BRAD BLACKWOOD: The Post-Grammy Crisis, Authentic Networking, Common Mixing Mistakes

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host, Eyal Levi. Welcome to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we're now on our fifth year, but it's true, and it's only because of you, the listeners, and if you'd like to see us stick around for another five years, there are a few simple things that you can do that would really, really help us out, and I would be endlessly appreciative. Number one, share our episodes with your friends. If you get something out of these episodes, I'm sure they will too, so please share us with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me and our guests too. My Instagram is at al Levy urm audio, and let me just let you know that we love seeing ourselves tagged in these posts.

(00:00:57):

Who knows, we might even respond. And number three, leave us reviews and five stars please anywhere you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, I want to thank you all for the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never, ever charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way possible. All I ask in return is a share post and a tag. Now, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM podcast. My guest today is coming on for the second time. Actually, first time I had him on was in May of 2016, I believe. So it's been a minute, but his previous episode was pretty great. I don't know why I didn't have him on sooner. I really should have. I need to make a note to myself that when I have a great guest, I need to wait less than four years.

(00:01:57):

So note to self, his name is Brad Blackwood. He's a Grammy Award and Sato Award-winning mastering engineer out of Memphis, Tennessee, and he's had a long and successful career at his mastering studio, euphonic masters, everything from Maroon five to Lamb of God corn, black eyed Peas. I mean, I actually read a lot of the list of his clients during the episode, so I'll save you from that right now. But this guy is a list and he gives great answers about mastering, but as we do on the URM podcast, we don't just talk about mastering. We talk about life and what it takes to turn this dream into reality, and then also what to do when you accomplish certain goals and the mental component of that and what networking actually means. This is the most relationship driven industry in the world, and if you don't know how to make relationships with people properly, you could be the best engineer on earth, but no one's going to want to work with you unless you just happen to be that oddball who can make everyone a ton of money. But there are very, very, very few outliers who are like that. You got to have the social skills, and then we also talk about some health related issues that I think are relevant to anybody who's working in a sedentary type field. Anyways, without further ado, I give you Brad Blackwood. Brad Blackwood, welcome to the URM Podcast. Welcome back to the URM podcast. That is, thank you. It's good to be back, man. Have we been in a time dilation where our lives feel like two months, but back on earth it's four years.

Speaker 2 (00:03:49):

Yeah, it's like we're an interstellar or something. I can't believe it's been four years since we spoke like this before. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (00:03:54):

It was May, 2016.

Speaker 2 (00:03:57):

Yeah, that's wild. When you reached out to me a few months ago and told me it'd been three plus years, I actually had to go back and look through my messages. I didn't believe you.

Speaker 1 (00:04:05):

It was either May, 2016.

Speaker 3 (00:04:07):

It was. I looked it up. I looked it up. It was May, 2016. It's been almost four years. Yeah, it's

Speaker 1 (00:04:11):

Crazy. Yeah, it was our second mastering month when we used to do those. I swear we are an interstellar because those four years have gone by a dream. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:04:23):

It is. Really, we're just getting old.

Speaker 1 (00:04:26):

Do you think that's what

Speaker 3 (00:04:27):

It's Well, I am. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're not getting old. Well, I'm not getting younger. I'm sure getting old. I can tell you that.

Speaker 1 (00:04:33):

Yeah. I mean, that's the side effect of not dying, I guess. I suppose. Yeah. So that's how I look at it.

Speaker 3 (00:04:38):

I'll take it.

Speaker 1 (00:04:38):

Well, whenever people bring that up in a negative way, I'm like, yo, what's the alternative? We could be dead.

Speaker 2 (00:04:46):

Yeah, that's why I try not to complain about aches and pains and things like that. It's like that's just kind of the cost of doing business at this point.

Speaker 1 (00:04:53):

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I've done awesome things. I know you have too. It hasn't been wasted, in my opinion. No, not at all. Do you ever get those feelings I should do more or shouldn't have fucked around or any of that sort of thing

Speaker 2 (00:05:11):

About some things? Yeah, I mean, I don't feel like I should do more. I don't feel like I should do more necessarily family stuff with the wife and kids kind of thing. Not to sound heroic or anything, but I do kind of look around sometimes and feel like, man, isn't there something more I could do, just sort of to help out society. I live here in Memphis, and so there's just a lot of issues here. I dabble back and forth between, well, what on earth can I do? There's a lot of people that devoted their lives to trying to help these people here and help people in general get better and have better lives. What could one person do, but at the same time also sit around and think, man, I spent a lot of time focused on myself and my interests and my family and not outward. So yeah, I guess that's the one area of my life. I think I could be more maybe altruistic.

Speaker 1 (00:06:00):

That's a very interesting topic because I have read in many places all the way from stoics to modern businessmen, self-help people or not self-help people who, and I'm kind of getting the idea that there's something about altruism that completes us. I think that we're wired with a need to help others, and so lots of people do it because even if they accomplish all their personal goals and have a good family life, they still feel like there's something missing. I mean, some people do charity because there's a tax write off for sure, but I don't think that that's most people. I think most people do it because we have an innate need to help others because it makes us feel complete somehow. I don't know if it's an evolutionary thing that it's to help the species keep on going or a spiritual thing if you believe in that, but I think it's innate.

Speaker 2 (00:07:06):

We're societal creatures. We gather together. We don't really live independently. It's very unusual for someone to be a complete and total loner and live off in the middle of the woods somewhere completely separate from everyone else. So we're naturally drawn together. I don't see how you could separate that from having compassion for seeing those around you that need help. I mean, if we're naturally drawn together, it seems like that would be a natural component to that as well, whether that be spiritual or evolutionary or whatever you believe. It just seems like that's observable fact. If we're going to be drawn together, then a natural aspect of that is that we're going to, generally speaking and care for each other

Speaker 1 (00:07:43):

Seems pretty logical,

Speaker 2 (00:07:44):

Right? It seems like it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:07:46):

I guess the reason I've been thinking about that is because I've been having similar thoughts kicking ass with work, getting my personal shit together with the health and weight loss and all that, but it's been feeling like there's something missing and it started to dawn on me that maybe I need to do some sort of volunteer work or something along those lines. I always thought about doing something to help vets, and then I just didn't, URM got crazy busy and I forgot all about it, and then recently it came back because one thing I'm trying to focus on is not just crushing my goals, but also feeling good about myself and life, which is a whole author story, and that really came to mind. I think that there's something to it. I think that maybe that would be the missing piece. I feel you on that.

Speaker 2 (00:08:51):

I do some things already and I'm sure you do as well. It's not just this, I live my life that's totally centered around Brad, but at the same time, I think there's always something bigger that I could do, and that's the part that gets me. It's not that I don't think I'm inherently just a hundred percent selfish, but at the same time it does seem like I could give more.

Speaker 1 (00:09:10):

Absolutely. Well, yes, there's some stuff that I do, and then also the whole nature of my company is based on helping other people, so

(00:09:18):

Obviously I profit from it, but the whole mission of URM is to help other people, and while it's not exactly helping people who are going through PTSD or people who can't buy food, obviously we're talking different levels of help still. It's based around that, and I really, really do love that. And then I also agree with you that there's that feeling of wanting more, and I'm sure that that feeling of wanting to do more is not just in that aspect. I'm sure that you approached your career the same way and when you were building your skills the same way and when you started getting clients the same way, I'm sure that that's just a part of how you think, how can I take this further?

Speaker 2 (00:10:00):

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. There's no question about that. I guess I assume everybody's wired that way. Maybe they're not. I

Speaker 1 (00:10:05):

Don't think so.

Speaker 2 (00:10:06):

I think, yeah, my wife's always told me if there's anything that I ever just really set my mind on, not if it's just when it's going to be achieved, that's just kind of the way I'm wired. I can be pretty singular in that regard, in the way that I focus on things. I think what you're doing with URM is fantastic, and I've thought before, what could I do? I don't really feel like I'm wired to be a teacher. I've got some friends who are master engineers that also teach at local colleges and things like that and do coursework with them, and they love it. It's very fulfilling for them. I don't think I'm wired to do that. There's nothing about that that seems appealing to me, but I do think it's an amazing thing to, you seem to almost minimize it, like you're not feeding people and it's like you kind of are feeding people. You're giving people the skills, you're helping them acquire the skills that they need that are very difficult to come by just out on their own so that they can afford to get better at their job and they can attract clients and then afford to be able to buy that food, pay that rent, buy that next piece of gear, whatever they need. So I mean, that is true. I wouldn't dismiss what you're doing as if it's not pretty vitally important to some people's lives.

Speaker 1 (00:11:10):

Well, I appreciate you saying that, and I do agree. For instance, if someone has a job that right now is the type of job where the type of job that say people in the arts tend to get before the art side of their life takes off. I'm not talking shit about any jobs right now, by the way, because I respect anybody who works. So please don't anybody take this the wrong way, but a lot of people who are trying to make it in the arts will work at Starbucks or temp work or things that are obviously meant to be temporary that aren't going to make them enough money to create a good life anyways. And so if I can help them get the kinds of skills that will not only let them replace their income with something that they love doing, but hopefully grow it to something that they can sustain a livelihood off of, it's pretty amazing.

Speaker 3 (00:12:07):

That is. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:12:07):

I get what you mean about the teaching thing. By the way. I felt the same way at the very beginning. It's actually kind of funny. When my best friend Finn asked me to come to Seattle to kick off the creative Live audio channel, I was the first audio person to give a class. I was the only producer he knew, and I was really not into the idea. I helped him strategize how to convince the powers that be to give an audio channel a chance, but then I ended up getting myself invited on it. This was in 2003. I was like, oh man, I can't say nos like my best friend, but God, this is going to be lame, so not a teacher. But then I went and I did it, and here we are. So it's interesting, but there's many ways I think to spread the word without having to necessarily teach in a classroom.

(00:13:03):

For instance here today will definitely be at some point talking about mastering and answering people's questions. We're going to be talking about how you got to where you are. Here's why I think it's important to share that, not because it makes people feel good. I think that hearing about people's careers gets people motivated, but that's not why I think it's important. I actually think that motivation is fickle can have a bad day, and you know this from losing weight. It's not about motivation. It's about something deeper that makes you stick to it. What I want is for people to hear this and understand that we're real people and that this shit is totally doable. That's way more important to me. I had this advantage growing up of being around professional musicians who were at the top of the classical world. Those were the people who were, that was my dad, that was his friends. Those were the people who we were in circles of. So making a music career, a reality was just baked in. They printed that shit. So to me, it always made sense, but I remember growing up that all my friends who didn't have parents in the industry, their parents were very against it, and then so they got wired with, it's impossible. Only very lucky few ever go anywhere and the rest are dirt poor. Those kinds of ideas, and so I want to put out there that this is totally doable. We're not super humans.

Speaker 2 (00:14:42):

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Maybe when that first wave of people who chose to go to say an audio school, let's say instead of a normal university really started, I would guess that would, I mean, I'm sure there was a small amount of that back in the eighties, but I think it was kind of in the early nineties is when you started to see larger and larger groups of people.

Speaker 1 (00:15:04):

I think so

Speaker 2 (00:15:05):

Do that. So I was at Full Sail like in 95 and 96. That was the year I was there, but convincing my parents to let me go there, they had to co-sign on the loans, and at that time, it's inconceivably more expensive now, but even then in 1990s dollars, roughly $20,000 for a year of school with zero guarantees, you're not graduating with an actual degree. It was a specialized associate's degree is what we got back then. That was just a non-starter. They looked at me like I was crazy. What are you going to do? Make eight bucks an hour for the rest of your life?

Speaker 1 (00:15:35):

Yeah, I need to look at something real quick, man. I want to know what just for, because if I don't look this up, I'm going to be wondering the whole time. I'm looking up $20,000, 1996 versus today. Let's see here. I'm wondering this because the price of these types of educations gets brought up a lot. Okay. That is the equivalent of $31,724, just for reference.

Speaker 2 (00:16:05):

It's a lot. That's probably about what they charge for the same style of program today, although now full sales and accredit to university, they do four year program thing like that, so it's maybe hard to compare apples and oranges, but I mean, at the time I was going to the University of Alabama, I was trying to get into the pre-med program and we were paying something like four or $5,000 a semester for school. The comparison was, it was pretty dramatic considering an accredited university versus the full Sail center for the Recording Arts, as it was called at the time.

Speaker 1 (00:16:34):

Dude, that's only a little bit cheaper than Berkeley was

Speaker 2 (00:16:37):

Probably. I'm from Orlando. I went to mean I went to Alabama. I only lived there for two years, but I'm from Orlando, so we were very familiar with Full Sail. It was in our backyard basically in Winter Park, and I had worked with bands in high school that had recorded out there for their free recording sessions they did for students to get some practice and things like that. I was very impressed with the facility and toured it and made my mind. I wanted to do it, but the parents just would not sign the loan.

Speaker 1 (00:17:03):

How did you convince them?

Speaker 2 (00:17:04):

It's funny enough, my placement guy, a guy named John Abraham, his son works there now, in fact would just call the house about once every four or five, maybe six months and just check up on me, see if I would change my mind. Of course, I didn't live there. It was always my mom or my dad that got the phone call. I remember one day I was talking to my mom. I was in Tuscaloosa at the time. I was talking to my mom on the phone and I told her, I was like, look, I'm not feeling this. I was going to get into sports medicine kinesiology, and it just didn't ring my bell. I wasn't excited about it at all. I probably could have gone through it and just, I would've struggled through it. I wasn't really passionate about it, but I could have done it.

