Michael Montoya: Producing for Juice WRLD, The Rise of Trap Metal, Working with Korn & Slipknot

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host,

Speaker 2 (00:00:06):

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 know it's been a minute since the last episode. I just needed a break after lots of podcasting, but I'm back and I'm be podcasting quite a bit. In 2020, first episode back is with my friend Michael Montoya, AKA Morgothbeatz, who I met in about 2014 when he was in a local hardcore Death Corps band called Goliath, which I recorded. Since then, he has leveled up tremendously. He's now a producer songwriter for artists such as Issues Scar, Lord, Lil Z, Pia Juice, world Bones, Jonathan Davis, and even Sid Wilson from Slipknot. He plays guitar and wins a plague and is just winning. He's gone from being some cool kid in a band to doing some a-list shit, and I thought that you guys would enjoy hearing from him. So without further ado, I'll give you Mike Montoya, aka Morgothbeatz. Michael Montoya. Welcome to the URM podcast. I'm glad we're finally doing this. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 3 (00:02:37):

Yes, thank you, Al. I'm excited.

Speaker 2 (00:02:39):

Yeah, I'm excited. Well, I mean, we talked about this at Nam. We kind took over the dinner conversation for people who weren't there, which is all of you listening. Basically, there were about 20 people at a dinner, and Mike and I basically took over the conversation at the table. It was really, really nice to see you.

Speaker 3 (00:03:02):

Yeah, no, that was great. I hadn't seen you in a while, so it was super nice. It was a fun dinner.

Speaker 2 (00:03:06):

Yeah, for sure. And it was just cool to hear how much you've leveled up in the past few years because what, what's interesting to me about your career is that your band was the last band I ever recorded, and at that time, the band is Goliath for people who are wondering. That was when I retired, and at that point in time, you were a dude in a local band. I mean a hardworking local band, but just a dude in a local band who I thought was cool. But you were still working your way into the industry at that point. That's right. When I quit to do URM, and it seems like parallel to that, your career has really taken off to where you're doing stuff with a-listers and playing guitar for cool bands, writing for people, producing for different people across multiple genres, and it's a long stretch from being in a, I don't know, what do you want to call it? Death Corps band Hardcore.

Speaker 3 (00:04:17):

Yeah, we were somewhere in between Death Corps and hardcore.

Speaker 2 (00:04:20):

When you look back on that, would you have expected any of this to happen if Michael Montoya from 2014? That was at my studio,

Speaker 3 (00:04:29):

Man? Honestly, no. Well, initially my goal was to make that band blow up. That band became a stepping stone for me and looking back at it, it was actually a really good life lesson that I was able to learn. We had a merch thing going, we made money off the band. It was to the point where we were busy and touring and all that. So I got to experience the grind, as some people say, and basically from that, I was able to join Wins a plague. That band was pretty popular, popular enough to get me into a real band, a bigger band that signed and all that fun stuff. And then just from there I made little calculated moves, I guess that ended me up in bigger positions. So I definitely didn't expect it. I kind of wanted to try to make that band work the best I can. Everyone does starting a new project or whatever, but what ended up happening I think was much better, and I am really glad I did do that band and I went through all the fun stuff that bands who are just starting out touring have to do everything on their own end up doing. Because if you don't go through that DIY experience, you don't appreciate the bigger stuff quite as much. I wouldn't appreciate touring in a bus and all that type of shit if I didn't tour in that tiny ass van.

Speaker 2 (00:05:55):

Well, it's kind of like getting the entry level position at the corporation, like the mail room job in a way.

Speaker 4 (00:06:02):

Totally.

Speaker 2 (00:06:03):

When you guys came to my studio, I could tell you guys were a really hardworking band. I mean, the studio was in Florida and you guys drove in a van all the way from California to Florida just to come record. So that to me was like, all right, span works hard and that's not a short drive. And so I was impressed by that. I also thought it was kind of stupid.

Speaker 4 (00:06:26):

Oh yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:06:28):

I don't offense or anything.

(00:06:31):

I was like, either these guys are really motivated or they're really motivated are their dumb asses. Why are they driving all the way from California? That's ridiculous. But at the same time, I was really impressed by it because at the same time on the other end, it's like, wow, these guys really will do what it takes to make shit happen, which is the attitude you have to have, be willing to do what other people won't do, and if you wanted to get that recording done, so you made the sacrifice. And so right there, I could tell that something was different about the people involved in the project. So I'm not surprised honestly by any of this.

Speaker 3 (00:07:16):

That's awesome. No, totally. I mean, yeah, we booked our own tour across the country, which at that point though, we had already had been doing that, so it was just like, let's just book a tour. We already know how to do that. So it worked out where, I mean, that project was cool. I'm still happy. I'm still proud of that. Todd Jones from Nails was on the guest vocals on it. That was one of my first times I started trying to pull strings to get really cool stuff to happen, use the band as a leverage point to build relationships and stuff like that. And yeah, that band was a good learning experience. Now I know how to run a merch line basically, and I know how to book a tour. Not that I ever want to do that ever again, but I know how to do it

Speaker 2 (00:08:08):

Well. It's not necessarily that you need to book a tour, but you know how to put together something that requires lots of logistics. For instance, because I booked tours, I feel like booking the URM Summit booking now the mix more specifically the URM summit because it requires so many people's travel arrangements and everything, it was very, very second nature to me. I don't plan on ever booking a tour again, but having had that experience of grinding it out in a small band has taught me things that have resonated and just been useful to this day. I have some friends who got big on YouTube and now their band is doing quite well. They skipped a few levels and hey, I'm not talking down on them at all. Whatever it takes to get to your dream, more power to you. I respect anybody who makes it work in music because music's a tough gig. However, I will say that I feel like some of my friends who have gone straight from YouTube to playing two packed venues without really, really grinding in between, it's no knock on them at all. But I do feel like they have missed out on some valuable skill building.

Speaker 3 (00:09:32):

No, totally. I mean, I definitely think it's an easier path and probably a more desirable path, but at the end of the day, if you really want to learn the ins and outs of this and you really want to test yourself to see how bad you want it, which is kind of what the band did, it kind of taught me to work smarter, not harder. Definitely learned a lot of lessons from it that I was able to apply with joining Wins a Plague later on. That's actually what stopped that band was it started making me realize how to think a few steps ahead, how one Path could lead to multiple paths. And if you take a small opportunity here because of a potential outcome from that small opportunity, then those type of decisions are going to get you further than just sticking gun ho to what you have.

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So it was kind of like, do I keep doing my smaller band, which even though we have label interests and all that type of stuff, or do I join a bigger band with more opportunities? And that was kind of where that happened. And it was same with going into producing hip hop and stuff, because around the time, I think when we recorded that maybe a little earlier, that was when I started really getting my feet wet with production and doing hip hop production. I'm talking about, I recorded bands and all that kind of stuff before that, but doing different kinds of production and working on different kinds of music. And then that path led to a whole other thing to where now I worked on a platinum album and a number one album this year, so I would've never thought it started from a smaller Mashy band, which now actually even looking back at it, I think Goliath probably could have been pretty popular being with bands like Knock Loose and Burials and stuff like that. Really, mhy sound has almost dominated heavier music like Death Corps bands and stuff like that aren't really the relevant thing anymore. Those beat down hardcore bands are, and that's kind of what we are doing.

Speaker 2 (00:11:34):

So when you're talking about thinking ahead a few steps, and I do this too, something that I've taught myself how to do and now it just kind of comes naturally to me when you talk about that, how does it specifically relate to joining wins of Plague? How many steps ahead were you thinking and what were those steps that you were trying to get to?

Speaker 3 (00:11:56):

Initially I started working with the bass player, Andrew, the old bass player

Speaker 2 (00:12:01):

Of Wins of Plague.

Speaker 3 (00:12:02):

Yeah, I started working at his recording studio

Speaker 2 (00:12:04):

Just as an intern or assistant,

Speaker 3 (00:12:07):

Just as an intern basically, as in to being just an engineer at the studio. And I didn't really, at that time, I wasn't quite as smart with that sort of planning, but what happened was because I did that, I never thought like, oh, one day this bands not going to need, they're going to need a guitar player and I'm going to be the person to do it. I just wanted to be around to surround myself with people doing what I wanted to do and just to kind of be a fly on the wall. Initially I was like, all I want to do, I was like, I want to be in a metal band and I want to be a metal guitar player and tour with all my favorite bands and all that kind of stuff. And that was kind of the cap of my goal.

(00:12:48):

Maybe I'll be a producer who records and stuff too, but I want to be in a band. And when the time came for them to actually find a new guitar player and stuff like that, I had already been working with the singer on a new project we were kind of doing, starting a new band. And essentially that just led to, yo, why don't you just play guitar for Wins a plague instead of starting something new? So that was when I realized, oh, this one step became this next step. And then I just kind of started basing my life off that this person, if I say I work with someone, I'm like, well, this person is close with this person, so maybe if I work with them, a potential outcome is I can work with the person I really want to work with

(00:13:31):

Artists or singers or rappers or whatever. I usually will work with the producer, whoever their main producer or so is because I know getting to the artist themselves is really hard to do. It is next to impossible unless you're close in their inner circle. Because me and my friend John, who is my production partner, record all of little Zands music for example, and I know how that infrastructure works is if anyone wants to give him music for him to hear and sing do or rap to, they kind of have to go through us because we're the people who play his music for him nine times out of 10, the

Speaker 2 (00:14:12):

Gatekeepers.

Speaker 3 (00:14:14):

So that's how everyone works. That's how every system for every artist works for the most part nowadays is they're not really getting music from the ars and stuff like that. If you can work with the person already next to them. For example, since I play guitar, usually these producers don't. So I'll be like, Hey, let me send you a bunch of riffs and song ideas where I'll just write a whole song on guitar and give it to 'em, and then they'll make a track out of it and then that track if they like what they made, they show it to the artist and then you got a real song there or a real placement there that will actually make you some money. And that was just kind of how I started making those calculated decisions was educated guesses basically.

Speaker 2 (00:14:57):

Yeah. A lot of people ask me how to get past the local level with their productions, and I always tell them there's two ways really that I know of. Number one is a local band that you work with gets big and you get big together. That's really rare though, and unlikely. I mean, it happens. We all know people that it happens to, but that's because we're in the business. So we know the lottery winners basically. Andrew Wade with the data, remember for instance, or Joey Sturgis. We know these guys because they're the ones who made it work and helped grow bands, but that's very few and far between. That's not normally how these things happen. I always say the other way is that you need to get around people who are working at the level you want to work

Speaker 4 (00:15:50):

At

Speaker 2 (00:15:51):

No matter how, even if it's as a runner or an intern or whatever, you need to be around people who are working at the level you want to work at so that you become a part of that environment.

Speaker 3 (00:16:05):

Totally,

Speaker 2 (00:16:05):

Yeah. Those people become your social circle, and if they like you and are impressed with you eventually you don't know when it could be a year from now, it could be two years, it could be two weeks. You never know. But being part of that environment is how you get those gigs.

Speaker 3 (00:16:25):

Totally is. And one thing too that doesn't, for people who might get discouraged, be like, oh man, I'm never going to be friends with Joey Sturgis or whoever. Sometimes those people are your friends around you and you need to cultivate new artists on your own. You need to take that leap because if you can enter in a social circle that you want to be in with already having credited, say one of your friends is a really good singer or something like that, and you want to be a producer or you want to, whatever you want to do, if you want to be in a band or whatever it is, but you got to kind of surround yourself with talent that you believe in at an early stage too. Because if you come to the table with, Hey, look, I helped produce this artist and I worked with this artist really early on and now say a year later or so, they're a lot more popular, then the bigger people will be like, oh, cool, this person may be onto something.

(00:17:31):

Maybe I should hear what they have to say, versus kind of going in cold with no real examples of any of your work or anything that's worked for you nowadays. For me, it is kind of funny. I would've never thought that being a hip hop and pop producer or whatever would get me a lot more gigs in metal. I thought the two were going to remain similarly, fairly separate worlds from each other. And now I get all kinds of stuff because of just the times, I guess, and just the molding of genres and the genre list mentality that is in music right now. So you never know what's going to lead to what or you never know when you can apply one thing from one skillset to another place. And yeah, now I get to work with some of my favorite bands ever. I never would've thought I would've gotten to do that, and that was not because I joined one of the Big Death Corps bands, and it's not because I played metal guitar, it's because I learned a new genre in music and started working on new genre of music.

(00:18:44):

And lucky for me, I did it at a time when it was underground and cool, and then it became mainstream. So I was lucky to ride that wave a little bit, and I'm by no means the only person doing this. There's a lot of really sick people out there who are in this, my peers at this. But that kind of stuff is important. You don't want to be as possibly can I think, and that's what's worked for me. I mean, some people make the same kind of music their whole lives and that's great, and if you're successful at it, cool. But I don't know. I would rather do the Rick Rubin approach and make as many genres as you possibly can.

Speaker 2 (00:19:28):

I think it's dangerous to just do one thing. Honestly, I think it's dangerous because what if that thing that you're doing, I don't want to say it goes out of style, but loses relevance

Speaker 3 (00:19:40):

And it will, nothing stays around forever in its current form.

Speaker 2 (00:19:45):

So a lot of people are wondering about this. How did you make the transition into rap? Where does that even come from? I know that there's this whole scene where metal and rap are kind of crossing over with these new genres that kind of came out of nowhere, but how did this happen for you? How did you learn how to do it? How did you get in with those people? Where's it all from?

Speaker 3 (00:20:14):

Well, a lot of my friends, a lot of my best friends, I'm part of a production group called the Be Brigade or Hip Hop producers, and these are my friends I went to middle school and high school with, and then other friends who I've met through them. Their world has always been like hip hop production. And I've always been a fan of hip hop because I grew up skateboarding. And so for me, metal punk, hardcore and hip hop have always been in a similar place for me. I mean, I wanted to be in a metal band because I was a guitar player, but I always liked the genre. I always loved underground hip hop, and I've always just tried to as much music as I can. I try and find the good in music before I find the bad. And I know a lot of people in Metal World have some up nose snotty opinion about stuff like this, but to me, I first started playing guitar on my friend's beats because that's my skillset is guitar.

(00:21:17):

That's my strongest musical, that's my strongest musical contribution I could make. So I started playing guitar on my friends' beats, and then as I was in sessions and stuff and just saw how they do it. And at this point I had been recording bands a lot, having to learn to record live drums, I went to recording school, all that stuff. I was able just to be like, you know what? I could do this. I can make these myself and just make my own kind of thing. And lucky for me, the scene that is now the mainstream of hip hop with emo rap and trap metal and the darker hip hop kind of stuff, people who I produced for Bones Juice, WRL, stuff like that, that was underground at the moment, that wasn't what mainstream hip hop was. So it wasn't so hard to work with an underground scene because we were actually a pretty popular band in the world of underground metal and hardcore at the time.

(00:22:18):

And I got a shout out to my friend Oman 13, who's a pretty awesome underground hip hop artist who's pretty popular. And he was a kid who used to play in another local hardcore band that used to open for us in the IE for Goliath. This is Pre Winds of Play. And that kid became a very untouched hip hop artist who he lived with people like Lil Peep and Ghost Main, and he's really involved with that scene. So he sampled a Goliath song once, and I found out about it, and obviously when I got the thing like, oh, someone sampled your music, and I was super excited about it, it was this crazy mix of metal and hip hop. It was basically a breakdown, but instead of bass, it was eight oh eights and the trap drums and stuff. And I was like, this is such a sick blend.

(00:23:15):

And he was screaming, he was in a hardcore band, and I was just like, it was kind of like, aha, this is sick. I'm going to try and take this more seriously. So it just kind of snowballed. I just kind of did that. And then people were excited about that and were like, oh, this sound is crazy. And I was able just to work with him and then work with another artist and work with another artist. And then I kind of developed my own little sound, my own little contribution to it, and people just started seeking me out. After I started getting those bones placements, I really noticed a change in my life where I was like, okay, this is what I should be focusing on because I mean, death Corps is sick. I like it, metal sick, hardcore sick, and I never want to not make that kind of music because it's who I am.

(00:24:05):

But I was like, this is a new thing that has not existed before and it almost reminds me of new metal. And if you could be at the start of a genre in hindsight, you want to be so I don't want to be the person be like, oh no, I'm going to stick my nose up to what these dudes are doing because they're not playing instruments and it's not a band. I don't know. So I just was excited to work on something that hasn't really been figured out yet, something where it's kind of uncharted territory. So the limitations are a much less, there's no real box built yet with when you start a sub-genre. A lot of people see that sub-genre as only can exist in its most infant form. And then every band who tries to push the walls out a little bit then gets called, oh, you're not this anymore. You're not that anymore. And I was just like, man, I'd rather be free of that and just be at the start of something and try and create the parameters like myself.

Speaker 2 (00:25:03):

The walls are pretty much set in metal and hardcore.

Speaker 3 (00:25:07):

Yeah, it's a real problem.

Speaker 2 (00:25:08):

I actually think that that's one of the reasons that the genres aren't bigger is self-limiting.

Speaker 3 (00:25:15):

No, totally.

