creative for and they end up. There was an album that I did where someone I was working with just decided to completely change their life schedule to imitate mine. So they would come to the gym with me every single morning for two months, eat when I ate, worked when I worked, and then when I went, they would go and they went, I've never been this productive in my life. And then the album would finish and then they'd go home and they'd be like, yeah, no, it it's over. I'm back to where I was. It's not the same, but it was kind of funny. It was cool. I thought it was fun. It was an interesting experiment.

Speaker 1 (00:17:51):

I have had one scenario, it was actually with my college roommate. He actually went on to become a very successful person. He joined, I don't know if you remember this band, it probably won't, but this band called The Calling that was really big around the early two thousands, like a multi-platinum band, and

Speaker 2 (00:18:16):

He

Speaker 1 (00:18:16):

Went from that to one of these real estate TV shows, biggest lists or whatever.

Speaker 2 (00:18:24):

Oh right,

Speaker 1 (00:18:24):

Okay. Where they're in LA and they've got a $20 million home and it's one of these reality TV shows, but he's like a Patrick Bateman from American Psycho in the way that he lives. Just more beauty care products than anyone I've ever dated and one of the most self-involved narcissistic people ever. However, his schedule is incredibly productive and so I just synced up to him and holy shit man, those six months we lived together were just incredible.

Speaker 2 (00:19:05):

It just takes the arithmetic out of it if it's not a choice. It's like when you see about Mark Zuckerberg, he wears the same clothes all the time. He doesn't want to have to think about that and probably eats the same meals all the time. He doesn't want to think about that. When I was doing the 5:00 AM thing, I also ate the same meals, the same meals every single day at the same point in time as well. I do that and people go, oh, do you not get bored of it? It's like, no, I like the food that I'm eating, so why wouldn't I want to eat it all the time? It's fine.

Speaker 1 (00:19:35):

I totally do that as well. And that's actually, that's one of the things that I can point to when I'm in my most productive time periods. There's some things that happen and that's one of the things that happens is somehow I end up eating the same thing at the same time every single day. It's always something super healthy and it's not exciting whatsoever, but it's the same thing

(00:20:05):

Every fucking day. No thought involved. I've been on this kick to try to eliminate anything that takes thought that shouldn't. So kind of the same idea that put into mixing workflows that we teach. I'm trying to put into my life. One thing that I've been doing recently for instance, is Amazon has this subscription service. So I mean it sounds really simple, but it's amazing that every single thing that I know that I need for the month or for the quarter or for the half year, it's all on a subscription. So just shows up. I don't need to think about it.

Speaker 2 (00:20:49):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:20:49):

Everything.

Speaker 2 (00:20:50):

I do it too. It's fine.

Speaker 1 (00:20:53):

Toothpaste all the way to cleaning products, all that stuff, like your normal life stuff. I don't want to think about having to get it. So it's just on a subscription and it shows up when it needs to and that's it. But if you do a bunch of things like that, take every aspect you can and figure out a way to leverage today's technology for you. You can eliminate a lot of bullshit.

Speaker 2 (00:21:24):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:21:24):

Wasted time.

Speaker 2 (00:21:25):

Yeah, there's a lot of excess noise that isn't really needed. It's whatever. It's not for everyone. I explained some aspects of it to people. They're probably the same way that you probably do and they'll probably just pull the face, the face. It's the one that's like,

Speaker 1 (00:21:40):

They'll pull the face now, but they won't in five years is what I've noticed. And so five years ago when I was getting groceries delivered, people would make fun of me.

Speaker 3 (00:21:49):

Really?

Speaker 1 (00:21:50):

Yeah. You're just trying to get out of, I dunno, you're just trying to be lazy. It's like, actually no, I'm trying to be more productive, but people that I know who are into technology and are into normally open-minded would make fun of me. It was some bougie thing or comments like, well, I don't have the money for it. It's actually, it's

Speaker 2 (00:22:12):

Cheaper.

(00:22:13):

Who wants to be in a supermarket? I don't understand. Who wants to go clothes shopping? Why do you want to be there? It's so dumb, it's so irritating. Anything like that, being in a place where other people are and they're going, ah, technology will turn you into a robot. It's like you are being a drone in these stores where monotonous music is playing and you standing in line and you're not making any decisions. You're just there going, oh, what type of, I don't fucking care. Just get out. Just oh my. Yeah, okay, alright. I guess that's a nerve, but yeah, it's just fucking dumb. Why is it? Thank you. It's like when people, oh no, I don't really want to rant. This is my first time doing a podcast and I just don't want to be here telling people that their life choices are wrong.

Speaker 1 (00:23:03):

No, man. One of the reasons that this podcast does well is because we don't do normal stupid interviews. People are honest and tell their thoughts, so you're welcome to rant about it and I totally get it. I agree with you. It's like, why would I want to spend 30 minutes driving to the grocery store an hour to an hour and a half walking around it, waiting in line, deciding, oh, this type of canned beans is 30 cents cheaper than this kind. Then stand in line, then drive back. Why? Seriously

Speaker 2 (00:23:38):

Why it's stressing me out thinking about it actually, it's just, fuck, the idea of it is just irritating, I think. Yeah. The only time I ever end up in supermarkets is when I'm on holiday, and that's just because the routine's gone and that's it.

Speaker 1 (00:23:52):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:23:53):

I think

Speaker 1 (00:23:54):

Fair enough. Yeah. I end up in supermarkets if I'm in Europe or something and we have an Airbnb. But the thing is that now five years later, a lot of those people who made fun of me about it also get their groceries delivered. So I think But they won't admit it, will

Speaker 2 (00:24:13):

They?

Speaker 1 (00:24:13):

Right. No, they admit it. They just don't realize that they made fun of it a few years ago.

Speaker 2 (00:24:18):

I see. I wondered whether it'd be one of those things who's like, ah, just don't tell. Don't tell him. Alright,

Speaker 1 (00:24:23):

Just No, no, no, it is. They're not early adopters and so once it becomes a mainstream thing, they just go along with it. So I think when people give you that face that you were talking about

Speaker 2 (00:24:36):

The face, yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:24:37):

Yeah. Just ask them again in five years and it'll probably be a normal part of their lives

Speaker 2 (00:24:43):

If I know them in five years, if you know.

Speaker 1 (00:24:46):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:24:46):

Things move so quickly in our world you don't know the same people even give it two years, you don't know the same people anymore. So weird.

Speaker 1 (00:24:55):

That has happened to me. But I will say that one of the things that really has helped URM move as quickly as it has is leveraging old relationships. I just said leveraging twice in the past 10 minutes, but is a lot of people that I've known for 10 or 15 years, the relationship coming back around, I feel like if I didn't have those relationships, it wouldn't have been able to move. But then again, yeah, there's a lot of people who I'll know for a very short period of time and then that's it. It's over.

Speaker 2 (00:25:33):

Yeah, obviously there's exceptions to the rule, but I find that, oh, what is it? My dad says,

(00:25:38):

You meet people to challenge you for a reason and they're there as, it's like in psychology, it's mirrors, right? You either like the thing that you see or you don't. So if you don't like the thing, then it's a reflection of you. If you like it, then you probably like how you look. I dunno, but I dunno the whole thing. But I just know that those people that are there, they're just today's obstacle. If they stick around, then it's cool. If they're not, then it's just you don't really have to relate it to the person.

Speaker 1 (00:26:05):

Well, just out of curiosity, do you stay friends or do you even become friends with the bands you work with?

Speaker 2 (00:26:13):

Most of them. I got told actually not to be friends with the bands that I work with when I first started out, but I can't help it. I get really super involved in all the music to an extent where doing a record is kind of just, I sound like a proper artist now where doing a record takes part of me away by the time it's done. So listening to sundowning, the sleep token record is extremely draining. Listen to, I love it, but listening to it just reminds me about the whole process. That was amazing. None of it was negative. It's just listening to, it reminds having a bookmark of your life. It's really weird. And so having those bookmarks, I can't help but fall in love with the people that I end up having those moments with. And this is purely platonic. I'm not interested in entering another romantic relationship with all these guys, but it's just like I can't help it. I end up, especially with the records where everyone gives a fuck, there are records that you have where people are just, we're not going to lie. There are records that are there just to be records. They're not there to be art.

(00:27:24):

And then there are records that are very art driven. And when I get to be involved in those, I cannot help but respect and adore the people that make those. And then a drug, I just constantly want to be around them. I constantly want to be working on stuff with them because it's life fulfilling. It makes me happy. So all I want is that happiness. So yes, I do become friends with some, probably most of the people that I work with, but there are some that it ends up being a business relationship

Speaker 1 (00:27:53):

Of course. Was the reason that you were told not to make friends with them so that you could keep that authority figure status so that you know how sometimes people that are really close to you, like brothers for instance,

Speaker 2 (00:28:10):

Take the piss

Speaker 1 (00:28:12):

And sometimes band members don't listen to each other and that's why they need a producer because they need that mediator or that outside third party that they trust so that you can kind of keep that

Speaker 2 (00:28:26):

Status. Well, I guess the advice that I got was completely correct for the starting point, at least until you had some sort of level of respect and authority over the project. On the whole, the advice was necessary for the time, but it's not necessary so much now because I have some respect because of the work that I've done when I was starting out, I was hoping that if, I guess it was seen that I was hoping that if I was friendly towards the people, that I would get more from the project or that they would come back I suppose, and work again. And we're talking year one, year two type amateur mistakes that I made when I was starting up as a business person. And I resented that feedback when I got it and I thought they were wrong and I know that they're not wrong because I now very much use that as the starting point from day one. And then eventually by the end of the project, we are either we are friends or we've started at a point where we can finish at and there's no harm, no foul. It's very difficult to go in the opposite direction without people picking you up on it.

Speaker 1 (00:29:32):

What do you mean by the opposite direction?

Speaker 2 (00:29:34):

Like walking into a room and being like, you're right mate, do you want anything? Can I get that for you? Yeah, let's go do this. And then something will happen where they'll be like, dude, we can't pay you this month. Is that okay? I'm sure that's fine. We're friends. And you're kind of backed into a corner on that because if there's no respect and there's no mutual understanding and they've just assumed that because you're being nice to them, that you'll give them a bit more leeway on you paying your own bills, it becomes very difficult to go from being so forthcoming with being friendly to then end up in that apparent spot, the adult spot that you need to have in those relationships.

Speaker 1 (00:30:12):

I totally agree. One of the things that I was taught by one of my mentors, and he said it pretty crudely, but be a dick at the beginning so that you don't have to later. And what he meant was not really be a dick, but look for the opportunity at the very beginning to lay down the law about something. Not because you're trying to be a dick or anything, but because what'll happen if you don't is maybe it starts off great, fine, but at some point in a long project, if you're together for four to eight to 12 weeks, something will happen along that path that requires authority. Whether the band broke something or it's just musical authority or something, or payment, whatever it could be, something will come up where you need to use your authority. And if you have three weeks of being like the bro and then suddenly do that, it's going to make everything weird. They're not going to see you that way. And so when you do that, it's going to come out of nowhere and they'll be like, why is he being a fucking dick? Because they don't see you as an authority. Whereas if you establish that at the beginning and then that's it, you're cool after that, then if it comes back up, they're not going to be surprised. It's going to be within the parameters of your relationship.

Speaker 2 (00:31:51):

And it's only ever like the first point of contact that you have. I would say this if I was teaching someone, you don't restart that relationship every time you work with that band either. So once you've done it once when it's happened, you never have to go back there again. And even if you do become friendly or friends because they know that you have the capacity and are allowed within your own working space to have your own authority, they still respect your space. Well, that's the hope and that's what experience should teach you by the end of it or as you go along. That's why I think because I've found that establishing point, I try to get that out of the way as soon as possible with everyone.

Speaker 1 (00:32:31):

How do you do that without ruining the vibe?

Speaker 2 (00:32:34):

You just say, I'm going to have a really adult conversation with you and then we can get into the interesting part, which is the music.

Speaker 1 (00:32:40):

Fair enough? Just be honest.

Speaker 2 (00:32:42):

Yeah, we're going to be adults for the next 15 minutes. You are going to have to hear this. I'm not going to repeat myself. And if you miss it, it's on you, the end, you give them consequence, it's fine.

Speaker 1 (00:32:51):

That works. So you don't turn it into some big dramatic thing, just get it out of the way.

Speaker 2 (00:32:56):

No, treat everyone like an adult, speak to them. They're an adult. If at that point they decide to fuck about, that's the point where you go, we had the chat on day one and now you are crossing that line and now you are going home. That's it. I don't have to explain it. If I'm saying you are going home, you're going home and it's not because I want you to, it's because you've let yourself down at that point. I don't enjoy that chat. It makes me feel as uncomfortable as it makes the person hearing it, but I'm not going to have someone shit in my house basically, this is where I live, this is my home. I can't have that.

Speaker 1 (00:33:37):

So how did you establish that trust at the very beginning? Because that's the hardest thing I think for people who are starting out. And it really is the most important thing too because you can't really have an impact on a project if they don't trust you.

Speaker 2 (00:33:55):

Well, I had someone ask something quite similar recently. I've started doing one-to-ones just to see what it would be like to teach people. Because ultimately that's one of the best things that you can do once you've gone and knowledge, you provide it back to the people that don't have it. Teaching someone how to have experience is difficult at any point. And teaching someone when to know or how to read a room so that they know that they can have that conversation to get respect and trust is difficult because the way you may approach something is going to be completely different to the way that I approach it, and we may still get the same result. It doesn't mean that either one is the way that I wouldn't be able to teach your way. You wouldn't probably wouldn't want to teach my way of doing it, but they both get the same result.

(00:34:40):

So the way that I started establishing respect and trust was by initially having to prove my self worth basically to the band. And whether that's through elevating the music to the next level with songwriting, additional production coaching even we end up at being therapists at the best of times during the whole thing. Or even resolving band disputes, which isn't our job, that's not why they end up here, but that's half the stuff that we end up dealing with. And I think it's those small interactions that end up building that level of, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about and he gives a fuck, alright, the end. And as I ended up with more experience and more people knew a bit more what to expect when they came here or what I was capable of providing, the opening line is just like, I'm going to invest myself as much as I expect you to invest into this. I think people understand how much engineers or producers can provide to a project and how much of a fuck they can give, but that completely comes down to how much of a fuck the band gives in equal parts. So finishing songs, coming with finished songs, that really helps coming with great ideas and understanding how to be flexible, that really helps. And understanding how they want the end user to hear it and then emotionally respond to it, that also helps. Those things are marks of giving a fuck.

Speaker 1 (00:36:07):

I guess what I'm wondering is I feel like all that stuff is predicated on them even listening to you in the first place. And I remember this from when I was really first starting out, and I hear this in one-on-ones all the time, see this posted in the URM group a lot that people can't get their clients to even listen to them in the first place before you have any sort of track record really. I think that once you've done some projects that people like there's at least a base level trust for them to even be having the conversation with you. There's a certain level of band that wouldn't even go to you in the first place if they didn't have a basic amount of trust. And then from there you build the deeper trust. But I'm talking about before you have that basic level of trust when you're really, really first starting out because yeah, finishing their songs or bringing ideas that help them finish their songs and all that stuff, that's all great, but how do you get to the point where they're even letting you try that? And let me just say this, I just spoke with somebody who had a great answer,

(00:37:28):

Which was it was Matt Good? And he said he just does it and shows them.