(00:17:40):

And she said, it's funny you say that. I heard from John Abraham again today. He kept calling and calling and just every six months he wasn't bugging him or anything, but he would just check up on me and see how I was doing. She goes, maybe that's what you're supposed to do. And so about two, three months later, I moved down to Orlando, moved back home with them, and went and started talking to 'em, and my parents went and toured it, and they were impressed with the whole program and the facility, and they decided to let me take my shot.

Speaker 1 (00:18:04):

That's really, really cool of them. Did you know that you were going to go down the mastering path?

Speaker 2 (00:18:09):

No, no, no. I thought it was going to be a mixer. I don't think I even knew what mastering was really. When I started Full Sail. I mean, I started from Zero. I had very little knowledge. I'd worked in some bands and garage garages, things like that. But I mean, I knew a four track recorder, sette recorder, and that was all I knew going into it. So I knew that I had to start off with my foot on the gas and ready to go and did really well. I mean, I graduated I think second my class overall small classes, mind you, so it's not like I killed it, but the

Speaker 1 (00:18:38):

Second out of two

Speaker 2 (00:18:39):

Where there were 31 in my class, but yeah, I was second out of two. But yeah, I mean, it was like I knew I was going to have to really throw myself at it, but it was easy to throw myself at it. I really wanted to do it, and so even though we averaged, I think they told us we averaged 37 clock hours a week either in class or in lab, and then you have study time on top of that. I just soaked it up and I just really, really enjoyed it and threw myself at it, and I figured, Hey, this is my one chance to learn everything I can about everything from the VIR to STI to whatever stuff that I'll probably never use, but I may as well know it, and I really enjoyed the whole process. Actually,

Speaker 1 (00:19:12):

I also want to say for people who are listening and thinking, man, I can't afford that. All I'll say is you don't need to. In this day and age, in this day and age, there are plenty of resources. Yeah, it's different. Don't feel like if you can't get that type of funding that you're fucked, you're, it's a different world now.

Speaker 2 (00:19:33):

There's still value in those programs. They've really spent a lot of time developing curriculum and hiring people and things like that.

Speaker 1 (00:19:40):

Of course, I'm not knocking those programs at all,

Speaker 2 (00:19:43):

But at the same time, the internet as it existed was nothing like it is today. It was basically Usenet for those of us with computers. So it wasn't like you could have curriculum online and have stuff like even URM. That was a pipe dream 25 years ago. Not even, it wasn't even a pipe dream because you couldn't even, how could you envision something that the platform that is built on didn't even exist? Yeah. I mean, nowadays, I still often tell people, Hey, you should check this stuff out. Check out full sale. I was happy there. I think it did a good job. I think it's probably still a really good school. It depends on how much you're willing to pour into it and how much pride you're willing to set aside and those sorts of things. But at the same time, it's not an absolute. I know plenty of guys who are extremely talented engineers that are honestly basically self-taught or learned off the internet.

Speaker 1 (00:20:31):

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's like anything else. If you go to a traditional school and you apply yourself, if you go all in, you're going to get a lot out of it.

Speaker 3 (00:20:41):

Exactly

Speaker 1 (00:20:42):

Right. I think many people say that it's a rip off man, but when I hear that, I always wonder, well, what did you do when you were there? Because I went to Berkeley and I felt like I was ripping my parents off, but I never felt like Berkeley was ripping me off. I didn't think Berkeley was right for me, so I didn't go to classes a lot. Instead of going to classes, I studied the music industry and practiced guitar back at my apartment. I had a very, very specific path I wanted to go down, and that path was not really taken seriously there and the type of person that once I know my path, nothing is going to stop me or divert me. Yeah, I'm with you. I know you're like this, so I'm not going to go to the jazz arranging class as much as maybe it could help somehow to understand complex jazz arrangements. Great. I mean, sure. I would rather spend that time learning about the structure of a major label because I'm going to get my band signed to a major label and I want to know how this shit works, and so I just prioritized what I really thought I needed, so I actually felt like I was ripping my parents off and I couldn't take the guilt of having them pay for a place that I was failing out of. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:22:08):

Well, so when I graduated from Full Sail, I had no idea at the time, their placement's really great. I knew their placement was supposed to be good, but Ardent where I ended up here in Memphis, great studio, great history. At that time, they only hired their night guys, which is how that was the ground level entry, how you started off at Ardent. Everybody started off that way. That was going to be in the engineering program there, if you will. They only hired Full Sail graduates at the time. They had a good history with Full Sail.

Speaker 1 (00:22:36):

Wow.

Speaker 2 (00:22:36):

That was the only way in the door,

Speaker 1 (00:22:37):

Man. It's not like that these days.

Speaker 2 (00:22:39):

No. Well, it can't be anymore really, because first of all, the schools, there's so many more of 'em now. It's so diversified, but there's so many, like we said a minute ago, there's so many talented people that know it top to bottom, but at the same time, even then, there were some guys that came in that were self-taught that were really, really smart, that tried to get jobs there, or were visiting engineers or whatever, and they would do some sort of lame brain things like try to connect devices with incorrect cables and stuff They didn't understand. One was digital, one was analog, let's say, or things like that. You're kind of like, how do you not know this stuff? Granted, that was still early enough in the digital days. That sounds completely crazy to anyone now probably, but in the early to mid nineties, there weren't a ton of digital devices out there. There were DAP machines, things like

Speaker 1 (00:23:24):

That. But here's two things that I've noticed are a real issue with the traditional schools. So when I was in Boston for Berkeley, I went around to different studios to scope them out, and this is what made me decide to learn how to record. I wanted to get my band recorded, but I wanted to do it for real. I wanted to book six weeks, find the best metal producer in Boston, all that. I was on a mission,

(00:23:50):

And the moment that any of them found out that my band were Berkeley students and that three of them were in the recording program, they fucking iced us out, and they told me, Berkeley students have a terrible reputation in Boston. Nobody hires them because they think they know everything. So, and then also, when I used to have a Florida studio in Orlando, this was in between 2011, 2014, full Sail would hit me up talking about their placement program. Since my studio did sign bands and everything, I would get hit up constantly twice a week at least by their people, and I kind of made friends with one of them, and they were trying to get me interns,

(00:24:36):

Not interns. The kind that you think about that then transition to become assistants, et cetera, interns that are there for three months to get a credit and then move on. I tried it a couple times and man, these people were useless. They didn't have, maybe they understood signal flow on a console maybe, but they had no idea about session etiquette. They had no clue how to do some modern things that are 1 0 1 for a professional environment like editing drums, tuning vocals, session management prep, all these things. Obviously those weren't issues. I mean, there were ways to obviously prep a session for a console and a tape machine, but digital DAW prep to the level that it's expected nowadays on sessions

Speaker 2 (00:25:32):

That

Speaker 1 (00:25:33):

Was not being taught.

Speaker 2 (00:25:35):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:25:35):

I have a list of things that I know that get people hired these days that I try to teach, and the Full Sail kids that would come through generally had zero of that, which it made me feel pretty strongly that if someone is going to a school like Full Sail now, not in the nineties, but now they have to supplement it with something like URM or with an internship, that's a real internship with a real producer that's doing actual work in the industry. They need to be getting that information on real life from somewhere, because what you're getting from the traditional school is more of a general knowledge, like how to plug in the right cables and signal flow, things like that.

Speaker 2 (00:26:26):

I've not been back since I graduated. I've not even back to Orlando since I graduated in nine six. I had my fill of Orlando living there for 20 years, but

Speaker 1 (00:26:34):

I understand.

Speaker 2 (00:26:35):

Yeah, I'm sure you do. I had my fill after four, so I don't have any idea what it's like now. I can say two things that address that. Not a lot's changed. I remember in the late nineties, early two thousands, full Sail was probably still kind of the biggest, or at least most well-known of the recording schools in the industry, and really pretty universally had a terrible reputation. So many of the kids that came out were sort of arrogant feeling like they had graduated. It was time for them to start recording bands, not take out the

Speaker 1 (00:27:07):

Trash, like the Boston Berkeley thing.

Speaker 2 (00:27:09):

Yeah, it's very similar. That resonated with me when you said that. Whereas when I went to Ardent, you start off as a night guy, guess what? You don't set foot in a studio for months. I mean, you're literally working, going, they call you night guy because you own at four 30, you open the side door for clients as they come and go. You make coffee, you take off the trash, you trash the studios at the end of the night when the session's over with and wrap cables and put away mics and I mean, you're just basically, you're a glorified secretary slash janitor for usually at least a year, sometimes several years. But when I looked around, even my class, when I look back now, I look back at all the people I graduated with. I think, like I said, they were 31 or 32. There are exactly two that I'm aware of that have worked in the industry. One still is in the industry, and one of 'em went up to hit factory in New York City and just got chewed up and burned out just dealing with their clients. That was quite the place when it was at its heyday. So there's basically two out of 30 of us that I'm aware of that are actually working in the industry. There's probably a few more that I just have never gotten in touch with, but I mean

(00:28:12):

That's a drastically small amount of people that went to a school specialized in that. And I don't know that it reflects as much on Full Sail as it does sort of the people that go to a school like that that's not, at least when I was there, is not a Berkeley, which is you're getting a degree, a useful degree. I always tell people what I got was equivalent to a welding certificate, and it's nothing against welders, but I mean, it's not going to transfer to University of Mississippi for classes or anything. Nothing transfers. So

Speaker 1 (00:28:41):

I don't think a Berkeley degree is going to do much for you either.

Speaker 2 (00:28:44):

Well, yeah, probably. I'm just saying at the end of the day, my point is that it's just that it was about drive. I have to be driven. Absolutely. And the one thing I'll say about Full Sail, at least when I was there, again, it's been 25 years, so I can't really speak for what they're doing now, but they told us when you graduate, you're going to spend three months to a year probably working for free. You're not going to get paid anything. Absolutely. And you're going to need a second job, all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:29:06):

Well, God bless them for saying that because the truth.

Speaker 2 (00:29:09):

Yeah, it really is. And so when I got the job at Ardent, which was not my first job out of school, and I can talk about that in a minute if you want, but I was shocked that they paid me a minimum wage, which was not very much. Obviously it's minimum, but I mean, I was expecting to go there and work for free, literally, and I started getting checks. I was like, that was amazing to me. I ended up staying there for seven years before until I started my own place, back to what I was saying, it was not my first job. So I graduate and the guy graduated, or that was ahead of me in the class, actually got the job at that. I ended up taking, his wife did not want to move to Memphis, wanted to move to North Carolina to be near their family. So he turned the job down, moved to North Carolina. I found out years later they got divorced. He wishes he would've taken the job, man. So they came back and called me and said, Hey, we've got

Speaker 1 (00:29:58):

That topic.

Speaker 2 (00:29:59):

Yeah, we got a position for you. And so I ended up moving up to Memphis. So it's like, oh my goodness, how it's up. So it fell in my lap in that regard. I mean, I was in line because I'd worked hard through school, but I was working for the first six weeks out of school. It was about a six week gap from the time I graduated until I moved up here at the Disney properties in one of the hotels doing AV setup for these conferences and stuff, set up slide machines and crap like that. I mean, it was misery. It was absolute misery, and I didn't feel like I've accomplished something. I'm working in the industry, set up a slide machine is not what I went to school for,

Speaker 1 (00:30:37):

Paying dues.

Speaker 2 (00:30:38):

I didn't even think it was paying dues. I didn't see how there was an avenue out of the that, but it paid me like eight bucks an hour, and it was something better than waiting tables, I thought. So this happened to fall on my lap. I got the call from placement saying, Hey, he turned the job down, so if you wanted, you can go up an interview for it. And I did and ended up getting hired. But I mean, I had no idea what I was going to end up doing. It wasn't like I had this easy path laid out in front of me that just fell in place. I mean, it kind of did fall in place, but it certainly wasn't easy. It was pretty, I tell you what, that was six, it might've been eight weeks. It was soul crushing. I mean, I literally remember coming home one day and just going in my room and shutting the door and just bawling, crying. I cannot believe I just busted my butt for 13 months and paid all this money to go to school, and I'm setting up slide projectors.

Speaker 1 (00:31:24):

Yeah, your soul got put through a wood chipper, basically.

Speaker 2 (00:31:27):

Yeah. I mean, I didn't expect to start off making records, but that was not the path I saw, and I couldn't see any way down the road that was going to let me get past

Speaker 1 (00:31:37):

That. What's interesting is I've got three thoughts on everything you just said. First of all, a very similar feeling is why I ultimately decided to drop out of Berkeley, and it was because the path that finishing laid out was a path that would make me feel that way if I had finished out my guitar degree. The type of player they turn you into, if you do the work, is the type of player that plays wedding bands, bar mitzvah sessions, and no disrespect to those guys at all because it's a personality type, I think.

Speaker 2 (00:32:14):

Yeah, that's just not you.

Speaker 1 (00:32:15):

It's not me at all. But I mean, I think that if you do have that personality type where that's, you can make a hell of a good living, so more power to you, but for me personally, that would have crushed me. So I got out. The other thing I want to key in on was that your friend moved because his wife wanted to leave and look, I know that everybody's in a unique situation and family first. However, there's a reason why I never let a significant other dictate what I could do career wise, and this was something that I decided very, very young, and it's like one of my life rules. And I'm not saying that everyone listening should adopt this either. We have to do what's right for our own lives, but the way I have always seen it is relationships are temporary, but I've still got to live with me this whole time.