Speaker 2 (00:25:16):

Lots of times when a band goes outside the box, they lose the support of the scene. So it's a self-limiting scene

Speaker 3 (00:25:25):

And I think I'm super interested in sub genres and stuff like that too. I'm not the kind of person who's like, don't call us a Death Corps band. Don't call us a hardcore band, don't call us whatever because that's this or that. I'm totally fine with labels, but what I'm not fine with is thinking that a genre starts one way and it has to stay that way the whole time The walls on it can't expand. For example, if we look at what Metal core is now versus what it was when it started, metal Core is probably the largest umbrella sonically in metal music in general right now. It covers a really wide range of sound at this point, and I think that might be because it purists and stuff haven't all the way ruined it. Maybe

Speaker 2 (00:26:15):

That's because purists never accepted it in the first place.

Speaker 3 (00:26:19):

Yeah, exactly. It was free of that.

Speaker 2 (00:26:20):

It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (00:26:22):

Yeah, it is. And it's kind of funny, even though metal's not in the most popular place it's ever been that every year I feel like I keep hearing breakdowns are going to die, it's about to be over. And then every year since I've been a kid loving hardcore music thinking, oh man, this is about to pop because all these blogs and stuff are saying it and they know what they're talking about. Never happens.

Speaker 2 (00:26:46):

I don't think it's going anywhere.

Speaker 3 (00:26:48):

I don't think so either. I think it'll evolve, but it ain't

Speaker 2 (00:26:51):

Going hopefully.

Speaker 3 (00:26:52):

Yeah, I hope so. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:26:53):

I've been hearing that since I was a kid too. I've been hearing that metal's going to die hardcore is going to die. It's not going to die. It fulfills a specific need for a specific group of people emotionally, and no other styles of music really fulfill that need though I will say that these new seem like trap metal stuff, the super heavy rap styles with the metal imagery made by metal heads, it's a very interesting thing. It kind of has that same sort of anger that I feel metal has had over the years. I feel like it is almost inhabiting that spot for today that certain types of metal inhabited in the past.

Speaker 3 (00:27:46):

I totally agree, and that was why I even drew my interest in it and even being early to the party on it, I was reached its sonic potential yet I think it's still very early in its infancy and a lot of the artists in it are really big. I don't think metal people really understand the size of the artists we're talking about here in terms of their numbers and stuff, but I definitely think that I agree with you that it's cool because like a reinvention of it. I think that one cool thing that I do really like about hip hop and that I really do draws me to it, especially on the production end of things, is that essentially the genre is entirely based on drums and bass and whatever the melody or top line over that is could be from anywhere. You could take a guitar riff from metal, you could take a saxophone solo from jazz, you could take a whatever, anything that is the going to be the melody, melody of your beat. And you have some interesting genre fusion. So it's really easy to blend genres in this world, and I'm actually surprised that it didn't happen more. I mean this is similar to me, to what New Metal was except reversed. Instead of metal bands like corn and stuff like that and mixing hip hop influence into their metal band, it's rappers and producers mixing metal into their hip hop music.

Speaker 2 (00:29:22):

Based on that comparison or that idea, sounds to me like your guitar skills were exactly what some people needed. If it's hip hop bringing in metal elements and you're saying, here I can contribute some heavy ass guitars to your beats fulfilling a need.

Speaker 3 (00:29:42):

Well, to me, I saw the scene kind of going this way because hip hop was getting darker and darker and the imagery of metal came first and the kids being kids who grew up on metal and starting to make hip hop, because to be honest, it's a lot easier to start a solo career if you're a vocalist nowadays and you don't have to have a band because you can just get beats and you can just be a vocalist over those beats. So yeah, I kind of was like, okay, cool. This is happening whether people like it or not, and it's been a gradual thing. So it kind of went from kids being from Metal World, but they make hip hop music, but they implement some of the occult imagery and the edginess or the darkness of it. And then that sort of interest in the aesthetics turned to sonic and eventually it was like, oh, let's scream over this dark trap beat.

(00:30:48):

We're in a hardcore band. And then when that started happening, I was like, okay, because screaming, or at least the type of screaming we're talking about comes from metal and hardcore specifically, no other genre can claim that thing. So when that started happening, it was like, oh, okay, so the sky's the limit on this really. We can basically just make these genre fusions in a million different ways. It could go so many different directions. And I was just like, sweet, I'm going to take what I do and play riffs and just change the drums. I mean, it's not a crazy concept or idea or anything that is impossible to do. You just have learn the best parts of each genre and learn how to put it together. That has kind of been my mission state with it and working with really open-minded bands and stuff like that too, issues, who is the most genre blending band I know it really helped me open my eyes for the potential of envisioning a sound that doesn't exist yet and trying to create that sound, I kind of asked myself, what do I wish something sounded like that doesn't exist yet and can I make that or can I come close to approaching that or who can I collaborate with to create said sound with issues?

(00:32:17):

It's like to put it very basically it's like what if r and b, Neos soul funk and stuff was mixed with modern progressive metal music and all sorts of other little elements in there and that's what they were able to create

Speaker 2 (00:32:33):

And very authentically too.

Speaker 3 (00:32:35):

Yeah, well that is definitely because of their musicianship and their background in music and being a multi-genre players.

Speaker 2 (00:32:44):

So let me ask you something. This is very fascinating to me. You have a vision, and by the way, I think that vision and intentionality is the most important thing. Any creator, whether you're a lead guitarist, a painter, producer, songwriter, businessman, it doesn't matter. Having a vision is everything. So alright, so you have your vision, it's for the sound that doesn't exist yet, so you don't necessarily have a reference because the sound doesn't exist yet. What's the first step in making that a reality? How do you even define it if it doesn't exist yet?

Speaker 3 (00:33:25):

I think you have to look at your favorite parts from what you're trying to create from. Actually a really cool lesson I learned. I used to get guitar lessons from Mark from suicide silence long time ago, almost 10 years ago now or something like that. Eight, nine.

Speaker 2 (00:33:43):

See the dude with the massive beard?

Speaker 3 (00:33:44):

Yes, that is Mark.

Speaker 2 (00:33:46):

He is good beard.

Speaker 3 (00:33:47):

He told me the key to making a good original sounding band is not to mix two or three bands or four bands or whatever in playing the same style of music that you want to play if you just want to coexist in a sub genre. So if it's like I want to make a band that sounds like Chelsea Grin mixed with Wins a plague mixed with suicide sounds, well you're going to get a band that sounds like that you are going to get a basic Death Corps band and

(00:34:18):

What you need to do is take 2030 of your favorite kinds of music who aren't necessarily in the same style and pick things about them that you really hyperfocus in on when you're listening to these kinds of music. Or it doesn't have to be bands. I'm just doing that blanket term artist in general. So say you're like, I really like the Cures lead guitar tone or something like that, and I really like sugar's rhythm tone, and I really like Earth, wind and Fires drum style and I really like the production that Drake has or something like that and just wild things like that. But if you hone in on small details and you figure out how to apply those small details, you can come out with something pretty cool. It's not always going to work and you're going to probably have to spend a lot of time working on specifics, but if you learn those styles of music you want to emulate and eventually it's just going to come out of you.

Speaker 2 (00:35:26):

I agree completely. I used to do that too when I was writing. So there's this song Doth has called Double Tap Suicide. And by the way, just to clear anything up, we don't mean the guitar technique

Speaker 3 (00:35:40):

Double tap,

Speaker 2 (00:35:42):

Double tap just in case you fuck up the first time. But no, because someone was like, is that a guitar technique? I say, no, you idiot, you shoot them twice. But I remember that one specifically, it was like, alright, I really want to combine clean parts that you would hear on a Danzi record, like how the God's Kill Old. But I want the energy of Joey Json on the first Slip Knot, the way that he pushed and pulled tempos or that slayer would do on some of their fills, pushing and bullying. But I also want the fluid motion of Morbid Angel, but I want the catchiness of a Slip Knot chorus, but I want the beauty of one of those OPEC parts that they play for like eight minutes straight.

Speaker 4 (00:36:41):

Oh yeah. I'm one of my favorite

Speaker 2 (00:36:43):

Along with flamenco and it's got to be catchy as fuck and it's one of people's favorite songs by us, but there's a few more things in there. There was like, we love it when Lamb of God go to these halftime parts, so we're going to do something kind of like that too in there. But there were parts like the chorus also was like, we love it when Marilyn Manson gets these single alongs going, and so somehow put all that shit into one brutal ass song and you can't really pin down a genre on it. It just sounds like our band, the way that we nailed the Joey Jsan thing was by writing Tempo changes into the fills.

Speaker 4 (00:37:31):

Oh,

Speaker 2 (00:37:32):

Okay. Because we figured out that the reason that First Slipknot sounds so energetic besides the vocals and all that, but drum wise specifically was because Joey wasn't playing to a click and his tempos are all over the place,

(00:37:49):

But in a way that's really fucking musical. We noticed that a lot of times he would speed up on fills gradually, but towards the end of a fill he'd be like 15 BPM faster than he started the fill and then it would come into another part that's just like blazing fast and people who were tracking everything to a click lost that I think until people started changing clicks around like they do now. A lot of metal bands lost that kind of frenetic energy. So we're like, we need it on grid because we want to make a modern recording, but we still want to capture that energy. So how do you do it? You write the fucking tempo changes and not in the way of the chorus is to BPM faster, more like there's a ramp on this fill, it speeds up during this blast beat.

Speaker 3 (00:38:43):

No, totally.

Speaker 2 (00:38:44):

And it worked and I've always thought that, and by the way, I completely, I'm just saying that I completely agree with that method. If you want to have a complete unoriginal band, well first you need to acknowledge that you have your influences.

Speaker 3 (00:38:59):

Oh yeah, a hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (00:39:00):

Everyone is going to borrow from their influences, but you need to make sure that your influences are coming from lots and lots of places. And the thing that I always encourage people and producers too, this is something that I always think is crucial for someone who wants to be a good mixer, good producers to expand your tastes, focus on becoming a great music listener and go far beyond your own genres. If your only influences are, like you said, Chelsea grin, suicide silence, and you mentioned one other band,

Speaker 3 (00:39:37):

When's a plague? Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:39:38):

When's a plague? Okay, you're going to sound like the band that plays first of five on their tours.

Speaker 3 (00:39:43):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:39:43):

They already did it first and they already did it better

Speaker 3 (00:39:46):

And they're mixing bands together that aren't the bands you're mixing together.

Speaker 2 (00:39:51):

Correct.

Speaker 3 (00:39:51):

For wins a plague. We don't really care what our peers are doing because essentially, I mean you want to have some form of awareness on what's cool and what's not cool, but we are more interested in mixing. We know what our sound is, we know what the audience wants and we know the kind of stuff we want and we know the ways we can grow. We know that kind of stuff and if you can apply stuff from other places that you wouldn't expect, but you have to do it in a way that makes sense. That's what I'm saying with the hyper focus on shit. One thing I learned, I'm afraid we were talk about this, but I've been working with Sid Wilson a lot from Slipknot,

Speaker 2 (00:40:33):

Which is badass.

Speaker 3 (00:40:34):

Thank you very much. People we can already hear a collaboration of ours that we did. It's with my artist, this girl who's a trap metal artist. Her name's Lucina and she was in a metal band and she's kind of like my project that we make all our music together and stuff and it's fun and Sid was really into it, so we made a song together and that song's out, but really working with him and seeing how big a role he actually plays in the creative process of Slipknot and how much of a genre bending genius those dudes are. Early on I really realized, I was like, wow, this Slipknot would not be nearly as interesting without Sid contributing all these crazy drum and bass ideas and all these crazy underground hip hop scratching techniques and all these weird industrial noises and stuff that are going on and these crazy classical piano parts, which Sid usually plays, all those piano parts and I was like, this one inclusion of this dude from outside of everyone else's influences really made that band super special. And I don't think he really gets as much. People just kind of think that he's up there, just people in metal already have a very wrong impression of what scratching is and how easy scratching

Speaker 2 (00:41:50):

They sure do.

Speaker 3 (00:41:52):

Scratching is so hard to do. I mean, I live with low file ty from the turntables and issues and he can cut someone's head off with scratching and Sids like that too, so that is a very sick skill, but the amount of things you can do with soundscapes and interesting stuff like that is pretty wild. So I was kind of learning a lot from him just being like, wow, if you really try and create something that hasn't been done before, let's throw a drum and bass part in this section in Slipknot. Surfacing has a good one or Fit It Out has a good one, and you really start to focus on those little details. They'll kind of blow by the average listener, but if you really stop, and this goes with tons of bands, any of your favorite bands, if you start paying attention to the small things, how do they transition?

(00:42:41):

Where's the grooves coming from? Is this something that a lot of other bands are doing, A lot of other bands implementing this sort of influence into their music? And if not, you got to find things that make you original because even the mix a million genres together thing, I think some people really think they're doing it and they're not doing it well. They're like, oh yeah, we're a Death Corps band, so we're going to implement Morbid Angel and we'll have some pec here and there and we'll have some, we're stepping outside the boundaries. It's like you're still mixing metal,

(00:43:13):

You got to go outside of metal. That's the whole point when I'm saying mix something, I'm not saying rip it off exactly. I'm just saying, Hey, the drum groove in that Juice World song or whatever is super sick. What if I play that on real drums and it was over a riff that's kind of like this Pantera song or something like that. And that's how, at least for me, that's kind how I find originality more so is in those kind of experiments is more outside the box stuff. And even rethinking what you're willing to think of in terms of what kind of music you're making and what you have to do to get there. Sometimes maybe real drums are the answer sometimes maybe you should go all the way in the direction of make the drum sound electronic because there's something to that, and I know Metalheads have a real issue with programming and stuff like that, but music isn't about what you can play. It's about what comes out the other end and that's really all that matters. How it got there is almost not irrelevant, but it's not the biggest part. It's the outcome. That's the important thing.

Speaker 2 (00:44:27):

I completely a hundred percent agree with you. Kudos to anyone who's a really great player. I mean, we all know that that takes a lot of work and years and years of dedication, but that in and of itself is not enough kind of in a relationship. It's almost like love's not enough. You got to have all these other elements. I feel like in music playing is not enough. It's just not because all that means is you can create sound with varying degrees of accuracy through an instrument, but that doesn't mean anything. It's irrelevant if it's not communicating a certain feeling and creating a sound that achieves a vision and whatever you got to do to achieve that vision, that's what matters. I think vision is everything.

Speaker 3 (00:45:20):

Yeah, totally. You got to be inspired. You got to be creative and look, get as good at whatever instrument you're into and you want as possible. I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't spend the early part of my whole music career disciplining myself in guitar and production and stuff like that if I didn't get the fundamental stuff down. But I'm just saying it doesn't matter unless you know how to apply it. For example, if you're a really good guitar player and you say someone is at that point right now where they're like, okay, I'm really good at guitar now. I can play all these songs from my favorite bands. I'm at a level to where I'm in the ballpark of that, then I'll be like, okay, then what's next? How do you create your own voice? And I get a lot of people who ask me, what should I do?

(00:46:10):

How do I work with people? And I play guitar, but I don't make beats or anything. I'm like, okay, cool. I do this even though I make beats on my own. What I was saying earlier, if playing guitar is your strength, find people who need that strength and be open-minded to, if you can create your own thing, you can go on your computer and you can record a whole song on guitar. Say you do a whole song, a riff leads everything, and you give it to someone else who strength say is drums or drum programming, and that person then kills it on the programming, then you're going to kind of start to get something to get excited about. You got to know where your weaknesses lie and where your strength lie, and you got to be honest with yourself about that. I think a lot of people just get to one point and just kind of stop and go.

(00:47:03):

Well, now I'm a big proponent of collaborating. The fun thing about being a producer, I think, and I know it's kind of funny because hip hop producer and rock producer almost have two different titles and functions, but is that you can collaborate with whoever and you don't have to stick to this particular sound with a band. You kind of get into a place where you develop a sound. And unless you're really good at whatever you're going to evolve your sound to, it's going to be a lot tougher to sell people who are already fans of you on a new sound unless you can really sell it. Bands bring me and stuff like that. But yeah, I think that the fun thing about being a producer is, I mean, yeah, I'm known for making my blend of alternative rock emo stuff like that and metal of all various forms mixed with modern hip hop influences.

(00:47:58):

But I have music varying all forms of genres like EDM, pop, funk r and b. I try and make these other things to strengthen my muscle at that, and if the opportunity ever comes up, I can utilize that. But yeah, as I'm just saying is strengthen your musical muscles. If you're really good at metal guitar, learn some r and b songs. If you're really good at hip hop production, try making a pop beat, try making a neo soul beat or just step outside your comfort zone. And then when you go back to your original thing, you have more tools to drive from. That's one thing that's helped me in hip hop is the metal thing is I can pull influences. Everyone wants guitar beats nowadays, and I'm like, cool. I understand what good guitar playing is and I understand what good rifts are so I can take my influence from OPEC and all these other bands and give them to a producer. And they've probably never heard rifts like that because it's just not in their world. So the one genre thing definitely doesn't just apply to metal, it's all over the place, but you can surprise people in a different world when you come to them with the coolest parts from your current world.

Speaker 2 (00:49:07):

Absolutely, and that reminds me of something I heard Korn say

Speaker 3 (00:49:11):

Shut up

Speaker 2 (00:49:12):

Early. Early on they said that they wanted to have a combination of all the cool parts of Morbid Angel and Sura without the guitar solos and the double bass.

Speaker 3 (00:49:24):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:49:26):

They said that they loved it when death metal bands would just slow down and just be fucking heavy and brushing and halftime and when those slow sludgy riffs. So why not do a band that's all that?

Speaker 3 (00:49:40):

I love that. Yeah, that's my favorite.