Speaker 2 (00:37:34):

Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 (00:37:35):

And that way he doesn't have to suggest it. He'll show up at the studio a few hours early and do it, do a save as with a different session name, do the idea, and then when they get in, it just hits space bar and either they love it or they don't. But that way he doesn't have to be like, Hey, so I have this idea. It's kind of different, but

Speaker 2 (00:37:55):

Okay, well okay, I guess it's a bit unfair because that stuff I relate to because I do it, but I I'm not aware that I'm doing it, if you see what I mean.

Speaker 1 (00:38:07):

Your brain just kicks in and you do the idea

Speaker 2 (00:38:11):

And it's not fair. And the more that I talk to people, especially with you asking that question to me kind of sitting and thinking on it, I'm really in an unfair advantage.

Speaker 1 (00:38:21):

What do you mean?

Speaker 2 (00:38:21):

Well, because of who I got brought up around, my dad used to teach companies how to be more effective. That was his job. He would get brought in by MDs and CEOs, they'd ask him how to do this stuff and how to fix their marketing and I'd be around that environment, my whole upbringing. That's really cool. He was just a problem solver. But unfortunately, because it's really difficult to tell someone how teach someone how to have perfect pitch, you just either have it or I guess you can get it over time, but some people are just,

Speaker 1 (00:38:55):

You actually can't get perfect pitch. You

Speaker 2 (00:38:57):

Can't, okay, I didn't know that. I

Speaker 1 (00:38:58):

Know you can get relative pitch.

Speaker 2 (00:39:00):

Okay, I didn't know that. So I've learned something that's cool.

Speaker 1 (00:39:03):

I am successful. I have taught you something.

Speaker 2 (00:39:06):

Yeah, no, you've got to learn something every day, right? You've also got to be wrong multiple times a day, otherwise you don't learn anything.

Speaker 1 (00:39:13):

True.

Speaker 2 (00:39:13):

Yeah. It's really difficult for me to, because I have to think about it really hard because I naturally just do stuff and I naturally say stuff and end up having conversations and approach things in a way that ends up with everyone getting what they want. And before I did music, I was a graphic artist and I built websites for people. So being able to communicate effectively and understand how to translate what they need into what they want because not everyone knows what they need, but they think they know what they want.

(00:39:42):

And so it's unfair and it's not like a superpower I got brought up in that environment. And so I know how to talk to people on a certain level that gets a certain result. So when you are asking me or you are talking to me about the situations that people are coming across are ones where I'm kind of sat here going, I can't relate to it because I don't think I've had it. And that's really unfair because I wish I could help and I wish I could provide advice, but I'm kind of just out here going, no, I just said words and those bad things don't happen.

Speaker 1 (00:40:14):

I want to hear more about this upbringing. This is something that is really interesting to me because I've talked about it on here quite a bit, but I also have a very unique upbringing of a very accomplished dad musically. He's one of the,

Speaker 2 (00:40:32):

He's a composer, right?

Speaker 1 (00:40:33):

Conductor.

Speaker 2 (00:40:34):

Conductor, sorry.

Speaker 1 (00:40:35):

People assume he's a composer a lot. He doesn't compose. He's actually really bad at it. He got hired to do something for ESPN once and man, it was not pretty as a conductor, he's one of the best in the world. And so I got raised around a list. Classical musicians, his friends are all the best in the world. And so the thing that I got out of that was understanding excellence is this thing where also knowing what's possible where I think a lot of people don't see that. They don't see the potential in things. And even when things seem very unrealistic, I've always been able to see what other people just don't see. And I've been able to have success because I can see it through. And that came from being around in an environment like that. And I don't have to about it. I see the future.

Speaker 2 (00:41:36):

It's problem solving. It's unfair. It makes you feel like an asshole for having it as well because kind of a bit like silver spoony. But

Speaker 1 (00:41:44):

Yeah, there was other things that I didn't get though a normal people type of life. So I'm just curious about your upbringing a bit. Very, very interesting to me. Did he ever sit down and try to teach you this sort of thing or is it just something you picked up from being in the environment?

Speaker 2 (00:42:03):

If I asked him, he would approach me about it, but up until that point, no Dad's approach to being my dad was one that I didn't understand until maybe two years ago where effectively I became an adult. I'm 30 now, but I don't think I was an adult until two years ago where I understood how life and stuff is kind of just put together. And at that point I was able to go back to him and be like, alright, I get it now. I don't hate you anymore. I didn't hate him, but you know what I mean? There's always that sort of childlike resentment as you're growing up. It's like, why aren't you here? Why don't you give me everything? And the answer is, is because you don't need any of it, George put everything down. So if I asked him about how to, because there were times where I had weird situations, like a band coming to me 18 months after we signed off. No, we didn't sign off on project. We didn't even actually start it. But coming back, demanding the time that they put down for and then just didn't turn up for. So I was at the studio ready that they got a refund on and I had to approach dad about this. This was about five years ago, maybe six years ago. I had to approach him and asked him what's the fit?

Speaker 1 (00:43:18):

Wait, so they did get a refund, so hold on. So they paid a down payment book for a time and then just never showed up and then wanted a refund 18 months later, assholes.

Speaker 2 (00:43:30):

Yeah, that's not a normal situation to be put in front of you. Is it like being a self-employed guy applying your trade and then something comes out of, what's the term, out of left field and then you dunno what's going to happen. And I had to go to dad and I was like, I'm pretty sure I know what the fair thing to do is, but I dunno if it's the right thing to do. And that was the point where, and it's those conversations where he would sort of,

Speaker 1 (00:43:58):

What did you think was the fair thing to do?

Speaker 2 (00:44:00):

I wanted to say no, but I also knew that there was an opportunity. I still worked that week. I had an inkling that they weren't going to come in and so I found secondary work so I wasn't completely screwed. So I ended up giving them a discount for one of the services that they didn't use, which was amping or something. The amping didn't happen, but the studio time was paid for, so I ended up giving them something back because there was an off chance because one of the guys was pretty talented and I had a feeling that he might, if he wasn't an asshole, become something and I figured that if I gave something small that didn't hurt me back, that it would leave that doorway open so he would feel like he won. But I also knew I was safe financially, so that meant that I was happy. So that's what ended up happening. I didn't want to give them anything. This was the asshole bit in return. I didn't need to do it and they're probably going to listen to this, so it's fine. Well, they're assholes for doing that to you. Yeah, they paid me for the studio time over months. So then I split up their refund over equivalent amount of months.

Speaker 1 (00:45:10):

I mean, fair enough.

Speaker 2 (00:45:12):

Sorry. Yeah, it sounds cheeky.

Speaker 1 (00:45:14):

Look, you didn't have to give them a refund at all. But the thing is that's interesting, there is thinking about what are the potential repercussions if you're just looking at it in a black and white way on paper, just the right move is fuck 'em. They don't get a refund because they paid a down payment. That's why you get a down payment. But then there's also everything you do has a consequence. And you could say that the consequence for them of not showing up is losing the money. And that's true, that's not untrue. But then you actually not working with them on that refund has a consequence as well. And what is the consequence of that?

Speaker 2 (00:46:04):

Well, the consequence is unhappy people have really big mouths. That's right. If that happens, there is no amount of PR that you can do or Facebook advertising or pixel tracking that you can do to fix how quickly bad news spreads.

Speaker 1 (00:46:21):

And it doesn't matter if it's true.

Speaker 2 (00:46:24):

No,

Speaker 1 (00:46:24):

That's something that's very, very interesting these days is accusations hold more weight than truth in many scenarios. And even if the truth comes out, there's still damage done from the

Speaker 2 (00:46:37):

Accusation. People love drama, they think it's great. So yeah, so I gave them a bit back because at that point, I guess my tactic was that, well, I've given them something back so they can't really complain. And so then I've taken that option off the table. That was kind of what I was doing. I guess it's not buying their silence, it's just stopping them from having the opportunity to be more of an asshole.

Speaker 1 (00:47:03):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:47:03):

So whatever.

Speaker 1 (00:47:04):

So how did it go? You gave them the refund over time and then what happened?

Speaker 2 (00:47:09):

Nothing. They fucked off and then the band split up. Classic.

Speaker 1 (00:47:13):

I mean I guess the thing is you never know though.

Speaker 2 (00:47:16):

No.

Speaker 1 (00:47:17):

Like you said, you saw that there was potential and it could have been a situation where the guy was very appreciative in another where the same thing happens and you work with them. That guy then goes on to become successful and remembers that you did that.

Speaker 2 (00:47:37):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:47:38):

Maybe

Speaker 2 (00:47:38):

If it's five years ago, it's very close to when I was starting out, really going at it on my own that especially when you are working within a very niche community, which is rock and metal, everyone knows everyone. All it takes is for something to go a bit wrong. They all play a local show, they chat some shit and you don't get any work and then or other people cancel because they think you're ANRs asshole and you treated their friends badly, blah blah, blah. It's just like, I just can't be bothered. Just go away. If this is that important to you, just fine. It's not important to me. Just stop. Just stop.

Speaker 1 (00:48:17):

Yeah. Also, if they're hitting you off for that refund 18 months later, there's probably some desperation.

Speaker 2 (00:48:24):

Yeah, they're broke.

Speaker 1 (00:48:25):

Yeah. There's something about to get evicted from where they live and have exhausted all means, and this is a last ditch effort to find some money. So look, the thing is, I don't want to put it out there that I'm suggesting that people always refund bans It's, or people that screw them over. And at URM when people want refunds, we don't always give them to them. Like the policy, especially with the URM summit and it's a high ticket event and no refunds and we try to stick to that, but every now and again, someone will have bought the ticket and then their life falls apart like an illness happens or their wife leaves them and locks them out of the studio and they suddenly have to pay all this crazy lawyer fees and child support

Speaker 4 (00:49:23):

And

Speaker 1 (00:49:24):

They lost their income and now they're driving an Uber saving back up to get more music gear and crazy shit happens and we could be like, no, sorry, no refunds. Or we can choose to work with people and I'm not trying to encourage people to hit me up and make up stories. I'm just saying that there's a place for caring about the people you work with and about your own reputation enough to make exceptions where appropriate.

Speaker 2 (00:49:57):

Yeah, I think it's just chess really, isn't it? And I can empathize with a situation like that where you also, in this situation where you've got to be careful with what we put into the conversation and what people take away from it. I was just dealing with a shit situation and my easiest way of I guess dealing with it was if they're a bit happy, they'll leave me alone. They can't be assholes about it. It gets it off my plate and that of email anxiety is horrible. I hate having to deal with any of those types of emails where people are just, and they're reaching and that type of anxiety drives me up the wall. I hate it. So I will do not anything to get to avoid it, but it's just like I will try and make sure that that just is not in daily rotation at all, but I can appreciate why you are probably having to put a bit of a disclaimer on this going. Yeah, so it's a bit of a as and when type situation.

Speaker 1 (00:50:59):

Oh yeah, absolutely. Because you, I guarantee you some people will hear it and try to take advantage of it.

Speaker 2 (00:51:06):

Yeah, I don't want that. That's not what I want. It's just story time.

Speaker 1 (00:51:11):

Oh yeah. Well, the thing is, anytime that happens, we do our due diligence to make sure that the person's telling the truth and we know that people like to take advantage and so what we need to make sure, especially when it comes to something like the summit, is that they're not just asking for the money back because they decided to buy a Kemper, something like that. And we said no refunds for a reason is that we make no profit off the event. Every single dollar that comes in goes towards making the event awesome. Anyone who's gone knows the event is over the top.

Speaker 2 (00:51:50):

I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (00:51:51):

Yeah, it's not for profit. Everything else we do is, but that particular event is to give our most dedicated students and also our closest friends instructors just an opportunity to come together and supercharge everything basically. If you're really, really serious about all this shit and really love what we put out and you want to supercharge the benefit, that's what it's all about. And it's so expensive to put on. It's so expensive.

Speaker 2 (00:52:28):

Yeah, I bet

Speaker 1 (00:52:29):

There's just no room for profit. We would have to be bringing in twice as many people or three times as many people to reach a profit and that's fine. But that said, we have to be very careful about giving refunds because that money is earmarked for something.

Speaker 2 (00:52:46):

Sure. I think that makes sense. Well, I guess if you've, anyone that's run and owned to business kind of understands how cashflow works and when it's fine to make a loss and when it's not fine to make a loss. So I think, well, you're explaining it to me and I'm like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Of course, yes, fine. Next it makes perfect sense that, but I did not know. I didn't know, and this sounds like sounds an ad placement. I didn't know that it wasn't for profit because obviously my limited reach I guess with it is I see it when it happens on Facebook or when stuff comes out on YouTube and I watch it because it's cool. It's just cool and it's nice to see because stuff like that doesn't happen over here in Europe or in the uk, but I didn't know it wasn't for profit.

Speaker 1 (00:53:35):

Well, people assume that because of the high ticket price that we're just raking in the dollars and it's one of those events that self-help people do that's high ticket price and they're just flying there in helicopters, so you're not, no airplanes not private. It is a for-profit business. We do make money off of the other things we do, but this one in particular is not, I'd love it to be, but it's just not. And the benefit for, it's such a powerful thing for everyone involved that it's just worth doing. But yeah, every dollar goes back in. I think in 2019 we made $1,900 off it.

Speaker 2 (00:54:24):

That's sick. Congrats.

Speaker 1 (00:54:26):

Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:54:28):

That's good going. Was that for a week's work?

Speaker 1 (00:54:33):

That's one of the reasons I'm not doing it in 2020.

Speaker 2 (00:54:36):

Okay.

Speaker 1 (00:54:36):

It takes so much work to do. It basically takes me about three or four months to put it together.

Speaker 2 (00:54:41):

Interesting.

Speaker 1 (00:54:42):

So we've done it three years in a row, and so if you do the math, that means that out of the past three years, about nine months have been spent on this event. So if we were to do it in 2020, that would be one full year out of the past four spent on this event, one full year. That's crazy. When I did that math, I was like, I need a year off from it.

Speaker 2 (00:55:08):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:55:08):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:55:10):

Especially when Okay. And then, sorry, so my brain keeps coming round to, this is a URM podcast and we're talking about basically how to manage a business the whole time

(00:55:21):

And how to manage time, which it cracks me up because it's just, yeah. Oh, we'll get to audio. Oh, I don't mind. We can talk about this the whole time. Part of me just wanted to interrupt because I've just had a notification on Apple News saying SpaceX is going to put people in orbit. People like citizens like you and me, and I know that that harks back to an episode that you did where you're talking about aviation. I was like, oh, okay. I should probably tell that Al, but we were mid flow about something else, but it's time to go and get your tickets.