(00:33:15):

And if I give up an opportunity over somebody else, first of all, I'm going to start to resent that person. And who knows if that person's even going to be around in five years. I've had lots of girlfriends. I've got a trail of girlfriends. If I had changed my path for any one of them, that would've been so stupid. So I think people should really, really think carefully about whether they're really, really willing to possibly give up their own future for something that could be fickle. Then again, you could be with the person that you're going to be with for the next 50 years. You never know, but relationships with people can be fickle your dreams. However, those will stick with you forever, especially if you didn't follow them, they'll haunt you. I know people who didn't at least give it a shot or who were giving it a shot, but then the wife or the husband or whatever wanted them to stop for whatever reason or had to make them stop, and now 5, 10, 15 years later, it eats their soul. So I dunno, it gets to me when I hear that.

Speaker 2 (00:34:30):

Yeah, I mean, it's frustrating. I've been blessed that we're at almost 24 years now. Me and my wife, we got married three weeks after I started at Ardent. We obviously had planned the wedding before that, but always been super supportive. So that's awesome. If I needed to move or whatever, she was a hundred percent behind whatever we needed to do. So if you find the right one, it's kind of okay to let them weigh in on it, I think. But you got to be careful. Yeah, I know some absolute horror stories where people have turned away from potentially really great gigs and they regretted it later when the wife is gone or the girlfriend's gone, or boyfriend or whatever the relationship is, and then suddenly they don't have either because they made that choice over something that they weren't a hundred percent certain over.

Speaker 1 (00:35:15):

I've seen that happen so many times, man, that's a real crusher, I think, especially when they realize they don't have either. It's a very bitter pill.

Speaker 2 (00:35:25):

Now, keep in mind, if you don't mind, if I hadn't listened to my wife's advice, I probably wouldn't be mastering records right now. Even when I went to Art after Full Sail, the idea of mastering was kind of cool, but I still wanted to mix records. I thought

(00:35:40):

I sat in on a few sessions, both recording sessions and mixed sessions, and realized that spending at that time, nowadays it's probably different, but I mean at that time, it wasn't uncommon to spend eight hours mixing a song on a large format console off tape machine, and that was what it took. You spent hours and hours and hours listening to that same song over and over again. And I realized very quickly that I wasn't wired to do that either. That's a level of minutiae, repetitive sort of stuff that I didn't think, it didn't speak to me at all. So there was a time period there after maybe a year or so at Ardent where I was kind of sitting in on mixes and going, I don't know if this is my thing either. And then they bought an early Sadie workstation and my wife was like, why don't you just take that machine over, make that you can become the digital editing guy, make extra money on the side, so on and so forth. And I did that, and that just sort of naturally progressed into it. So if she hadn't been around, I probably would've in my bullheaded way, continued chasing, mixing, and who knows where I'd be today.

Speaker 1 (00:36:46):

Well, there's something to be said for finding the right partner in crime, right?

Speaker 2 (00:36:50):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:36:50):

Oh, absolutely. Someone who is not only supportive, but also understands you in a way that you might not understand you

(00:36:59):

And who also takes an interest in what you're doing enough to be able to give advice. That makes sense. Does she have anything to do with audio? Oh, no. Okay. So that says a lot that if she doesn't know anything about audio, but she took enough interest to understand the different roles because I know certain people who were dating people in audio who don't know or care about Jack shit, not saying that I expect significant others to learn about the annotated history of tube mics. But she learned enough because she cared about you about your life and your challenges and your work environment to be able to be a partner.

Speaker 2 (00:37:45):

Well, and I think that she could also see when I'd get excited talking about, let's say this, Sadie, when we first got it, and I thought it was such a cool thing before that we had Aeu di ais, which I'm talking about really ancient digital audio here, but I mean, it was just a real klugy interface and all this kind of stuff, had all kinds of weirdnesses to it. What

Speaker 1 (00:38:03):

Does klugy mean to have never heard that word before?

Speaker 2 (00:38:07):

You've ever heard Kluge the word Kluge?

Speaker 1 (00:38:09):

No, I'm looking Urban Dictionary. How do you spell it?

Speaker 2 (00:38:13):

I think it's K-L-U-D-G-E.

Speaker 1 (00:38:15):

K-A-L-U-D-G-E, assorted collection of parts assembled to fulfill a particular purpose. It actually kind of works in this context,

Speaker 3 (00:38:27):

Talking about the suited axis

Speaker 1 (00:38:29):

In the computer world, a clunky unpolished, quickly thrown together solution that accomplishes the required task, but is the equivalent of a bandaid.

Speaker 2 (00:38:38):

Yeah, that's the studio di ais in a nutshell, right there.

Speaker 1 (00:38:41):

Got it. Alright.

Speaker 2 (00:38:42):

I had no idea that was the exact definition, but that's sort of what I was thinking. So there you go.

Speaker 1 (00:38:47):

Perfect.

Speaker 2 (00:38:48):

Yeah, so it was this weird thing that the interface was terrible and the key commands were non-intuitive in every way and so on and so forth. So we get this Sadie, and it's the first really modern DAW that I'd ever had a chance to really get involved with, and it kind of excited me. I don't know, I just thought it was cool, but yet it didn't change my mind. But I think she could probably see that excitement and when I talked about it to her, even though she didn't understand anything about it, and that was enough, it was a blind spot for me. So single-minded in what I thought I wanted to do, but she could see it and from there go, oh, yeah, maybe you should do this. And it didn't seem like a bad idea. I liked it already, so it was easy.

Speaker 1 (00:39:27):

Man, that's so awesome, and I'm really, really happy for you that you found a true partner. Oh, yeah. I think that that's actually pretty rare from, I've never been married. I've had long-term relationships, longest being nine years, so it's not the same as marriage. But I feel like from what I've seen of my married friends or friends who also have done long-term gigs, finding a true partner is first of all, very rare, and second of all, a game changer.

Speaker 2 (00:40:04):

And I would never have left Arden and tried to start without her support and encouragement when I floated the idea how. So we started Euphonic in 2003, and it was sort of an answer to, I felt like my business, both financially and just from a client standpoint was growing, but not really at a pace that I felt like it should. And I felt in a way I felt kind of held back by Ardent and the way that it was set up.

Speaker 1 (00:40:30):

And you were mastering there?

Speaker 2 (00:40:31):

Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:40:32):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:40:32):

Well, ardent sold off the mastering business in 1986. They just thought there really wasn't much future in it at that point. Vinyl was going away. CD had become the dominant format, and really, I think from the late eighties through the mid nineties, that probably wasn't a bad choice because the cost of getting into the digital game was so unbelievably high while the dedicated mastering houses were already ahead of the game in that regard. So by the time I got back and we got Sadie, this was a full on capable of doing anything you need to do, mastering workstation, multi-track editing, but primarily built for two, four channel stuff.

(00:41:09):

So I think that really changed their mind, and then I just sort of took it over. I learned it inside and out where I was the guy that even if somebody tried to use it when I wasn't there, they ended up calling me asking, well, how do you do this? How do you do that? And I ended up doing a ton of digital editing for a while, and then that just naturally started turning into, why don't you do some EQing? Why don't you do this? Do this, make it sound better? And kind of just, like I said, organically grew from there. So I restarted Arden Mastering and ran that through oh three, and I was really, I think I would've been content staying there the rest of my life. I mean, I had long-term plans to rebuild Arden mastering into a multi-room mastering place within the Arden, under the Arden umbrella and this and this, that, and the other.

(00:41:47):

But there was some frustrations, and at one point, it was kind of her thing, well, why don't you just do your own thing? And at first, I laughed it off. I can't do that. How on earth am I going to start my own business? That's crazy. Then I started crunching the numbers and thinking about it and looking at it, and it felt risky at the time, and now I laugh at it, but it felt risky. At the time. I was doing pretty well, but I mean, I didn't know how many of my clients were using me because I was at Ardent and I was the ardent guy, or they were using me because they liked what I did, because a lot of it was in-house work. They'd come and they'd record and mix there, and they'd go ahead and have me master it while they were there. And it seemed natural that all that would go away. Nope. Well, it didn't. Yeah, something like, I forget the exact number, but it was over 90% of my clients that had used me like that before just continued coming. And even the new clients that came through that knew of me continued to call me up at Euphonic and use me.

Speaker 1 (00:42:38):

There's a really interesting thing that I learned when I was learning about acquisitions, business acquisitions and selling businesses, and when they're doing valuations, mind you, I didn't go to business school or anything like this, so I have had to teach myself all of this stuff over the past few years, but what I learned was that different types of companies have different types of multiples attached to their revenue. So it would be like what your typical annual revenue is times a number is what you can hope to sell it for. So some are 10 x, some are four x, some are the cost of the building and what's in it or whatever. And there's a reason for why recording studios are at the bottom, bottom, bottom. So are events businesses, but recording studios are at the bottom because they're essentially worthless to an investor because the only thing that matters is the person who's in there running it. So the gear matters to the person using it, but nobody is going to, when I say nobody, yeah, maybe there's 0.1% of clients who will choose a random studio. They have some piece of gear, but in all reality, people go to studios because of the person, and since you can't sell the person, recording studios actually have zero value as far as investors go, and as far as business goes, that makes all the sense in the world. Of course, they went with you. They weren't there because of ardent. They're your clients because of you.

Speaker 2 (00:44:24):

I wish I had known that at the time. It would've given me more confidence. I was really nervous. That was a frightful time. I had two small kids, and it was really scary making that jump. But I mean, yeah, I totally believe that. Now empirically, I see that that's true, but I was 30 years old and probably had the mind of a teenager. I wasn't really thinking on that scale or at that point in my life. So it was definitely a scary moment for me. But I mean, the proof was that, yeah, I left and they tried to keep the room open and working, and they ended up closing it like three months later. To be fair, a huge percentage of those clients that discovered me, discovered me because I was at art. And if I would've just been sitting in my house mastering records out of my house the whole time, I don't think that I would've developed the client base that I had that followed me after that fact. But yeah, what you said is true. I mean, it's like they did. They absolutely did. It was shocking to me how quickly we got it off the ground.

Speaker 1 (00:45:16):

It's not shocking to me, but I understand why it was shocking to you. You just didn't know that it worked that way. But I

Speaker 2 (00:45:22):

Just didn't know the numbers yet. I didn't know the facts.

Speaker 1 (00:45:24):

But I mean, this is why you see that with very, very small exception, very small exception, when the people who made a studio successful decide that time's up, that's it for the studio. It either gets sold to someone else who repurposes that building for something else, or maybe another group of producers come in, and if they're people who don't have clientele, the place goes under an example sphere. I don't know if you're familiar with Sphere out in la. He bought that place. I forget from who, from someone very successful. It was a man, I forget who Sphere used to belong to. It was a successful studio, then he bought it and renovated it. But that's a very rare situation.

Speaker 2 (00:46:14):

Yeah, there's a few places in Nashville. It's usually if you think of the RCA studios where Dave Cobb is now, places like that. But I mean, that's a really successful guy moving into a historic place that's kind of a no-brainer. You think, well, that's going to work. He's already got a tremendous client base on and so forth. But if you just hired some dude and say, okay, come run the studio and make the deposits here so I can draw a paycheck, good luck. It's not going to happen.

Speaker 1 (00:46:38):

Yeah. I guarantee you that that's only working because he's a successful guy.

Speaker 2 (00:46:43):

Sure.

Speaker 1 (00:46:44):

If you took that historical studio, and I don't want to say nobodies, I hate the way that word sounds. Yeah, no, I get you. But that what you're saying, but for all intents and purpose, if you put a bunch of noddies in there, that place is going to tank regardless of its historical status. For that reason, people go to studios because of the person that's in it. This is also why, whether the old guard likes it or not, why laptop producers and self-taught bedroom guys who, and girls who develop the skills can get clients and they can do it in very bare bones, home setups and do great, because at the end of the day, clients care about the person who's working the gear, not the actual gear.

Speaker 2 (00:47:36):

I mean, they care about how their music sounds at the end. And if they don't care, I mean, I used to be really wrapped up, and I guess I haven't updated on my website in forever, but having a full gear list and stuff on that, and at some point in the near future, I'm going to have their website redone, and I'm just removing that entirely. It doesn't matter. No one cares how many custom EQs I've got or what kind of speakers I use. No one cares about that. Only other mastering guys and a handful of audio geeks really care about that stuff. Everybody else is just like, does it sound good?

Speaker 1 (00:48:10):

Euphonic Masters, by the way.

Speaker 2 (00:48:12):

Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, it hasn't been updated in forever, so

Speaker 1 (00:48:15):

I think it was updated since the last time I saw it. Oh, I don't know. I don't remember. There was a while

Speaker 2 (00:48:19):

Ago. I don't do any of the updates, so I just have to send 'em off and have 'em, have a guy do it, but I'm going to remove all that stuff. I have a few pictures who talk about, dude, that's so awesome. People don't hire me because I've got a pendulum compressor or an SEC eight or whatever. They don't care

Speaker 1 (00:48:33):

About that Maroon five.

Speaker 2 (00:48:34):

Well, or they heard a song they liked or an album that they liked or whatever, or a producer that they have worked with before just finished a record with says, Hey, I want you to use this guy. He's really good, or whatever. And that's the kind of stuff that happens. Or a lot of times, a lot of my clients are repeat clients. They just keep coming back. And I love those guys, and that's amazing to me that people will keep sending records to me over and over again. I love that they like the way I hear it, and everybody comes out happy in that way. So

Speaker 1 (00:49:01):

Man, first of all, your client list is nuts. Do you ever look at it and say, damn, son, that's an insane list. I don't mean sit there and stroke yourself off, but I mean, I don't mean it in that way. I mean in, do you ever take a moment and look at it and realize

Speaker 2 (00:49:22):

There's definitely times that it's usually not looking at the list. It's usually I'll cut an album for somebody, and I did the last Dave Matthews band album, and I can literally remember sitting around in the parking lot at Full Sail listening to Under the Table and Dreaming, and then Crash came out, and we'd sit out in the parking lots and jam out to that while we were in school learning to be recording engineers. And then 25 years later, I'm mastering that new album, and there's moments like that that are sort of surreal. One of my best friends in the industry, he died about six years ago, Mike Shipley.