Speaker 2 (00:49:42):

Forget the solos. Forget the blast beats.

Speaker 3 (00:49:45):

Yeah, shout out to Jonathan Davis too. That's been another cool thing. I've been getting to work with him and really understand. Yeah, that exact thing you were talking about with Korn. I've definitely talked to him in depth a lot now about where did your influence come from? How did you create such an original voice and just how did you create this genre? And basically it's what we're talking about. It's very similar. It's just they loved all kinds of music and they didn't just love that kind of music. They understood that kind of music. They understood funk, they understood soul oldies, hip hop, Jonathan Davis learned how to beatbox from being really into obscure New York scene that you would just never expect, but all that stuff isn't from nowhere. He didn't just open his mouth and start like, I'm going to beatbox on a porn song that's from a very weird influence he had from this small subculture. And I was like, okay, this open-minded thing is really the ticket. They're a very diverse band. They have some of the heaviest stuff I've ever heard and some of just the softest, prettiest stuff, and that's always my favorite kind of music is them. Slipknot is like that. Deftones is like that stuff that's very diverse. And when you pull through multiple, a wide range of influences like that, that's the only way you can achieve that kind of thing. And I understand when bands like a cannibal corpse or what Slayer did and hate breed and stuff, they kind of invented a sound and

Speaker 2 (00:51:25):

Stuck to it.

Speaker 3 (00:51:26):

But unless you invented the sound that everyone is ripping off, then you're just kind of in the lane that this other person created. If any new metal band is just kind of making new metal by the numbers, you're just kind of following what porn and Slipknot and them already did. You're not really reinventing the wheel. Even if the genre is a pretty wide sound, like a wide spectrum of sound, you're still copying.

Speaker 2 (00:51:54):

Ms. Suga is a great example of that band that created a style and have stuck it through,

(00:52:01):

But they don't need to change. They are who they are. They invented that shit. Speaking of Jonathan Davis, one of my favorite vocalists of all time and definitely an alister, that is kind of what I meant at the beginning when I was talking about going all the way from being in a local band to working with a-listers. That is really, really impressive. How did you get to working with him? I know you're talking about thinking a few steps ahead and getting in the right environment so that you're around people who are doing what it is you want to do, but I mean that's pretty far up the ladder. How do you start to get to that level? We've been talking about working with Slip Knot members and horn members. It doesn't go much higher.

Speaker 3 (00:52:48):

No. Yeah, it's crazy, man. Another crazy thing is our drummer for Wins a plague is now in Lamb of God, and that's another thing where it's all these bands I grew up loving all of a sudden I am friends with them. But yeah, the Korn thing specifically, so when I joined Winsor Plague, me and my friend Davy joined it together as the guitar players, and Davy was friends with Head, and then Davey was able to join Korn as their keyboard player, as their live keyboard player. So I was just lucky enough to, a good friend of mine got a great opportunity and has just won the lottery of life basically. And Jonathan Davis, I met him. He's so cool, so humble. The coolest guy. Honestly, his ego is close to none, and I've been making music with his son too, pirate. He wants to be a rapper.

(00:53:47):

He's really into a lot of the darker hip hop stuff that I work on. So my thinking, thinking steps ahead, I was like, okay, cool. A pirate is a cool kid. I like him a lot. He has a cool voice. So I wanted to work on music with him because he is probably a chip off the block to be honest. I was like, how could you not at least see? And we started making stuff that we're excited about and through that, Jonathan was impressed with my production, so we started making some stuff together too, and it just kind of worked its way out. I was able to basically just be like, okay, this situation can lead to this situation. And that's basically kind of what happens is you take an opportunity and then after you take that opportunity, you kind of just stay open-minded to what can happen. And that's pretty much that man. Honestly, it was pretty organic. I didn't call 'em up cold, call him, punish him, any of that stuff. It just kind of,

Speaker 2 (00:54:48):

That shit doesn't work.

Speaker 3 (00:54:49):

No, it doesn't. You don't want to be seen to these people as that. You want to kind of come to them as having something to contribute in their lives. And to me it was like, Hey, and Jonathan's really well aware of the genre blending and hip hop and stuff. How could you not be? Because basically it is a similar thing as to what he did when he was a kid. So it's something he's excited about and we just kind of hit it off. So I just go up to his studio all the time in Bakersfield and just stay with him, and we just work on music and it's super sick because he has probably the only, I can honestly say one of the only people I've ever recorded with a truly original voice was something like, I will never hear a voice. Sometimes everyone has their own voice to an extent, but no one sounds like this dude. No one sings like him. It's just insanely original. So yeah, it was like that. That's similar too. I've been working with Travis Barker a lot too from Blink 180 2, and that was a situation where I just kind of approached him and we work on same kind of music because Travis is of the same ilk of being a very, very open-minded dude. A lot of the stuff I'm talking about in the lane I'm in with this world, Travis is dominating it. How could he not? He's Travis fucking Barker.

Speaker 2 (00:56:07):

One of the greats.

Speaker 3 (00:56:08):

Yeah. I just approached him, was like, Hey man, we both make this kind of music talking to him, and he knew a lot of the stuff I had done already, so I was able to make some beats with him and I just didn't shit the bed. When the opportunity presented itself, and we've made a bunch of tracks together, some cool stuff looks like it's going to happen with them. I don't want to say specifically to Jinx it.

Speaker 2 (00:56:34):

So when you approached him, you approached him with a track record and with him already knowing your work and with you guys having a similar direction.

Speaker 3 (00:56:46):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:56:47):

It wasn't just out of the blue like, whoa, you're famous, so I want to work with you.

Speaker 3 (00:56:51):

Yeah, exactly. That's not going to work. If you want to work with some of these people, you got to know what they're into and know what they're trying to do. With Travis, it was just like, Hey, and I had something to offer too where it was like, I would love to make music with you. I'm making music with this person and that person, and it would be really cool if we can make, I know you haven't worked with them yet. Maybe we can get something together and we can work on something that is for this person or that person and let's just make some music, see what happens. And it's what happened. We made one song, it led to 2, 3, 4, 5, and we kept, we've just been pounding out tracks and it's been great. I mean, man, definitely probably the best drummer I've ever met. Probably better than any metal drummer I've met nine times out of 10, to be honest with you. Watching that him play metal. I know it's not everything everyone gets to experience all the time, but if you watch Travis play Metal, he would be everyone's favorite. Prague death metal drummer, whatever. If he was in a band who's like,

Speaker 2 (00:57:58):

Didn't he audition for Slayer?

Speaker 3 (00:58:00):

I heard that. I have.

Speaker 2 (00:58:02):

Yeah, I heard that too.

Speaker 3 (00:58:04):

I should ask him.

Speaker 2 (00:58:04):

I'm really curious to hear if that's true. And I heard that the only reason he didn't get it was because, not because he couldn't play it or anything, and not they didn't like him, but just because it's Slayer, it's too weird for Slayer fans.

Speaker 3 (00:58:19):

Like, oh, the drummer from Blake Wayne two, he can't do that. But that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:58:23):

That's what I heard. I don't know the truth behind it, but I heard he auditioned and fucking nailed it.

Speaker 3 (00:58:30):

Yeah, he's so good. I was watching him do blast beads and stuff. I was like literally the cleanest blast I've ever heard in my life. I couldn't even believe it. It's kind of funny, I think people in metal a lot of times have this elitist idea that, oh, metal is the hardest type of music to play and we have a monopoly on the best musicians in the world and stuff like that, but it's like, nah, it's not really true.

Speaker 2 (00:58:55):

I think it's the hardest stuff to mix.

Speaker 3 (00:58:57):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:58:57):

That's what I think is true. Not the best musicians in the world.

Speaker 3 (00:59:01):

No, and I think that it's interesting when you come across some, even a lot of pop session players and stuff like that, dude, if these dudes were in metal bands, they would be then the biggest metal bands in the world. These dudes are so fucking sick at music, but they're going to make music for shit that charts and is number one and stuff on Billboard, so you can't really be mad at it.

Speaker 2 (00:59:24):

No. Those guys like the kind of dudes that would play in a Justin Timberlakes band or something, those are the best musicians.

Speaker 3 (00:59:31):

Oh yeah. No joke. No joke. Guitar players, no joke drummers. Some of the best. Yeah, definitely. Some of the best musicians I've met were from places. I was surprised to see how good they were.

Speaker 2 (00:59:42):

Yeah, it's actually, it's really honestly not that many great musicians in metal. There's some for sure. We know some, but I do think that that whole idea that metal musicians are the best or something like that, that's a myth.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):

Yeah, it's definitely a myth.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):

It's a total myth.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):

Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):

In fact, lots of them fucking suck.

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):

Yeah. I mean you being producing for all the bands you have, no one knows more than you, and not to say there are some of the best musicians in metal. Yeah, for sure. I work with Pia a lot and those dudes are fucking insane at their instruments. Tim and Scott and the Clays are just, God, dude,

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):

They're pretty young, right?

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):

They're like mid twenties.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):

I would not be surprised if down the road when Pia is not a thing anymore to see one or more of those guys being one of those pop session types.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):

Oh yeah. I mean, Tim's already doing similar stuff as me. He's already,

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):

Well, there you go.

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):

Yeah, he's already has his foot in the door working with pop and hip hop artists and stuff like that. It's really like, to be honest, if you want a number one song nowadays, do you want a platinum record and all that kind of stuff that people are going to be like, ah, I do it for the passion. I don't want any of that. After you get that, you understand a little more. It's not the reason you should create music and it's not any of that, but it's a cool feeling when that juice rolled album went number one, and it would just went platinum recently, and I produced a song on it with my friend Perps who's a sick producer, and it was like, oh wow, this is an achievement. This is something I have to chase.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):

First of all, congratulations on that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):

Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):

And it's a hell of an achievement. Very few people can say that they achieved that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):

But you never expected that one.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):

No, I did not. I didn't expect it, and that's why I think it happened was one thing I've learned about myself is that it takes me more time sometimes to achieve things that I want. I want things right away, but usually it usually takes me a while. For example, with the whole joining wins of Plague Thing and all that stuff, it was like, oh, I wanted to be in a ginormous battle band right away, but who doesn't? But it takes a lot of work and it takes sometimes longer than you're going to expect if you're the person who doesn't quit, something's going to happen. It is the people who just quit and throw in the towel like a hundred percent. That's when nothing's going to happen for you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):

Well, there's an opposite though. I'm sure you know that local band that's been around for 20 years

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):

And

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):

Still play the same eight songs.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):

Oh yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):

Definitely. So there's also knowing when you should quit,

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):

Or at least knowing when there's no shame and say you're like, oh, I got to have this normal job or whatever. That doesn't mean you have to stop making music entirely. You can just, if you're going to be in that same local band for 20 years, maybe it's time to reimagine it or maybe it's time to start

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):

A different band, start

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):

Something different with a different vision that's not quitting, that's just repositioning yourself. For example, I could have been like, and Goliath stole my early songs at some point. I have fucking albums and albums full of songs from that band, but if I would've just stubbornly stuck my heels in and been like, no, this is my thing. I'm not going to sell out, blah, blah, blah. Fuck mainstream music, I'm going to make mosh music or whatever. That's just ignorant. And on the other side of it, selling out, I, I've been called a sell sellout before a few times because they're like, you work with little Z, you work with Juice Wrl, these people, this is garbage. How can someone from fucking wins a plague, work with these fucking drug head, SoundCloud, rapper, mumble wrapper, whatever, and it's like, dude, if you can't understand why people like this kind of music, then you need to reassess your taste. Even if you don't like certain music, you should understand why people like it, even if you don't like it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):

Does it bother you at all when you hear that kind of stuff?

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):

No, because I'm making what I want to make and selling out is making music that you don't want to make for money. And first off, that's got to be so hard to do. I cannot imagine having to make music from an uninspired place.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):

I actually had this conversation with Devin Townsend when he came on the podcast. We were talking about Chad Kroger, and we were talking about how lots of people don't get it, but that dude and that music is not sellout music because that is exactly who Chad Kroger is, and he's doing exactly the music that is natural to him. It just so happens that that music is huge. Same way that Devin Townsend is doing what's natural to him, and he's big in his own, not Nickelback big, but Devin was talking about how every single time that he tried to do something more like Nickelback, more like

(01:05:11):

Commercial, I guess that it just never worked. And I could say the same thing. I remember I had a band in college and we tried to do everything right to be on the radio and we were all Berkeley kids and we're all good musicians and everything was exactly what it should have been. I guess paint by numbers, but I was never feeling it. I never really felt it. I had this darkness inside of me I needed to express, and then I had this side project called Doth on the side that I'd go home every, I'd go home for winter break and we'd write this electronic death metal, and I'd be like, man, this is fun. Because when dust started, actually, it's really interesting. When dusts started, it was drum machine programming, kind of like techno shit with death metal, and it was way too early. It was impossible to do that back then. Nowadays you can do that.

Speaker 4 (01:06:15):

Back

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):

Then no one was having us, so eventually we added real drums and became a real band, but the whole time I was like, man, this is what I really want to be doing. I don't want to be doing, I try to do this rock stuff, this radio stuff, and my heart's just not in it, but we worked so hard on that radio band and then my band that gets signed a roadrunner is my side project. Weird ass band

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):

That

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):

Because, and I think it's because you can only really do what you feel strongly about. You can't fake it. I don't believe that sellouts do well.

Speaker 4 (01:07:00):

No,

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):

I think that typically when bands sell out, they lose fans because people smell authenticity. So for instance, when Metallica did the black album, I don't think they were selling out.

Speaker 4 (01:07:15):

No, that's what they wanted to make.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):

Yeah, I think they made exactly what they wanted to make, and then it just so happened to get really famous.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):

No, totally.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):

That's not selling out.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):

No, that's not,

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):

Yeah, that's being an artist. There's a thing that happens that you can't predict this, but there are times where certain artists will be in sync. It's like I don't believe in it. I'm not a spiritual person. I don't believe in karma or any of that stuff, but there is some sort of collective unconscious. It's more like where the public is overall, mentally, emotionally, what most of the people resonate with at a certain point in time. And there are some artists who just understand that because they're a part of it and their music just expresses it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):

Oh yeah, a hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):

At the right time, at the right time in history, kind of the same way that Slipknot expressed with that type of anger at the exact right time where the path had been laid by corn, there hadn't been good metal for many, many years. There was anger building in the psyche of the public and then Slipknot came around and I remember I was ready for something heavy. Oh yeah. It had been so long since Good really fucking heavy music came out. It had been like five years, and I was ready to abandon metal, and I remember I heard Sick Come on, and it's just what, when the double bass came in, I was like, yes, this is what I've been waiting for. They were in tune with something that millions of people were ready for, and as you saw, metal got big again and it spawned the careers of so many bands,

Speaker 3 (01:09:09):

Every band from the 2000 tens.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):

Yeah, maybe Slipknots, not metal core or anything, but they made it possible for every single successful band of the 2000 tens to have a career because they answered that yearning that the public had.

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):

I mean, now I would even say it's like it can come from anywhere, even someone like Billie Eilish or something like that. People try and say, oh, she's a sellout or whatever, but no way. That girl is a fucking genius. She just won between her and her brother. She won 10 Grammys last

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):

Night. That girl is a pure artist

Speaker 3 (01:09:44):

And she makes weird alternative pop music that a record executive two years ago, three years ago would've been dismissive of and like, no, this is too weird, too alternative, all that. And because the public is in, like you're saying, in the space it's at, it's just the perfect time for where people are just sick enough of the manufactured kind of not manufactured, but the typical female pop artists that has become generic in a way nowadays and yeah, similar with Slipknot, they're

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):

Ready for a little darkness.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):

Yeah, exactly. Sometimes people are ready for a little sorrow and darkness and real emotion that isn't fun. Music people who make, I like making fun music too. Fun Music is cool and it has its place and I have tons of songs I made that are just lighthearted fun, but the stuff that's taken seriously is usually the more somber or of the serious emotions.

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):

The public has to be ready for it, and oftentimes I've noticed that it has something to do with the world situation. I don't get political. I'm not a political person. I don't vote. I don't go there. But in the 2000 tens, there was a lot of anger over politics and wars and dark music got big again, and now there's a lot of unrest in the world and things. I'm not saying that they are unstable, but I'm saying they feel unstable.

Speaker 4 (01:11:21):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):

Definitely. Whether or not they actually are unstable, that's an argument for experts, and I don't go there. I try to only talk about shit. I know, but I do know that the world feels unstable. The world feels like it's in a dark place. This country feels like it's going through some major sort of division, and that means in my experience, that dark music has a place again.

Speaker 3 (01:11:53):

No, absolutely. Sometimes that doesn't mean it's going to manifest itself in metal necessarily all the time. It doesn't always. It's not like that genre has a monopoly on those emotions.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):

As a matter of fact, I think metal shit, the bed with it for a lot, not across the board, but there was a function that metal served when I was growing up, and by the way, I am not one of these back in my day types. I love new music.

(01:12:20):

I love Billie Eilish. I love this weird ass rap shit you do. I love new music, but we're just talking about the impact that certain genres had on society when I was growing up, metal was what the angry people were into that was not allowed in the mainstream and there was no voice. It was kind of like the voice for the voiceless kind of thing, and it really isn't the voice for the voiceless anymore. There's a lot of cool things in metal now, but a lot of it's become about being sick. I think metal is a lot more about being sick and badass than it is about being voice for the voiceless.