Speaker 1 (00:55:49):

Thing about this is when we started the URM podcast, it was all about audio like hardcore. And we've been doing this for five years now, and before that I was doing Creative Live and I've talked about, I remember that audio. Yeah, I've talked about audio a whole lot and we'll always be talking about that, but I'm a lot more interested in who it is that I'm talking to and about the stuff behind the audio. I want to know where their heads are at and we will get to the audio, but we already have now the mix. That's the thing is if you want to talk about compressor settings, a podcast is not going to be better for that than now. The mix,

Speaker 2 (00:56:36):

It just tickles, it tickles me because, and just imagining someone clicking on for the first time and being like, why are we talking about waking up at 5:00 AM Tell me how to use a Neve. What are you getting at

Speaker 1 (00:56:47):

Fucking getting out of the mix? That's the thing is we have such a better platform to actually show how to do the audio than a podcast that I'm more interested in getting to know about the people behind the audio and what makes them tick and how they actually get shit done. That's so much more interesting to me.

Speaker 2 (00:57:11):

I think so.

Speaker 1 (00:57:11):

And I'm noticing the response to our episodes. People tend to appreciate those episodes a lot more.

Speaker 2 (00:57:18):

Okay, that's cool.

Speaker 1 (00:57:19):

Yeah, we get a much better response off of those. I'd be bummed if people wanted all just like, well, how do you set your compressor?

Speaker 2 (00:57:27):

And they just talk about the same compressor every episode.

Speaker 1 (00:57:31):

Right?

Speaker 2 (00:57:32):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:57:32):

A of people have thanked me for not taking it in that direction anymore.

Speaker 2 (00:57:37):

I wonder if there's a way of exaggerating it even further and going beyond intentionally, avoiding talking about audio altogether. It's just like, no, we're not talking about that ever.

Speaker 1 (00:57:47):

I mean, it could be the, I guess Brian Hood's podcast, which is a hundred percent about business. But the thing is, I don't want to do that either because I want to talk about whatever makes the person tick. So that is also audio. There's the part of it that is how they actually made it happen in the world, but then there's also the part of how they made it happen had something to do with their skills in audio. It's not one or the other. To me,

Speaker 2 (00:58:18):

I can relate to that because before I discovered the podcast, so this is where it gets nerdy. I've listened to the podcast for, I dunno, over a year. It's all I listened to whilst I'm at the gym every morning. Oh, thank you. No, dude, it is. So when you reached out, I was like, okay, this is fun, this is weird, this is cool. But before then, and I used to use it as a device and this is where it relates to you, I used that and the captions of Nail the mix that went up on YouTube as the opportunity to get a better understanding for how other engineers or other producers, depending on what they focus on, think because like you say, it is the way that people end up approaching things. I just found it interesting seeing the people that I knew, like say from the Andy Sleep Forum talking and not typing shit out and seeing their personality and seeing how that comes across and seeing how that eventually ends up affecting the emotional decisions that make a make or just hearing people talk about the stuff that, like you're saying, you want to know about what makes them tick.

(00:59:23):

But hearing in the podcast, hearing the people whose records that I've grown up listening to Tom Lord Algae's one is crazy to listen to.

Speaker 1 (00:59:33):

It was crazy to do.

Speaker 2 (00:59:34):

Yeah. But although I'm an engineer and yeah, I'm on your podcast talking about a handful of stuff that people like. I'm still just a bit of a nerd when it comes to other producers and a bit of, not a fanboy, but just huge respect for the people and being able to hear, not the heroes I suppose, but other people that are sat at the table that I want to eventually get to. Being able to hear how they think and being able to hear tidbits that align or are relatable. It's really not endearing encouraging. It's just nice, I think, because there's no other real way to understand whether you are on the right pathway or even in the right ballpark for how the job is supposed to be done.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):

Totally. And I think that if all you were getting was Tom, Lord Algae loves this EQ move or something, I don't know if it's as relatable as understanding not only what EQ move he's making, but how the dude got to that point and not just how he got to that point technically, but how that brilliant brain of his works. It's fascinating stuff to me.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):

I was also going to pick up on the ones that we talked about on Facebook, which was Rick Carson, like hearing or seeing him describe how he, because I'm pretty sure it's visual, how he sees how sounds are made, but by hearing them and then recreates that for either himself or for other people when he was talking about being sent MIDI to then go and get the Stevie Wonder type thing down and he knew, what was it he said he just wanted to know what song or something because he knew how everything else was put together.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):

By the way, if you haven't heard the Rick Carson episode, you should.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):

Yeah, it's fucking nuts.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):

It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):

That dude has a, I don't know what number it's at, but that guy's got a high iq,

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):

But also his brain, he is someone that sounds like is operating above a certain level all the time. His RPM must be higher than average just for his, it's not just IQ is it? It's how efficient

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):

RPM.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):

Yeah, it's how efficiently and how quickly he gets to that point of acceleration whilst performing that thought. Right. It's not just starting at one point and getting there eventually. It's just like bam. It's SSD versus hard drive.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):

I'm very fascinated by movie directors. I think that they're like music producers on basically

(01:02:09):

They have to know how to do the art part, but there's so much that goes into that. And so watching some interviews about Martin Scorsese and certain actors being asked, who's the best director you've worked with? And they're all saying Martin Scorsese, and these are people who have worked with lots of incredible directors and why, and it's because you can watch high level problem solving happen instantaneously. There will be a super complex problem that occurs, and I don't know what problems occur on movie sets, but it's described as some super complex problem occurs that would normally take a master director serious thought to figure out, and they'll figure it out of course. But with Scorsese, apparently it's just like problem happens. He thinks for two seconds, bam solution.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):

Was this something you were watching or listening to?

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):

Just different interviews. I've seen a few different people saying it. The one I'm talking about right now is Jonah Hill was talking about working on Wolf of Wall Street with him, but I've heard other people say that too. I think De Niro was saying it. Different people have said that there's all these layers to the problems a director has to solve from the technical to the dealing with what the actors are doing to the budgetary constraints. How many shots do they get at a certain scene before they can't do it anymore? Who knows All this stuff. I don't understand. Not in that world, but he just, bam, he just sees the solution and that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):

Yeah. Well, sorry, I'm just processing everything you just said because I'm agreeing with it, but I don't know anything else other to say then. Yeah, okay. No, that sounds a, I'm going to make a note of watching those interviews because I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess you are, right, but also then the idea of being able to, because, okay, so I started up doing YouTube bits and bobs just simply because I figured it was something that would be useful eventually, and I hadn't appreciated the being able to pre-visualize how a shot works, how lighting works, what lens, how something's going to grade, how something's going to sound in an edit, how it's going to work, the motion of the camera, oh my God, I thought audio was difficult and then I didn't realize that there is something and it is, yeah, and it is. But I would much rather do a death metal album than do a documentary for someone else or have to figure out a feature film with actors because fuck trying to,

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):

Now that you've done some video, you know how hard it is to get something to look good.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):

Can you imagine? So that's the thing is when I started getting involved in the video into things, now I know how hard it is to do that. So I see a Chris Nolan movie and it looks the way it looks and it's like, holy shit. Yeah. How is this possible?

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):

No longer are you there going, oh yeah, no, they've done really well with making sure that, oh, you watch Interstellar and you go, oh, that's quite interesting. They've buried the dialogue completely against the backing track. I bet people are going to hate this, but actually this is really fucking cool because he's taking a risk and then it goes on to, huh, they've pushed everything to the yellows. That's cool. That's not how that would've been shot. Oh, they're saying they're supposing that this is at nighttime, but because of how the shadows are, I know that this is shot during the day, blah, blah, blah. And then you get into all the weird stuff like different LED lights show white differently, so it's going to change the color cast of everything that's in the room. And then that boggles your mind because then you can't use multiple different brand LED lights for doing daylight white because then you start fucking with colors and it's like, fucking hell, I don't never, I thought photography's enough, I'm going to deal with the stuff that stays still.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):

You put all that stuff together and then all those different details, and then somehow you're telling a story

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):

And then there's actors that's crazy. And then you have to make sure that it could look good, but then you've also got people that you've got to believe aren't acting, which is the weirdest thing because then, I dunno if you do this, I watch a film and I know it's really good when I stop going, oh yeah, they're actors.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):

Yeah, absolutely. That's kind the criteria for me is I don't want to think of them acting.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):

No, but it's a weird thing to think about when you do think about it when you go, oh yeah, I watched that and I was not aware that they were acting. I was just completely accepting the story for what it is, which is I find that, yeah, I find that interesting too. I find that fun.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):

So I think acting is kind of a fucked up profession and I kind talk shit about it a lot. Just, I mean, they're pretending they're adults that are pretending.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):

Yeah, they're really good at it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):

Yeah, it's kind of weird, man. It's kind of a joke. They're pretending to be something else, but then you see something like Jo Quin Phoenix as joker and it's like,

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):

Holy shit. I'll tell you what, the body contorting that he had to do in order to hold himself differently, that was the thing that got me. Yeah. I dunno if that is for everyone, but the fact that, have you ever tried holding yourself differently to the way that you hold yourself?

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):

Yes. It's very hard. It's very hard. I've tried to fix my posture. It's very hard.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):

And yeah, so I think we all have to fix our posture because we're constantly like this over laptops. But he's there. He's popping out a shoulder blade for almost the whole film and it's called a winged scapula, but you only had it on one side to intentionally do that. It hurts. And I was watching it and I'm just, not only was he insanely great, he had four different laughs throughout that whole film and each laugh was to signify something else. Either it was masking or it was his actual laugh, or he, he was crying

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):

Or he was angry

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):

And he was telling emotion from the point of view of that character through something that was completely disturbed that he couldn't control. And then you're seeing all that stuff culminate and it's possibly one of the best performances that I've seen. And obviously other people agreed because he got an award for it, right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):

Many.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):

But to see him again, contort his body into that shape, not only was the acting, put that aside, like doing that to your body for however long he was filming for, that would've been agony. That level of self-control, to do that intentionally, to damage yourself, that caught my attention over everything else. You can act, we can pretend we can lie, and we may not be very good at it. And then other people are very good liar. I guess that's what acting is, right? It's just lying really well. But then to lie, whilst you are intentionally making yourself uncomfortable by making your body wrong, that's the point where you go, alright, he's got this nailed. He knows exactly how to make you empathize with someone that realistically you're not supposed to care about. You're not supposed to empathize with that character. You're not even really supposed to like him, but you do end up being, you're supposed to be horrified by him. And then you end up finishing the film, which is about 10 minutes too long, unfortunately no spoilers. But there's just one scene and they should have just done a dead stop after that one scene and then that would've been amazing, super brave. But the fact that you end up going through that journey and this guy's done all of this stuff and you are there going, you know what, with how it resolves you go probably would've done that too. And that's fucked.

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):

Yeah, absolutely. And you don't question whether it's real. No, I do see a parallel, by the way, with vocalists. The thing that's always gotten me about great vocalists is when I actually believe what they're saying versus when I don't. That's a lot more important to me than lyrics. The reason I'm saying that is because some bands that have very simple sixth grade level lyrics and then Korn for instance, and not exactly,

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):

Not exactly the most complex deep lyrics ever. But then the way it's delivered is so real that it affects people. And I think that vocalists need to be able to do that on command. And it has, I think sometimes they're lying like actors, but you can't know that. You can't think they're faking it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):

Well, I guess it's either lying, it's a fine line, isn't it? Because I would call it wantingly reliving trauma. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):

Well that too. Yeah. Well, in the corn situation, yes, but in death metal for instance,

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):

No. Especially if you're like, is it cannibal corpse?

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):

Hopefully not. Hopefully they're not reliving anything they did.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):

No, it was the lyric. What was the one that got me? And I was like, how much time have you spent when he was talking about the essential salts of the body or something like that. And I've always remembered that one. Cause I was like, this guy, why would that be the thing that you are growling about? It was almost a biology lesson about how the human body is made and then effectively how he pulled it apart or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):

Yeah, exactly. So hopefully he didn't actually do that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:56):

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I would say hopefully not, but then also if he did, then I guess it's kind of part of the mission statement. You don't want to not believe, but you also don't want to believe you're kind of just there going, if it came out that had happened, you'd kind of go, alright, well I guess I know where he got his research from.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):

Right, exactly. Well, I guess that's the thing with great vocalists is you have to, I do believe that regardless of what they're talking about, something about it has to be believable at least. I mean, when you're watching a movie, it's not real, but you're not thinking about it. So yeah, you suspend your disbelief for a second. I think it's the same thing with great vocals. When you're recording somebody, is that a criteria for you with the vocals? Do you believe what they're saying?

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):

I don't think everyone, it sounds harsh, but it's like not everyone can run a hundred meters and under whatever the limit is or is possible, but it's just, I think some people have it and some people are capable of doing 11 out of 10 and translating something that happened and getting it across either directly with the lyric choice or indirectly by using obscure lyrics, but conveying it through delivery. I think either people have that ability and they can use it. I think some people have the ability to sing really well, but need encouraging, need to be guided to share that emotion or how that emotion can be shared. So that would be, I guess in acting world, that would be what giving the artist direction. Ultimately what I want is one of two things. If the person has it naturally and they're doing it anyway, I'm not going to intervene.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):

So when to get out of the way,

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):

I'm just going to shut up. And if I think less direction actually is going to help even more where they think they want direction and I'm just going to refuse giving it to them to see what happens, then even that's applicable because that again is also a motivator. It's a little manipulative, but it does work.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):

How do you judge it? Is it just kind how it makes you feel?

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):

Yeah, I think I go on the hairs on the back of my neck

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):

Makes

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):

Sense. The first time you hear Bjork or something like that where you just kind, it's just inex, you just know. Yeah. I think there's something that probably hits a primal side of our brain with music or with singing where it's convincing because it starts setting off the pins and needles in your head and you get that kind of fight or flight sort of response to it. And when that starts happening, I guess that's ASMR for some people, but when that happens, I go, oh, okay, we we're in the ballpark and sort of the degree of tolerance is whatever goes with that singer, and if someone can sing really well so they can pitch and they've got really great tone and they're fine on the mic, but it's just a bit like beige then. Did you just

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):

Say beige?

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):

Interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):

I know what you mean, but the interesting choice.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):

Okay. Yeah, beige. It depends because I think with experience, you either know how much you can get from someone and then how much the music will benefit from it. In some cases, sometimes the view isn't worth the climb in some instances, and I'm not advocating that people don't work, but I'm also talking about energy retention and about making sure that you put your time into the things that make the biggest amount of difference with the smallest amount of moves.

Speaker 1 (01:15:34):

Well, yeah, I mean you have to always have your eye on the big picture and actually getting the project done.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):

So I guess it's all my answers are just turning out to be as and when with

Speaker 1 (01:15:45):

Experience sort of stuff. That is the overall answer to any audio question is it depends, but I think that what's interesting here is understanding who you can push and how far I think emotional intelligence and being able to read who you're working with and understand the capabilities of your working with is one of the most crucial, crucial things a producer can have. And knowing when you're going too far or what is too far with a vocalist especially can be the difference between finishing or not finishing. You can literally blow their voice out if you push too hard and there will be some things that no matter how much coaching you do, just aren't going to change. They're not going to get that much better in that amount of time. If they wanted it to be better, they would've had to start a year prior,

Speaker 2 (01:16:44):

Or actually in some cases actually think less. I found some cases where people just the ordeal of recording is really weird for some people

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):

It's like going to the dentist

Speaker 2 (01:16:54):

And I think the only times where I've ever felt as exposed, there was a point in time where I didn't know what it was like to be every single member of the bandit at any given point in time, and by that I mean I had no idea what it felt like to sing on a microphone to a track and not have the game set properly and not have the right headphone or level. And I was of the position where I was like, I have no idea how to coach someone if I have no idea how it feels, if I can't empathize with it. I taught myself to sing and I forced myself

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):

Just so that you would understand how to communicate the vocalists.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):

Yeah, and I can't sing

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):

Great. I can, no, that's like when I took six months of drum lessons just so that I could understand how to talk to drummers and program better.