Speaker 1 (00:50:00):

Oh, yeah, it's tragic.

Speaker 2 (00:50:01):

One of my all time, all time favorite mixed engineers. I mean, so many of the records that he mixed were just massive parts of my youth. And then we ended up working together on the last, whatever, I don't, eight or 10 years that he was alive, doing a ton of work together. He liked my work and I liked his work, and it was a great symbiotic relationship, but it was always kind of surreal that Maroon Five Records a great example that was produced by Mutt Lying Mixed by Mike Shipley. And I thought that that was half of my childhood.

Speaker 1 (00:50:29):

Man, that's nuts.

Speaker 2 (00:50:31):

So those moments really, really speak to me. There's those times that I worked with a band that I was a massive fan of, and I thought, well, I'll never get a chance. And then suddenly I'm cutting their records or something like that.

Speaker 1 (00:50:42):

I'm going to read some of this list real quick just because when I do the intro to this, I'm not going to turn the intro into a 90 band list, but I just want to give people some idea of what we're talking about in case they've never heard of you. Let's just say Allison Krause, all that remains alter Bridge, Backstreet Boys, bare Naked Ladies, black Eyed Peas, Vanessa Carlton, Dave Matthews Band, driving, crying, Eve six, Everclear, fly Leave, government, mule Hate Breed, Warren Hayes, Hollywood Undead, lamb of God, corn, maroon five non-point Liz pH POD, wage war, overkill. Trivium Thursday. Thursday is Grace Soulfly Skillet. Oh, 21. Pilots Got to Say Them. I love that band. But that's a crazy, crazy list, man. And I'm glad that you take a moment sometimes to think about it. I've noticed though, I kind of do the same thing when I look back over URMs achievements or whatever. I don't normally sit there and gloat to myself or whatever, but sometimes I'll be in a nail the mix like this January, sitting at T's house on the Angels and airwaves, and it's just like, oh, we got here.

Speaker 2 (00:52:01):

Yeah. How crazy is that? This is awesome. Yeah, exactly. And that's what it is. Those moments. And the first one that I had, that was probably 99, it was the ZZ Top record, just like Triple X, but it was 30th. It was their 30th anniversary, and I didn't master it, but because I was the digital editing guy, I did a tremendous amount of digital editing on it, preparing that for, to send off to mastering, and that was the first one. And I mean, I was such a massive ZZ Top fan all through the eighties and nineties. I mean, it was one of my top, probably three or four bands, just loved love, loved them so much, and then to be hanging out with Billy Gibbons and doing this editing and stuff, it was so surreal. And even then, I'd only been out of school for a few years and I thought, wow, if this can be the future, this is pretty stinking cool. I didn't expect that all the time.

(00:52:51):

The other time that it hits me is sometimes I'll look at the week that's coming up and I'll just look at the bookings that are scattered across the week, and I'll think to myself, wow, every day I'm doing one project that 20 years ago if I had done that in a month or a year, I'd think I was, this is happening. This is awesome. And now I'm doing that at least one of those every day kind of a thing. So you just have those moments where you start thinking back about, because it happened so gradually, it's not like I just woke up one day and all these credits were falling in my lap. They just happened. No,

Speaker 1 (00:53:23):

This is a life's work.

Speaker 2 (00:53:24):

Yes. 25 years of just kind of chipping away at it and trying to make people happy. And then one day you wake up and you kind of go, oh, wow. I've worked on some pretty cool projects over the years. So yeah, I mean, it's been a good run.

Speaker 1 (00:53:36):

I had a couple of moments like that with my band. One was a pretty funny scenario, but then after it happened, it dawned on me that, holy shit, this almost happened. So my band made it to Oz Fest. I don't know if you remember the Oz Fest tour?

Speaker 3 (00:53:55):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:53:56):

For people who don't remember Oz Fest. Oz Fest was a huge festival tour every summer that it was big. It was

Speaker 2 (00:54:04):

The giant festival. Each summer

Speaker 1 (00:54:06):

It was like warp tour for metal basically, and then it got replaced by Mayhem Fest, but we did Oz Fest on our first record, and it happened too fast to take in, but then one time, somehow I was in the main backstage, we're definitely not a main stage band, and I had to piss so bad and I found a bathroom and it was like a piss emergency basically. So you're not typically supposed to use the main stage bathrooms, but I had to When

Speaker 2 (00:54:43):

You got to

Speaker 1 (00:54:43):

Go?

(00:54:44):

Yeah, it was either going to be right there on the ground all on my clothes or it was going to go in that bathroom. So I went in that bathroom and then the door wouldn't open. I couldn't get out. There was something fucked with the door, and it was one of those really, really heavy doors, and it wasn't locked. It was just jammed, and then the light turns off. It was on a timer, the light switch was outside. So I'm stuck in this bathroom, not supposed to be in the light's off, and we had to play in 25 minutes, so I need to get back and it's a long haul. It would take 15 minutes just to walk to the second stage. So I'm starting to get nervous. So eventually I kicked the door police style, kicked the door open, and it just swung open and slammed against the wall. Sharon Osborne had walked by literally 15 seconds earlier, dude, I almost took Sharon Osborne out and literally 15 seconds early, she walked by with her daughter. Can you imagine having injured them?

Speaker 2 (00:56:00):

You definitely have a different memory of Oz Fest.

Speaker 1 (00:56:02):

Well, I have a whole different career right now. Yeah, I think so. I was thinking about it the whole time, and I was like, once my adrenaline went down after the holy shit, I almost kicked a door in Sharon Osborne's face. Then it was like, holy shit, I almost kicked a door in Sharon Osborne's face. What in the fuck? How did we get here?

Speaker 2 (00:56:24):

How did these worlds collide in the first place? Right.

Speaker 1 (00:56:27):

Yeah, that's actually real.

Speaker 2 (00:56:28):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:56:28):

It was a great moment. I think that to me, that's the best way to appreciate things. I think when you have these realizations, a lot of people have me that I should make a conscious effort to have gratitude or something. I think they mean well, but it just doesn't, I don't know. I can't fake it. It has to hit me. Has to hit me.

Speaker 2 (00:56:56):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:56:56):

I don't know if you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (00:56:57):

Well, no, I mean, I am just seriously filled with gratitude all the time. The deal. There are a ton, and I mean a ton of dudes out there that are every bit as talented as I am, mean, it's not like I'm just this one guy and I just happen to have had a bunch of opportunities that a lot of people don't ever get. I mean, that's the reality of it. The right, just luckily in the right place at the right time.

Speaker 1 (00:57:22):

Yeah, that's part of it. But dude, you crush those opportunities.

Speaker 2 (00:57:26):

Okay. Yeah, in many cases that's true. But I'm just saying, so for example, Mike Shipley, how did I meet Mike Shipley? So back when glut started, I was good friends with ju. I am good friends with Jules, but I mean, I was good friends with Jules at the time when he started it, he had wanted me to come over and start a forum over there, and I thought about it, but I decided not to. And I thought, well, I used to hang out on the Gear Sluts chat. They used to have this, I'm assuming they don't now, but when it first started, they had this little chat room. You could pop up a separate window and you'd sign in and you could sit there and chat in real time with people all over the world that were Gear Slots members. It was actually pretty cool.

(00:57:58):

This is, like I said, the first couple of years of gear slots, it wasn't nearly as big as it is now. It was different. I ended up sponsoring that for about two years. I was the euphonic sponsor of the Gear Slots chat, had a little banner at the top, and we paid a max amount of dollars each month for the sponsorship and so on and so forth. And that's literally how I came across Mike Shipley. He came in one day, was just angry ship shape as he was on gear, somebody had screwed up a record and was asking the guys, who should come on someone? Just give me an idea who should. I'm tired of using this guy and this guy and this guy. Who do I need to try out? And everybody's saying, try, you should use Brad. You should use Brad.

Speaker 1 (00:58:32):

A mastering engineer ruined his album.

Speaker 2 (00:58:35):

Yes.

Speaker 1 (00:58:35):

Oh, I know that feeling.

Speaker 2 (00:58:36):

Yeah, that was pretty common with Mike because he was pretty picky. He got the mix of sound the way he wanted them to. They didn't need to be, and they never needed very much. It was just a little bit of Polish here and there to make 'em fit together and that sort of a thing. And they were ready to go and too many guys, I guess decided to get out the Air Hammer and go to work on him just because that's, I don't know, maybe they had the tools. I don't know. I don't know why. But anyway, and he literally did, because these several people that were, he didn't know them from Adam. They were friends of mine that were from Gear Sluts, but he decided to reach out to me. He sent me a private message on Gear Sluts. I did a single for him. He liked it. I did. The next thing I knew, he sent me the new a band called Fuel. I dunno if you remember them. They were popular back in the late nineties, early two thousands. Yeah, of course. So I did the Fuel album with him and then from there on out, we just kept working, and that was literally just because I was hanging out in the Gear Sluts chat, and he popped in and was in a bad mood over something that had happened to him.

Speaker 1 (00:59:26):

Let's dissect that for a second though, because see, to me that's not luck for several reasons, and I'll tell you why. First, let me also just say URM students. You've got the URM chats and I have seen similar stories, maybe not at that level of a Mike Shipley, but I've seen similar things happen where in the URM chats, people hook up and now have careers together and serious partnerships. So use that shit. Yes. Here's why I don't think it's luck. You were sponsoring it. The luck side of it is that somebody else fucked up the master on that day that he happened to go on the chat and talk about it. That's the luck part, was that somebody else fucked up and that he was talking about it. But the fact that it came to you is more that you positioned yourself, right? Because obviously you had been in there, you had been paying the money to sponsor it, and you had been doing good enough work and making enough people happy to where they said your name, but that's not luck. That's work and positioning.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):

Yeah. My point though is that I believe that there's lots of guys out there right now mastering guys, let's say that cut great sounding records. They really just need that one chance. And I've got, my thing is it's not just Mike Shipley. I've got, I don't know, like a dozen stories like that where just people have mentioned offhandedly or someone had heard, oh, someone said you're pretty good at this, and they give me a shot and they like what I do, and I get that shot because I happen to know somebody. I've done a lot of networking. Now that's something, by the way, that's huge, huge, huge, huge, huge is networking and not pimping yourself, not just always putting your card in someone's hand, but get to know people. Be friendly. I think being able to just talk with people naturally and have a conversation that doesn't revolve around what Mike pre they used on this album kind of stuff all the time. It's immeasurable, the impact that has, I think on people that you can just have a conversation with somebody if you're socially awkward. I mean, no offense, but you got to work on that because,

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):

And you can work on it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):

You can work on it, absolutely. Trust me, I've seen it, but I mean at the same time that networking is huge. You're not going to make in this industry if you're just going to sit at home and wait for the phone to ring. You've got to get out and take advantage of every opportunity to meet and press the flesh and talk to people and get to know people and develop relationships. Because a really, really relational

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):

Industry, man, I just experienced the best version of this. I just had to go to Florida for now. The mix. We did it with a Swedish producer named Buster Odeholm. Mark my words. In the next five to 10 years, he's going to be at the top of the metal game. And the reason I think so, by the way, former URM student, which is badass and self-taught bedroom guy who figured out how to do things great. So very, very modern, the modern template I guess for how many people get good, but the reason that I think that he's going to be a big shot, he's still coming up and we try to feature people at all levels from TLA to people that we think are going to be, if they have something to say, something to contribute. We don't care if they're TLA or coming up.

(01:03:00):

But anyways, my first time meeting this dude was last week. I got in an Uber with him and we went to have lunch with Nick, our production manager, and in the first minute of knowing him, we're talking about girls joking around. We had lunch. We didn't talk about work until the last five minutes of that lunch. And it was just like, so what's the schedule? Okay, we're going to do this and this and that. And the dude was so easy to hang out with and whenever we talk about this topic here on the podcast are now the mix. All the pros are always saying, you got to be able to hang out with people. You got to be able to network. And this was the most perfect example of someone who you just can hang out with him. He can hang out. We went to the studio that we rented. He had instant rapport with the studio owner that was twice his age. Busters is only 28. That stuff, man, in addition to skills, that's the formula.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):

Well, I mean, I've said this for years and a lot of people look at me funny. Either they don't want to believe it or they think I'm lying, but I'm telling the God's honest truth. I know more guys that are maybe not super talented but have fantastic personalities can really interface with people that have been successful than I do. The opposite. I don't know. I can't think readily of anyone who is socially awkward has not tried to improve that and is just a stellar engineer that has been super successful. All of the successful guys I know are able to hang out and talk about just whatever. It doesn't have to be audio, maybe it is audio, but just whatever and just can hang out and they're a good chat, good conversation, a good personality.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):

From the standpoint of audio production, if you're just purely talking about can you make the record sound good? It should be about your skills and that's it. But I mean, people want, it's a relational industry. People want to the person and get along with 'em and want to hang out with 'em and that kind of stuff, especially if you're going to be, and what I do, it's a little different because obviously most of my clients, I don't even meet most of my clients face-to-face ever. But if you're recording or mixing, there's a lot of times you're going to have people in the room with you and you've got to have a good vibe.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):

That's why I think he's going to, as a producer man, he's an awesome mixer, but I think as a producer, he's going to be working with some big bands because that's what it takes is like, yes, the skills, I think the skills are almost assumed that if you're working with certain level of bands, you might not be a genius, but you got to be at a certain level, I think not going to suck obviously, but being able to hang out with them in a way to where they're comfortable and they like hanging out with you, that's going to make a huge difference in you moving forward or not. Because you were just saying there's tons of these scenarios that you can point to where someone just recommended you or just said, try this guy out. But the thing is that in my experience, that's how the majority of audio careers get off the ground is through recommendations. Word of mouth, somebody knows somebody. That's how it works. I really don't know any other way that it works. Is there one,

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):

Okay, there's a few guys out there that I don't know personally. I don't know of anyone who knows them personally, so I don't know what their personality is like

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):

Seban the ghost.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):

Yeah, that's actually who I was thinking of. I've mixed, I've mastered a bunch of stuff. That'ss mixed. I have no idea if the guy's a good hang. He may be the most socially awkward person ever, but his talent is so ridiculously off the charts that it doesn't really matter. That's by far the outlier, right?