Speaker 4 (01:13:05):

No, totally.

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):

And something has to be the voice for the voiceless. I think in movies, joker just did that.

Speaker 4 (01:13:13):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):

And you saw how big Joker became the most profitable comic book movie of all time because the whole theme is Voice for the Voiceless, but I think Billie Eilish speaks to that. The kind of music you do speaks to that, and Metal doesn't really so much anymore, but it to definitely used to.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):

I definitely think that metal's in a place right now where it's kind of in Refinding, its feet and even the trap metal thing that's still a part of metal. It is still half of it is metal. The only thing that's really making that genre hip hop is the drums and the bass. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):

But do the metal heads consider it metal?

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):

No, they don't. And that's the issue is that the closed-minded narrow-mindedness of the mentality that metal got a little cocky with because the early part of the 2000 tens, it really seemed like metal core was for sure the biggest genre of rock music in general, and I think that's where my theory on why Metal isn't as predominant as it was even five years ago, is because the industry in metal is just as dated as the audience listeners can be in terms of what they're willing to accept that's new and when they're willing to accept new things. But because metal core is a more extreme genre than what they just had, there's a lot of screaming and stuff, especially in the early part of the two thousands, and even though the massive popularity to have it was never really embraced by labels where they would actually be willing to give it a radio push, the mentality was, oh, that will never be played on the radio. Well, yeah, it'll never be played on the radio if you guys don't do your fucking job and push these bands. These bands, this is the new style of heavy music whether you like it or not, and I feel like they really had a negative effect.

Speaker 2 (01:15:18):

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(01:17:06):

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. I agree completely. However, I do think that as my generation becomes the in power and there's more people like you out there, and I think that could change, I guess as soon as people who understand the future become the power structure, it could change. That's my hope. But I agree that the power structure in metal is very, very dated and that's part of what hurts it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:04):

Yeah. It's like it has an obsession with the past, which I get it. Like corn and Slipknot and all those bands are fire and they're ginormous and it's a great thing to look at, and those are people I work with, so I understand, and those dudes are fucking brilliant, but you can't just expect a new corner Slipknot to keep coming out over and over and over again and bands can't keep expecting to play a style from the early two thousands and late nineties with no sort of update to it. If anything, I feel like the thing that killed it was a lot of bands soften their write whatever music you want to write, and there's definitely value in writing softer songs and stuff like that, which I think every band who's good at it should do. But the problem becomes when you edge your sound out to the point where it's boring, why you see a lot of these metal core bands fell off is because they took out all the cool stuff.

(01:19:12):

They took out all the fun breakdowns, all the shit that made their live shows fun and kids, whether they like it or not, whether they think that part is campy or whatever, stigma. Some bands really took it to heart with the amount of backlash that the newer scene was getting and they're like, oh shit, maybe we have to, even though we're really popular and we just got a number five album on billboard or whatever, maybe we have to dole it out a little bit, like take out the heavy stuff, write more straightforward rock songs, like let's not be a metal core band anymore. Let's be a rock band.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):

My theory with that is that the problem is that when those bands tried to do that, they were trying something they didn't know how to do and that's why they failed at it. They don't,

Speaker 3 (01:20:03):

No one wants to hear a metal core band try and play a rock. I want to hear a rock band who comes from that kilt play, that type of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:20:12):

That's not to say that if you come from the medical world, you can't learn how to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:17):

No, totally.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):

And this is coming from personal experience watching this happen, people who the same way that we were saying that you really should learn these other genres, you should take the time to, if you're combining genres, actually learn those genres. You can't just come from nowhere when a lot of these metal core bands tried to go active rock, they're active rock elements were coming from nowhere basically. So it was kind of half-assed, and the general public doesn't know that. They just know if they like it or not and they didn't like it and because it was fucking bland. It is just bland. And I really do think that it comes down to people trying to do things for commercial reasons that they don't really feel

Speaker 4 (01:21:12):

Totally.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):

So because they didn't really feel the act of rock stuff, they didn't pursue it with the same artistic fervor that they pursued the heavy stuff and had they pursued it, really, really learned the best of the active rock. No,

Speaker 3 (01:21:35):

I agree. I

Speaker 2 (01:21:36):

Don't know. Learned some Alice and Chains learn some sound garden, learn some newer stuff, learn some pop, learn, all these different things that make for a great rock band, learn how to actually play the style properly, learn how to write a fucking melody

Speaker 3 (01:21:58):

With

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):

Your voice,

Speaker 3 (01:21:59):

Then update it and then add to it. I think that I write with a lot of bands too. That's another thing. So it's been kind of fun writing for a lot of these metal core bands that some are attempting to do similar things, and it's kind of interesting to have a take on the creative process with all these other bands like working with them collaboratively. I don't want to throw anyone onto the bed because Metalheads and all these bands have writers, even though metal bands have as many writers as pop artists. Just sorry to break it to y'all, but your favorite songs probably weren't written just by that band. They were probably written by a co-writer and or producer.

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):

Unless if it's an opeth or something.

Speaker 3 (01:22:47):

Yeah, unless it's, there's exceptions to the rule but's extremely common. Now it's just like, all right, where do we go from here? And some of these bands have done a good job at it. It's not like every band shit, the bet on it, some of these bands are actually pulling it off pretty well and well, I think why I've been getting these opportunities is because of the hip hop thing and tons of bands now are like, Hey, we want to have this blend of what you're doing, but for our band, so we can have these verses that are more in that elk of the production vibe and then we can have these big choruses and stuff like that. So it's kind of fun taking what I'm doing with the trap metal stuff, but implementing it into an actual band and be like, how do you go into the 2020s with this? Because every decade something new happens, it's just science at this point. You can almost count it every 10 years there's going to be a new thing that happens or something is going to evolve to a point of being unrecognizable from where it started.

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):

So a band approaches you a band that's done well for say metal core or something, death core, metal core, whatever, some band that's done well in heavy music that's not a accountable corpse, not a band that is just are what they are and you just got to record it a band that's coming to you because they know what you do and they want to modernize. However, they don't actually understand those genres and maybe they don't have the chops necessarily, but they want to add that stuff in. How do you make it natural? How do you make it make sense?

Speaker 3 (01:24:46):

Well, at a certain point you have to know when you got to take the wheel on things and at a certain point all it also depends. It's pretty unique to each situation. A band like Issues for example, they're all geniuses. Every member of that band is equally contributing in terms of creativity because they all have something to bring to the table and I kind of just facilitate ideas and play more of the traditional producer role in terms of the writing sessions and stuff like that is what I work with them on is the writing sessions and we have a method that works. So with that band, it's kind of just playing to their strength. I know what sky's feeling, I know what AJ is feeling, I know what Tyler wants. Josh is kind into this. So I kind of just go, Hey, let's get together and kind of stir the melting pot.

(01:25:40):

Just kind of be the middle person and that's a position to be in. It's kind of knowing your place. I'm not going to sit there and grab the guitar from AJ Sky and be like, oh, let me just write all your risks for you because they are going to come up with something way sicker than what I am in terms of what they're they're doing. So I'll maybe be like, Hey, what if we do this production idea it. So that's kind of my role in that sort of thing. But for stuff that's much more involved, stuff that I'm really taking the creative helm on, I just kind of do what I want. Essentially the band is coming to me for a reason, so I'll be like, yo, you want me to add my flavor to this? Let me do it and I'll show you what it sounds like.

(01:26:28):

So whatever the band is, I'll try and think, okay, this is their style. This is what their last album sounded like. This is what their fans seem to from them. This is what I like from them. This is what I would like to see the direction they go in. So I'm going to try and create that and hopefully they're on the same page and then I usually do that, kind of present it to 'em and then they'll be like, okay, sick, maybe let's try this, or that changes here and there, but it's just like being another member. It is just kind of trying to put yourself in the position of like, okay, I'm the guitar player for this band for the day, or I'm a member of this band for this song, and it's just taking that role seriously and just trying to vision, like you were saying, vision. Have a vision for that specific idea that is separate from the vision you have from what other band? You don't want to just have your sound and then every band you touch sounds like you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:21):

Yeah, which sometimes happens.

Speaker 3 (01:27:23):

Yeah, it's going to happen to some degree. I'm sure as these songs and stuff start to come out, maybe some people I already am experiencing it where I'm kind of like, alright, I need to pivot a little bit sonically and add some more elements and stuff because I'm getting a lot of stuff where people are like, oh, this is a morgo type of beat or that kind of thing. I'm like, that's cool, but you don't really want to just be known for that one style.

(01:27:52):

So that's kind where if anyone who's working out there to be a collaborator in bands and stuff like that, there's no, and bands who are hesitant about working with their friends and stuff on music, the band doesn't have to be the only people who write music for that band. That's limiting. If you have a homie who's super sick of guitar and he's not in a band or you just want to write a song with them, don't be ashamed in doing that. There's nothing wrong with that. Whatever gets you the result and makes you make the best music you possibly can is the right answer. So that's why bigger bands do this is because they understand that. They understand that, hey, we're in a world now of super creative geniuses that can bring a lot to the table for us sonically. So not saying I'm that at all, but that's what the mentality of writing with other people, it's like, okay, cool.

(01:28:52):

This person's super sick at that we necessarily aren't great. We couldn't make this song as good without this person's help. So you write a song with that person and then the result comes out sick and the fans are happy. Would you rather people make music that isn't as good or would you rather people be open-minded and collaborate? I know ideally fans are like, oh, I want my favorite band just to write all their music and it just to be an expression of them and stuff, but that's not reality in the music world in almost most cases.

Speaker 2 (01:29:24):

One of the things that Var always said that a producer should do if they want to be successful and have a repeat clients is make the songs better. Do whatever needs to happen to have the band coming out of the studio with something better than they went in with whatever it takes

Speaker 3 (01:29:49):

Totally.

Speaker 2 (01:29:49):

And to the point where they know and they feel like working with you made their music better,

Speaker 3 (01:29:57):

And if they're excited about their music at the end of it, then they're going to be stoked. It doesn't really matter who wrote it. At the end of the day, it's like matters what the end product is. And that's not to say I get the sentiment that some people are going to be like, oh, it's not fair. People labels just put together these pretty bands and just get super genius writers to write their music for 'em and then boom, they have a career. It's handed to 'em on a silver platter and there's some truth to that. There's definitely some truth to that some,

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):

But that's a lot harder to do than people realize

Speaker 3 (01:30:32):

And it's really understating that doesn't work. So many failed examples can come of that. Usually the bands that make it through are bands who are actually capable of making their own music. They're just writing with other people as a bonus. That's extremely common and there's really nothing wrong with that. I think mentalities are what hold a lot of musicians back and there's these sacred guards and stuff like that that people stick to because they think it's pure or whatever and they want to make it in a pure way or I don't know. I just think that kind of stuff gets in your way. You should just be open-minded to collaboration and that's one thing that being a producer outside of the rock world taught me was, oh, okay, cool. Collaborating is really sick and there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to produce the way I produce in hip hop and pop in rock music.

(01:31:34):

Why can't I go to this other producer, go, Hey, let's make this beat together. I'm going to send it to rest in peace like Juice Wrl or anyone like that, or Well, let's make this for this person. Same with bands. There's no reason I can't be like, Hey, let's write a song. My friend's band, they're working on their new album. Let's maybe send them a song, give 'em some ideas, and then that album's going to turn out better because they have more minds on it unless they're a type of band that is like you said, like an pec or something like that, but that's rare.

Speaker 2 (01:32:10):

It's very, very rare. I know that some people listening to this are going to be thinking to themselves, okay, that's all well and good, but I can't get any of the bands I work with to take any of my ideas seriously. What do I do?

Speaker 3 (01:32:24):

Well, then you might have to rethink the bands you're working on and the type of producer you want to be. Do you want to be an engineer or do you want to be a producer? And what kind of producer do you want to be? Because the producer title has a couple different things Now, the old school way of being a producer is kind of the person who oversees the project necessarily kind of steers the direction of who's going to mix it, who's going to engineer it, who's going to edit, is this song too long, what's wrong with it? That kind of stuff. The producer in the more modern, or at least in the terms of pop and rock and hip hop and stuff like that means the producer of the music, the person who's creating the music. So basically you're a one man band. I think that if you are having trouble getting a band to take your ideas and stuff like that, then maybe that's just that project.

(01:33:14):

Maybe that band is gungho on their sound and if they're gungho on their sound, it's their band. Just be like, and they say they paid you already and all that, then cool. Just do what you have to do. Get through the project, make it as good as you can bring it, but don't force your opinion down people's throats. I'd recommend though, try to work with bands who are open to your ideas if you have an idea for them, but don't force your ideas in there just so you have your ideas in there. If the band is already sick and they're already with issues, for example, I was explaining, I explained that first just so I could be like, yo, this is an example of a band where I'm not going to force ideas into it because they are

Speaker 1 (01:33:55):

You be stupid.

Speaker 3 (01:33:56):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:33:57):

First of all,

Speaker 3 (01:33:58):

I can do my strength in the band. For example, right now we're kind of just messing around with rough song ideas and this is actually one little cool nugget. I'd like to this help for people who are songwriters or bands in general. That is a cool thing that issues does is we'll make a song, or at least like a verse chorus idea just over production, like a minimal basic production that just kind of sets the vibe of what we want the song to feel like and just write a verse in a chorus. And if that verse in chorus is super sick, then we'll write a whole song around it. So the vocal takes the main focus in that scenario where you're writing songs with the vocal in mind first because you got to write, when you're writing riffs around vocals and band structures around vocals, it makes you think completely different about it because there's something in the way. There's something

(01:34:55):

You can't just play your way to make stuff more interesting or whatever. You add layers a million times over and try and come up with this thing and then the vocalist has to find a place to sit in after the fact you're having to write around the vocal. That's one of the things I think that makes that band so sick is that they are able to walk this line of progressive and pop in a way. I don't think any other band can. And part of that is the attention to the vocal. It's about that and it's about, the riffs are amazing. The rhythms are amazing, everything else is amazing, but the reason it works is because they help. The vocal is already in mind a lot of times.

Speaker 2 (01:35:34):

That makes perfect sense. I think that there's a few things at play too, is you have a reputation now and a body of work, and so people work with you because of that, because they know who you are and they know what you've done and they know what you bring to the table, so they seek you out for what you do. But what about before anyone knew that you did that or before that was established, how did you get people to even give you a shot? I mean, I know you were in Winsor Plague, I know that you were working your way up, but how did you get people to give you a shot as a co-writer?

Speaker 3 (01:36:24):

Well, it kind of happened by almost, not by accident, but I just kind of realized that, oh wow, people in bands are down to work with me too. Because again, it kind of goes back to a lot of people in rock music really like hip hop music. I think it's just the modern pop music. So a lot of these people, every generation has their pop music. What's popular, what's on top? What are all the kids listening into? It's kind of funny because because I was in Goliath, I was able to get my foot into this door of all these kids who are warped toward kids starting to make this underground type of hip hop where they're blending emo and metal and all kinds of different genres together. And it was like, oh, this dude's from a band. So they're like, oh yeah, I'll hear your beats.

(01:37:15):

Let's see what your beats sound like. So it kind of went from that, and I was able to get those placements through that and through those placements as I started to stack 'em up. And when people started in bands, I noticed when I go to shows and stuff, more people in bigger bands and stuff would be like, oh, I know who you are. And I was really surprised by that because I was like, oh, well, I haven't really worked on too many people from this world thing other than the fact that I play in Wins a Plague and stuff like that, which I know we're a well-known band. But then it started to become different. It started to become, I started to realize, Hey, I can work with these bands because they like the kind of music I'm making in this other world. It just started being like, Hey, I can add some production on your songs.

(01:38:03):

Let me take a stab at maybe making some of my ideas that you like from this world and I can apply it into your band. And sometimes that just means playing keys. Luckily being in a symphonic band, when's a plague. I very much, that's why I even was able to start making beats and develop a sound was because I knew how to structure keyboard arrangements and symphonic elements and stuff like that. And then it just becomes an exercise of choosing sounds and stuff. But if you already have the, that's really all the genres is in my head. That was the big turning point for me when I was like, it's like, oh, all music is super similar. It is just the sound. What sound? Are you playing it through a clean tone or are you playing it with a synth or are you playing, is this a full-time beat, a halftime beat?

(01:38:51):

And those little things are the things that pick what genre it fits into, but they're really fluid musical ideas throughout all music. So I was able to kind of just put my foot in as just, Hey, let me add some production here and there. And then luckily with the issues thing, they were just like, Hey, why don't you just engineer the writing sessions for us and you can produce the writing sessions for this next album, which came to, which is Beautiful Oblivion, and I'm not the only person they worked with, but then I went on Warp Tour with them all of Warp Tour, and we just spent the whole warp tour working on the album. I was there specifically to work on that album, and then that just started making it able to be easier so I could be going up to my friends who are in bands who've been my friends for a long time now and be like, Hey, let's collaborate. I got this thing going over here. This is kind of what I've been doing. I got the Juice WR the Platinum and all that exciting stuff where it gets people more. Now I can flex that kind of shit. But beforehand, it was just kind of really just telling people what I could add to what I think their songs were and not being afraid to ask fans, Hey, let's collaborate.

(01:40:08):

Don't be afraid to talk. Don't be afraid to go up to people and try and meet them on a creative level.

Speaker 2 (01:40:15):

But the thing is that when you did that, you already had years under your belt in your own band, having toured, having put out music. You weren't starting from zero, I guess is what I'm getting at.