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):

Yeah, it's when you're like, and when you think about it, it's like, oh no, this makes complete sense. This is really logical. I'm an idiot for not thinking about this. But I bet you after your first lesson you went, oh yeah, okay, fine. And then had some sort of internal revelation and it was like, yeah, I've been a dick.

Speaker 1 (01:18:01):

Well, what happened was that my band had hired session drummers, so I started my studio in order to record my band and help. It was a parallel thing. The studio was in service of getting my band signed. But anyways, at the beginning, wrote everything on, we programmed the drums and then hired a drummer to try to play this

Speaker 3 (01:18:26):

Stuff

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):

And he was not cool about it because it was so unrealistic and he railed me so hard for that. I just decided, okay, I don't understand clearly. I'm going to get some lessons so that this never happens again and so that I can communicate with drummers better. So it's not like I became a good drummer or anything.

Speaker 2 (01:18:48):

No, it's like I wished I was a drummer. God, drums are the best thing. Hands down that or a vocalist and a piano, but they're the best. But I think I only think that now because I'm sick and tired of just recording guitars all the time, so I might change my mind in a couple of years, but at the moment, drums are like the one because it's so, I dunno, maybe it's just because it's primal again and very neanderthal to be really good at hitting stuff really hard that makes a cool sound and it's okay,

(01:19:20):

But learning how drummers feel, that's another thing, especially when people talk about red light syndrome. It's only because that can only click into place because someone hasn't had their internalized thoughts catered to, and it can take a couple of sentences and that can be the difference between someone freaking out and not being useful for the whole day or just being completely put at ease and being understood or felt like they're understood and you have not just one day, but because you've had that one success that one day you don't have to do it again for the rest of the sessions and probably don't have to do it ever again when they come back. So with teaching or learning how to sing, it meant that because of the mistakes that I made and I've realized, oh, if I sing like this, then it sounds like that this is why it sounds nasal, or this is how someone changes their throat position or sings at the back of their throat to make it sound this way or this is why this happens and actually made me then understand vocal mic choice for application better because I understood the anatomy of how singing works or why the voice gets more bassy when you start singing softer and why everything tightens up and becomes way more harsh to listen to when they start belting, which is why really one microphone for all purposes is boring because I track vocals behind me, so I have direct contact with the person when they're singing so I can, it's very easy to turn around and go, oh, okay, I feel like you're doing this.

(01:20:48):

Just let go of all the air and they go, what? Just let go of all the air. It's fine. You're not having to sustain this. You're not having to retain anything. You can just let go and it'll feel like you are not being held back and it'll be stuff like that that'll be like that. I didn't know to say until I learned what it was like to be there.

Speaker 1 (01:21:08):

By the way, let me just say real quick, if you want people listening, if you want to learn more about this, we have a fast track in your arm enhanced that we made with Mary Zimmer, vocal production for non vocalists where she's a vocal teacher, a very great vocal teacher where she talks about this exact thing about if you're not a vocalist, these things you need to understand in order to really be able to communicate with a vocalist. But nothing beats actually learning how to do it though. That's the number one.

Speaker 2 (01:21:42):

Yeah. It also makes you better at melaine.

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):

Oh yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):

You become really good at auto tuning yourself to make it listenable,

Speaker 1 (01:21:51):

And then you also know what is actually difficult with what you're asking of a vocalist

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):

And then where their range sits, or actually where you think their range could go, but they need coaching. They need more help than you can provide, and there have been situations where it's not great and it's not glamorous where I've gone, we can do this, we can do this session now how you want to do it, or we can get a result that's maybe 15, maybe 20% better if you go and get coaching and you'll last longer and your voice won't burn out after three hours, so you'll save money overall. If we take that just a bit of TLC and not everyone loves that suggestion,

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):

Well, that could mean delaying the release,

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):

Right? I've not done that with a band where they've had a deadline because of labels or whatever. It's normally when I'm doing development projects with people that are either changing genre or they need specific input in order to go from, they're at the local touring circuit level and they've done a handful of releases on Dream Bound or something like that, and they need to elevate again. So they want to attract a booking agent, a manager, they want to be able to pitch to labels, but they don't really know what that recipe of things looks like because everyone's looking for a certain level of everything, but there's actually, there's no guide on the internet on how to band really, because you're not running a band, you're running a business.

Speaker 1 (01:23:27):

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

(01:24:19):

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

(01:25:14):

Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to URM Academy to find out more. What's interesting too is the reason there's no real guides on it is because it's an unsustainable business model. I know some people have tried, and actually before URM Finn and I started a UK M, which was Unstoppable Killing Machine. Really?

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):

Market changed it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:57):

Yeah, yeah. Well, this was 2013, definitely had to change that, but it originally geared towards bands and helping them with how to band, and we realized very quickly that bands don't want to pay to learn how to band.

Speaker 2 (01:26:14):

Really. Okay,

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):

That's interesting because a lot of bands are really shit at being bands,

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):

But bands have an issue with going to school to be a band.

Speaker 2 (01:26:24):

It's just a business. You're just learning how to be a business.

Speaker 1 (01:26:27):

I know, I agree. The thing is that the bands that are super artistically great would never pay for that. It seems like the bands who do pay for that are the bands that those bands that they check off all the boxes business wise, but they just don't have that it factor. Yeah, they're not good. Yeah, they might be technically okay, but there's some talent missing or something. But they check off all the boxes. Yeah, they work hard. They brand themselves, they do all the right shit. But those are the bands that pay for these kinds of things because they pay for everything else too. They pay for branding, they pay for marketing, they pay for image, they pay for gear, they pay for everything. But those are the kinds of bands you'll end up working with if you do a how to band kind of scenario. Just to bring up Jonathan Davis again, can you imagine someone like Jonathan Davis signing up for a how to band course?

Speaker 2 (01:27:29):

Not really. No.

Speaker 1 (01:27:30):

I can't. And I can't imagine any of the true artists that I've worked with signing up for something like that because they're artists and look, I totally agree. Yes, it is a business, but that's the thing. I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 (01:27:45):

I've tried it and that's what I discovered was we were, first of all, finding people to actually pay over and over was close to impossible. And second of all, the only people who did were not people who really had any future. The people I knew who had a future had zero interest whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (01:28:04):

Well, maybe there's, because I've thought I have wondered about this because I get asked it a lot. I get asked by bands normally when I'm doing development work like Rebrands and then moving from one genre to another,

Speaker 1 (01:28:18):

But this is different because you're a producer who's got trust, and so they're coming to you as a trusted person as an individual. You're not a company who helps bands get to the next level.

Speaker 2 (01:28:32):

Well, the main questions that I get asked is how do we release this? How do we schedule this and how do we approach this? How do we do this? How do we do that? And when you're running a business, you go, oh, if you hear the question being asked a lot, typically you have a market to work with. And it made me go, oh, maybe there should be a thing that exists that helps people attend to this. And I didn't know that you had also entertained or tried going down that avenue before and just found the people that want or that are in need of the service of the wrong people basically.

Speaker 1 (01:29:05):

Yeah. The thing to realize is you might hear it a lot, but that's because you're probably dealing with people at a certain level and they're talking to you about it because they trust you in particular, and we were talking about earlier, establishing that trust is really hard to do. It's predicated on the work you've done before and all these other factors, but they're asking you like you George, particularly because it's you,

Speaker 2 (01:29:38):

Right?

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):

If you were just some company putting out Facebook ads

Speaker 2 (01:29:43):

Or something, oh yeah, no, they wouldn't trust that at all. No,

Speaker 1 (01:29:45):

They wouldn't trust it. No. And if they didn't know you personally,

Speaker 2 (01:29:48):

That makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:29:49):

That's why it doesn't really work. And then also, how many people is it really that are asking you this? It's not thousands. No, it's not thousands. You would need thousands in order to make it a viable business. So I'm not saying that there's not thousands of bands out there who want to next level just saying, finding thousands of bands who would pay for it over and over and over again who are actually worth it. They're going to talk to their producers. That's the

Speaker 2 (01:30:18):

Thing. Yeah, no, I just hadn't thought about it like that. I feel a bit naive thinking about it, not negatively, but when it's put like that, it's kind of like, of course you're hearing it, George. You're in the environment and it's a captive audience. When we see Noname brands on Facebook or Instagram ads or whatever, we're like, why is there any brand loyalty to that? Why am I going to use this? Why is that the thing that's going to answer my question?

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):

That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:30:42):

Yeah, I understand that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:43):

And when people see that kind of stuff in music, the first thing they think is scam. And even with URM, we really had to combat that at the beginning was scam, scam, scam. Really? Even now, there are still a few people who, they've never bought any of our products, so this is not people who have been in it saying it. This is people who will see a Facebook ad and be like, you can't teach any of this shit. Sorry, these guys are scamming. They don't know what the fuck they're talking about. But that's the first reaction that music people have towards stuff like this. There's something about music, the music mentality that people don't like marketing, they don't like being marketed to and everything needs to feel authentic.

Speaker 2 (01:31:37):

Wow. I bet they buy Apple products as well, right?

Speaker 1 (01:31:41):

It's not supposed to be consistent. There's no rule that says they had to be consistent about this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:31:47):

But they're expecting you to be consistent though.

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):

Yes, man, I didn't make the rules. I'm just understanding them. I just don't think that bands are the right market for it. It says a lot about you if they're coming to you because it means that they trust you and that you've established that.

Speaker 2 (01:32:07):

I'm glad that that's your prognosis.

Speaker 1 (01:32:08):

It is. My prognosis is not a scalable business though,

Speaker 2 (01:32:12):

Unfortunately. No. Okay. Well, it's nice to hear it back though because it, I'm sure you can appreciate trying to find anyone to talk about this because it's not small level education, is it? Because now the mix is, it's tackling quite a big subject

(01:32:29):

That when you think about it and try and break it down into smaller chunks, starting off is knowing where to start from and where you want to end up is the finished mix, but that's not the actual end result. The end result is someone walking away with something that they'll use. Taking a look at those types of thought processes and asking yourself the question, is this a business? Because when we hear those questions a lot, I bet this happens to you once or twice a day because it happens to me when I go, is that a thing? Is that something that moves forward? Is that another, because I don't want this to be my only job. It's very difficult to be able to talk to someone or find someone where you go, here's this thing, is it a thing? And they're at the same level of understanding where they're able to go, yeah, I had that thought, but this is what I found.

(01:33:15):

And it's actually a conversation that you can have where instead of someone just going, yeah, do it. Yeah, do it. It's great. I love it. I'll pay for it. It's like, that's not what you want to hear when you're having ideas. It's not, yeah, go make it, go make it. I've had people be like that with me. It's like, that's not the feedback I'm looking for. I'm looking back for the feedback of why this doesn't work or if, because the other argument is do you have Dragons Den in America? I don't know what that is. Do you have Shark Tank? That's it, isn't it? Yes. The people pitch business ideas to other entrepreneurs, right? Yes. Okay. In the UK it's called Dragons Den. Okay. And my favorite question is, okay, if your idea is so great, why doesn't it already exist?

Speaker 1 (01:33:54):

That's a good question

Speaker 2 (01:33:55):

And it's one of the first things that I picked up on is that if your idea is great, and no one's ever thought of it before, which is bollocks, everyone's thought of everything already every single time. It's not an original thought because there's enough people around all the time for all the thoughts to be having had, why doesn't it exist? And some people go, oh, because maybe they've not had the capital or they've not done this. And most of the time the reason is the thing that doesn't exist because it's not worth existing. And in some cases you're wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:34:24):

That's

Speaker 2 (01:34:24):

Right. And in some cases, you're right. Fortunately with nail the mix, because again, I'm going to keep harping on Big Fan,

Speaker 1 (01:34:31):

I had to answer that question by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:34:33):

Oh, did you?

Speaker 1 (01:34:34):

At the beginning To myself, but sorry, go on.

Speaker 2 (01:34:36):

No, I was just going to say that because with Nail the mix, I remember when it first started off with Joey in the small kind of gray bluey room.

Speaker 1 (01:34:44):

Yes. That was in Florida. That was Florida place.

Speaker 2 (01:34:48):

So there was probably a thousand reasons to not do it at the time. And I always find it interesting when I see someone or multiple people have success with something that really is a really hard idea to, I'm going to say the word capitalize on because it's not about making capital, it's about making something progress effectively. That idea should realistically done by different people would fall apart. It wouldn't work in the same way. There's also the thing that changes, which is also part of dragons then is if this is the right answer and this is the right thing, then why? If you see what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:35:23):

Yes, absolutely. I actually, I had to answer that to myself back when we started. My thinking was the reason it hadn't been done yet was because I guess in normal people styles of music, no one has taken rock or metal seriously. So there was no lineage for rock and metal education, period. There was for everything else. So you did have Dave Sato talking about pop legend. Yes, definitely legend. But he wasn't doing a nail the mix for pop, but he was still talking about pop. You had Graham Cochrane, but he was doing that Christian rock sort of thing that he does. And then you had Berkeley online, but nowhere were any of these people taking metal and rock. Seriously. And so my answer was, it hasn't been done the way that I've done it, but I have proof that people do want information on this subject. It hasn't been done because nobody in my world with any credibility has stepped forward to do it. And for whatever reason, that just hasn't happened. And why me? Because I am from this world and do have credibility and there you go. So I'm going to do it. But those are important questions to answer for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:36:54):

Exactly. That also comes back round to my dad as well. Full circle. Those would be the how. So he was the guy that fixed businesses, so he would be there going, why you? Is this a good idea? Does this need to exist? This sort of stuff. Then so I heard those questions not only through a TV show, but also from my dad, but subconsciously, so that sort of sub programming existed all the time so that when it came to making businesses or starting stuff up, it would always be this sort of like the ticking in the background, just making sure that you're not leaving something unchecked. Whereas I guess most people think they have an idea and because they thought of it, they're just going to do it starting a business, if you see what I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):

Yeah. That's not good enough. That's definitely not good enough. The other thing was why me is because I'm willing to quit producing to make this happen.

Speaker 2 (01:37:44):

Yeah, you did that

Speaker 1 (01:37:44):

And the other people I know who could maybe do it are not going to quit producing. They're not willing to sacrifice their careers in order to start this.

Speaker 2 (01:37:54):

Scary,

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):

It was, but the thing is, that's kind of what you have to do. There's no way, in my opinion, that you could possibly do a full-time production career and run a business like this. It's just not possible. You could do a little part-time thing, like a limited scope

Speaker 2 (01:38:13):

Or one-to-ones or something, I dunno.