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):

Yeah. Well, I've always said that if you can make money for people, everything else doesn't matter. First of all, I don't know him, so he could be the coolest guy ever, but he also could be the unit bomber and it wouldn't matter.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):

But the difference is the only reason he makes people money is because he got the opportunity. Somewhere along the line, he's got

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):

To be able to hang to some degree.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):

He would be the outlier if that were the case. And I don't know that there are any outliers. I've never met one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):

I remember reading an interview long time ago with, I think Wes Borland from Limp Bizkit, not a band I'm a big fan of, but this was when they were huge biggest band in the world status, and the interviewer was asking about with music that angry and in general about all of metal. I mean, they were not considered real metal, but still, that's the kind of metal that was big at that time, and it was a whole scene and the interviewer was saying, aren't the producers and record companies afraid to work with you guys? Your music's so angry. They scared. And his answer was like, look, these bands like us and Korn and Slip Knot, I mean these are professional bands. These are guys, these are our jobs, and there's no way that any of our peers could have gotten this far if they didn't know how to work with people and hang out with people. There's just no way. So the art is one thing. The art might sound crazy and angry and make you want to break stuff, no pun intended, but the people behind it, they have to be functional to some degree. I mean, running a band at that level is not, there's no joke. So you got to be able to function around people and you have to be able to hang out. I thought his answer was interesting. I think that this has always been true in music. Even in classical music. I've seen it be true

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):

With bands. You kind of get into a little different vibe because I have worked with bands and been around bands before where one or more of the members of the band just really couldn't care less what anybody thought.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):

Yeah, but there's always the one guy in every band,

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):

Or sometimes it's the manager or sometimes it's the label, the a and r guy. There's always one guy who's grounded. Yes, I think a band could be completely crazy, and if they keep putting out a product that sells, somebody will handle it and absorb it and be okay with it. I don't think that works in the engineering side, the production side. I think we have to be able to absorb that stuff, but we have to be able to also to just interface and have a good time with people and get along with people. And there's some engineers out there that sometimes they post stuff on Facebook or whatever. I kind of think, man, the vibe you're putting out is so aggressive or so negative. It makes me wonder what kind of artist goes, Hey, that's a person. I want to be involved with my art,

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):

Right?

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):

I mean, that's the way some people are, I guess. I don't know, but I just feel like it's the whole attracting flies with honey rather than vinegar.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):

Well, that's why I actually really appreciate your Facebook page or your Facebook profile, not page, just for people who are going to differentiate. I don't know if it's friends only or something or if that's public, but I've always found everything you post to just be either uplifting or entertaining or funny, and I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):

Well, thank you. But probably in 2010, I went through and I cleared out. I had, I dunno, like 1500 Facebook friends, and I just cleared out all of them that weren't actually close. Friends of mine paired it down to whatever, 150 people or something, and within hours I was getting all these messages and Facebook friend requests like, Hey, somehow we got disconnected and it's bands and things like that that I didn't know. The guys from Adam. I literally had never met a single one of 'em, probably never spoke with 'em on the phone. Might've communicated once or twice via email in some cases, maybe only spoken to the guitar player and it's the lead singer. I literally don't know this guy from anybody except I mastered his record, but he wanted to be Facebook friends and I have a firm that I use for marketing stuff Every now and then we want to put together t-shirts or graphics or whatever. I reached out to him and I was like, what am I going to do here? I don't want to piss off all these people that they out to me and they want to be Facebook friends. I mastered their record and I tell 'em, no, you kind of come across like a dick. So it's like, I don't want to do that. So he was like, you need to treat your Facebook page as the personality for your business.

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):

Yes,

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):

And that's what I've done ever since then and

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):

Personal brand,

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):

And that's what it is. I mean, if you notice, I refuse to dive into religion or politics or any stuff like that because first of all, I think that that format is a ridiculous format to try to discuss things with nuance in the first place. But

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):

Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):

Secondly, I am not going to win people over. I'm not trying to win people over. I just want people to know who I am, and I am sort of the eternal optimist. People that know me will tell you that, how are you doing, Brad? Great. What am I going to complain about? I just am not kind of that person that gets hung up and whines about stuff typically. So what you see is a reflection of how I feel about stuff. Generally speaking, it is. If it makes me laugh, I'm going to post it. If it's something where somebody's done something really kind to help other people out, then that's great. I'd start that hashtag, or I use that hashtag kindness rules all the time because it's like I think that the world needs a lot of people who are trying to be kind to other people. So the personality for my business, but that's not fake. It's who I am, but I definitely keep my personal life off of it completely. I don't really share my personal life on social media at all.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):

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

(01:13:28):

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

(01:14:23):

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 think the way you're doing it is very smart. I don't want this to sound like fake. What you're doing is you're putting out a very positive personal brand. This is something I think about all the time too. So there was a time period where I used to post a bunch of personal stuff or opinions on things, and I stopped in stages, but at one point I decided no more personal stuff at all. They don't need to know what's going on with my family or someone I'm dating. Hell no, my dad has a concert next week. I am going to post about that fucking cool, but I leave anyone I'm dating off, for instance, and with a couple girls that actually has made them jealous or made them think that it's because I want to trick other girls or something. And it's like, actually, no. I'm trying to protect you. I I'm trying to protect you from the hoards that are going to start harassing you because I know the world I work in

(01:15:49):

That aside. Then a few years later, a certain war happened in 2014 that affected my family. I just posted, I was in fear for my family's life, and the amount of hate that started coming my way was just like, holy shit. And it was from people that I was friends with and that I had worked with, and it was a very, very rude awakening to where I've worked really, really hard for everything that I've achieved in music, big or small, and I am not going to fuck that up over political misunderstandings on a medium that, like you said, is not a good medium for discussion. Anyways, so I decided I will never post about religion, politics, anything like that ever again, and I will ban people from my page for I'll let, if they do it once, I'll be like, please leave that off. But they keep doing it gone zero tolerance. And in URM, in our community, one of the things that people love about the community, I mean, dude, we have people who are still subscribed to URM who have not done and nail the mix in two years because they went pro and they don't have time, but they're still subscribed. They still pay the subscription. They want access to the community. The community is so positive and

(01:17:27):

Their friends are in it. And dude, we have a zero tolerance policy on all that stuff. No politics, no religion, nothing divisive. You can't be an asshole. No shit talking the end zero, it works. I guess you get back what you put out there, and if you put and only tolerate I guess positive messages, that's what you're going to be surrounded by.

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):

Yeah, I mean, every once in a while I'll have one of my friends, it doesn't matter left or right, they'll tag me in something political and I'll untag myself. Same here. And I usually don't say anything to 'em unless it becomes a pattern, but it's just such an avoidable thing that's so divisive, the politics and religion and all this stuff, and I don't see the point in it. It's not going to move the ball down the field for me as a person, much less as business or anything else. I'm trying to tell you earlier about altruism and stuff. It's like, how can I make the world a better place? What can I do to make my legacy more than just he made

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):

Records. I know what you can start by fighting on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (01:18:36):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I can fucking docx people on Twitter and yeah, that'll do it. That's how I want to be known. So it's like, yeah, at least if someone can know that they can read my post and not have to shield their kids' eyes from it or whatever, then at least there's that. At the very least, there's that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):

Well, and also to what we were saying earlier about this being such a relationship driven industry, that being true, and it is true. That's not just an opinion. That is a fact. This is a relationship driven industry, and like you said, a lot of people that you work with friend request you because you're the dude that mastered the album. Why would you be looking to fight with them online? I've had to teach URM students about that, and we had a couple of employees back a few years ago, good guys, but they didn't understand. They would post some incendiary stuff on their personal pages, and I tell them, look, you can post whatever you want on your personal page, but you have to remove URM from your profile. If you want a list that you work at URM, you can't post that shit because we are not about that, and we don't want to be associated with that sort of thing. And I think it's the same thing as what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):

Yeah, I've got friends who are hyper political, probably 80% of what they post is political stuff on both sides. And it's amazing to me how many times they get into these really heated arguments about stuff. Like I said earlier, it's like you know that there's a certain percentage of people that it's going to turn 'em off either seeing your behavior and the way you respond to somebody or that you believe that X is the right political move or whatever, and it's like, I just don't understand the value. First of all, I've met two people in my life that have ever had any of their political or religious opinions changed by a Facebook post, and it hardly exists, and you risk just burning so many people over something that has nothing to do with what you do as a career or what you're trying to do to help them with their art. And I see these guys doing that and I think, wow, you're just, wow, I don't understand it. I just don't understand that

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):

Poisoning. Well, basically,

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):

Yeah, it just seems like it. Maybe not. I mean, if I wanted to hire somebody to be a chef or to do whatever, I'm not going to really care about their political beliefs. Same thing with if they're going to master a record for me, let's say I personally wouldn't care. It's like whatever. No, but someone else might. There's some people out there that I guarantee I've seen people like, well, I'm not going to buy that compressor from so-and-so because this is his political belief. I've literally seen those statements before and it's like, I don't want any part of that. It's not worth it, dude. People stop talking to family members over this stuff. Yeah, it's just not worth it. So for years I've just, yeah, it's probably been a decade now since I've posted anything remotely. I'll post stuff politically in jest.

Speaker 1 (01:21:33):

Yeah. Oh no, you post some funny ass shit. I steal some funny stuff. Me too. I stole that Oscars post from you. That one was hilarious.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):

That one was one of those that turned kind of sideways. Yeah, one of the guys did it, and it was just like, I can't believe that somebody's going to get bent about this. It's literally obviously just meant to be funny. It's not an oppressive thing. It's not anyone who knows me would know that I didn't mean that artists shouldn't speak for themselves or what are you talking about? It's literally the way it was written. It was

Speaker 1 (01:22:08):

Funny. Yeah. The joke was, I mean, for people who don't know at these award shows, you're on TV and so you're on a clock. Everybody has what, 45 seconds or something. And so when these actors start going off about their causes, they're fucking up the show. There's more to it than them just going off about a cause they believe in. I know for a fact that they've been asked to keep it to X amount of time. So the whole meme is about that, and it's not so much artists should shut the fuck up. It's just a funny take on it. And

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):

It's kind of like there's a time and a place. Right, exactly. So I've accepted awards before and I get up and I thank the artists and the producers and my wife and I go sit down. It's not just because you hand me a trophy doesn't mean that, okay, this is my time pontificate about everything. People aren't there for that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:08):

You didn't tell everyone how to vote?

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):

No, they don't come there and go like, Hey, let's see who wins this Grammy so they can tell me how to feel about something. That's what music's all about.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):

Wait, wait a second. So you didn't use your chance when you won that Grammy to make the world a better place by talking about trees for five minutes? I did not. I missed that opportunity. Maybe next time that person.

Speaker 3 (01:23:32):

Maybe next time,

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):

Man. Okay, so I want to talk about the Grammys real quick, but let me just tell you just before we move on that meme, I posted it in my stories. I did that before I saw the reaction you got. If I had seen that reaction, I just thought it was so fucking funny that I had to post it. And I saw some people get bent later.

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):

Wow. It was like one person, but yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):

Yeah, one. But he was wow. But I got one on Instagram in my dms where this dude was assuming, he started telling me that I have fascist views about artists and that he's very disappointed that someone in my position would believe that artists aren't allowed to have a voice. And I'm like, where does that even, how did you

Speaker 3 (01:24:29):

Extrapolate that from a meme that has 30 words?