Speaker 3 (01:40:31):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:40:32):

A hundred percent. Even if you weren't fully formed or whatever as far as your skills go or your direction goes, it wasn't coming out of nowhere when you ask people to collaborate. Another thing that I tell producers who want to work their way up that they really should consider doing is you need sort of a calling card.

Speaker 3 (01:40:55):

You need a strength

Speaker 2 (01:40:56):

Something, and having your own band or your own music that people can point to is massive, massive, massive. I've seen it work massive. Yeah. So many people. I know that's where a lot of their initial success came from was because of the band connection. And the band doesn't have to be huge. You don't have to be in a huge band, but you need to have some sort of musical output that people can respect, and it doesn't need to be huge. Like I said, it doesn't need to be huge, but there needs to be something that you've done that's you.

Speaker 3 (01:41:37):

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (01:41:37):

So if you're just an engineer, for instance, all you've done is engineer on people's stuff and don't have your own band and really written your own music, I think it's going to be a lot harder to convince people to collaborate with you than if you've been an engineer and you have those engineering credits, whether they're local or national or whatever, but you also have music to show for where people can listen to what you've done and be like, oh, okay, this dude's a good musician. Oh, this dude writes cool stuff. You need something.

Speaker 3 (01:42:13):

Yeah, I totally agree with my story. There's a lot of specifics in it, and I think with everyone's story, you're going to find there's a lot of specifics in it. You have to really be self-aware of specifics. The couple steps ahead thing is,

Speaker 2 (01:42:27):

What do you mean by specifics

Speaker 3 (01:42:29):

In terms of, I started in a certain place and I was able to evolve to another place because of specific skill sets and because of my specific friends and the place I wanted to go, and just basically I was able to, I have a little unconventional path, maybe I could say,

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):

Oh, I get it, I get it. I mean, same thing. I learned how to record so that I could record my own band. I used the studio to make connections for my band. Those connections then led to the connections that got my band signed, but the whole time I was recording bands. And then once my band got signed, I started working with Real Producers. I used my skills from the studio to help out on our records. And then because of that, that led to me getting hired at a really big studio, metal studio that you came to, because that skillset, I was asked Do Creative Live. And through the skillset that I got on Creative Live combined with the skillset that I got through being in a band and producing and all the different shit I've done over the years, that's what led to being able to pull off URM. It's all very specific stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:43:43):

Totally. I think maybe something that people can use and apply in their lives is say you're just like what you're saying, have your own music. Even if that means if you're a writer or you're a songwriter, you want to start a band or whatever. I mean, this is URM, so I'm assuming everyone here has a basic knowledge of recording. If you can get your demos or your ideas to a place where you are stoked on 'em and you're down to release them to the public, do not be afraid to start your own SoundCloud or band camp or whatever and have something just to show people. Just if you're not getting any bands to record, then make dope music on your own. And if that's what you want to do, then you'll be able to be like, Hey, check this out. I would like to work with you. Here's what my stuff sounds like. And if it sounds cool and it's something they want, then they're going to fuck with you. But you might have a little period of where you're going to have to really focus on yourself and you might not get a lot of work all the time,

Speaker 2 (01:44:50):

And that period could last several years.

Speaker 3 (01:44:52):

Yeah, it really could. And that definitely happened to me. I was just recording local bands in my scene because I worked on my band stuff and they liked the way my band sounded, so I was able to just, you got to be good at, nowadays, you got to be good at a lot of different things. You can't really just be one thing. If you're just one thing, the chances are there's going to be someone who is good at a bunch of things, who is going to be better than you? Or even if they're not better than you at that one thing, there's still going to be someone who's good at multiple things, who they might go to otherwise because they have other skill sets because it's no longer rare to be good at recording. I feel like,

Speaker 2 (01:45:33):

I remember when I decided to leave Berkeley to start my studio, but really I wanted to get signed. There was a five year gap where, and I remember for those first two years of just being in my parents' basement, really the main thing I did was just get better. I was just practicing a lot and not just practicing guitar. I would analyze people's lyrics for several hours. I would analyze their music. I would do covers of Beatles songs or an Eminem song or a slip not song. I would just learn and learn and learn and get better. And there was no light at the end of the tunnel, no prospects. I didn't know anybody in the music industry outside of my dad's end, which is classical, but that doesn't, A lot of people think that my dad helped get me signed.

Speaker 4 (01:46:35):

Oh,

Speaker 2 (01:46:35):

Really? Is so stupid because the classical world and the metal world couldn't be further apart. But yeah, just years of just sitting in a basement, and that's after the years of sitting in a dorm room trying to get better. And years before that, during high school of trying to get better, but years of just knowing that this will pay off. And I think everybody needs to go through that time period where you might not see the light at the end of the tunnel, but the thing that is, the light should be the light at the end of the tunnel at that point should be you getting better.

Speaker 3 (01:47:14):

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (01:47:15):

You got to focus on yourself,

Speaker 3 (01:47:17):

And if you don't go through any time period of growth, when you start to get stuff, you're not going to really know what to do. And at some point you're probably going to make a mistake. I mean, you're going to make mistakes all along the way, but if you can really hone in on your craft, figure out what you're doing, and sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Sometimes what you want to do isn't going to be what you end up doing. For example, I did not grow up dreaming of being a hip hop producer and thinking that I was going to have any sort of established name as a producer in this world. It just wasn't

Speaker 2 (01:47:53):

My plan. My plan wasn't to run a school.

Speaker 3 (01:47:57):

Yeah, exactly. You just take opportunities as they come being how small, however small those opportunities are, and you try and get as much out of them as you can, whether it be from a learning experience or whether it be from a real live actual career building experience where I just started making beats. It was fun to me. I was like, oh, this is fun. I didn't really expect, I was like, oh, this is my ticket to success. It was really just, oh, cool. I like doing this and I'm down to do this every day until I figure out what it is I'm doing. Exactly. And luckily, I'm just not afraid to go up and talk to people. And I think maybe I have a halfway decent gauge of when is the appropriate time? How do you go in quick, make an impact, say what you need to say kind of thing, and maybe that person will remember you and want to work with you.

(01:48:57):

Maybe they won't. If you're a producer or you're someone who's collaborating, you want to work with, say you see your favorite artist or someone who you admire a lot who's not super famous to wear, why bother, but someone who is popular enough to wear, you know them and you like their music and you want to work with them. If you go up to 'em and it's a good time and you go, Hey, what's up? Try and meet them on a level of being more of a peer than a fan and try and talk to them maybe about specifics in their music that you like and stuff like that. And if you can talk to them, be like, yeah, I make this kind of stuff. I would love to maybe collaborate with you in whichever way, shape, or form you can. And sometimes that comes with rejection. Sometimes nothing's going to come of it, but eventually maybe someone might say yes, or someone might at least take the time to give you their email. And then that's when you shoot your shot. I have so many examples of, I have so many crazy artists, emails and numbers and stuff like that that I've sent tons of tracks to never hear anything back. Probably never will. That's not how I'm going to work with those people.

Speaker 2 (01:50:09):

How did you handle rejection at the beginning? When I imagine, I mean, dude, I don't think rejection ever feels good, but the thing is that once you're at a certain level of success, you have so much going on. I feel like if something falls through, you're already onto the next thing and you can't really focus on it. There's something I actually need to talk to you about after this because we might have something falling through right now, and I know that a few years ago I would've been way more nervous. Now I'm not. And I remember, I think it was Michael be Horn or one of these massive producers saying that the way that they deal with rejection is don't even worry about it. Just you're onto the next project. If one doesn't work out, say you get fired off a mix or whatever, it's like, alright, too bad that didn't work out, but let's make this next thing I'm working on the best thing I've ever done at the end.

Speaker 3 (01:51:12):

Totally. And yeah, it just kind of is what it is. If sometimes the rejection won't be out front, like, no, I don't want to work with you. Sometimes it'll just be in silence. You're just not going to hear back or something like that. And if that's the case, yeah, just don't get too butt hurt about it. Maybe. It's usually never malicious. It's usually never like the artist is like, fuck this person or something like that. It's usually just you have to put yourself in their shoes. They have unlimited a lot of options with who they can collaborate with and stuff. And sometimes you have to ascend to their level. They're not going to come down and meet you. You have to at least rise to a place where they take you seriously. And I know that's not an easy answer for everyone to hear that.

(01:52:03):

The answer to getting more gigs and being more consistent and stuff like that is to be better and to do more calculated things that get bigger and draw the attention of more people. But it's probably the most real thing that you're going to hear is that what you got to do is you have to take your work seriously. Don't be too much of a perfectionist where you never release anything because it's never good enough. But find your sound, find what you want to do. And these are all very general terms. People can take them in whichever way they want, but a lot of times you have to at least have something to show or something to bring to the table. You can be friends and become friends and get close and all that stuff later after the work, but you have to bring some sort of value to the equation.

(01:52:58):

Say you're a guitar player or whatever, and you see an artist, you like a singer or something. Sometimes that doesn't mean like, yo, let me send you beats. Sometimes it can mean, Hey, I play guitar. I make this kind of music. I love your stuff. Maybe can I send you riff ideas or could I get your contact to your producer and send him riff ideas? And sometimes it's just know your strength, you're a player. If you're good at one thing, really try and milk that for as much as you can in different ways and all the times. That doesn't mean you're going to be the producer for some band's project or you're going to be running the show. Sometimes it means you're going to play a small role and take that small role as seriously as you take the bigger role.

Speaker 2 (01:53:51):

Yep. The thing you said about ascend to people's level, I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. That is something also that comes up a lot when I talk to producers who want to go beyond the local level. How do they get past this local level? And I ask them this one question that if they're being honest gets them thinking the right way, which is, okay, so you want to work with signed acts, you work with all locals. Why would a signed act work with you? What's in it for them? Why would a label risk their budget on you? What is it about you that's going to cause them to work with someone they've never heard of that doesn't have a track record who they don't know can handle the pressure of a label release? Why would they work with you? And I don't mean that in an offensive way. I really want an answer. I need you to explain to me why they should work with you. Because if you can't answer that, they're definitely not going to know. And normally they're like, I can't answer that. I was like, okay. That's why you're not getting those

(01:55:12):

Artists because you don't even know what you bring to the table.

Speaker 3 (01:55:18):

Totally.

Speaker 2 (01:55:19):

No one else is going to know for you.

Speaker 3 (01:55:21):

Yeah, exactly. And sometimes it's like maybe you need to refocus. Maybe you're too focused on working with a signed act and that's your end all be all, and that's what you're trying to put all your chips in that bag. Maybe you should worry about your local act becoming that signed act, and maybe you shouldn't even be worried about working with a signed act at all. We live in 2020. If you want to be a producer for a band and you have some local band that you think is sick and that you can make better, try and have a vision for them. Be like, Hey, so alright, this is what we're going to do. We're going to work on this say song or ep, whatever, and we're going to shoot a couple music videos. We're going to blow you up on the internet first, which is what I would recommend to any artist from any genre.

(01:56:08):

Now, don't trip about playing touring off a demo for six months to a couple years. If I learned anything from Goliath, it was useful. Lessons like that to where I was like, okay, nowadays the thing you got to do is focus on make a dope song with that artist, whoever it is you're working with, and try and make that song get to its highest point that you guys can possibly get it. So if you can be like, all right, let's shoot a music video. We only say you're like, oh, well, the band only has a couple hundred bucks for a video. Well, again, we live in 2020. Find a video director who is an up and coming dude who's dope. Work with your local community, work with your creatives, because that's how everyone starts out. It's never, it's so much better too if you rise up with these people than if you meet someone who's already up there.

(01:57:06):

A lot of the stuff that I've gotten partially is because I produced and engineered with my friends in the BIE Brigade thing. I was telling you little Z's music because he was just my friend Diego staying on our couch at our house recording sometimes. And the music that he made in the garage that we lived in that my roommate John engineered a lot of and stuff became mainstream. He became a pop mainstream artist and he went from a broke kid from the IE. Sleeping on our couch sometimes and it was because it like, oh, this kid has a cool voice, he has an image. All this stuff is in place. Fuck it. Maybe he has a chance, so let's just make some music with him. Why not? That worked out and because that worked out, it changed my life. And that will happen to you if you believe in the artist you're working at a smaller level.

(01:58:07):

Don't worry about working with Slipknot, don't worry about working with porn. Don't think that you can start from zero and jump all the way there. It might happen to some people, but it's not going to happen to everybody. And if you can just take your local talent or your local project that you're working on and be like, okay, cool, so we're we're going to record this single, and you do the best job. You pull out all your cards. Maybe you're not going to get guitar tones, but someone who has all the best keer presets or whatever, pay them to reamp your shit. Whatever you got to do to make it get to the best level you can with whatever your budget is, find the local videographer, whoever who's going to do it for whatever your budget is and trust that their creative be into their stuff, check out their stuff and if they're doing a lot with a little, then that's the best thing you can ask for is to get these people early. So if you do that and you have a vision, you put it out on your own, be like, okay, well we're going to put it out on our own, then we're going to invest this couple hundred bucks into promotion where we're going to blast beat network or something like that where they do ads and stuff on metal sucks, right?

(01:59:23):

So something like that where you can do your research, alright, cool, we're going to make merch designs that look like this. We're going to this band, this release is going to follow this aesthetic, have a complete vision of the idea and don't think that, oh, what I'm going to do is I'm going to work with this sign band and everything's going to fall into place. Because nowadays that sign band is in a similar position as the unsigned band because you have the same creative tools you're working with and you have the same landscape. The only thing is the sign band maybe has more of a budget, but nowadays people don't give a fuck. If you have a high quality music video, if you don't have the money for a high quality music video, make up for it in creativity, whatever you have, if you have to make a video look like an old style VHS, but at least it's a vibe or at least it's a consistent aesthetic and you can take the band you're working with and have them really focus on their image and focus on all the stuff around the music, then that's how you're going to be able to work with these bigger bands.

(02:00:29):

Because as soon as people find out, say that band ends up doing something cool and they're like, who produced it? And it's like you produced it. So you can then go to a band, maybe a level above them and be like, Hey, let's do the same thing. Sit there and have a vision and exactly back to the vision thing. That doesn't just mean, oh, I'm going to mix this genre and that genre. It means what Jack White does with colors and shit like that. This is only going to be black, white and red, that kind of shit. Or Slipknot with masks or with Winsor play the Samurai thing. If you can have that vision and you can help that band with that vision, and then when you start working with these other bands and you do the same thing, something's going to work out to some level for you eventually if you just keep at it and you keep helping bands with their visions and helping them realize it's more than just music.

(02:01:25):

So I think that's probably the best thing I could tell people is that don't trip up so hard on like, oh man, I'm not working with the artists who I listen to every day. I really want to work with them so bad more than anything that I'm going to put all my eggs in the basket of trying to work with that artist. Like you said, why is that artist going to work with you? But if you come to the table with something that's dope and that they're like maybe one day, like I said, things lead to another thing. That's what happened to me was people were like, oh, this is sick. Who produced it? Oh, he produced it. Oh, let's work with him and the next thing you know have a fucking personal relationship with Sid Wilson and Jonathan Davis. That's how that works is start smaller around you, but take it seriously and try and see a vision through and then you're going to climb a ladder and it could be slower, it could be harder, or it could be overnight. You could do this and you could start this with a band and you could spawn the next, bring me the Horizon or you could produce the next, bring me the Horizons fucking album and you had no idea because you guys were just kind of doing shit that you thought was cool, but you can't, it

Speaker 2 (02:02:36):

Could also take 15 years.

Speaker 3 (02:02:37):

Yeah, exactly. But you can't force it. You guys have to come up with something creative and original and that means looking outside of music, that means looking at other things you're into, if you're into video games or something that, or say how there's Power glove and all these bands who are super into video games, maybe the aesthetic of the EP you're working at has to do in line with what you guys are fucking with outside of music. And that's how a lot of times you develop lifestyle things is stuff that's related around more than just music, how suicidal tendings are with skateboarding or something like that. They embodied skateboard culture into their image because they were all skate kids and that's just what their day-to-day lives were. So say, yeah, fill in the blank with whatever you're into. Game of Thrones or The Rings, whatever, any nerdy thing you could think of or any football, it doesn't matter if you guys come up with a cool idea and if it's your homies or it's just like the band from your local scene who you believe in them, they believe in you. That's probably the best thing or the most realistic path to a higher place is going to be do it at a lower level first. Prove yourself and climb the ladder.

Speaker 2 (02:03:47):

I know some people who have sent me songs that they produced and wrote and everything and they kind of have all the boxes checked off that you mentioned, but they're like, why has nobody isn't this working? And I hear it and I'm like, buddy, because you suck. I don't want to be mean or anything, but typically that's the reason I never hear these tracks from somebody and think to myself, damn, nothing's happening. This is amazing. How is nothing happening? So my advice when people check off all those boxes and nothing's happening, it's been a while and nothing's happening and nobody cares. Focus on getting better. That goes back to what we were talking about earlier about maybe you do need to take some time to focus on yourself and on your own level and really refining your craft. Maybe your craft just isn't there yet. I think a lot of times people will check off those boxes that you said, but they're not ready. They're just not ready. They're not good enough and it is what it is. Also, the other thing, sometimes maybe they're just good at one thing and they're trying to do everything and

(02:05:09):

What you said before was your specialty was sick ass rifts. And so you took that and you tried to apply that where you felt they were needed outside the genre, and so you didn't try to do a bunch of things that you weren't great at. You took the thing that you knew how to do best and started there. And I think that that's the other thing is I think people haven't always taken the time to understand their strengths and their weaknesses, and it's something I like to say is, I mean, I'm not a fan of blues. I actually kind of hate blues, but

Speaker 3 (02:05:48):

We differ in that.