Speaker 1 (01:38:16):

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Or a small educational business might be doable, but man, a full production career, like you said at the beginning, you're talking about it taking a piece of your soul with it every time you make a record. You can't that, so when you're working on an album, you have to be all in on that

Speaker 4 (01:38:39):

Mentally.

Speaker 1 (01:38:40):

You can't be all in with a band for X number of weeks and also be all in on an international company. Seriously, how I don't understand.

Speaker 2 (01:38:53):

No, you end up diluting your attention. Especially, it's different though, isn't it, with art in general. If you're going to be believable, honest, convincing, and that's how you want the things that you're making to come across, you can't really just not invest yourself in it. I don't think you have to. Yeah, I dunno. I don't understand how it would work any other

Speaker 1 (01:39:14):

Way. That's right. I agree, man. All I know is that when I was working on albums, whether they were my own or for clients, whether I loved the band I was working with or not, it became my life. Maybe there were some other things happening. Maybe I'm producing a band and I also had to finish off a mix for somebody.

(01:39:36):

But I'd say that with that band that I'm producing, that's the top spot. And I have experienced where I tried to divide it, and for me it didn't work. And I honestly don't know anybody else that that's worked for. I know lots of producers, I know lots of dudes who have a side hustle going, or they are producers and they're also in a band that tours. But the thing that's very common across the board is something has to give. So the ones that have a side business going, they're not producing quite as much as they used to. And so if they want to be like the guy, they want to be the guy, what I call the guy, it's very, very hard to take the foot off the gas. And then their bands typically are part-time bands, so it'll be something where the band does festivals or one tour per year or whatever, and that's fine. I'm no judgment whatsoever, but I'm just saying it's not like their band is a full-time band that they're actively trying to take to the top, and they're a producer that's actively trying to go to the top, and that has companies that's trying to take the top. It's like there's one thing that's the main thing, and then these other avenues are kind of when they can types of endeavors.

Speaker 2 (01:41:06):

Yeah, no, it's an all or nothing industry.

Speaker 1 (01:41:09):

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (01:41:10):

If you want to get your face on Mount Rushmore and be with the greats, you kind of just got to accept that that's your life for the next however long it takes. And that's ultimately what I want. I'm not ashamed to say it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:25):

I was about to ask you if that's what you want.

Speaker 2 (01:41:27):

If I don't get there, it's okay. It's fine. I say it's fine a lot because it's an acceptable outcome, but I won't be happy with myself for not trying. It's inconceivable to become a Terry date, A-T-L-A-A-C-L-A, Eric Valentine, along those lines, but that would be the end game. This a pinnacle to have left your mark and to have done something that not only you love, but others can get happiness from as well, and it's just that's the end. That would be amazing, but I'm not going to assume that it's going to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:42:02):

There's elements to that level that are outside your control, which are the artists that you're working with. Are they going to have that impact at that point in time in history where that's a huge part of it.

Speaker 2 (01:42:16):

Yeah. I kind of find that if you insist on them winning awards, it's really useful. You just say you're going to have to win all the awards you can with this record, and then we'll be really successful.

Speaker 1 (01:42:27):

Yeah, just write that into the contract.

Speaker 2 (01:42:30):

Yeah, just like if you win awards, this goes really well.

Speaker 1 (01:42:33):

Okay,

Speaker 2 (01:42:35):

We'll all win.

Speaker 1 (01:42:36):

Just negotiate that with the label up in advance. And I'm not doing this unless it wins a Grammy, so

Speaker 2 (01:42:43):

Yeah, I would like all the Gries that Billie Eilish just won, but for every record behind do, but yeah, no, they'll be on there. I guarantee you, her and her brother will get to that point. Hands down, of course. Hands down.

Speaker 1 (01:42:58):

As long as they don't derail. As long as they don't derail,

Speaker 2 (01:43:00):

But the first album is even. That's amazing. And the stuff before that, I don't want to be like I discovered them, but I've been aware of that. She was an artist for, she started when she was 15 with her earlier stuff, and it just popped up and I was like, that's a voice, and it goes 15. I'm like, that's insane. And then you see them multiples of years later doing the bond theme and it's like, it's so sick. It's like one of those things where people would be like, oh, what's my favorite one? Where people go, oh, yeah, it's just manufactured by the industry. No one in the industry. No one cares. They don't care. They're not going to do it. They don't care. Those are people being people, and it's so sick. It's so sick.

Speaker 1 (01:43:45):

The industry isn't capable of manufacturing stuff like that. Anyone who says that doesn't understand how the industry works, they've not spoken with the label rep, right? Yeah. The industry has tried to do stuff like that, and what people who say that aren't realizing is what they're probably unaware of are the number of artists who do get all the same stuff that the successful artists get in terms of backing and

Speaker 2 (01:44:14):

Fail.

Speaker 1 (01:44:15):

They get the marketing budget, they get the big label, they get all that stuff, and then they fail.

Speaker 2 (01:44:20):

I think this is, maybe this is the topic for the day, but it comes back down to if people want art, they want it to be honest and they can smell bullshit. Yeah, absolutely. They can tell if you're not all in, and that's probably why it doesn't work for the manufacturing process, which is why when you hear specifically when she sings, I think it's great that she's a singer that doesn't feel like she needs to belt to be heard or to be understood or to be like for someone to emote with, and the fact that she's just staying within that range, which is just spoken word volume, which is so difficult to control, way more difficult than just belting. You're just belting. You're just compressing your own voice and you're just going for it, conveying emotion. At that point, she did belt on the bond theme. Oh, okay, I'm wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:45:07):

No, no, no. You're right though. Most of the time she is at spoken volume,

Speaker 2 (01:45:13):

And that's two things that most people would go, oh, female singer within the industry, it's going to have to belt at some point. It's going to get a bit catty and no, not happening. Also love the fact that she doesn't wear clothes that people expect her to wear. I think that's brilliant. I think that's great that no one can assess her or judge her based upon how she looks or what body shape she is. I think that, for me, that was one of the biggest things that stood out as like, oh, that makes so much sense. She came into the industry being 15, 16, which is going to be a point where people shouldn't be turning children, which is what they are into sex idols, but that's what they do it. They do it. I mean, it happened with Rihanna, remember Britney Spears? I was going to go with Rihanna, sorry, but yeah, Britney Spears.

Speaker 1 (01:45:55):

Yeah, Britney Spears was like 16. Same and peering in school girl outfits and stuff

Speaker 2 (01:46:01):

And bikinis and stuff, and it's like, okay, so no one's going to be paying attention to what? They're like Britney Spears, insane singer. No one's paying attention. And so to completely take that off the table and then make it all about what's actually happening in front of the mic and coming out and being sent to people, I dunno if it was intentional, but if it was genius, if it was just

Speaker 1 (01:46:21):

From what I understand, really, I heard her say, saw that it was intentional so that people wouldn't judge her for that. She didn't want people to know what was underneath those clothes.

Speaker 2 (01:46:33):

That's fucking great.

Speaker 1 (01:46:35):

And by the way, that's how I discovered her too. It just popped up and I checked it out. For some reason, I saw a blue-haired girl with black tears, and I was like,

Speaker 2 (01:46:47):

Interesting. Oh, is that the first video you saw? Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:46:49):

Yeah. And I was like, holy

Speaker 2 (01:46:51):

Shit, this girl's good. Yeah, that video is insane. That song has no typical structure to it either, and it's like when you notice that happening, it's just a B song, which is difficult anyway, to move from, is it Na b song or is it just a, in terms of different sections? Because verse pre chorus, chorus verse, pre chorus, chorus, middle eight,

Speaker 1 (01:47:14):

I actually didn't analyze it. All I know is that it's over before you know it, and three or more minutes went by and it's like, how did that happen?

Speaker 2 (01:47:23):

Yeah. I love it when that happens and people get surprised because when you're done listening to music all day, you don't want to listen to music anymore. You just kind of want to go home and put on noise canceling headphones and just be quiet for someone to make such an uninterruptible impact that you carry on listening to music. It's a big testament as far as I'm concerned, because you're done with music for that day, and then there you are. Just being a fan again, I miss being a fan,

Speaker 1 (01:47:53):

By the way. We're talking about a song called When the Party's Over

Speaker 2 (01:47:56):

Nice.

Speaker 1 (01:47:56):

For anyone who hasn't heard

Speaker 2 (01:47:57):

It. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:47:58):

The video is crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:48:00):

There's also another video on how they actually made that video happen, but the fact, I like that it's a one take as well.

Speaker 1 (01:48:04):

I need to find that. I've been curious. At first I thought it was cg, it all practical. It's not cg,

Speaker 2 (01:48:11):

It's all practical.

Speaker 1 (01:48:13):

At first I thought it was cg, but then she starts wiping it and I'm like, that's not C What?

Speaker 2 (01:48:19):

And it stains her clothes and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:48:21):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:48:21):

Yeah. That's cool. I guess what I'm really trying to get at is the fact that I'm thankful that stuff like that can be honest and exist, and it can allow us to be fans of music again and take us back to that point before we ended up doing the job, because it's really difficult to get back to that point where you're in the trenches so often, it's really difficult to relate to music in the same way that you used to before you got here.

Speaker 1 (01:48:44):

Totally. Another thing that I take from it, I totally agree about the being a fan thing, is to me, the fact that she won all those awards with Phineas and Joker won and got as big as it did to me, that gives me hope for art in general. To me, that's a huge deal that that's what won the Oscars and the Grammys this year is art. And there's been many years where that doesn't happen. There's many years where the people winning. It's not that they're not good, but they're not winning for the right reasons, in my opinion. And in some cases people just win off of popularity. The fact that art is winning to me is a huge, huge deal. It's a big change. Well, you keep hearing, for instance, about how the music industry is experiencing a new golden age and how it's recovered from that really, really scary time period.

Speaker 2 (01:49:45):

Yeah, 15 years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:49:47):

Yeah. Really scary time period. So to me, this is evidence that that's the truth, that we are entering a golden age, and to me also with seeing a movie like Joker do as well as it did, and I guess parasite too.

Speaker 2 (01:50:02):

I haven't seen that yet.

Speaker 1 (01:50:03):

It's good. I don't think it's best picture good, but it's really good still.

Speaker 2 (01:50:07):

Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:50:08):

The fact that it won is still great because what it means to me is that corporations who fund these things will see the value in investing in artists as opposed to garbage. I hope that that's how it's taken, but it gives me hope for the future because people who fund these things that they believe will give a return if art is giving a return, that's a great sign for art.

Speaker 2 (01:50:33):

Yeah, it's really good for, I guess,

Speaker 1 (01:50:35):

Our

Speaker 2 (01:50:35):

Economy, I

Speaker 1 (01:50:36):

Suppose. Yes, absolutely. It makes me think about the fact that you got started about a decade or so ago, which was kind of a famine period.

Speaker 2 (01:50:49):

Yeah. The recession

Speaker 1 (01:50:50):

For the music industry in terms of building a band, a brand or business in music.

Speaker 2 (01:50:56):

Yeah. It's really, really bad time to decide that you wanted to be interested in music.

Speaker 1 (01:51:01):

Yes, it was.

Speaker 2 (01:51:02):

Did you have a recession in America as well at the same time?

Speaker 1 (01:51:04):

Fuck, yeah. In 2008, our whole economy crashed.

Speaker 2 (01:51:09):

Unless it's an impeachment. Very little news gets over here.

Speaker 1 (01:51:12):

Oh yeah. It was a major, major, major, major recession. And you couple that with the problems in the music industry with downloading and

Speaker 2 (01:51:25):

Yeah, Limewire.

Speaker 1 (01:51:26):

Yeah, pre streaming.

Speaker 2 (01:51:28):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:51:29):

It was rough times, but what were some of your big takeaways when trying to get your business off the ground in that time period?

Speaker 2 (01:51:36):

Well, back then I was an idiot because I started it out of necessity rather than, and it's a really weird thing to think, I'm going to start this out of necessity because all my other options are shot. So I had to start, I guess, just working at the smallest level that I could and taking all the jobs that would come in, even if I didn't really love them. I actually learned no tell a lie because it was related to music and it wasn't working in a supermarket. I loved everything. Even if it was just menial, it just meant that I wasn't stacking shelves for someone else.

Speaker 1 (01:52:14):

How long had you been recording at that point?

Speaker 2 (01:52:17):

Unprofessionally? Yeah, 10 years ago. I was 20. No, it's about 10 years I guess. I was at university when I started, and I only really started out in necessity. You'll know this, you're in a band. I was in a band. You start recording demos and you're like, I'm not going to pay someone else. I can do it, and I've got a Mac, it comes with some software. I can figure this out. And that's where things start from, I suppose. And it was a really natural way of, and again, dad comes back into this as well, understanding how to use your own network to your advantage. So being in a band, playing gig circuits, meeting people, meeting other bands that don't have demos that want to record, or bands that need to pre-pro before going into the proper studio to record, or you kind of just go, me being me, I'd be like, alright. Yeah, no, I've been doing that recently for me. Yeah, yeah, no, if you need help, just hit me up. It's cool. I just didn't lay into it heavy because being super baggy about it is like, well, like we said, bands don't like being sold to No. So you just talk about yourself and all they want to do is talk about themselves. So

Speaker 1 (01:53:34):

Favorite topic

Speaker 2 (01:53:35):

Actually. Yeah, no. If you want to get bed with a band, you just ask them about what they're doing next.

Speaker 1 (01:53:39):

It's true.

Speaker 2 (01:53:40):

It's horrible, but it's true. You go, ah, sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:53:42):

That's true. In not just band. Not just band. Sorry, I've just

Speaker 2 (01:53:46):

Clipped the mic. That just works. Alright, cool. Life tip. Life tip. How to use dating tips from Al and George.

(01:54:04):

Yeah, so I started off on the band circuit and using my network to my advantage. It was around about that time that I also met and became friends with Adam, get Good whilst I was at university. And then when I left university. Talented guy. Yeah, I mean, I love him. He's like my older brother, basically. And then I left university because I didn't get accepted onto the third year because I was on a music production course. I thought I would learn something and what I learned was absolutely nothing to do with the job. I think the most I took away from that course was how to build acoustic treatment. That was it. And how to design a room.

Speaker 1 (01:54:46):

Really?

Speaker 2 (01:54:46):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:54:47):

Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:54:48):

Everything else, game staging? No. How to mix? No. On my music production course, they had a VJ section, like why? Anyway, so my university experience wasn't great and then I didn't get accepted onto the third year, which was to specialize. I wanted to move from song music production into specializing in the third year on songwriting. I figured if I wanted to engineer bands, I should probably know how songs work and I didn't get accepted because I'd already specialized too soon. I dunno how you don't specialize when you're on a music production course, but there we go. So then I wasn't really given much of a choice with jobs just simply because I'm really bad at working for someone else in that capacity when you're just serving coffee or stacking shelves. I tried both. I even worked in a computer game store. I lasted one shift. I was just so bad at it, so bad. Just not wired for it. Yeah, dude. When someone says something and you go, that's the worst way of achieving that, and then you say it without thinking about it and then they go, but I'm the boss and this is the thing that got me fired. Just like I don't care. You are the boss. And it's still stupid amazing. It is just one of those moments where your brain, no, your mouth gets there before your brain goes, don't do it. And

Speaker 1 (01:56:12):

Done that before.