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):

I asked him something like, how on earth are you astute enough to think that you've got me completely figured out from a joke meme I posted on a story? Please explain this to me because if so, I want to know how to do it. He ended up apologizing when it made him realize that he was being ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):

I wasn't so lucky, but I just keep handling it. I just keep telling 'em, it's a joke, man. It's a joke. I mean, if you don't get it, then I'm sorry, but it's literally just meant to be funny. I work, my entire career is built around helping artists express their views. That's literally all I do all day long. It's help the artists achieve their goals with regards to expressing their views. So obviously I would never be against that. That's just ludicrous to even suggest, but somebody gets it in their mind

Speaker 1 (01:25:25):

And then they have to run with it. Let's talk about the Grammys for a second. Lots of people talk shit about the Grammys. They say it's not important, blah, blah, blah. But we all know that it's a big goal for lots of people in music. It is one of those notch on the belt dreams that engineers and artists universally tend to have, and it does mean something. And I think a lot of people just talk shit because it's easier to talk shit than to say, I wish I had that and I didn't get it, and I don't know how I'm going to get it, but you got it. And what's it like? Was it like a fuck yeah. Sort of thing, or what did it feel

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):

Like to your initial statement or point? For me, when I started my career, I've always believed that setting goals, whether they're easily attainable, you know, can do this on your own or it's just something like a pie in the sky. If things work out great and winning a Grammy was one of those for me. I mean, that's sort of the highest award that you can get from your peers in the industry that say, Hey, this was superb work. As a master engineer, we only get an actual Grammy. So just to clarify, and this is not to be hyper picky or pedantic here, but to be a Grammy winner, you literally win the trophy, the Grammy trophy with your name on it. So as a master engineer, I've won Grammy's, quote unquote, where I mastered the best bluegrass record or the best whatever record, and the artist, the producer, the engineer, or any engineer that worked on over half the record, whatever, they get, the trophy master engineers do not master engineers only get a Grammy in, I think it's six categories, album of the year, record of the year, and then the technical categories, best surround, best recorded, non-classical, that kind of stuff.

(01:27:23):

So to win mine, which was best recorded, to me, that was sort of the ultimate goal. In fact, I never actually, that was never, to me, it was just I wanted to win a Grammy, but the thought of actually getting a Grammy trophy that was for best engineered, which is of course what I do, there's obviously reliance on the players being excellent, everything upstream being amazing. It's not like I take credit for it, but just being part of that team that was highlighted that year of saying, this is amazing what was done here that was really, really special. I remember a friend of mine from Nashville who at that point, he had I think seven different Grammys, none of 'em were for best engineer. And he called me and congratulated me and I was like, Hey, man, thank you. I appreciate that. And I told him, I was like, I'm sure for you it'd be old hat.

(01:28:07):

And he told me, he said, I would trade all seven of these for best engineered, because when you think about it, the best engineered is the one where it's not about this. I mean, like I said, it's hard to disassociate the performance from the engineering and so on and so forth. Obviously if it's a moving performance, it's going to kind of sound better in a lot of ways. It'll connect with you emotionally. But ultimately it's when your peers, the rest of the recording engineers and producers that are academy members vote and say, that's the best sounding record this year. That really meant a lot. So it's kind of like I got the one that was the ultimate for me, at least right out of the gate, and that was really cool, and I'll talk about that in a minute. I'll tell you right now, the downside was I got home and whatever, a month or two later, the trophy arrives.

(01:28:53):

It's not like the Oscars where they hand you the trophy and you'll get it engraved right there. The Grammys, you win it, they give you a dummy award, and then they make the plaques and create the awards and send it to you two months later or whatever. So I got it a couple months later and I opened it up and this is so cool, and it's giddy and it's fun, all this kind of stuff, and it hit me. I was 39 years old and I thought I've literally at this point accomplished every career goal I'd ever set out for myself, and what do I do now?

Speaker 1 (01:29:17):

Set them higher.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):

Well, at some point you kind of go, and I've never been one. I know I'm blessed in this regard. It's not something that I can take credit for. I've never dealt with depression before. I've never been saddled with those sorts of issues. So I didn't go through a bout of depression or

Speaker 1 (01:29:33):

Anything. I'm very happy for you.

Speaker 2 (01:29:35):

Yeah, no, and I really think that I'm kind am the outlier in that regard. It seems like most people have struggled with some things like that. Maybe my brain doesn't work the way it's supposed to, and I don't feel some of

Speaker 1 (01:29:46):

Those emotions. No, actually, I think your brain works the way it is supposed

Speaker 2 (01:29:48):

To. I don't know. Well, whatever, but I never went through depression or anything. I don't want to overdramatize it, but there was this thing, so what's my next goal? Okay, win another Grammy. I mean, at that point, to me, it's a little bit like going collecting Ferraris. Now I have two Ferraris. It's like, well, that doesn't do me any, it's not the same. That one was the one. And

Speaker 1 (01:30:11):

So you had an existential prices,

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):

And part of it was I'm 39, 40 years old. There's probably some midlife stuff going on there. So there's a little bit of like, is this it? Have I reached the mountaintop now? Is this as good as it gets? And it was good, don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining, but I'm just kind of like, what do I do? I've always had goals that I would strive after. And it's weird at age 39 to have done all of it, platinum records, gold records, number one, singles, whatever. It all happened. What I've found is, for me, it's changed where now it's more about developing and sustaining a reputation in the industry, not just as maybe a nice guy. Hopefully you don't Google and find all kinds of negative stuff about me. But also being that,

Speaker 1 (01:30:58):

Well, you tweeted that one thing in 1998. I know that's not true, we can't talk

Speaker 2 (01:31:05):

Anymore.

(01:31:06):

But beyond that kind of my goal, if you could say this has been just like, how can I be that guy that the artist always feels like they're as important to me as they really are, that I'm not dismissive about it? Look, I charge the same amount of money. If you're maroon five or if you're somebody's mom doing a vanity project, I don't charge. Somebody can afford to pay more money on a major label. I don't charge more. It's the same rate no matter what it is, what it is. That helps me, I think in a lot of ways, stay grounded and appreciate everybody that picks up the phone or sends an email and books a session with me. And that's kind of become my goal. It's like I want to make sure that every client feels like they're as important to me as they really are. It takes all of 'em for me to pay the mortgage and pay for the kids' school and do this and do that, and all these sorts of things. It takes all of that, and they're all really, really important, not just the big famous ones. So that's kind of my goal Now, if that means anything, but it does back to what it felt like, the actual winning of the award, going to the Grammys and all that, it was a bit surreal, honestly. It was a bit kind of weird. That's way outside of my comfort

Speaker 1 (01:32:17):

Zone. I went one year. I know what you mean. It's

Speaker 2 (01:32:21):

Just like, yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:32:22):

It's like being on another planet.

Speaker 2 (01:32:24):

Yeah, it just screams. I guess that's a lot of the entertainment industry in Los Angeles is probably a lot of that, but it's just not a dude from Memphis who masters records and is by himself all day.

Speaker 1 (01:32:38):

Man, I went in 1998, I was 18 or something, and my dad's lawyer was a guy named Joel Katz, who's this huge, huge attorney. And Joel came to an after party after one of my dad's concerts and invited me to go with him. And I was like, are you serious? He's like, yeah, call my office tomorrow if you don't call, it's your fault. I was like, alright. Then he came through and it was so weird, man.

Speaker 2 (01:33:12):

Yeah, you say the after party, that was probably the most surreal thing. So we won the Grammy for Alison Kraus record, and there was a whole long drawn out, hilarious, but too long for this format story involving Mike and Shipley, and we'll just say he got lost and it took a while. So then we go to the main ceremony where they only give out the last few awards that are sort of the big awards, and they do all the live concert and everything like that. And so then we go to the after party, and that was, I think when it hit me the most because I'm sitting there and in this catering line and I noticed that ice tea is the guy standing in front of me. And the whole time I'm thinking that it hits me that Kenny Loggins is on stage playing highway to the Danger zone live. That's the live artist that was performing at the after party. It was, it just, maybe that happens all the time in Los Angeles, but it was a very surreal moment for me looking around. This is weird, man.

Speaker 1 (01:34:20):

When I went, so I was in line to go in. There was suddenly this huge commotion and this short black dude, and this is important. I'm not about to say something fucked up. You guys will all understand why I said it this short but enormous black dude knocked me out of the way and knocked the next couple people out of the way and not tackled, but used his chest to hit this dude in the back and basically send him forward like 10 feet and suddenly security were there. And I was like, is that Mike Tyson? It was fucking Mike Tyson. And that was his ex-wife Robin gis with her new dude and Mike Tyson being, I think he's calmed down. I got knocked out of the way by Mike Tyson. Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:35:18):

Good thing you didn't take a swing.

Speaker 1 (01:35:22):

Yeah, could have fucked him up. Yeah. So just next level, surreal. And then Stevie Wonders playing and it's just like, what is going on

Speaker 3 (01:35:32):

Here?

Speaker 1 (01:35:33):

It was just one of those things. And I'm sitting there in the seat and David Crosby is right in front of me and he's playing with his wife's hair and that little detail. He's just like a normal old guy. He's just sitting there with his wife playing with her hair. I don't know the level of watching Aretha Franklin. I'm watching Stevie Wonder, David Crosby's in front of me. I just got knocked out of the way by Mike Tyson. Like, whoa, Brad Pitts over there. I was 18 years old. Shit blew my mind.

Speaker 2 (01:36:09):

I don't think it matters if you're 18 or 38 if you're not in that world. It's kind of a bizarre scene. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:36:15):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:36:15):

So we went to, the Village, always does the p and e Wing party every year. And so I show up that whatever Wednesday night for that when we flew in a little bit early so we could do that, and that's the producer and engineer wing for maybe those who aren't hip to the recording academy stuff. So I got invited to that. I went and it's at the Village studios and at one point we're kind of standing in the little tent that they have set up outside and my wife starts talking, strikes up a conversation with somebody, and the two ladies are sitting there talking and I look over and it's art Alex aka from Everclear. Nice. And that's his wife that's talking to my wife. And so my wife ends up introducing me to them and I've cut Everclear album since then, and including Art's new solo record that came out just this last year. We hit it off and ended up having dinner that week and just had a good time. He's flown out to the studio and hung out here at the house while we mastered one of his records. But it was just that kind of bizarre, just bump into somebody and now here you go. Last time I flew out to LA a few years ago, he's the one who picked me up at the airport. It was kind of the weirdest airport pickup ever to have art pick you up at the airport. But

Speaker 1 (01:37:23):

That right there, when I think of networking at its finest, I think of it as something genuine. You're making a genuine friendship and then you happen to work with that friend. To me, that's how it should be. It's a word that gets bastardized a lot and gets used in with weird connotations because a lot of people are just fucked up about it. But in my opinion, that's how it should be is you meet someone, you hit it off, you become friends or something I say or something because you can't be close friends with every single person obviously, but

Speaker 2 (01:38:01):

No, yeah, you develop a relationship,

Speaker 1 (01:38:03):

You develop a relationship, and it's a real one. It is not fake. It's not fake at all. In the best case scenarios, you become real friends and you also work together. I think that that relationship in lots of ways is what enables the work to happen. And obviously that work has to kick ass, but because if it didn't, then you're not even having that conversation in the first place. I think that's a pretty cool one, I think. Is he a good

Speaker 2 (01:38:32):

Driver? Yeah, he was a fine driver. Took me to this great killer little Mexican restaurant for lunch. It was awesome. I don't know the name of it, it's been too long. But yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:38:41):

He's a great

Speaker 2 (01:38:41):

Driver.

Speaker 1 (01:38:42):

So I have some thoughts about what you said about how you felt about your mastering win. So first of all, congrats on getting the one you actually wanted to get. That's great. The whole idea of what do I do next? That's a really hard question. And I think even if you haven't accomplished every single goal, I mean there's some goals, for instance, that you might never accomplish. So for instance, there's some goals I had that are not accomplished. However, the big picture of them were get a death metal band signed to a major label, wanted to be in a band that toured and made albums. I wanted it to go platinum of course, but that's not in my control. And that didn't happen and the band didn't get big. But I mean, we still got to do Oz Fest. We still got to tour many times, got to put out three awesome albums. We did all that stuff so

(01:39:47):

That part of me of the goal list was satisfied even if the top top level of it was not. So I guess regardless of that, now 10 years later, 40 now, that's not, my goal is not to be in a platinum band. So your goals change, but I still frequently experienced that feeling of I just accomplished something that I set as something that seemed so insurmountable that it was frightening and I did it. And now what? Because now it's over. I can't do this again. I already did it. I mean, can sustain it, but what's next? How do we take it further? And there's times where I do get depression over that. I have learned how to fight it though exercise, losing weight and all that. But on a mental level, I realized that I need to keep being unrealistic. That's the key for me at least, is even if I achieve something that at one point was unrealistic, like say a financial goal or something for the company, which we have achieved and surpassed many of the goals that I thought were unrealistic, but how do I go from there? And I've realized I have to start thinking in terms of way grander in order to make it interesting, to make it so unrealistic and so crazy that it's exciting again and it gives me purpose.

(01:41:25):

So whenever I feel like I'm losing purpose, I have noticed that it's because my goals aren't high enough, therefore they're not engaging enough and therefore I don't feel like they're meaningful enough. I find what is a crazy amount of impact I can make on other people, or what is a crazy revenue goal or something like that. And then I set that and then suddenly charged back up. So that's what works for me. I don't know if it's what works for other people, but I get it though with the Grammys, what are you going to do when it 18 more times? You already kind of crossed it off.

Speaker 2 (01:42:06):

I definitely would not be upset. No, of course. But at the same time, I know guys that have 7 8, 1 of my friends is 13 Grammy awards, and after a while it's just, you can tell when they get it, it's kind of like they're like, oh, cool, here's another one. But it's literally, the impact is a small percentage of what it was initially because it's the same thing that's happened over and over again. It loses that impact because it's not something fresh and new. For me, one of the things that with my goal becoming, hey, I want to really try to make sure every client gets the best every time for me, and that's a great goal and it's made to feel as important as they truly are. That was where I started looking outside of the studio more. I used to be such a studio rat and I was in here just as much as I could go and workaholic type thing. And I realized that I would be better served if I would freshen myself up and do things differently and find hobbies. Frankly, outside of the studio, I think it's really easy to overdo it and get a little too focused maybe sometimes. What's a

Speaker 1 (01:43:15):

Hobby? I've heard of this. I've heard of this concept, a hobby. What is a hobby?