Speaker 2 (02:05:49):

It's fine,

Speaker 3 (02:05:50):

But it's it's okay.

Speaker 2 (02:05:51):

It's okay. I still love you, but you'll never hear BB King try to play an inve Malm steam solo, right? BB King always played what BB King was great at, and so I don't know a single BB king recording that was not awesome for what it is. He knew his strengths and I'm sure he was aware of his weaknesses and he just didn't, you never heard his weaknesses. Every musician, every great musician has weaknesses and those musicians that people worship, they worship them because they have not heard them play what they're bad at playing.

Speaker 3 (02:06:34):

Yeah, they wouldn't care otherwise.

Speaker 2 (02:06:36):

Yeah, those guys and ladies who we all think are amazing have the self-awareness to only put out there the stuff they are amazing at.

Speaker 3 (02:06:46):

No, totally. And I think one thing too, to just not really discourage people too much is sometimes it's more important that you're making a dope song and a dope product than the most clean prestige product.

Speaker 2 (02:07:02):

I agree.

Speaker 3 (02:07:03):

When I'm saying make it good, I don't mean make sure that the mix is perfect or that this can sit right up perfectly next to fucking Andy Sneak mix or something like that. Or I'm saying that understand the project, what you're doing and what the vibe you're going for is. So for example, like little zand stuff, it was okay, this is the vibe. It is not perfect, it's super raw, it's almost punk rock and its approach that it doesn't give a fuck. So the fact that it doesn't give a fuck gives you so much room just for imperfections and rawness. So it was basically, all right, cool. We're just going to make these hard beats or these mellow emo kind of vibe beats that have a sound and a vibe to them that match dude's voice and he has a cool sounding voice so you can have him put on whatever and his voice is going to sound cool, his strength, so you play it to that.

(02:08:02):

That doesn't mean, oh man, I got to make this shit sound good like dream theater, something like that. No, if you're recording some band who's this awesome raw, hardcore band, look at a band like Knock Loose. This is the perfect examples. That band is selling more than the main stage warp tour bands of five years ago. They're shitting on them and they are just Will Putney just perfectly knows what that band is, what the vibe is, and they consistently go for that and they kill it at that. So if you know what the vibe is and you know how to create that vibe, the most important is do what's right for the project. Don't have some general blanket of ideas that you think is going to be right because it's a standard nowadays. It's all about fucking throwing standards out the window and doing what's just cool.

(02:09:00):

Do what's cool, don't do what's people maybe expect out of you. And I don't think that people are really doomed if they're not the most talented at one thing or the other, just like you said, know your weakness and if you're weak in that area, try and surround yourself with good people and try and surround yourself with talented people who are like-minded. And that doesn't mean surround yourself with famous people who are already successful because tons of, there are so many people talented who aren't popular, who never are going to get the credit they deserve or whatever. But if you can surround yourself with a friend group or collaborators that have different strengths in different areas and you guys can learn to work together and be like, okay, my strength is mixing, so for this project we're working on, I'm going to do that. Your strength is your guitar tones, your strength is your vocal production, whatever, whatever it is your strength is.

(02:10:02):

Know your weakness, know your strength and surround yourself with people who compliment your strengths or who you can lean on in terms of weaknesses. For example, a weakness for me for a while that actually working with issues really, really helped, and you might even be able to test this, you were recorded me pre doing this was my rhythms. I didn't feel were super interesting when I was early on that my strength was writing really cool, exciting rhythms in terms of I just felt like it was my weakness. So working with artists who that is their strength now that is no longer a weakness of mine. Now that's a strength of mine, know where you need to work on what muscle group. If your weakness is, you don't come up with really cool great melodies and stuff. If you have any friends or anyone you can work with who you admire, their melody capability when you work with them, really try and understand what they're doing. Try and take the influence from people around you that's going to have a bigger effect on you probably than what album you're listening to. If you can really learn from fellow musicians and fellow artists and stuff who you can be honest with yourself and be like, man, I fucking suck at this. Whatever this area is, I need to work on it and work on it and work on it and work on it until it gets better to where you, you're not afraid to present it to people.

Speaker 2 (02:11:30):

We're actually doing something in URM now called the Collab smash that happens every month basically. We get these different teams together of people collaborating and there's a goal which is write a song and the style of, so say it was in the style of knocked loose

(02:11:49):

One month because we had knocked loose on, and so you had different teams. You had a team Canada, which is like five URM members from Canada, they're all over the world and they write a song in this style record and mix it, and however they want to figure out how to do that is up to them now. One of the things that I noticed in one of the first few rounds was that it sounded to me like the teams just did whatever doesn't sound to me. They really sat there and were like, okay, this person is the best out of all of us at mixing. This person should mix. This person is the sickest guitar player here, he should be playing the rhythms. It didn't sound to me, they really took that approach of everybody playing to everybody's strengths. And so a lot of weaknesses were displayed. And the thing is, I completely agree with you surround yourself with people who are better than you at what you're weak at, not so that you can hide, but that you can get better.

Speaker 3 (02:13:01):

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (02:13:02):

Also, so that what you're working on there can sound as good as possible, but rhythm playing used to be one of my weaknesses and it was always, I thought the hardest thing about guitar, I always thought it was harder than lead.

Speaker 3 (02:13:15):

Oh, having a sense of rhythm is so much harder because

Speaker 2 (02:13:18):

So much harder.

Speaker 3 (02:13:19):

You can't teach a sense of rhythm. It's something that has to be instinctually in you. You can drill scales for days and come out a fast guitar player.

Speaker 2 (02:13:30):

Yeah, you have to, how to feel certain things. But through getting with certain musicians who did have great feel and great rhythm chops, I got a lot better. I still wasn't really the dude on the records that played the rhythms just because the other dude was way better than me, but just as a result of having played with him and with some other people who were so damn good at it, I got way, way better, way, way, way, way, way, way better.

Speaker 3 (02:14:02):

That's the other thing too, where it's like, I'm not saying pick your friend group out of fucking, oh, I fucking hate this person, but damn they can play guitar. I'm saying, if you really, really want to do music, you and your friends should probably just be making music for fun with no real expectation of much how all the best musicians I know are. I mean nowadays it's more like whenever I make music with someone, it could potentially be something because I have places to put it. It's also just something you do for fun. You and your friends hanging out. If you take this really serious should be you and your friends writing a song together, making a beat together or making a medal. Whatever it is you want to make, whatever genre it is you all want to make, be there together and work on sit there and work on that shit together.

(02:14:49):

Be like, let's do this for fun. It doesn't have to be for anything, but let's just make a song and that's us hanging out, hanging out, go to, I mean you still got to socialize and do all that other stuff. Networking is extremely important, but if you can make music your life in terms of it's what you're doing for fun and it's just what you're doing when you hang out, then you're going to see quick growth, real quick growth because you're working on music all the time. And some people, I've been kind of interested in people's process thinking about the differences when we're going to do this between what I've learned from working with rap producers and hip hop producer, pop producers and metal bands and stuff like that. And one thing I noticed that I think hip hop has an interesting, I don't know if I want to call it agen, but it almost seems that way is the creative process never stops.

Speaker 2 (02:15:46):

What do you mean by that?

Speaker 3 (02:15:47):

I mean with bands and stuff like that, a lot of times they will write in chunks of time, there'll be a four or five, six month period and that's when they write their album and then they take a year before they start writing again.

Speaker 2 (02:16:02):

Oh yeah. They just stop writing.

Speaker 3 (02:16:03):

Yeah, they just stop writing. That does not happen. It's like you are trying to make new stuff every day, all the time, constantly because the wheels keep moving because you got to, that's something that's freeing about it too because okay, cool, this album came out. I worked on this album, but now it's time to try and make new stuff for new people and keep that going. So I think that a lot of times with that, some of the best bands I know are people who are in constant states of creativity.

Speaker 2 (02:16:34):

I agree,

Speaker 3 (02:16:35):

But I know not everyone's like that. I wouldn't expect maybe tool, for example, to constantly be writing tool music. I guess some things are probably for chunks of time and moments of inspiration specifically, but that doesn't mean you can't be working on other stuff and constantly sharpening your skills, whether say you're in a band and you're like, okay, well we're writing our EP now, so now it's time to write. But in the meantime, if that means you got to think ahead for the next release after you come out with that EP and be like, okay, cool. Why stop riffing? Why do you have to write in chunks of time? This should be an everyday thing because if you don't make it an everyday thing, by the time you go back to it, you're going to be in a totally different place. And I think sometimes that's how bands get stinkers of albums is it's rust more than anything they've toured and stuff, but that's not the same thing playing live.

(02:17:34):

Maybe you learn from the live experience on what's working and what's not in a live setting, but that's also can be a false realization because sometimes the most boring live songs can be the biggest song you have, like we were saying with a band for Knock Loose or something like that. I think that is a band that writes music very specifically for a live environment, similar with a lot of hardcore, because being from Goliath and stuff like that, that was a pretty interesting realization I had that maybe some people in bands can think of is I was writing music for my band specifically for a live environment because we wanted to be that super mashy band that pushes the boundaries on being heavy and having a really crazy live show. So I wrote songs for that, and that's a different mindset than writing songs that are just going to be listened to and necessarily, I'm not trying to make people move like that.

(02:18:33):

And I think that if you can muster the mentality of getting both down where you can write a song that's exciting to play live and a song that's exciting to listen to, then you get a nice middle ground. But there's differences. You write certain things in the live, you might write a circle pit part because that's going to be sick live, but that doesn't always necessarily mean it's going to be the best thing for the listening to the song. Or I might write a whole song that's just all mosh parts, like two step breakdown, stomp glass, beat part, all that stuff, all parts dedicated to make people move in specific ways to specific beats and drum beats and stuff and riffs. But because I had a band that was kind of dedicated to that mindset and I wrote in that mindset for a long time when I got out of that mindset, I can kind of pinch back into it. I think one of the main differences between hardcore and metal is that metal doesn't have the amount of dancing going on, different dance moves and stuff like that, whether it's silly or not, it's a reality.

Speaker 2 (02:19:37):

It's true.

Speaker 3 (02:19:38):

And you can't hate on a band like Knock Loose and being as big as they are, but they write music for that purpose. And that is partially why they're so successful, because they're so fun to go see because they're so good at that.

Speaker 2 (02:19:49):

Well, again, I mean there's a vision behind that, whether the vision is some grand artistic thing like Muse or something, or whether the vision is we're just going to make people hardcore dance and hit each other. There's still a vision. And everything you just said was even if you're writing a song that's specifically just for live to make people go nuts, that's still a vision. That's not just random shit. That's a very specific vision that you have the vision, then you execute.

Speaker 3 (02:20:25):

Yeah, totally. It's just again, pulling from a larger well of things that you know work and don't work in your own music when using other genres. Sometimes it's about understanding not just the type of music they're playing, but the culture around the genre where you can apply stuff from the culture, not just the way the music sounds.

Speaker 2 (02:20:45):

So let's talk about your process for a second. We haven't talked about process at all, and you started to say that that's something that started to interest you, but maybe you could tell us a little bit about your process. Is it the same if you're writing something heavy versus hip hop or you get in the room with Jonathan Davis? Is the process different than if you're in the room with Sid Wilson or if you're in the room with wind of Plague or Juice World?

Speaker 3 (02:21:14):

I mean, it depends what I'm working on. Whether it's like, okay, I'm sitting down to write music for this specifically, or I'm just making something because I want to make something, and nine times out of 10 I try and not overthink it. I try and sit down and just pick up a guitar or pull up a synth or start with program, a drum beat, whatever sounds cool to me. And I kind of honestly stumble into idea after idea. I've never really been the kind of person who hears a melody in my head and hears a whole thing in my head and I just basically regurgitate it out in that exact way. A lot of my music is just taste. It's just this sounds cool. Alright, I'm going to go to the next thing. This sounds cool. All right, I'm going to add that. And I just keep that going.

(02:22:02):

So say I'm writing for a band or say me and Sid are working on a beat or whatever, I'll just sit there, just lay down ideas I think are cool and just try and express how I'm feeling emotionally or however, whatever is inside me, whatever kind of vibe I want to go for. And eventually I'll be like, Ooh, that sounds cool. I go with that. I just go with what sounds cool to me first, and I try not to overthink it too much. So if I'm writing a song for falling in reverse or I am writing with whoever, crown, whoever, any of my friends, I'll just be like, alright, cool, let's just start with first idea. If the first idea is good, you got to have that first idea be good because you're building the whole thing off the first idea. So I think a lot of people get scared like, oh, where do I start? And they overthink the fuck out of it. But sometimes you just got to trust your taste and trust your just start. Yeah, just start. If it sounds cool, if one idea sounds cool, great, move on to what you're adding onto the next thing to that. And that's kind of the thing that remains consistent for me throughout all of it.

(02:23:04):

When I'm writing a metal song, obviously I'm like, okay, I'm going to make this sound like a band. It's not a different mindset, it's the same mindset,

Speaker 2 (02:23:12):

Something that worked for me. Tell me if you do this, I feel like with writing there's as much of a warmup process as there is with playing how when you're playing guitar, there comes a point where that level of warmed upness where you've been playing on stage three shows, three songs in, and you're just warm.

Speaker 3 (02:23:34):

Yeah, you're just perfect. Yeah. In that spot,

Speaker 2 (02:23:37):

You're good. Yeah. I feel like with writing too, there's just a point where the light bulb turns on, and so sometimes I would start writing, not overthinking and get a riff done. It's kind of cool. Then the next riff and then that third riff is where shit really happens, and it's like the first riff that I'm like, yeah, okay. Fuck yeah. And then basically it delete everything up to that point and be like, all right, this is the starting point.

Speaker 3 (02:24:06):

Absolutely. Yeah, I think knowing when to start over and when to reimagine what you've got going already is definitely something you should be mindful of if something's not really going the way you want it to. Exactly. And maybe you have some ideas in there you're stoked on and some other ideas that you have mixed feelings about or something like that. Sometimes you just have to hit the mute button on some things and just start with what you're liking. If that third riff is dope, and then say you write the fourth riff after that and that is equally as dope, and then you're about the two riffs before it, maybe delete those two riffs and try and think of the song in a different place that is more in line with the cooler ideas that you feel like you have. And there's nothing wrong with starting over. There's nothing wrong with revisioning stuff. Honestly, hitting mute on a lot of times is the biggest strength you can have is not trying to force something to fit. Sometimes it just doesn't, and sometimes it's just better to be like, this isn't working. I'm not going to lie to myself. And sometimes I feel like people will leave stuff in because they've spent so much time on it and they feel like the time equals goodness, or I can't mute this now. I've spent three hours on it. I

Speaker 2 (02:25:16):

Think it's called the Time Sunk Fallacy.

Speaker 3 (02:25:19):

Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 (02:25:21):

Because the sunk time, because yeah, because you spent so much time on it, then there's some value to it.

Speaker 3 (02:25:30):

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (02:25:31):

It's bullshit,

Speaker 3 (02:25:32):

It doesn't matter.

(02:25:32):

So yeah, I mean, honestly, same thing. I try, it's kind of funny. I really admire minimalist producers, even though I myself am not super minimalist. Rick Rubin's probably my favorite producer and he's very key on minimalism, but I really, because it's so much harder to just have a couple ideas that sound good together than making these large stacks of crazy stuff that kind of gel together and make some wild sounding thing, but you're kind of just relying on the intricacies of it. It's not really a strong idea. We were talking about, that's a great example. Her brother Phineas is a fucking God at minimalism, that song Bad Guy or whatever, it's like a baseline. It's one baseline and a four on the four click drum. And he was able to know this is enough. And sometimes that's the answer is dynamics, dynamics, dynamics you got to take away to add, because when you take stuff away, those moments when everything drops and you have the full realization of what you did.

(02:26:41):

And usually I start with that. I usually start with the big moment. I'll write the hook or the breakdown or whatever part in the song is a part that is a big moment. And then I'll usually take ideas from that that are like, sometimes it's a layer in the moment. Sometimes it's like you do a lead guitar or something like that, or some ambient guitar vibe in the background or synth, whatever it is. And then sometimes it means, okay, cool, this is the drop. This is a big moment in the song. The next moment is going to be a stripped down version of the big moment, but I'm going to use an element from the big moment. So it's still familiar, but it's a more chilled version of it. So I think it's getting the most out of your ideas really. How many bands are there where you hear them play like a riff section or something like that, or a part in a song where you're like, God, that's so sick. Why does that only happen for four bars one time? Or why didn't they just take this idea and just run with it? I think bands who do do that walk is a perfect example from Pantera.

(02:27:48):

That one riff could have just been a breakdown. It could have just been a bridge or something like that, but they knew this is the fucking shit, so we're going to make this the whole song. And sometimes that's the answer is that one idea, if it's a strong idea, milk it for as much as you can really install in people's heads that when they're listening to your song that this is the moment and the song is revolved around that.

Speaker 2 (02:28:15):

But you got to know when that moment is. I'm curious how you would, I would always know it's hard to explain because it was never about being correct or you can't ever say This is sick because it's at this tempo or in this key or that harmony works. It's not like that. It's like when you get one of those moments, it's like

Speaker 3 (02:28:41):

It's a feeling.