Speaker 2 (01:56:13):

Yeah. It's not like I am here now, so I didn't know that that would be the result, but I ended up having to move away from uni and then I had all this leftover recording equipment from studying at uni. I had like an M audio, 2 6, 2 6, Adam, a sevens and a Mac, and I turned my dad's single space garage into a studio and I was like, this is my job now. This is what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 (01:56:41):

One thing I've heard from lots of people in the arts who have done something, and I felt this way too, is that they had no choice and there's something within them that made it impossible for them to do anything else. Man, if you're listening and that's not you, that doesn't mean you have no hope, but there's a certain type of person that's just wired this way. Their brain is just wired to where they can't work for anybody. I'm that way too. I am a horrible employee, a horrible student, horrible employee. I have to be running something or it doesn't work. I am just not meant for that. And no matter how hard I try, my brain doesn't allow it and I get it

Speaker 2 (01:57:36):

Completely. And really, it's really funny. All you want to do is be able to work with a group of people because you want to work with other people, but every time it happens and you end up in that situation, you're there going, you're taking too long. This is wrong. That's bad. And your brain's just giving you more reasons to just alienate yourself in a work environment, but it's just kind of what happens.

Speaker 1 (01:57:57):

Yeah. That just tells me that your brain is wired to be the boss of a project.

Speaker 2 (01:58:04):

It helps. This is really useful in this job.

Speaker 1 (01:58:06):

Yeah, well, exactly. I think that when it comes to this type of work, there are certain things that we're predisposed for and naturally being able to see how to make things better, making things better is kind of the job description for a producer. And if you don't do that naturally, you're going to have a hard time because you're going to be competing against people who just, like we were talking about Scorsese, they just do it. I get it. That's how their brain works. Their brain is wired to find solutions.

Speaker 2 (01:58:42):

You're working up against someone that has a natural advantage.

Speaker 1 (01:58:47):

That doesn't mean there's no hope though.

Speaker 2 (01:58:49):

No, of course not. It just means that your route is different and you're going to have to work a bit harder at other things.

Speaker 1 (01:58:55):

Yeah, exactly. Same way that I have to work harder to develop normal people, habits that are very useful, like waking up.

Speaker 2 (01:59:04):

And I have to work really hard at counting because I'm dyslexic as fuck, so I can't do mathematics at all.

Speaker 1 (01:59:13):

I'm bad at it too. I would've never guessed that you weren't good at math. You seem like you're good at math. I'm terrible at it.

Speaker 2 (01:59:18):

You could show me a hand of change. And I go, those are coins. I wouldn't be able to tell you how much it is. And I go, that's nice and completely irrelevant now that we have contactless payment. But nice. I wouldn't be able to tell you how much it is. Fair enough. But the good thing about mathematics is that there's a rule system. So especially if you're incredibly logical, you can just accept that the rules work and you don't have to really think about it or understand it in order to use them. So that's kind of the only get around with that type of situation with mathematics, just I don't have to understand it. If that's what the answer is, then I'm going to trust that it works.

Speaker 1 (01:59:50):

That's actually a really deep way of thinking. I think that that's true for lots of things, man. I think Tony Robbins said this that you don't have to understand how a car works in order to know how to drive it, how it works makes no difference in whether or not you can use it to get to your destination.

Speaker 3 (02:00:08):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:00:09):

I think a lot of people in recording slow themselves down by trying to understand too many things that are not related to getting the job done. And that's not to say that, look, if you have, for instance, an interest in electronics and how to make gear, well by all means pursue that because that's how we get gear makers, which we need them. So if that's you, great. But if that's not you and you're still learning this stuff because you feel like you have to and it's stopping you from getting work done, the question is, are you just distracting yourself self from doing what really matters? And I think that's often the case.

Speaker 2 (02:00:54):

Yeah. I think, and this is actually quite, I really like this topic when it comes down to considering how people think and then what that results in. And I think that if you are able to consider things, I dunno how to say this without sounding like an asshole, because it's really difficult. It's fine. It's not fine. The sound like one who cares. I think some people are taught to think wrong by school is the easiest way that I can explain it. I think that the academic systems that we are brought up in, I wasn't brought up in it, I was homeschooled, but you are taught that there's only two answers. You're either right or you're wrong for the majority of when you are going through your sponge stage as a child. But realistically, answering a is pretty fluid. There's multiple answers to anything

Speaker 1 (02:01:43):

Except for maths.

Speaker 2 (02:01:44):

Except for maths, where either it is either the thing it is or it isn't. No sort of maybe. But being taught in an educational system where you are either right or wrong and you're only praised for being right, it could have the opposite effect of people being too scared to answer in case they're wrong.

Speaker 1 (02:02:02):

Absolutely. And it also limits their ability to really look into solutions that make a difference in real life or properly analyzing scenarios because there's complexities in life in a gray area. And like you said before when you were talking about that situation with the refund, how there's the right thing to do and then the thing that made you happy. And then there's also the consequences of whichever way you decide to go. And there's no real right answer there. Is there

Speaker 4 (02:02:41):

No,

Speaker 1 (02:02:41):

I mean, maybe the right answer would be the one that doesn't fuck up your future, but how do you figure out what that is? That's not as simple. That's not a binary yes or no. That's weighing many, many possibilities and trying to make an educated guess. And by nature of making an educated guess, that means there's no right or wrong until it plays out. So how does that work if you're taught to just think in terms of yes or no?

Speaker 2 (02:03:13):

But we are, well, I'm saying we, but I didn't experience it. But that's what I observe is that people are, I've met some people, I've met amazing people that are just, when you're just like, fuck, you could be so much and they be self limit and you're there going like, dude, you could be amazing. You could legitimately do whatever the hell you wanted to do, but you just need to stop restricting yourself based upon what if I'm wrong?

Speaker 1 (02:03:41):

What if it doesn't work?

Speaker 2 (02:03:42):

Yeah. It's like, fuck it. There are points where actually that is the fine attitude to have and you don't need to be logical, and it's just, if you're going to be happy at the end of it, it'll be fine. It'll be okay. It doesn't really matter, obviously, as long as you're not going to kill yourself or anything like that because then there's no coming back from that. As far as I'm aware,

Speaker 1 (02:04:00):

I actually did a podcast on the power of saying fuck it a few years ago.

Speaker 2 (02:04:04):

Oh, cool.

Speaker 1 (02:04:04):

It was in response to people asking me how you overcome the fear of approaching people or of networking or of taking a risk. My answer is you have to say fuck it at some point and just

Speaker 2 (02:04:22):

Try Right.

Speaker 1 (02:04:23):

At the end of the day, that really is, that is what you have to do. Many times you really don't know. There's no way to know.

Speaker 2 (02:04:31):

Oh yeah, there's always going to be way more hundreds upon thousands of reasons to not do something. And you know what all those outcomes are every single time you don't do something, you know what the outcome is. Yeah, absolutely. But you dunno what the outcome is if you actually go and do something. And I think that's what the thing that people end up getting put off by is because they're not able to predict it because they don't have any previous information.

Speaker 1 (02:04:54):

At least if you don't do it, you can predict the outcome.

Speaker 2 (02:04:57):

Yeah, you'll be rubbish,

Speaker 1 (02:05:00):

But at least you're right.

Speaker 2 (02:05:01):

Yeah, you're right about being

Speaker 1 (02:05:03):

Rubbish. At least you're right. At least you're right that it's not going to work.

Speaker 2 (02:05:06):

And the reason to be, it's just it. It's just sad. Being afraid to do or be is grim, and I know what that feels like and I know what that thought process feels like and it's so debilitating, and I hate seeing people that are awesome or could be awesome or have that potential to just not understand that they're allowed to do otherwise or think otherwise and that they're like, that's one change away from the rest of their life. It's fucked up.

Speaker 1 (02:05:38):

Did you ever have to overcome those kinds of fears?

Speaker 2 (02:05:41):

Yes, all the time. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (02:05:45):

Of course. Right. So the reason I'm asking, I knew you were going to, I guess in this case, I did know the outcome. I knew you were going to say yes because everybody has those fears.

Speaker 2 (02:05:58):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (02:05:59):

I'm sure Bill Gates has those fears too

Speaker 2 (02:06:02):

On his bed of money and

Speaker 1 (02:06:05):

His problems are still relative to him, so there's still things he wants to do. Even if it means adding a sewage treatment in an entire continent,

Speaker 2 (02:06:16):

There's

Speaker 1 (02:06:16):

Still the possibility it won't

Speaker 2 (02:06:17):

Work. Your mountain is always going to be as big as it is. So the things that you are concerned with that take up all your peripheral vision, the biggest fears that you have are still the biggest fears that you have, and you can't relate them to someone else's fears and concerns because you have no experience of that. So the things that say, okay, the Bill Gates would be concerned about and worried about that take up his whole peripheral vision, the thing that he'd be looking at would be a mountain is as big as that mountain's ever going to be, but for someone that can't make rent that week, that is their biggest concern. It doesn't mean that it means any less or any or is any less significant. Those are the things that are everything to be focused on at that moment in time. That was the thing that triggered for me.

Speaker 1 (02:07:00):

I really love that way of looking at it. I've always agreed, I think that it's very hard for people to put themselves in other people's shoes. And so I find that sometimes when people are too successful for too long, they forget what it's like to struggle

Speaker 4 (02:07:16):

For

Speaker 1 (02:07:16):

Rent. But then also, I know a lot of people who struggle for rent who believe that people who have a lot of money or whatever, have no real problems and they're both wrong because your problems are totally relative to

Speaker 2 (02:07:30):

You.

Speaker 1 (02:07:30):

Yeah. It's your landscape a hundred percent. No matter what's going

Speaker 2 (02:07:33):

On. That's the better way of saying what I said. But yeah, your landscape is how you see it. So one person will look at a hill and see a mountain and one person will see a mountain and see a hill. It'll just be relative to their life experience and what their condition situation is.

Speaker 1 (02:07:49):

Yeah. I mean, I can tell you right now, there's certain goals that I had for what I'm doing now that at one point in time, five years ago seemed insurmountable. I look at other companies that achieved that level of cashflow or whatever and was just like, fuck, that seems crazy. It does. But now that same level would be a step down and it would be terrifying actually. It would mean that things are going in a bad direction and my new goals to seem just as unrealistic as those old goals. Like you said, it occupies the same exact space.

Speaker 2 (02:08:32):

Yeah, this is good. I like this. This is pulling at so many different tangents that I talk about with people on the daily. So your reference to your business goals, you had those goals and then you achieved them. And I bet 100% because I get this, that you have people going, oh, you not just happy with where you are now. You've achieved all this and you go fuck off. So what? It's like, why do I pat myself on the back? You don't get this far to look back on yourself. You're still looking at the summit. It's like, yeah, but maybe you should take time off and slow down, fuck off. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (02:09:07):

Yes. I know exactly what you mean.

Speaker 2 (02:09:10):

And you're not setting those goals in order to achieve them. You are setting those goals in order to aim beyond them. And I know that sounds really daft, but my first goal was I knew that I was successful when I earned the equivalent year wage from music that I would've earned doing a full-time job at a supermarket. And that I knew that that was baseline success was being able to have the same income but the job that I actually wanted. And then it moved on to working with a band that was signed because I thought that would be a thing apparently. But those goals move now the goal is apparently I want to have my face on Mount Rushmore and be like, Terry Date and be considered within the upper echelon.

Speaker 1 (02:09:55):

That's a great goal.

Speaker 2 (02:09:55):

It's a nice goal. I dunno whether it'll get there because like we said, it was out of my hands because a lot of it

Speaker 1 (02:10:01):

You also didn't know if you would be able to make a wage equivalent to a regular job.

Speaker 2 (02:10:08):

No, I mean, and here that job that I was earning, it sucked. It was like 11 grand a year. That was it for stacking shelves.

Speaker 1 (02:10:16):

So in dollars, that's about $18,000 a year.

Speaker 2 (02:10:20):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:10:20):

So I mean still though, when you're making zero from recording, getting to 18,000 or 11,000 pounds, that's a big deal.

Speaker 2 (02:10:33):

It took 18 months though. I didn't do it in the first year. It took 18 months, but it's fine. It's whatever

Speaker 1 (02:10:42):

It takes however long it takes. But man, I forget who said this, if it was Gary V or some other one of those guys, ultra motivating dudes, but they said that the meaning of life is progress. And I was like, wow, this is the first time I really thought about it. And this is the first time that someone has actually answered that question in a way that makes sense to me. Because no meaning of life really isn't goals because anytime you accomplish a goal, it's over. I've never accomplished anything and been satisfied. It's always, yeah, it's cool for a minute, but then it's over.

Speaker 2 (02:11:30):

It's sad

Speaker 1 (02:11:31):

It, it is sad, but I wish it wasn't that way, but it's over. It really is

Speaker 2 (02:11:35):

Because other people live through vicariously, through your achievements, and then they have to tell you how good they are, and you go, I just wish, please, can you just not, and then let me do the next bit.

Speaker 1 (02:11:47):

Well, they're not in your head, so they don't know. But the thing that makes me feel best isn't having had accomplished things. It's when I'm making things happen. So when I am making a huge project come together, that has taken me years to put together, that is when I'm feeling best. It's not when it came together and then it's happening, then it's like to me that the project is happening like it's nirvana.

Speaker 2 (02:12:25):

No,

Speaker 1 (02:12:25):

I don't want to say I'm over it at that point.

Speaker 2 (02:12:27):

Well, at the point where the project's actually happening,

Speaker 1 (02:12:30):

Yes, it's kind of just flat, emotionally interesting. It's cool that it's happening, but I'm already on to trying to make the next bigger thing happen.

Speaker 2 (02:12:40):

Oh, I see. Because by the time the project's happening, you consider that it's done, so then you're focusing. Right. I see. I was thinking about it in selfishly thinking about it like building a record.

Speaker 1 (02:12:51):

It's not the same thing, but still, if you're thinking in terms of this is where art deviates from that, but still, if you're working with a band and you're working on a record, you don't want it to be your last record, right?

Speaker 2 (02:13:04):

No. Well, I think, but that time will happen, right? There will be a point where I'll have to make the last record and I'll know it's the last record. I'd rather want to decide when it's the last one than

Speaker 1 (02:13:16):

Fine. But you're nowhere near that.

Speaker 2 (02:13:17):

No, thank God.

Speaker 1 (02:13:19):

Yeah. But still, whatever record you're working on now, you don't want it to be your last record.

Speaker 2 (02:13:25):

No.

Speaker 1 (02:13:25):

So there's a next level, like you said, you want to get to Mount Rushmore. So I realized that whatever record you're working on now artistically, you want to make it as awesome as possible. And that's its own thing, but there's still that next record and there's that next band and there's that possibility of a bigger band. Not that bigger means better, but that's where I'm activated, is just

Speaker 2 (02:13:54):

Continually

Speaker 1 (02:13:54):

Making that progress. But you know what, with art, I was feeling that way. When you're writing a song and the light bulb turns on and you're in that moment of creating something that's awesome and that you know that if you're going to keep going, it's going to just be more awesome and you see the light at the end of the tunnel and you know how to finish the song. That to me is the same feeling

Speaker 2 (02:14:19):

Actually. Okay. I find that process really interesting. I have to sometimes ghost write for people. So it's writing on demand. And I know there's a lot of negative connotations about ghost writing

Speaker 1 (02:14:31):

Only in this genre.