Speaker 2 (01:43:20):

Well, for me, I get to the point where I try to work. I have friends of mine who are older and wiser perhaps, and they work more than I do, but I try to limit my work to about 30 hours a week. Now, sometimes I don't book certain projects that don't fit me because I don't really have the time, form or whatever, but I try to limit how much I do so that I have the time to do some of the things that I want to do. One of my hobbies is I've told you a bit about, this is rucking. It's an exercise type thing, but it's an exercise that doesn't really feel like an exercise. I just enjoy getting out and doing this. And so finding that time to disconnect and get out and spend an hour or two hours outside doing what I want to do that doesn't involve the studio. I don't even listen to music when I'm doing. I usually listen to podcasts just completely disconnect and it has nothing to do with being burned out or anything like that. It's like a way to completely energize myself so that when I get back in the studio, man, I cannot wait to hear what this project sounds like today and where it needs to go and that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:44:19):

Man, exercise has changed my life.

Speaker 2 (01:44:21):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44:22):

So rucking is that just walking with a heavier,

Speaker 2 (01:44:26):

We call it walking with a purpose is what we say, but it's derived from the military ruck marches. So you'd have, those guys will carry anywhere from 60 to whatever, over a hundred pounds. It's what they need to survive for X amount of days while they're out doing whatever they need to do. And a company started, the four military guys started building civilian backpacks that have special plates that fit in them in certain pockets up high on your back so they don't pull on you too hard and all this kind of stuff. And yeah, you put in whatever, 30, 40, 50 pounds and you'll go for miles and miles

Speaker 1 (01:44:56):

And miles. So I, man, I'm going to do that. So, alright, here's why. And thank you for telling me about that. I am lost 120 pounds, but I still have about 80 to go. Wow,

Speaker 2 (01:45:06):

Congratulations

Speaker 1 (01:45:07):

And thank you. And you lost 50 yourself and congratulations on that. That's amazing. One of the things about being heavier is that you burn more calories, especially when you move. So if you do enough cardio to lose weight from it, and you do lose weight from it as you go, if you keep going at the same intensity, it's going to burn less and less and less and less effective. So what I was thinking was I need to find a way to replace the weight that I lost when I go on these several mile long walks so that because man, an hour and a half walk for me is like 900 to a thousand calories. It is not that much anymore. But I want to add the weight back so that it becomes that again. Also, my legs are going to be like superhero legs.

Speaker 2 (01:45:55):

I'll tell you what's cool about rucking is it's considered what they call constant resistance training because your constantly, your entire core is engaged the entire time You've got this weight hanging off your shoulders, it naturally engages your core the entire time. And of course, that's extra weight that your legs are carrying, your shoulders are carrying. So you've got this constant light resistance. It's not like going and bench pressing 2 25 or anything like that, but I mean, you've got this constant resistance training. And so when you do these longer distances, we've done distances that are 30 and 50 miles. Nice. I average about six miles a day. Great. And it's like you just get out and get out and get fresh air, and I walk all around the town and see different things and find different places and I don't know, it's such a great way to get out and recharge and breathe fresh air and stuff.

(01:46:39):

And then I get back, I get home and I shower and I go to the studio and hit the space bar and listen to what I'm working on that day. And everything just, it feels great. It sounds good. I don't find myself run down in the studio. I used to get sometimes after these long days, long weeks, whatever, it's like I try to limit myself to about 30 hours. So it's like six hours a day, five days a week, light days. I make plenty of money doing that. I'm not doing this as I'm trying to get super rich or anything. I just want to make great music. So it works out really well. And I think that's been a huge thing for me is getting out of the studio a little more and loosening my goals that don't make me feel like I need to be in here all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:47:18):

Is that part of how you lost the weight Rucking?

Speaker 2 (01:47:20):

Yes, but I tore my meniscus in February of last year.

Speaker 1 (01:47:24):

What's a meniscus?

Speaker 2 (01:47:25):

So that is a pad that's much like cartilage that sits on top of the tibia, the large bone in your lower leg.

Speaker 1 (01:47:33):

That sounds terrible.

Speaker 2 (01:47:35):

And the femur sits on top of it. It's the cushion between the femur so it doesn't just grind on the bone. Right. So yeah, it can be painful, but I mean, my motto that I tell people is A little pain ever hurt anyone. Just suck it up and let's go. Right. But I mean, I rocked almost 1500 miles last year with a tor meniscus. It hurt sometimes and I limp a little bit, but whatever at the end of the day I'm going to get my work in. But yeah, so Chris Henderson is a friend of mine. He's a guitar player in a band called Three Doors Down. Met him back in like 99, 2000, so it's been a while, maybe five, seven years ago. He woke up one day and he was like 290 pounds. He was addicted to alcohol. He felt like, I don't know if he was ever diagnosed or whatever, but I mean he felt like he was an alcoholic, all this kind of stuff.

(01:48:15):

He's in a bad spot. He was in a bad place. A lot of guys get there. It's easy. Look, our industry is largely sedentary. It is what it is easy for guys to fall into that. And he decided to take control of it and he got into CrossFit and all this kind of stuff, and now he's like this crazy, crazy ripped super insha guy that I have no interest in following his footsteps to that degree. But he reached out to me maybe, yeah, it was right about nine, 10 months ago now, and said, Hey man, I'm using this app. I've been using this app called MyFitnessPal. It's a free app by Under Armour.

Speaker 1 (01:48:41):

Oh yeah. It's a great app.

Speaker 2 (01:48:42):

Yeah. Tracks his calories, tracks his workouts, he gets set to follow him and he uses a heart rate monitor on a watch, and he married those two things together and that was one of the ways he's really been able to control it. And so I started doing that May of last year and I've always been a workout guy, but I'd never really watched my diet super carefully. So it is what it is, and that's how I woke up one day and I was particularly fluffy and I was like, all right, I got to get rid of some of this fluff. Fluff. Yeah, I got to get rid of some of this fluff. So yeah, yeah, I've lost 50 pounds now in the last nine months, but it's not super fast. 1.2 pounds a week average or so

Speaker 1 (01:49:19):

That's actually how you're supposed to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:49:21):

Exactly. Because recalibrating kind of how your body thinks about food and processes food and how you think about food, your relationship with food and that sort of thing. So I recommend it to anybody. I think the guys in our industry, even guys who are thin, we talk about guys in the workout group. We see guys all the time that are skinny fat, right? They're six feet tall and weigh 165 pounds, but couldn't do five pushups if they needed to. They're not really healthy, they're just not fat.

Speaker 1 (01:49:46):

Now with all the exercise I do, the weight I'm at, even still being heavy, I can do 25 pushups. I've been working out

Speaker 2 (01:49:54):

Exactly and that's great. The whole thing for me is I want to get to a point where I'm healthy in weight, which I'm pretty much there now, but I'm also fit. So we're working out. I work out seven days a week. I don't take any days off, and that's become part of my life now and more than ever, like I said, I've always worked out usually four days a week or so. What changed diet wise? I had all these people trying to tell me that I should do keto or carnivore or whatever, and I just really it, I bought a cheap food scale off Amazon, like $20 digital food scale, and I'm weighing portions, literally accounting for each and every calorie. And it's just the discipline of doing that. That's been the key. That's been the key more than anything because working out, there's been times in my life that I worked out harder than this consistently, but you can't outwork out your diet. You can work out.

Speaker 1 (01:50:48):

I mean, unless if you're working out eight hours a day or something,

Speaker 2 (01:50:52):

Even then you can still out eat it. I mean, that's the reality of it, especially if you're not careful about what you're eating. If you're eating really clean foods, it'd be difficult, but if you're eating hose and Twinkies all day long, you can easily overcome that because you'll be so hungry all the time from burning so many calories. So

(01:51:07):

That's become kind of a thing where I talk to guys all the time in the studios when I'm talking to 'em about just anything. It's like, Hey man, so what's your fitness life look like and have time to look like I'm crazy, but I've lost, and we talked about this earlier before we started recording, I've lost a bunch of friends in this industry. Some of 'em are from cancer, from smoking or from liver problems, from too much alcohol or whatever, but I've lost a bunch of dudes from heart attacks. They were obese and they weren't being proactive about it and their heart gave out and it, it's something that it takes a little bit of work and some dedication more than anything. It just takes some self-discipline. But if you're willing to put the work in and do it, you can become so much healthier and more energetic and I don't know, I think you're,

Speaker 1 (01:51:49):

Dude, it's

Speaker 2 (01:51:49):

Transformational. It really is. It changes everything about you, I think. And so I try to talk to guys all the time about that, like, Hey, and I'm not like a fitness guru if you just look at me and you can tell that, but B, I'm definitely not one of these people that just talks about it all the time. And neither is Chris, by the way, from through or down mean. He literally just every once in a while, he'll make a post about it. In November, he will make a post about, Hey, if you want a summer buddy, you need to started in September, but it's not too late. Get started now. Don't wait until April and try to get in shape. But yeah, that's just become a thing because I see it all over the place. I see guys that even if they're weight-wise, they're in a good place. They don't do anything to actually improve their bodies and stress the bodies and they're supposed to

Speaker 1 (01:52:30):

And they could be eating like shit too.

Speaker 2 (01:52:32):

Oh, I know. Yeah. A lot of the goes do. Look, the diet's terrible for studio guys. A lot of times you work until you're just starving and you grab the closest thing and that's it. And that's not a great way to eat healthy at all.

Speaker 1 (01:52:43):

So you know what I've realized because battled weight issues forever now and lost weight several times. Something's different this time mentally. What I've realized is that the most important thing you can possibly do is fix the mental component, whatever it is that got you there in the first place. Some people, it's they didn't realize it. They put on two pounds a year for 10 years or 20 years. That's one thing a lot of people though treat food like a drug or there's a psychological reason for why they do what they do. And until you deal with that same way that if you're trying to get off of alcohol or drugs or something, there's a therapy component to it because there's something in you that led you to behave that way. It is as simple as just what you put in your body, but the fact that it even got there in the first place is more complex than people may realize. And so fixing the mental component is huge. I also realize that every single diet works, and so people should shut the fuck up about recommending diets to people. The Twine diet works if you're at a calorie deficit, so it doesn't matter. People should do. I really do believe that the best exercise is the one you'll do. The best diet is the one you'll stick to. The best kind of water is the one you'll drink.

Speaker 2 (01:54:16):

I'll double down on the Twinkie diet. That's not my diet, but I would say this, the Twine diet would probably be better for you than going keto, and I'll tell you why. That'll raise some eyebrows. What are you talking about? Here's the problem. I did keto for a while and lost weight and it was great, but the one thing keto did not address is portion control and changing the way that I viewed

(01:54:39):

What I'm eating because you can, Hey, eat as much bacon and steak as you want. Just don't eat any carbs. And that's basically what I did. Of course, because your body takes so long to process it, you eat, you actually eat fewer calories. But I wasn't changing that relationship with what a portion looks like, and by going to purely counting calories or if you're eating Twinkies, I mean you'd not be able to eat very many Twinkies a day. And so you'd really become disciplined about your portion control if you were going to actually stick to the caloric intake that you were trying to limit yourself to from the standpoint. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, so for fixing most people's problem with, for most Americans, obesity stems from, there are definitely probably some mental components to that, but a lot of times it's just portion. It's like you don't need 1200 calories a meal. In fact, if you do that three meals a day, you're almost certainly going to be piling on weight very rapidly. So learning what a healthy portion is would goes a long way towards really helping you learn to control how much you're taking

Speaker 1 (01:55:36):

In. Did you go to the length, I mean, you seem like a pretty technical guy, so did you go through the of figuring out your BMR and then your exact caloric deficit and then factor in the exercise and then also non-exercise activity thermogenesis and all that shit?

Speaker 2 (01:55:55):

I figured out my BMR and then once you enter that data into MyFitnessPal and you tell 'em what sort of caloric deficit you want, you want to lose one pound a week, two pounds a week, whatever, it'll tell you, okay, if this is what your maintenance caloric intake is, then subtract, let's say a thousand calories a day. If you want to lose two pounds a week and this is what you can take in a day, but then if you enter exercise calories in there, it'll add those back onto what you can take in as a net.

(01:56:25):

The biggest thing I did for accuracy was getting, I have a watch by a company called Polar that has a built-in heart rate monitor and GPS in it, and so it'll track my heart rate and can tell me how much work I'm doing. And the great example of that was I normally, I was rucking for a while because of my knee with just 20, 25 pounds in my ruck sack, and it got to the point that I was almost having to jog, which is not great for my torn meniscus to keep my heart rate up where I wanted to get it in the upper one thirties, lower one forties, because my body had gotten so efficient, so accustomed to carrying that much weight. So I went up to 30 pounds and noticed that that just didn't do much for it, that the extra workload was a little bit extra, but it really wasn't enough. So I've started doing some measurements at 40 and 50 pounds. I typically carry 40 now, and that's enough now that if I go out and ruck at a reasonable pace, say 1414 and a half minute mile, that gets my heart rate up kind of where I want it to be and that sort of a thing. So by increasing that weight, I can increase the stress putting on it without having to speed up all the time. But without the heart rate monitor, I would just be guessing.

Speaker 1 (01:57:30):

What's this watch called again?

Speaker 2 (01:57:32):

Oh, it's Garmin. Makes 'em

Speaker 1 (01:57:33):

A Garmin. Garmin.

Speaker 2 (01:57:35):

No, mine is Polar. P-O-L-A-R garment is probably the best known out there. I got a little cheap Polar M 200. It's like 120 bucks. It's nothing fancy. It's not something to look at.