Speaker 2 (02:28:42):

It's a feeling. Yeah. And it, it's hard to explain because you know when you got it, but you have to learn how to spot those. How do you know?

Speaker 3 (02:28:53):

Well, I think I have varying degrees of it. I don't think it's either cold or aha. I think sometimes it's where it's just so obvious that it's like I can bring anyone, any of my friends in my room, check this part out, and every time I show someone and everyone reacts the same way, that's a good indication to know that it goes outside of yourself. But sometimes when it's in myself, it's just like when I just can play that moment over and over and I'm just not getting sick of it and I listen to the rest of the song and sometimes I'm whatever on the rest of the song, or sometimes it's just not as sick as that moment. And every song is going to be like that. Every song you're going to parts from the song more than other parts from the song. So I think that when you know the moment, it's one of those things you can't teach taste.

(02:29:45):

There's certain things you can't teach, and sometimes instinct is something that you just have to know what's within you. You just have to know your taste. If you love whatever kind of music you're making and you realize that you've written a cool part in that style, that's your moment when it's the shining part of the song, when it obviously stands out to you, and sometimes it's not going to be the same for every person. To some people, the moment in the song that you think is the weakest moment in the song is going to be what they think is the moment. It's not universal and no one's right. The whole thing about it is that music is subjective and it's so subjective to the point where some people are going to agree on something like that. Some people aren't going to agree on something like that, but you just have to go with what you trust. Now. You can't just blindly just be like, oh, my way or the highway, you got to be aware. Say I'm writing for a band or something like that. Sometimes I've written songs where I'm like, I would never listen to this on my own time, but I already know this is the moment for their fans and this is going to be the moment in this song because it's in line. It's their vibe.

(02:30:57):

I try and see the moments from an outside perspective other than my own. I'll think, is this just a moment? To me? I have some things where everyone does where they have weird tastes and stuff that aren't necessarily super popular or things like that where I'll be like, this is my moment. This is a music. This is a part for me that I really like. Or I'll be like, this is a moment that I could see being more universal. I think it's sick and I think a lot of other people are going to think it's sick. So I kind of try and think about it from two points of view, my point of view and my understanding of what I think other people might think too.

Speaker 2 (02:31:33):

It's an interesting topic though, because you need those moments, but you really need to know how to spot them. But I think it really does come down to cultivating your tastes.

Speaker 3 (02:31:45):

Yeah, true. Because a lot of times people, if someone asks me that, I'd be like, play the song. I can tell you what the moment is. The first time I hear it. I'll know what the moment is instantly because, and I feel like most people will, most people, if they like the song, show your friends. Don't be afraid to get an outside opinion on what you're working on. If you're writing a song for your band or you're working on another band's project or whatever, don't be afraid to be like, we're working on this song, and I think this part is the part. I think this needs to be the chorus or this needs to have a moment in the song that's really its own to see what they think. Maybe if they listen through it, they'll be like, no, it's cool, but really that bridge is really exciting. That should be the chorus. Don't be afraid to get outside opinions and don't be afraid to rethink structure. Sometimes what you think is the verse is the hook can be the hook. Sometimes what you think is the intro could be the chorus.

Speaker 2 (02:32:46):

How much of your material gets scrapped?

Speaker 3 (02:32:49):

I try and see ideas all the way through to at least a basic form. So actually a kind of small percentage does, because the thing that I've learned from doing hip hop production is that sometimes things that I don't think are super sick are going to win over the rapper or the singer,

(02:33:12):

And I try and see those ideas at least through to a basic form. If I have say some melody, I'm like this, whatever, I'll throw some drums on it and I'll throw a baseline on it and I'll bounce it out, and so I have it. So maybe if I'm in a situation with an artist and I'm thinking I'm playing 'em stuff and they're just not feeling it, they're just like, eh, play the next one. Play the next one. And I'm like, what are they looking for? And sometimes it's been, a lot of times I'm like, oh, there's that one idea I did that's super simple that I was kind of whatever on, but it seems like he's looking for a super simple idea, so fuck it. I'll play that, play that instantly. Then everyone in the studio or whatever is like, oh shit, that's crazy.

(02:33:53):

So I try and recognize that from a producer standpoint, it's not always about my taste. It's about what's going to land the gig and what's going to get me in the room and get the people in the room excited. And sometimes that means it's something that I was particularly lukewarm on, but I have it. I still have the idea in my arsenal just in case. So I usually try and I mean, there are times where I'm just not at all and I had to have nowhere to go with it. I'm like, fuck it, I'm sorry. Nowhere.

Speaker 2 (02:34:23):

Yeah. So you do recognize when it's a dead end?

Speaker 3 (02:34:27):

Yeah. I don't spend too much time on those things. I don't exhaust myself to make it work unless I really, really am like there's something here. I'm just not realizing it yet. I got to spend a little more time on it, and then sometimes I'll end up on the other end of that very happy that I didn't give up, but sometimes I'll just be like, eh, I'm just going to put together what I know how to do. I feel confident now to the point where something that is maybe my weakest idea still might be kind of strong.

Speaker 2 (02:34:55):

So how do you know when something's a dead end?

Speaker 3 (02:34:57):

Just when I just can't get it to a point of even knowing what comes next. If I can't get something to where

(02:35:06):

I'm having any ideas about, say I'm working on a melody or something like that, and I'm just like, I don't even know what drumbeat I want over this. I don't know what kind of baseline I want over this. I don't know what anything, but sometimes if I lay it down and I'm just like, it's all right. One thing I really like to do, and I think a lot of engineers would probably have a lot of fun with this when it comes to production, when you can really pull your engineering card in this world specifically making pop, hip hop, stuff like that, but even metal, it applies really just the sounds you're using that's different. It's not really the mentality, but I'll take a melody, I write on guitar, say I write some plain eight bar, like simple basic riff, and I'll just warp it and mutate it to a point where it sounds nothing like the original idea.

Speaker 2 (02:35:54):

What do you mean by warp it?

Speaker 3 (02:35:55):

What I mean by is basically add a lot of effects. No chop stuff up.

Speaker 2 (02:36:00):

Okay, so just manipulate it.

Speaker 3 (02:36:03):

Manipulate it. Exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:36:04):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:36:04):

Sometimes there's great ideas and something that you can't see just yet, and when you can use your skills with being URM, you can use your skills that you've learned here.

(02:36:15):

Sometimes you got to be unconventional and try weird shit. I like a lot of the output stuff, like portal movement, those kind of effects based plugins. There are stuff by cable guides called Halftime is something I use all the time. There's stuff by Gross Beat, which is in Fruity Loops, which I'll bounce melodies out into Fruity Loops and put this gross beat thing, which is also an effect space plugin that warps melody ideas and stuff. So there's so much of that out nowadays that you can take a really basic simple idea and just go crazy with it and end up on the other end with some wild fucking thing that you would've never been able to do. And I have a lot of fun doing that. So sometimes I try and get the most out of ideas even when I'm not super inspired by 'em.

(02:37:01):

If I drive 'em to a point where even when I do all that kind of shit and go hard at manipulating, that's when usually I'm like, all right, cool. If I can't make this sound to where I want it and I kind of pride myself on being to take an idea I'm not stoked on and to turn it into an idea I love by that process, I think that's a strength of mine too. That's kind of something I'd say is that don't always take things at face value. Sometimes you need to reimagine 'em in a different context and sometimes that different context will make night and day difference

Speaker 2 (02:37:35):

When you're getting in a room with someone else like John Davis or whoever, it doesn't have to be him, but just somebody else that you're collabing with is your first time, what's going on? Are you collabing in person? Are you doing it over the internet? Do you have a guitar and a metronome? How does the session look

Speaker 3 (02:38:01):

With John? It's not never over the internet. It's always been in person so far, but basically it's I kind of just sit down and just start doing what I do, how I always do it. I just sit down and just start the idea. Don't let the fact that an idol of mine is standing next to me, fuck with me too much. I get that it's a high pressure. It is not a high, you don't have to make it a high pressure, pressure situation to where it cripples you,

Speaker 2 (02:38:27):

So only as high pressure as you let it be.

Speaker 3 (02:38:30):

Yeah, it's like he's not sitting there down your throat overanalyzing everything you do. I'm a fucking God. I know what's right. No, that sucks. That sucks. It's not like that. I'll sit there and just kind of come up with an idea and just do what I do, just roll through it. This is a cool riff. Alright, dope. I'm going to lay the baseline down and then I'm like, oh, this is cool, or it's not cool, and I'll just different baseline. I just go with my instincts basically. I try not to let it affect me too much and sometimes it's like with a collaborative process, a lot of times with John it's been, I bring some of my friends with me to work on music with him and his son and stuff to where it's like, all right, cool. I'll start an idea. And this is the beauty of collaborating is sometimes when you hit that dead end, the other person is just ramping up. So you can

(02:39:19):

Leave an idea in a basic form. It's like band where if you can be a one man band and yourself and you're capable of thinking like a drummer, thinking like a bass player, a keyboard player, guitar player and stuff, your limits are few and far between. So I'll be like, okay, so I'm going to work on this idea and I'm going to leave it at this point and you come and help jumping on this next part. Me and Jonathan were making this one beat this one time, and I was like, Hey, what would you do on high hats? He's super sick at drums and he is super sick at guitar, which a lot of people don't know, but Jonathan has written a lot of stuff for corn, a lot of the riffs, a lot of the drum patterns and stuff. He's a member of the band in terms of the music as much as he is the vocals.

(02:40:07):

So I was like, what would you do on high hats? Do you want to lay down high hats for this? Because I know he has that funk background. He's a really good drummer. So he laid his high hat pattern down and he is excited about it, and I was excited about it, not what I would've done. Sometimes there's beauty in the mixing of ideas. So with someone like that, it's just kind of, let's just have fun and make a song. There's no real super, we don't have to make this super pressure. Phil, with Sid too, Sid's strength is in his sound design and his ability to hear shit. That's like most people just couldn't hear in it. So I'll try and get an idea to a certain point where I think that he'll be able to take it from that point to a place I couldn't see. So that's kind of trusting your collaborators too, and specifically when you're in collaborations scenarios

Speaker 2 (02:40:55):

And how quick do these scenarios happen? Is this just idea, idea, boom, boom, boom, boom, or when someone's like, Hey, try this. Do you often have to interpret their ideas and then get it into the computer, or do they then pick up the instrument or how does that work?

Speaker 3 (02:41:14):

Yeah. Well, a lot of times sometimes it's a mix of both. Sometimes, Hey, here's a guitar. You want to try an idea and then let them lay down their idea over what you got going on already. Or sometimes it's even like, oh, let me just give you stems for what I got right now, and you put it into your program and fuck with it the best way. You know, because that program is your strength. So yeah, sometimes you run in circles sometimes where it's like takes a while until you get to a point where both people are like, all right, this is done. Sometimes you're not really satisfied when you say this is done, but you can't work on an idea forever because you're just going to drive yourself crazy. Sometimes There has to be a point where you go, you've got to accept the fact that, okay, this isn't all the way what I want it to be, but I'm at a point where I can't really do too much more to this because I don't know what to do. And when you're kind of in a, I have no idea what to do point, then it's done. Move on to the next idea. And if it's not initially the idea you wanted, then you got to just fucking try the next thing out.

Speaker 2 (02:42:21):

Do you ever go back?

Speaker 3 (02:42:22):

Oh yeah, all the time. Revisiting things can be great. Sometimes you just got to step away from something from a while, spend two days, three days away from it and then revisit it. And then just because a lot funner, I think to work from a place that's near completion than starting out on your blank page because when you're near completion, then you can start to do all the stuff that you might've been a little too burnt out to do when you were on your first pass. For me, then I'll start to really get in and start to add all the little effects and bells and whistles and start to, because I'm fresh, this is what I'm starting out with Now from a point of completion, like near completion versus the blank page, which the blank pages. If you can get the blank page to a point where you're like, all right, this is pretty cool, I'm going to sit on this and then come back in a couple days. And then a lot of times those ideas can be your best ones because you're taking a break. Maybe try a different idea. Don't be afraid to revisit stuff. Sometimes your older ideas can be even stuff you worked. I constantly will find stuff from years ago that I wrote.

Speaker 2 (02:43:29):

That was my next question was like, how far back does this go?

Speaker 3 (02:43:33):

Oh, yeah, I'll go as far back as I have to. Some people, the Goliath lost cause era stuff is the best music I've ever written. And to some people think that, and I'm not saying they're wrong, I don't think that, but I understand that sentiment. So I'm really not afraid to go back and take an idea I had from all the way back then because I know I was in a different place musically, and there were probably things about that musical place I was in when I was a lot younger are cool that maybe I haven't, that I've kind of lost a little bit through over the years. So I really don't think that there's anything wrong or as long as you're in a place musically that you're confident in yourself, which I feel like I was in that place then. So I have no problem. I love going back and revisiting ideas like that from a long time ago because then I can take everything I've learned from that point and add it to it and then cool. You have something that expands a chunk of your time as a creative.

Speaker 2 (02:44:36):

So do you basically have several hard drives full of this stuff or are they on the cloud or where does this all live?

Speaker 3 (02:44:42):

I've been decent about just transferring hard drive, backup hard, drive backup, hard drive. So if I can't come up with any ideas or anything like that, a lot of times what I'll do is that's when I start looking through all material is sometimes I start from that point. I'll be like, oh, I'll make what I do a lot is this is how I make for any inspiring guitar players who want to know where their future in guitar is and people who are like, oh, who have the mentality of guitar music is dead right now is one of the best times to be a guitar player because everyone in the pop and hip hop world wants guitar based music. So I'll make full guitar ideas and I'll make a pack of them. I'll make a whole folder full of them and I'll make a whole song or verse, chorus idea, add the layers, everything.

(02:45:29):

Basically make a song without bass and drums and I'll save them all in these folders, and these are the folders I give to other producers. Say, I want to work with that artist, so I'm going to hit this producer up and be like, let me send you some riff ideas and you can collaborate on 'em. So then maybe they'll play it for a set artist. But so I have these things that are idea starters basically that I can just go, I don't really feel like making a riff right now. Let me just go back to that time when I wrote that, when I did feel like making a riff and I just go through those ideas. I'm like, oh, that's sick. I'm going to start from there. So I will do that, and sometimes it'll mean going to old songs that never came out or whatever, and I'll just take a chunk of whatever I'm fucking with in that song and I feel inspired by the moment and I'll repurpose it in whatever I'm doing now just to get the ball rolling.

Speaker 2 (02:46:23):

So writer's block doesn't seem to be much of an issue for you because if you are feeling it, you have this, basically this treasure trove of old material that you can repurpose and get started from. You've got plenty of material to spark ideas from.

Speaker 3 (02:46:41):

Yeah, I mean there's definitely times when I don't feel like writing, but I can't say that I am super crippled by writer's block because of that.

Speaker 2 (02:46:51):

It doesn't sound like it.

Speaker 3 (02:46:52):

Yeah, because I, you don't always have writer's block, and when you don't have writer's block, if you can take advantage of that and pump out as much, pump out what you can while you can, and then sometimes it's as easy as just going back and listening and be like, oh, this is sick, and then that's going to give you an idea because I'll be like, this is sick. I can already hear what I'd want to do on drums for it, the drums. I'd want to program on this. So then I just pull in the idea and I just go start from there. Then that drum beat. Well again, just trust your taste. Just fall into one good idea after the other, the best you can. Having a little trove of past ideas definitely works for, that would be my number one thing I would say for people with writer's block, and I get these pacs too, I'm telling you from other people too. I have my friends send me ideas or random kids too. If you're someone who wants to collaborate with me, I'm pretty open. People will hit me up and be like, yo, I play guitar, and I'm like, sick man. Send me some riffs. If I like it, I'll work on it. If I don't, I won't.

(02:47:55):

A lot of times that's kind of where I start from. It's not just my ideas. I'll start from another person's ideas. Sometimes they'll do something where I'm like, yo, this is sick. I would've never played this. Then I'm at a point where I'm like, oh, sick. Then I'm just adding on to what I already think is sick.

Speaker 2 (02:48:10):

So basically when you are feeling inspired, ride that, ride it till the wheels fall off basically. Even if you're only supposed to write one or two songs, if you have five or six or seven in, you write 'em, and even if you have 10 partial ideas, write them and that's what saves your ass.

Speaker 3 (02:48:33):

Yeah, that's going to save your ass later for sure, and you never know when or where those are going to come into play. Even if you're on the producing end of things and you're working with your band or your artist or whoever, and they're kind of like, let's start a song. So you're not all the way under pressure to grab the guitar or whatever your instrument is and perform right there. Sometimes you can be like, oh, well, I have a bunch of ideas that I already have and I can just run through. And then it gives people, A lot of times, fluid quickness is what gets the job done. You don't want too much dead space in the creativity and too much downtime where people are getting bored and you're sitting there working forever on this one thing that the other person doesn't all the way feel. And then maybe they're like, oh, why is this taking so long? Why are you spending so much time on this when you can just kind of be like, press play. Nah, press play. Nah, press play. Oh, that's sick. Let's start from there.