Speaker 2 (02:14:33):

It's for this genre, but it's more like not in the

Speaker 1 (02:14:37):

Rest of the world.

Speaker 2 (02:14:38):

No, but I know that moment where you just go, oh, thank God, because I have to write. There are points where I have to, I set myself targets and I have to write a song with them four hours for this. I'm currently working on an album at the moment. I've written 11 songs in two weeks at the moment for it, and they're all midi based songs, but it's just getting the outlines done. And I know that moment of epiphany where you go, you change one thing and you see how it cascades down the entire line and you go, oh, thank God for that. I can now have a rest. I can now have a break. I know how this song goes. And then you can sketch it all out. I do. I really like that moment. I really hate the moment where you've just done the first minute and you go and I am stuck. And then you have no answers to your questions about how the song is supposed to be anymore. That bit I don't like, but the turnaround, the resolution, yeah. Really, I really like that. That's really cool.

Speaker 1 (02:15:35):

Yeah, that's progress. That's kind of what I mean is to me that's like happiness, that actual feeling of, I dunno. Yeah, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and just like everything's aligned in this weird way. It's the same as when I've lined something up or something is coming together. It's a very, very similar feeling. And so yeah, actually doing the project doesn't feel the same strangely enough. I can relate to that. Not that I have anything against it, but yeah, I'm always looking for that next better thing. And it was the same with writing. Always wanted to get to that point where I knew that I was going to next level this piece of music

Speaker 2 (02:16:19):

Or next level something else.

Speaker 1 (02:16:22):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (02:16:23):

Something, whatever it is. Because it's funny. I bet you are not focused on the next project. I reckon you probably looking at the thing that's like three or four projects down the line and going, that's the thing that I'm actually stoked for.

Speaker 1 (02:16:33):

Yes,

Speaker 2 (02:16:34):

I get like that. I have four really cool records lined up between now and summer. Awesome. And I'm stoked about all of them for different reasons, all of them. But there is one that has been mentioned to me and I'm like, I want that. That's the one I want and I want that. I don't mind when it is where it is. I want that because I can hang my hat on that. Yeah, I want that one. Because then also in turn, that then opens corresponding doors to knowing, well, if I work with this person, that person's friends with all these other bands, which I also really like, and they'll hear it and then it keeps on snowballing from there. So I'm really stoked on not just what's within the pool of songs of what's on next, but I'm also stoked about the playlist that comes after that. So

Speaker 1 (02:17:22):

It's interesting to me that you're thinking about these projects in a multifaceted way. It's not just you're making something cool artistically, but you're also thinking about the networking impact, the career impact, all the different things that come from having made a record. Did you always feel that way even when you were in year one and working with locals and local bands that you met? Did you also have that just on a smaller scale, but same types of thoughts?

Speaker 2 (02:17:58):

Yeah, because I think I don't treat every record like that because I think every band has different assets for what opportunities it brings for you to either express yourself or further your business reach or network. It's the same when you are running a business anyway, the connections that you make change things and they don't all operate in the same way on a local level. I was interested in getting either within reaching distance or getting to know the bands that had the draw at the time and we're talking back in MySpace days, so you could see who was more popular locally than other bands, A lot easier on MySpace than you could with Facebook. I think it's almost

Speaker 1 (02:18:42):

Like MySpace was perfectly designed for that

Speaker 2 (02:18:44):

100%. I was so unhappy when MySpace went because it was so easy to discover new music that way. And the worst thing Facebook did was never adopt any of the MySpace technologies or ways it worked for music as a business platform. Because can you imagine if when Facebook started, it had the option because it overtook MSN as well, which is, I dunno how young some of the people that you have listening, but I'm pretty sure MSN is ancient for them.

Speaker 1 (02:19:15):

They span the

Speaker 2 (02:19:16):

Ages. Okay. But can you imagine if we managed to move into Facebook as it is now? I think they've only just done it where it links to Spotify, it shows you what other people are listening to that you're talking, and then gives you direct access to those Facebook profiles in order to have that reach and discovery. They didn't do that when they first started off, and they should have done that with MySpace. It would've made things so much easier. It would've bridged the gap so quickly.

Speaker 1 (02:19:41):

Well, yeah, I think that because that didn't exist. It hurt for a while, but people have figured out other ways to get out. But what was even better than MySpace, it was mp3.com. I don't know. That probably predates you. It does predate you because you were 10 years old.

Speaker 2 (02:20:00):

Thanks, man.

Speaker 1 (02:20:01):

Mp3.com was around the year 2000 and it was a music discovery platform, but they paid out about a million dollars a month to artists. So they had something called Payback for playback. And so every time that you got played, you got paid. And man, some artists were making like 50 grand a month off of this. It was crazy. It was crazy. It was so awesome. And I discovered so much music that way. It was like the answer for how independent artists could make money in the age of downloading. It was so cool. I knew several artists that were doing great off of it and then it just went away.

Speaker 2 (02:20:46):

My version of that was, do you remember last fm?

Speaker 1 (02:20:48):

I do.

Speaker 2 (02:20:49):

Yeah. So I discovered a perfect Circle three doors down using their free downloadable player. I just remember being so confused that I'd be like, I want to listen to this band. And I got played every band other than the one I wanted to listen to, I was young, but I thought the idea of being given a radio station of stuff that sounds like or feels like the thing that you're looking for, while we have that now with playlists, but back then it was just well beyond the thinking of what we have now and just those sort of accidental discoveries are Yeah, I'm just really fond of that. Actually that memory, I hadn't thought about that for a long time, but just discovering really and three doors down in perfect circle, they're not unknowns, but I had no idea that they existed. And that was at the time when I was listening to Trivium or Bullet for my Valentine and Kill Switch Engage or Radiohead. So I was just in these different worlds of everything else and then being shown, I wouldn't even know how to put a finger on what they were at that time, but being shown a completely new style of music by accident, by clicking around on the internet, I dunno, not having that for a long time was really painful.

Speaker 1 (02:22:02):

I definitely think that the YouTube algorithm does that too. Now. There's different ways, but obviously you're a very tech savvy dude and seems like you definitely have stayed on top of the,

Speaker 2 (02:22:17):

I try

Speaker 1 (02:22:17):

Positive and negative impacts of whatever tech revolution we're going through. What do you think are some of the negative impacts that you've seen in recent years, at least with all this new tech, whether it's recording gear or streaming or whatever, what do you see as some of the downfalls we've been talking about the good sides.

Speaker 2 (02:22:39):

I think with all the good stuff being like we're exposed to more, right? That's just basically what's happened with everything, tv, music, et cetera. We're exposed to more. But I think one of the negatives I've seen is because of that, we kind of get stuck with option paralysis when it comes to music creation. I keep meeting, especially up and comers. I keep meeting people that can't write songs. They can write sections, but they dunno how to finish a song. They dunno how to build a complete thing. And they dunno how structure works. They dunno about transitions. They dunno about energy up and energy down. They dunno about false builds. How to make someone anticipate something that doesn't happen so that they get the payoff later in the song. Any of this, I'm seeing less, how do I put it? Just a less in depth understanding of what the DNA of a song is and how to then go and make it yourself.

Speaker 1 (02:23:37):

Why do you think that that's related to tech?

Speaker 2 (02:23:40):

Because I think what before, if we're going to go really back, I think as useful computers have been, I think it's stopped people from jamming on their own so much.

Speaker 1 (02:23:50):

That's very true.

Speaker 2 (02:23:51):

And I think the self jam, so riffing around on a guitar and using the computer more like a tape machine rather than the be all and end all of structuring and deciding where goes what or tempo. People do it less. And I think that kills creativity. And I think in some cases for some people that have worked with, they're less aware of what they're listening to because they don't, I dunno if you played guitar, right? And then the way we used to teach ourselves how to play guitar is you find your favorite song, you learn how it's played and then you recreate it and then you make your own version of that song. I think that that's not happening so much. And I guess that as a result, people aren't learning how to build songs.

Speaker 1 (02:24:39):

And I totally agree. By the way, I started to notice that when people started writing on a Guitar Pro, this was about 10 years ago or a little bit more, I started to notice more and more bands that were coming in to record had never played their parts, but they just had a Guitar Pro thing. It's horrible. The thing is, my band used Guitar Pro to document everything that we wrote on the guitar. We would write it and play it and make sure it was tableture. Yeah, exactly. That's what we used it for. But I would work with bands who wrote it on Guitar Pro, had never played it on an instrument and then came to record and there was a disconnect. A disconnect between the music they were trying to make and them they were not connected to their

Speaker 4 (02:25:25):

Music.

Speaker 1 (02:25:26):

And that I thought was very negative. Do you think that the option paralysis is just like with mixing, you have 17 compressors that you can try and so you end up not really deciding on one?

Speaker 2 (02:25:45):

I think. Well, that also comes back round to the whole don't want to do something that makes them wrong.

(02:25:52):

So I dunno if this compresses right, does this sound right? I don't know. Maybe I'll just, let's click a preset. Someone else did that. They knew what they were doing and it's in the right folder for the thing that I'm recording, so on and so forth. I guess the anti-technology way would've been, do you have a compressor? Yeah. Alright, what one have you got? And that was the thing that you had to learn to use and that would be the thing that either did work or didn't work and you'd learn how to use that inside out and then that would be it. And if you wanted something else, you'd have to buy it and you'd have one. I think the option paralysis is as much a godsend as it is, and I'm guilty of it as it is a negative. I spent last week trying to pick 20 plugins that I want to spend the next year using.

(02:26:40):

Only very smart. I'm getting there, but I'm also realizing that I still have to do recalls. So it kind of like, yeah, they're gone. And then it's like, oh, can we have this? And I'm like, fuck, it's back. Yeah, I think just having too many options is not being great because then people don't get to learn what they have. They kind of move on to the next thing, oh this doesn't work. I'll use the other company's version of the exact same fucking thing and see if that does the thing that I'm expecting it to do.

Speaker 1 (02:27:07):

When in reality it's you not knowing what you're listening for and how to get the idea that's in your head translated. That's the real problem.

Speaker 2 (02:27:17):

Well you don't even know what a good sound is.

Speaker 1 (02:27:19):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:27:20):

Is this a good sound? I dunno, I'll put more stuff on it. Is that a good sound? I dunno. It's the same sound but with more stuff on it. And the whole removing plugins thing is just down to, I think I used to be, although I was not as good an engineer, I think I was more creative with having less. So I'm now trying to intentionally recreate that environment where I'm going, alright, I'm only having this one delay for a month and then next month I get the other one. But this one comes off the shelf type thing.

Speaker 1 (02:27:49):

That's really, really smart and I encourage people to do that. I'm very much tech like we talked about the beginning with getting groceries delivered and everything. I apply that across my whole life. I am pro tech and pro evolution. Obviously though, anytime that you have a development and advancement, there's going to be cons and you can't just expect that a development is going to be perfect. It's made by people. There's nothing perfect in life.

Speaker 2 (02:28:19):

It's subjective.

Speaker 1 (02:28:20):

Yeah, totally. But there's going to be problems. And I agree. One of the problems with having this many tools here, we call it analysis paralysis, but it's the same thing is people get hung up on what to use and then I agree. They're afraid to be wrong. Very afraid to be wrong. And in our speed mixing course, one of the ways that we taught people to get around that was a time limitation. So you're suggesting a tool limitation, which is great too. I totally agree. We were suggesting giving yourself X amount of time to EQ something. So just try to EQ an entire song in 15 seconds per instrument.

Speaker 2 (02:29:04):

Right.

Speaker 1 (02:29:05):

And not because you would do that in real life, but just as an exercise maybe, but just as an exercise to get faster. The reason being that if you only do it 15 seconds per well, first scene seconds per track, you're not going to be able to second guess. You're not going to be able to sit there and fuck around. You have to figure out the problem or the thing you want to bring out, do it, move on

Speaker 2 (02:29:29):

Because our ears suck. We as soon as we focus on something for too long, the way that we hear stuff changes and that's just part of how our ears work. We're designed to be able to isolate sound or dangers and pick them out more clearly when we focus on them. So the sound changes when we focus on things that we mix.

Speaker 1 (02:29:47):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:29:48):

That sounds to me like how I describe people about creating a rule book so that you know where to start from. And then when you become really good at that rule book is knowing when to break the rules and then when to use the rules creatively. So this is a step-by-step process. You're just trying to stop. You're trying to encourage someone to just not overthink, but then I'm guessing at some point you probably get into the stage of, alright now just now that you know how stuff works, don't do it anymore type thing. And then see what they end up doing.

Speaker 1 (02:30:17):

When you say make a rule book, do you mean write it out or is it in your head?

Speaker 2 (02:30:23):

Subconscious. It's like, do you know the term about using a sandbox?

Speaker 1 (02:30:26):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (02:30:27):

Yeah. So it's creating a sandbox for you to work within and then you just stick to that. And then at any point you know that you can break those boundaries, but you're trying for as long as you can to work within those confines because it gives you a creative restriction. And then when you need to break that boundary, that's when you know that you've exhausted all your other options

Speaker 1 (02:30:46):

And there's a good reason for it.

Speaker 2 (02:30:47):

Correct.

Speaker 1 (02:30:48):

I was wondering if you wrote it down because we have, for instance, and this is different, but we have playbooks for different things, but that's because we have employees and if one leaves, we need to be able to have the next one do the exact same thing. That makes sense. So if it's just you, then you don't need to. And then also I do agree that it is, I don't know, it's different. You don't need to write this stuff down if you're a producer. It also, like you said, writing in four hours, that's great too. You're not giving yourself the time to fuck around.

Speaker 2 (02:31:22):

No, you're just using observation in order to guide your next thought process. When I'm working with band three pre-production, most of the time it'll be, I dunno how other people work, but the way that I work, I sit down and I listen to, I ask not to hear the demos until they arrive because I don't, I want to be able to give them my initial feedback as it happens because that'll be the only time that I can do that for them. Because after that I'm too familiar with the songs and then I'll talk them through the process. It'll go through multiple stages, but the main one that people miss out on is how energy works within a song. How you're going to direct the listener. Are you building up to something? Are you building out of something? Are you trying to misdirect so on. And then we'll work on those bases to flesh out their songs.

(02:32:08):

And I use these exact same rules when I'm songwriting for someone with someone or when I'm on my own finishing and starting a song within four hours. And that's like drum programming, bass guitars, leads, vocal melody, syn, orchestration, if it needs it, eight oh eights trap beats, whatever is supposed to be in there. It's all sort of mapped out and it's all on the basis that I'm trying not to go too analytical. I'm trying to go, alright, if I'm listening to this for the first time, what am I expecting as the listener? Am I wanting this? Am I wanting that? And sometimes the answer comes most of the time actually when I hit brick wall, I just have to go for a walk and then I'll be playing it through in my head because the act of walking for whatever reason or any sort of exertion, like going to the gym, I keep talking about it, will allow my thought process to go into a different state where I'm not in front of the thing that I'm focusing on. So I guess it's closer to meditation gives you perspective. Yeah. I get the answer almost every single time. So if I'm lost, I'll just go for a walk 20 minutes. Oh, okay. I do this. And then that would lead onto this. If I have this vocal melody, then I can reference it in the verse if I do that with the layers. Okay. And then I just go back and I'll just tap it all out and then it's kind of done. Makes sense.

Speaker 1 (02:33:30):

I've got quite a few questions from people, so I think we should get into them because we've been talking for a while and I don't want to take six hours of your

Speaker 2 (02:33:40):

Evening. Sure.

Speaker 1 (02:33:41):

So Carl Ghan says, I love the production on the Sleep token album. Would love to know how you got the guitars that sound so big and heavy, especially as they don't seem very bright, but they still cut through the mix. They do sound great by the way.

Speaker 2 (02:33:57):

Thank you. Trying to think about what I can say. I can say I can talk about the amps because they're mine.

Speaker 1 (02:34:04):

Do you have limitations on what you can say with that one?

Speaker 2 (02:34:07):

No, I respect the project so much that I want to make sure that I don't give away something that kind of ruins the enjoyment for someone. Got it. So I want to be able to answer the, but also be respectful at the same time. So he asked about the way, so he wasn't really asking about the amp, everything else, the guitars really aren't the most important part of that production. It's how everything else works. And then the guitars kind of played second fiddle for the most part and it was about working within the confidence of the space that was left for them. So they're not mega bright because I'm super sensitive to three K and 2K and 4K and I just, most of the time I end up tracking too dark anyway with everything. But it really paid off in this instance because we had a lot of bright post-production with all the synths and the drums are pretty, actually, they're in the foreground quite a lot and so are the vocals.

(02:35:00):

So with everything else being bright, I guess you got to work with the space that you're left with. I have found that being really sensible with the mono channel and how much information is ending up not doing mid side eq, but referencing Monos tends to show me problem areas that I don't hear in stereo. And I find that when I deal with those, for whatever reason, it allows for more space I guess because it's not congesting the mid channel. So then it allows for the compressor to look at things differently. So it's not any trickery, it's just about some TLC and being mindful of everything else that it's contending with.

Speaker 1 (02:35:38):

Makes sense.

Speaker 2 (02:35:38):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:35:39):

Eric Wilson's wondering or saying I love the vocal sound on the latest loath record. Was that something the band had in mind while tracking or was it a part of your mix process?

Speaker 2 (02:35:50):

It's not part of my mix process. It's Eric, their guitarist and Connor and their other guitarist and Sean are all producers in their own right.

(02:36:01):

I don't want to take praise for something that I didn't really decide. So they tracked all the vocals themselves and then they showed me what they were planning on doing and asked if I was okay with them pre-processing a lot of the stuff. The only thing that they didn't pre-process for the most part was the singing. Because singing I guess for some people is a bit tricky to get a grasp on. So the short answer is Loath did it and then I made sure that it worked. And then 70% of the singing stuff, I did that. But then they also provided, they gave me so many options, they provided me with delay throws, they really had put a lot of thought into it. So it was just a case of getting the puzzle to fit and making everything work. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:36:49):

Alright. Ben Palmer was wondering, the vocals on sundowning sound incredible. How have you managed to maintain the dynamics of his performance while still having each line in inflection audible and upfront? Also, any light you can shed on the reverb and delays used would be great. Too many thanks. Love your work.

Speaker 2 (02:37:08):

Thanks dude. Automation, basically the vocals are barely compressed. Like I'm talking six DB on a distress compressed. That's it. And if you've used a distress, you kind of know that six DB is kind of the most you can get away with before it starts impacting any sort of real character or sound. I think there's a V on it afterwards, but we're talking like minimal. And then the majority of it's automation because everything's so delicate, doing too much of anything can just kill it. It gets ruined. So it is just automation really for the most part and being like, oh, is this loud enough? No. Okay, turn it up. Done. I'm oversimplifying it. But it was that straightforward. The vocalist has is probably the best vocalist I'll ever record in my life.

Speaker 1 (02:37:54):

He's really good.

Speaker 2 (02:37:55):

I love him. I'm in love with him. And if I could, I would spend all my time around him. He's just one of those people that you meet and you're like, you are great. You're so great. Brilliant. It's not even like, yeah, he's just great. Reverbs are Val. Valhalla delays are, I think for that one, I think the delay is the logic stock delay, but it's the one in the guitar Pedalboard, not like the actual proper tape delay or anything. It's one designed for that's supposed to be used with guitar tones. They've got a really crazy dark mushy sounding thing and it works.

Speaker 1 (02:38:35):

I found that the waves GTR pedal board effects sometimes work great on vocals.

Speaker 2 (02:38:42):

It comes down to the limitation again. It's like even if it's a bit naff, it's probably really cool because it's naf. What does NAF mean? What the hell is naf? Naf? Alright, it's another British term. NAF is just like a bit shitty. No naf meaning I'm going to have to find this. That's probably an urban dictionary. How do you spell it? NAFF.

Speaker 1 (02:39:05):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:39:06):

Inferior or in poor taste. British slang. Objective. NF kind of. So shitty. So yeah, I guess shitty, but it's not like, oh, that's a bit naf. It's like a soft, bad term. Rowan, if I went, oh, your shirt is shitty, you'd be like, ah, cheers, mate. But if your shirt's a bit naff, it's like wearing a Hawaiian shirt. It's a bit naff.

Speaker 1 (02:39:27):

Okay, got it.

Speaker 2 (02:39:28):

Got it.

Speaker 1 (02:39:31):

Probably hard to answer this in a podcast, but Wesley Music says he is. Legend is crazy. Good. What is your technique approach on creating such a massive low end in your rock mixes?

Speaker 2 (02:39:42):

Share a mix with Adam.

Speaker 1 (02:39:44):

Get good and get him to credit

Speaker 2 (02:39:47):

Well.

Speaker 1 (02:39:48):

Oh, he co-ed it with you. Got it.

Speaker 2 (02:39:51):

Yeah, he got the job and I co-ed it with him if we're going to be super political. Fair enough. I don't want to take, so Adam kicked everything off and I mixed, I dunno, over half the record. He started it and then I carried it on and I tried to not really deviate too hard from the, I'm going to say rule book, the sandbox that he'd set for the record ahead time. So really the low end thing is like, that's just Adam.

Speaker 1 (02:40:17):

Yeah, he's great.

Speaker 2 (02:40:17):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (02:40:18):

Joe, man, fuck. I can't pronounce his name, so I'm just going to say Mr. Ros. Cool. Besides Evert Tune, how do you combat guitars? Going sharp when picking hard, tuning to the attack seems always inconsistent. And getting bridge cables for strings kills a lot of high end and harmonics. Your guitar productions are my reference. Much love.

Speaker 2 (02:40:42):

Wow. Okay. So I don't use an never tune because I don't like them. So all of them are fixed bridge because I don't use Floyd rows. So at Playing Strength, if it's an open, I will get the person to hit the string at playing strength over and over again and then retune the string to till it averages in pitch, and then I'll then do the same process again. But referencing against a midi note pitch like a piano because something that has harmonics and then I'll reference against that. If it's in tune, it's in tune. That's about it.

Speaker 1 (02:41:17):

Fair enough. Renar Magnusson says Sleep Token sounds fantastic. It's also really dynamic and flows so well from part to part. I'm curious what your best advice is for making dynamic and diverse songs sound cohesive, be it during tracking or mixing. And thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:41:35):

Oh, that's really nice. Don't mix into a limiter or a clipper. Don't mix into anything on a master bus at all.

Speaker 1 (02:41:43):

Interesting.

Speaker 2 (02:41:44):

You say

Speaker 1 (02:41:44):

That

Speaker 2 (02:41:45):

Because so many people do that. Yeah, I think that you can do that when you know what they're doing. If I was to try and show someone what I'm listening for, if a limiter was in the way or imparting loudness, they're not going to hear what something sounds like before it's hit that stage of extreme anything. It took me a really long time to unlearn that. That was down to, I think it was something that Jens Borin suggested a long time ago. I doubt he even remembers. He's the man and he mastered that record so he knows what he's talking about. And he mastered loath, so he's like my go-to now. He nailed it. He just did. So have you seen

Speaker 1 (02:42:26):

His two nail the Mixes? I haven't, no. Dude, they're great. They are long. One was Opeth, one was between The Buried and me. They're both 11 hours long or something. They are

Speaker 2 (02:42:39):

Sick.

Speaker 1 (02:42:39):

Awesome.

Speaker 2 (02:42:40):

I think he's great.

Speaker 1 (02:42:41):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:42:41):

I also really love the work that he did with, do you know Lepers?

Speaker 1 (02:42:44):

Fuck man. I would love to have lepers on N Mix. Please do that. I'm working on it. I'll pay you now. Dude, I love lepers so much. Shame. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (02:42:54):

So much. If anyone was to go, oh, who would you like to work with? That's band number one as lepers.

Speaker 1 (02:42:59):

Dude, there's leper dude. They're singer. Fuck. I know. They're a drummer

Speaker 2 (02:43:02):

Too. I know their drummer. I shared a Playthrough video on Facebook a while ago.

Speaker 1 (02:43:06):

I just did the other day. That

Speaker 2 (02:43:08):

So good. Is it the same one?

Speaker 1 (02:43:09):

Which one did you share?

Speaker 2 (02:43:10):

Is it the one someone else comes in to play Floor Tom?

Speaker 1 (02:43:13):

No, that's because Dave Otero shared that one a few days before. Oh, okay. I shared another one that just came

Speaker 2 (02:43:20):

Out. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (02:43:20):

The song is called Mirage.

Speaker 2 (02:43:22):

Okay, I'm going to check that. If it's on your Facebook, then I'll find it later.

Speaker 1 (02:43:25):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (02:43:26):

Yeah. So not mixing full circle, not mixing into a or a limiter until you know what it is doing and what it's imparting. I also kind of feel the same way about compressors, but I think it's a little less dangerous because at least in the box you can turn it off and hear, because I'm telling a light, I mix into distress on the drum bus from the word go. But that's because I think they sound great. But until you know what they're doing or what you're trying to achieve, I think it's really daft to just do something without knowing what it's doing. So I'll mix those songs or that band particularly without anything in line. And I will have, I'll keep my monitors at a certain volume and I won't touch it so that I'll know that if that's my reference point, if something's too quiet, I either need to EQ it or make it louder. I think a lot of people probably fiddle with the monitor volume too much when mixing to have proper understanding of reference point.

Speaker 1 (02:44:24):

Yeah, I completely agree with you on that. We did a mastering fast track with a guy named Mike Ian, and one of the things

Speaker 2 (02:44:33):

Awesome dude.

Speaker 1 (02:44:34):

Yeah, he's great. One of the things that he said was that he keeps everything at the same exact volume always, which I don't know if it's a hundred percent applicable to mixing always, but his reasoning was sound. It was that you hear things differently at different volumes. And so if you're not at the exact same level, you don't know if what you're hearing is accurate.

Speaker 2 (02:45:01):

That's correct. It's called the Fletcher Munson Curve. Yep. And he's right.

Speaker 1 (02:45:05):

He is right. I've got some questions here from Instagram actually.

Speaker 2 (02:45:09):

Cool.

Speaker 1 (02:45:09):

So Jeff Dunn, I was wondering how often does George walk into a room and immediately clap to test for drums? Fuck sake. No, he has an actual question. Jeff Dunn's wondering what audio rule or best practice do you most often break or think is most

Speaker 2 (02:45:27):

Bullshit? Trying to predefine the way that you work all the time is bullshit. So saying that I only mix with this or I only work with that, I was encouraged when I started out to have a rule book that predetermined the way that I would work even before I heard what it was that I was working on. It can be useful, but it can also be bullshit. And that was the rule that I loved to break when I got to break it.

Speaker 1 (02:45:50):

People love that on the internet, don't they?

Speaker 2 (02:45:52):

Man?

Speaker 1 (02:45:53):

Man, that's the thing. This is a fine line that we walk because giving people advice without having heard anything is it's bad. And so one of the things that bothers me to know, and in Facebook groups especially, is someone saying, I'm having this problem. I'm working with a vocalist and it just sounds not bright enough or something, what do I do? And then people are like, do this and this and that. And it's like, how are you giving them this advice? You haven't even heard what they're talking about.

Speaker 2 (02:46:26):

So I really rule breaking. Great. And Jeff actually asked a really, that's a really hard question to answer because that's like everything's bullshit really. But being told how to work or expecting to work a certain way and then being told I'm not allowed to change that as soon as I changed it is when people started noticing me is all I can say.

Speaker 1 (02:46:49):

All right. Last question from Alien Kink. Alright. Where did you first learn how to make drums sound so good?

Speaker 2 (02:46:59):

Adam taught me how to tune.

Speaker 1 (02:47:01):

That's pretty useful.

Speaker 2 (02:47:03):

And I don't want it to make, because I wasn't Adam's understudy, I wasn't his engineer or anything. Co-produced a few records, but within those few records, and we're best friends, you spend a lot of time around someone and you throw ideas around and you talk about how to do X, Y, and Z. You come up with new ways of doing things. So the tuning system that he uses and he shared with me, just made it so that if you're going to have a preset for anything, that starting point for tuning drums and then break it, by all means, everyone needs a bit of chaos that allows a reference point. So getting good sounding drums is knowing where you're starting from. Right? Well, if you dunno what your reference point is, then how do you know where you've come from or where you're going or how do you know anything objectively? But that's just my point of view.

Speaker 1 (02:47:52):

Well, that's what you're here to share is your point of view.

Speaker 2 (02:47:55):

Yeah. So yeah, the tuning system helped and then being shown distress on the drum bus basically. Yeah, those two things. Tuning and distress. That's how I sound like such a normal person. Of course. Distress.

Speaker 1 (02:48:14):

Well, yeah, they're so great. They're useful. Absolutely. Drum tuning too is one of those things, man, I think every producer should know how to do it. The odds are that the drummers you work with aren't going to know

Speaker 2 (02:48:26):

How. No. Or they may know a way, but it may not be the

Speaker 1 (02:48:31):

Way,

Speaker 2 (02:48:31):

Best way to get the most out of the she. And then when you start finding that, it's like, can you imagine being, having a guitar and not knowing how to put it in tune and then sort of hoping that you get it in the tuning that you need. That's kind of like the same thing, but with drums it's like, oh, it's kind of close. Yeah. Should we do that? Yeah. All right. And that's kind of where most people end up. And then they'll resort to samples, which aren't a bad thing, but resorting to samples as your mainstay and not really trying to, if you haven't tried to do a record without samples, then you've not tried. And it doesn't mean you have to, but I think it's a good challenge to have like singing without auto tune.

Speaker 1 (02:49:07):

Absolutely. Well, George, it's been awesome talking to you.

Speaker 2 (02:49:11):

Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (02:49:12):

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:49:15):

It has been fun. I have liked it, and we've talked about things that actually I did not expect for us to talk about that many deep things, but that I'm stoked.

Speaker 1 (02:49:23):

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