Speaker 2 (02:49:30):

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. It's actually what saved my ass lots of times too, is just having so much material

Speaker 3 (02:49:37):

And you can always say you have a demo or something that you're, if you have a demo that you've never came out, or even if it has come out, whatever, say you have a bridge or something in that demo that you're like, this bridge from the demo six, I'm just going to take this demo and take the part out of it I like and repurpose it. It doesn't always have to be in its final form, and don't be afraid to manipulate ideas you already have. Sometimes it doesn't mean that you hear the idea and you have to keep it exactly the same. Sometimes it's like, oh, that's sick. It could be sick if I pitch it to a different key or that could be sick if I take the first half of it and maybe write something different for the second half. As long as you're just getting the ball rolling, as long as that blank page isn't so intimidating anymore, when you're not starting from the blank page. It's a lot of times much. I mean, sometimes those starting from the blank page is the best thing you can do, but you got to do that when you're like, I'm up to it. I'm ready to start from the blank page. And just because you're not ready doesn't mean you shouldn't be creating.

Speaker 2 (02:50:44):

Do you have a writing template? What kind of stuff is in it?

Speaker 3 (02:50:48):

My writing template is usually I have some of my basic favorite drum sounds and stuff like that already loaded into it. I basically try and get it to a point where I can just start creating and have minimal shit to do that I always do for most of my stuff. When I make beats and stuff like that, I master while I make it, so I already have a master chain on it, so I already do stuff like that and I do things like, okay, cool, I like this plugin. I like sausage fater on my eight oh eights or something like that. So I'll have stuff that already set up to where I already know certain things that are going to be nine times out of 10 I lean towards that way and sometimes I don't and I mute shit on my template, but at least I'm starting from a point where I don't have to load up all these plugins every single time because I have my taste and stuff that I already like. So yeah, stuff like that, I just try and get it to a point where it's easy for me just to go in and just start flushing ideas out and it already sounds good.

Speaker 2 (02:51:54):

That makes perfect sense.

Speaker 3 (02:51:55):

Same with bands. I have the same thing. I literally use the same template. It's not really a different mentality for me. I just made a template that I could go either way with it. I could either make this more of a band vibe or I can make this more of a production vibe.

Speaker 2 (02:52:08):

The point is you're not fucking around setting up a session, you just load it up and you can get to work.

Speaker 3 (02:52:16):

Same with a vocal template and stuff like that. It's really important if you're an engineer, you want to just be able to open up your session and if you're about to record a singer or whatever is going on that you're working on, it already sounds pretty good. You're already to a point where you're 50% done with the mix. Obviously every project has its own thing, but there are general things you can do to make it easy for the artist to record and for it to sound good to them already so they can get the best performance out of themselves and you're not sitting there for an hour and a half busing shit to your reverb channel and experimenting with what reverb to use and just get a good sound going and then worry about that, the specific things like that after when you're going to mix.

Speaker 2 (02:53:08):

That sounds wise and efficient as well.

Speaker 3 (02:53:12):

Artists can be really

Speaker 2 (02:53:13):

Impatient.

Speaker 3 (02:53:14):

Impatient, yeah. There you go. Impatient. Perfect. They don't want to sit there for hours listening to you set up a vocal mix for you to track.

Speaker 2 (02:53:21):

No, dude, and I can tell you even when I would tell people for instance, well, okay, so it was a little different in your case because the drums were already set up.

Speaker 3 (02:53:33):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (02:53:34):

Because yeah, that was kind of a weird situation, but drums can take me three or four days sometimes to get the tones. If we've got the budget and the time. I'm going to take the time and I would always tell bands this in advance. We're not going to record any drums the first day, maybe not even the second day, so just relax. That's how it's going to be, but usually halfway through the first day we'll get the drummer pacing, when are we going to do this? When are we going to do this? It's like, yeah, I understand, but not yet.

Speaker 3 (02:54:08):

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (02:54:09):

But yeah, artists are impatient and I never quite figured out a way to get around it.

Speaker 3 (02:54:14):

It's tough, especially in the case of working with a live band and you're going for what we did where we did real drums and did all that kind of stuff. That takes time and you need to know what you're getting yourself into when you getting into the project. That's why the specifics of it are important is like, okay, what do you guys want to do? Are we doing real drums here or are we doing, are you cool with program drums? What sort of vibe do you want your band to have? And then going into it you can be specific and be like, well, if we're doing real drums, this is a time consuming thing because we're starting from scratch on something that's complicated.

(02:54:54):

So that was one of those things too that I find that I have a lot of fun with in terms of production versus writing band songs because for rock and metal is with rock and metal songs a lot more, it's harder to do, I'm not going to lie, it's a lot harder to do and there's more walls around it. With production, I can just take basic idea and just more it till it sounds cool. It doesn't matter if it can be replicated live, doesn't matter what sort of genre or whatever it fills in. You just kind of throw ideas together and you can knock something out in 20 minutes.

(02:55:30):

It's done. As soon as you bounce that out, that's the mix you're done. And a lot of times with the hip hop world, which I find is super interesting and which there are some certain things I kind of credit partially to its efficiency and popularity and its efficiency and output is a lot of times people are just mixing vocals to two track productions that the producer has already bounced out. So as soon as you finish your idea, which sometimes it can be quick, sometimes you can just lay a key line out quick. You're like, I got it. And then you just program the drums to it quick and then lay the baseline quick and then throw a structure together and it's done. You bounce it, that's the instrumental mix and then you get the vocalist on it and a lot of times that stuff is just like boom, boom, boom, super quick, but then the output of that, you can do that 10 times over and come out with a lot of shit, but that's kind of a genre thing.

Speaker 4 (02:56:25):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (02:56:26):

It works too. I do that with the trap metal stuff. Sometimes it's just taking one or two small ideas and when you're done, don't be afraid to say you're done. If you have something where you're like, this is sick and I already like it, sometimes that means that that's where all you have to leave it at. You don't have to. Like you said, time doesn't equal good.

Speaker 2 (02:56:49):

No, it certainly doesn't.

Speaker 3 (02:56:52):

And you'd be amazed at how many songs you hear in popular music that people, it just flew out of them quickly and it doesn't mean that it's any less good or anything like that. And that's how those things like those melody packs and stuff like that come in handy is because you can flush ideas out quickly. It's kind of funny that so much of what you hear on the radio or whatever popular who listens to the radio now popular playlist and shit are things that producers from America get melodies from these European kids in Sweden, Germany, stuff like that who are really good at creating melodies and they do those packs, give them to producers, and then those producers make the drums out of it and stuff and then boom, you hear those kids' melodies all on the radio all day and it's like a thing now.

(02:57:44):

So if thing is you're good at melodies or you're good at riffs or keys or whatever and that's your strength, do a bunch of those ideas and then the situation might come up where you're going to need those. It doesn't mean you have to do it every time, but say you're working on a project in a band and you've already made a bunch of keyboard loops or a bunch of guitar loops and the band comes in and it's one of those situations where it's really collaborative and the band wants you to work with them on a more you're a member kind of thing we're writing together. Then you can just be like, oh, hey, I have all these ideas here. Let's start with this. And then sometimes one of those ideas will make the best song they have because they get excited and you can have something to show them right away.

Speaker 2 (02:58:29):

How does someone get paid for the melody packs?

Speaker 3 (02:58:31):

Some people sell theirs, some people do that kind of route where if that's what you want to do and you just kind of want to make some money off it.

Speaker 2 (02:58:38):

Yeah, just put it up online and selling samples.

Speaker 3 (02:58:42):

Exactly, yeah. You're basically selling it and you got to give 'em the rights to it and all that type of stuff. Depends on the specifics. You can also do it where you say, if you use it, you get a percentage still, but usually this is when you get into more, the business aspect of it is that if someone uses your melody, I'll use myself for example, so for Juice World, I played guitar on the song won't let Go. Me and Perps made the song together. I didn't give him a melody back. We started together in my room and we wrote the riff. I came up with that part of the song and he did the drums and the bass and everything. What happened from there was then I get a percentage of that song. So if you have, this is for major label Reeses, but it doesn't have to be just for major label releases.

(02:59:27):

Like say that you wrote on a band song and you wrote the guitar line or you wrote whatever role that plays in that song is how much of a percentage you're going to get out of a hundred percent. So 50% goes to the vocals, 50% goes to the instruments or the instrumental side of it, and if you wrote the main melody in the instrumental side, say maybe you get you and one other person wrote it, say maybe you split 25% each depending on all kinds of variables, but just make sure you get your percentage. Make sure that either if they don't buy you out for what you did at a price that you think is going to be worth it, because you might get more from the upfront pay than you'll get from the royalties. You got to gauge it on how well you realistically think the project is going to do and how much revenue it's really going to make versus if you think it's worth it to take the percentage and take less money upfront, be like, no, I'd rather take my 10% or whatever of the song because I wrote this part of the song or I wrote this part of the vocal.

(03:00:32):

Whatever it is you did.

Speaker 2 (03:00:33):

Yeah. This is just something that you learn to feel out.

Speaker 3 (03:00:38):

You'll learn the hard way. I've learned the hard way a few times. That's the other thing about the music business, especially when you start to really get into the deeper ends of it where you're dealing with major labels and you're dealing with some real money behind it, then you got to really watch your ass because people are going to try and screw you over nine times out of 10 because they want their money. Those labels, their job is to keep as much money as they can, and that's one thing I will say that I do like about the metal and rock world in terms of being a producer from this world is you get paid upfront quicker. There's much more importance to your title like a Will Putney or How you Were, anything like that, you're in it already going in getting bread, but with production, it's almost like it's a maybe kind of thing where it's let's hope it gets placed. If it gets placed, then you got to get a lawyer, you got to do all kinds of shit, all kinds of shit that people aren't going to find sexy. And I honestly am still going through tons of stuff where I'm like, alright, I need to loosen up these ends on some of my splits and royalties and getting money from a sound exchange and those kinds of things that aren't the sexy stuff to talk about, but it's important or else how are you going to make money on any of this shit that you're doing?

Speaker 2 (03:01:58):

You're not.

Speaker 3 (03:01:59):

You're not. So you

Speaker 2 (03:02:00):

Have and no one's going to just hand it to you

Speaker 3 (03:02:02):

And they're going to try not to hand it to you. So that's why more recently when I was like, damn, I have to get a lawyer for real. I have to get a lawyer. I can't not have a lawyer in these sorts of conversations because you'll find yourself out of your league very quickly when you get that 14 page contract full of legal jargon that you do not understand, that's when you have to start thinking of stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (03:02:26):

Yeah, because this big shot you're working with does have a lawyer

Speaker 3 (03:02:30):

And they got

Speaker 2 (03:02:31):

A good lawyer

Speaker 3 (03:02:32):

And they usually have people who are like, man, we're not giving this fool this much percentage. He's working with this artist. He's lucky. They think you're lucky to be in that position and sometimes you are lucky enough to be in that position.

Speaker 2 (03:02:44):

I mean, to some degree they're right.

Speaker 3 (03:02:46):

Yeah. Sometimes you have to know when to be like, alright, I'm going to take a little bit less because I'm starting out and I did that. Everyone's going to do that. Sometimes the placement and the title is more important than the money you're going to get on the outcome of it.

Speaker 2 (03:03:05):

That's a hard one to gauge though, but yeah, I totally agree. I think that if you always argue for the money, you're going to end up screwing up some relationships.

Speaker 3 (03:03:15):

You're going to get bitter, you're going to get jaded, you're going to get all that type of stuff, which it's hard to not get any of those things in this industry to be honest, because there are always going to be people trying to get the best of you and you're probably going to get the best gotten of you at least a couple times. The learning experiences are, that's how you got to learn how to reposition yourself. Even just now, I'm starting to, I've learned shit where I'm like, wait, half my money I get from this from stuff like sound exchange and shit that I had no idea about before, so I've just had royalty money just waiting in a place that no one told me about or anything like that, and then someone's like, yeah, this is where you get that money from and then you got to go hunt that money down and shit.

Speaker 2 (03:04:02):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (03:04:03):

It's not always easy.

Speaker 2 (03:04:04):

No, but you're taking steps to get that all shored up.

Speaker 3 (03:04:08):

Half the battle is knowing it. The other half is knowing what to do when you figure it out.

Speaker 2 (03:04:12):

Yeah. I know quite a few people who had really great opportunities and they decided to try to play hardball with people that were out of their league and they ruined these great opportunities, but the thing that sucks about it is basically the smart thing would've been for them to agree to get screwed and that sucks. It does suck. It's like you have to understand that, okay, this is a battle which is part of a long war and sometimes you have to concede this battle to stay in the war and yeah, there are some times where you just got to let 'em win.

Speaker 3 (03:04:54):

As long as you get your credit, as long as you at least your name is on it and that anyone who questions that can look it up easily and tell that your name is on it, that's sometimes going to be more valuable in the long run because you'll get bigger opportunities. You just don't want to get to a place where you're just collecting this large sum of credits with no real sustainability or no income from it or anything like that. You got to at least figure that out a little bit. The production world becomes really complicated for something because then you start getting stuff pub deal offers and you start getting stuff like people trying to pay you upfront versus giving you the, like we talked about before, besides giving you the points and shit on records. You don't have to be a music business whiz, but you should at least know a little bit, at least it's worth watching a couple YouTube video tutorials on to figure out what to do when something is released just to make sure that you get your credit and or your percentage you guys agreed on.

Speaker 2 (03:05:58):

Yeah, I completely agree. Arm yourself with that knowledge. The thing is arm yourself with the knowledge, but at the same time know when to step off the gas.

Speaker 3 (03:06:07):

Yeah. Don't be the person no one wants to work with.

Speaker 2 (03:06:10):

Yeah, exactly. I remember this one time that at my old studio, my ex studio partner and I were going to do a spec deal with this local band from Atlanta. We really thought there was a lot of potential there. We were going to record two songs for free and spec deal, and they got a student lawyer to look over the contract and they marked up everything. They were so aggressive that it just ended up not happening because we were like, man, this is such a pain in the ass. Fuck. This is what it's going to be like. We're trying to help this band out and help get them signed and stuff, and we just want to make sure that if they get signed, we get to do the record the end, and they're turning this into this major ordeal.

Speaker 3 (03:07:11):

Sometimes people learn a little bit of stuff and then they get real up their own butts about this has to be done the super, super official traditional way or else no go, and this has to be they start bargaining with chips. They don't really have.

Speaker 2 (03:07:28):

Yeah. Well then in that case, it really did turn into no go.

Speaker 3 (03:07:31):

Yeah, and that's why too, you have to be somewhat careful with who you collaborate with and sometimes I'm not even cautious sometimes about what I play in front of what people, because sometimes if I've made something with someone who I've maybe had something in the past where they've been difficult or they've been not understanding of the situation and being like, yo, this person doesn't really have any money. We're not going to really make what we thought we were going to make initially, stuff like that, that will come up. I won't play it for certain people because I already know that if this lands, then I'm going to have to deal with this whole other thing, so fuck it, I'm going to play. I'm going to play the beat I made with this other person that is just as good because I'm not going to have to go through that with this person.

Speaker 4 (03:08:15):

Smart.

Speaker 3 (03:08:17):

And then maybe if it's a huge bigger situation, I really believe in that beat or whatever, and I'm like, I'm like, okay, cool. I'll play this because I already know this situation will be much more official and this person seems to be one of those people who's very stern or their lawyer is very stern about certain shit. You got to be mindful about that kind of stuff, and you got to decide too. Especially, it goes both ways too. For people who are working with bands and shit, what are you going to take up front if you write on the song? Are you going to establish something to where you're going to get your points on it, or are you just doing a basic upfront feed? So there are that kind of shit. That's not the sexy stuff to talk about, but

Speaker 2 (03:08:57):

Well, I mean, I can tell you that with lots of smaller bands on smaller labels, oftentimes my manager and I would just forego the points because why sweat them? Why get adversarial with these people I'm about to work with over something that's going to amount to

Speaker 3 (03:09:17):

Pennies?

Speaker 2 (03:09:17):

Yeah, a few hundred dollars maybe.

Speaker 3 (03:09:19):

Yeah, totally. For example, when people are like, oh, I want to buy a beat from you, or Can I get a beat? What do I got to do? I'll gauge it on the situation. I'll be like, okay, I'm down to work with people who are starting out and stuff, but sometimes I'll be like, I'm just going to take the money because I'm going to ask for this amount of money, and if I were to go through the whole thing of having to get a contract worked out with splits, and I'm like, all right, how are you going to release this? Is it coming out through a label or is it coming out through yourself already? It's coming out through yourself. Alright, you got to go through the distro kit thing and put splits in the distro kit and do my as cap, blah, blah, blah, and then sometimes it's worth it just to make it simple and just make it upfront and just be like, cool, this is the charge.

(03:10:04):

If this song does super well or blows up or something like that, then maybe we're going to revisit this and I'm going to take some points in the long run. So I usually don't sign anything or whatever for that option to be open because that's usually part of the agreement I'll have with people. But yeah, that kind of stuff is important because when you find yourself in a position to where people are actually, you're actually making some money off this stuff, you got to really treat it like a business and you got to gauge the risks versus the rewards.

Speaker 2 (03:10:34):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Michael, I think this is a good place to stop. We've been going for over three and a half hours.

Speaker 3 (03:10:41):

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (03:10:42):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:10:42):

Damn.

Speaker 2 (03:10:43):

So I want to thank you for coming on the podcast. Been awesome talking to you, and I'm sure should do this again sometime.

Speaker 3 (03:10:51):

Yeah, definitely. Thank you. I had a blast and yeah, anyone listening, thanks for listening. Feel free to hit me up if you have any questions or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (03:10:58):

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