Speaker 1 (01:57:45):

I've got a Y things one.

Speaker 2 (01:57:46):

Okay. Yeah, I mean as long as it does heart rate

Speaker 1 (01:57:49):

Nokia,

Speaker 2 (01:57:49):

Yeah, if it does heart rate, then I think it's probably all you need. I don't really need the GPS because I usually have my phone on me to listen to podcasts. I could use that with Strava if I wanted to. But

Speaker 1 (01:57:59):

Yeah, actually what I do is Strava my phone earbuds and if I remember to put on the watch

Speaker 2 (01:58:07):

And I use the watch religiously, I like the heart rail, I like to accuracy of it reading.

Speaker 1 (01:58:11):

I should start doing that. I've never really actually done that. I just have been checking my resting heart rate to make sure that it's getting lower and lower and lower, which it is, but I haven't really done that except for when I'm on a cardio machine. I'll check my heart rate then to get to that one 30 zone, but I haven't while walking and I should because these walks are something, so I do two workouts per day, so I work out six or seven times a week, but for those days I do two workouts. So I'll do every single day, I'll do one of these walks, it's like five or six miles. That's the non-negotiable

Speaker 4 (01:58:53):

One.

Speaker 1 (01:58:54):

And then at night I'll alternate P 90 X or weight lifting workouts. So I'll do a P 90 X style intense cardio thing, which is hard as fuck. Or I'll do weightlifting, so I'll lift twice a week or I'll do some conditioning work twice a week then. So I'm doing a lot, but I really feel like that heart rate monitoring might be a good idea,

Speaker 2 (01:59:19):

Especially for the walks, because what happens is as you get more, as your body gets more efficient, you don't really burn that many calories if you're not really getting the heart rate out. If it stands

Speaker 1 (01:59:29):

And I'm doing it to burn calories, I'm trying to lose weight,

Speaker 2 (01:59:32):

Still get a weight fest or get a ruck sack with some weights in it and increase that workload. That's what I do. I'm

Speaker 1 (01:59:38):

Not a

Speaker 2 (01:59:38):

Nutritionist or anything.

Speaker 1 (01:59:39):

No, no, it makes sense because that'll solve that problem of burning less calories. I weigh less.

Speaker 2 (01:59:47):

Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:59:48):

I just got to say someone like a drummer I used to play with great drum named Sean Reinhart. He just died at 48 and I don't know the cause of death, so I don't want to put out any misinformation, but I will say this, he didn't do drugs and he didn't have cancer, so I can only guess what it was.

(02:00:10):

And while he was a drummer, he also did a lot of sedentary studio work. It's the older you get. Our lifestyle in this industry affects you more and more, and even if you're on the musician side when you're touring, there's something you'll notice that the veteran bands, they don't tend to really run around like Guns n Roses anymore. They'll go with a yoga instructor and a massage therapist and have organic food, a catering and all that because they are starting to see, I mean, look at what we've seen from just the grunge community, and I realized that some of those deaths are suicides and I realized that some of them are overdoses, but point being that we're seeing people who are way too young from our world dropping like flies seemingly every few weeks or months. It's got to take it seriously.

Speaker 2 (02:01:12):

Not in any way speak lightly about the mental health components, but there is a direct correlation to people with mental health issues when they exercise and work out. There's absolutely almost universally and improvement in their state of mind and their wellbeing. And even so it's not necessarily about being skinny or fat or strong or weak, it's just about it can help your brain and help your emotions be better equipped to handle the stresses that you're going through.

Speaker 1 (02:01:40):

This is a fact. I have had clinical depression my whole life, or at least since I was a teenager. I don't know if I had it when I was younger. It's something that I have struggled with and at different times I have done better and other times I've done worse. So sometimes I feel like the fact that URMs, as successful as it is, is a fucking miracle because I was putting it together through one of the worst depressions I had ever been on. Where I feel fortunate is that, so I tell people is I was operating at about 30%. It was so bad. That's when I gained all that weight and man, it was dark times. I am fortunate that that 30% where I was functional, I made the right choices and URM happened. If I had made the wrong choices, who the fuck knows?

(02:02:36):

But I can tell you that I know for a fact that exercise helps with depression, both anecdotally and through doing the research and through what doctors have told me, it makes a big, big difference. You could always gauge how I'm doing by if I'm exercising or not. There becomes a bit of a vicious cycle because you feel the depression. The depression makes you not exercise, not exercising makes the depression worse and then so on and so forth. But by exercising, it's not that it's going to cure the depression, it's going to balance you out more to where you can then deal with it better

(02:03:19):

And make better decisions. Because fighting depression is a multi-pronged thing. You can't just take a medication or just get therapy or just meditate or just eat or just avoid drugs that bring on depression. You can't do just one of those things. You have to go at it from all angle. If you really, really want to beat it all the way to vitamin D deficiencies, are you getting your omega threes? All this shit goes into it and exercise is kind of like the hub for where all those activities can become possible. It gives you the energy to actually do them. So my opinion, you're not making light of the mental health component by talking about exercise. I think that that is one of the most important things that somebody could possibly do if they want to get over depression. And I realize that it's really hard to do if you're depressed because depression makes you not want to move. But just walking, you can walk, just walk, find a podcast you love and walk. That's all it takes. We've been talking for a while though. We should talk about mastering. Okay, if you're down,

Speaker 3 (02:04:40):

I'm talking about anything we want.

Speaker 1 (02:04:42):

Well, I just think we have a bunch of questions from people or we could keep talking about this too, but I'm game for whatever you want. Well, do you have any other thoughts on it?

Speaker 2 (02:04:51):

Not off the cuff. I mean I didn't prepare anything for that. I just kind of was rambling on. So

Speaker 1 (02:04:57):

Let's talk about mastering then. I mean, we've got some questions about that and people have questions for you. Man, this guy, he asked so many questions. I can never pronounce his name. I call him Vitor. That's his middle name. He says, I find that I'm getting a lot more loudness when I put Kramer master tape before my limiter. My tracks are hitting my master bus at minus 18. That makes the tape go slightly into the red sometimes. Is this a quote correct way of getting loudness? If yes, are there any other tape emulators or saturated I should check out?

Speaker 2 (02:05:40):

I don't really use any tape emulators or anything like that. That doesn't sound crazy what he's talking about. I mean, obviously if you're looking for some tape compression, you're going to need to hit it pretty good because tape compression's not this just an automatic thing. The tape's pretty actually dynamic. You have to hit it pretty hard I think before you start getting some effects from the tape. So the numbers he's saying probably sound somewhat realistic, although I'm unfamiliar with that plugin. I basically just use limiters or clippers for loudness a vast majority of the time. The most important thing is getting the overall spectral balance so there's not a preponderance of high mid frequencies that are sticking out and just crushing your ears or that there's not too much bottom in that's just eating up your headroom and you get all that stuff balanced out where it feels really good and it's going to translate well anyway.

(02:06:28):

It seems like it's easier to get it louder. A lot of times when I find myself fighting to get something as loud as a client wants it to, if I take a step back and start listening to it again and wondering, is it something I'm missing on the frequency response? More often than not, I'll find something that's just a little bit out of whack that once I tap that back in, it could just be something where the bass guitar is popping out at a hundred hertz, just a little bit too much, and you can push that back a little bit and suddenly you feel like you can get another DB or two out of it, and that can be exactly what the client wants. So I think I'd focus more on that if he's talking about just getting absolutely insane levels. Then it just comes down to what, as Chris Athens calls it, what's the loudness potential of that particular song? Every one of 'em is different, but I don't really use much in the way of saturated. That's just never been kind of my thing. That seems like all of 'em have ever tried change the audio more than I wanted to.

(02:07:19):

I think if I wanted to go for that kind of thing, I'll look for different types of compressors or something to use instead,

Speaker 1 (02:07:24):

Tell me if this is true. I don't master and I never did when I was working as a producer and a mixer, that was the one thing I kind of let the experts, but I've kind of started to have a theory and some mastering engineers I respect have kind of confirmed it, but you have to mix a song in a way that allows it to be loud. I mean, I guess there's things you can do in mastering obviously to make it loud, but for the best case scenario where it's loud and awesome, you really should be given something to master that is ready to be made loud.

Speaker 2 (02:08:04):

If it's loud and awesome, then that means the mix came in awesome. I mean, just red, ready. There's nothing I can do to take a mix that's not just perfect for loudness and make it loud. And usually in those cases it's easy. You'll start applying some gain and suddenly you're like, wow, that is banging, and you look down and you're doing a DV of game reduction or something. It's like, holy crap. So

Speaker 1 (02:08:27):

That's what I thought.

Speaker 2 (02:08:28):

Throw all the way back to the maroon five moves like Jagger, that mixed, that mix came in and it wasn't limited or clipped or anything. It's nice and dynamic, but I mean, it was one of those songs that's so easy and it was not super loud, but it was pretty freaking loud and it's the bottom end just thumped away. It just really felt great. That was all se I mean, that wasn't like I did anything special. Making it that loud was easy. The mix was ready for that. It was begging for it. So I mean, that happens all the time. You look at some of the stuff that Elvis Basques doing, those mixes come in and they're just, I mean, I might add a DB sometimes.

Speaker 1 (02:09:03):

God, he's so good.

Speaker 2 (02:09:04):

He's so good. Yeah, he's freaking, he's a ninja. Yeah, you get this seven dust album and it just sounds huge. Just sounds huge right out of the gate. And I just do a nip and tuck here and there with the eq, maybe add a DB or so whatever it needs to fit in the context of the album and print it and they love it. I think if you're struggling to make it loud, chances are you're fighting the mix and it really wasn't mixed in a way that would be as easy as it really ought to be. But I will go back to there are times that I've fought with it and it's because there were things that just weren't quite right in the overall response of it that for it to be loud like that, and there's sometimes people like it, they want it to be real chunky at 150, 200 hertz, and that's the way they want the mix to sound. And so you hit the wall and you kind of go, well, this is as loud as it's going to get, otherwise it's going to start distorting. And sometimes they don't care and they want the distortion and it's their record, but the mix will tell you how loud it can go.

Speaker 1 (02:09:57):

I've noticed that I feel like a lot of problems in a mix really. For instance, a lot of problems in audio I guess start several steps before you hear them. For instance, in getting a huge distorted guitar tone that blends perfectly with the bass, there's lots of stuff you do with the gear, but there's that component for sure. But something really basic, really, really basic, making sure that the bass isn't a few cents off from the guitar or that the guitar low strings are actually perfectly tuned makes a huge difference in how big and cohesive you're going to be able to make those guitar sound. You could do all the right EQ moves, and if there's that little bit of a bullshit in the low end that's wobbling weird because it's out of tune, good luck. You're not going to reach it full potential. And I think there's all kinds of problems like that in audio. I hate to keep using those, get it right at the source cliches, but this whole loudness thing there is still, like you just said, there's often a get it right at the source, the source speak the mix. If you want it loud, get it right at the mix. If that's considered the source for a master,

Speaker 2 (02:11:20):

Yeah, probably before that even. I mean, get a great player that doesn't play erratically tonally, so you're not having notes just popping out crazy on the base or whatever. All those things come together. So I mean, obviously a song like that moves like Jagger. Granted that's been whatever, eight, nine years, so it's kind an old song now, but I mean

Speaker 1 (02:11:37):

Still sounds great,

Speaker 2 (02:11:39):

But I mean that's one where a lot of that was synthesized, which certainly makes that a whole lot easier. Those kinds of things. You get to some of the stuff that Elvis is doing, and that just takes great tracking, great mixing great players, everything's got to come together for you to get those big giant sounds that sort of just leap out of the speakers like his mixes do. I can't take any credit for that. That's just I'm getting out of the way and letting his mixes shine. In those cases,

Speaker 1 (02:12:03):

Man, you get the credit, great engineers, whether they're, I'm just going to say man, because this counts for producers too. So I think to be part of being a great producer, mixer, mastering engineer, whatever, is knowing when to get the fuck out of the way.

Speaker 4 (02:12:19):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:12:19):

Alright, here's one from NAR Magnuson. One thing I find to be hard about mastering is when the song has a big tonal issue, like being very bright or dark or boomy or harsh fixing, it requires one or more drastic EQ moves and the results can be satisfying, but you're on the risk of doing too much and move too far away from a mix that the artist initially approved. In other cases, I've had very happy clients after doing drastic moves because they had mixed it to a point that was in their view at best and found my drastic move to be an improvement. What's a great way to navigate this minefield? How can when to get heavy handed or when to either accept it as it is or went to ask for a mix revision?

Speaker 2 (02:13:07):

That took me a while to figure that one out. And what I finally settled on was I am going to do whatever I think makes the mix sound better, period. And if they come back and go, man, this is completely different than our vision. We really love the mix the way it was. I might ask some questions and figure out what it is that they're attached to or not attached to or whatever they're hiring you because they like the way the records that you've worked on sound and they sound that way either because you liked the way they sounded and got out of the way or you didn't like the way they sounded or thought they could be better and you made those changes and the client signed off on 'em. There's very few records out there that have my name on 'em that if I listened to it, I go, oh, well the client made me do this and I would not have done that.

(02:13:49):

That's not my choice. They made me go back and change it and make it this way. Now, don't get me wrong, I still have clients that'll send me something and I'll send it back to 'em and they'll be like, yeah, this is completely different than what we were hoping for, so can we go back and try it again? No problem. That happens. Sometimes you don't get the vision of what they're going for, but most of the time when I find pretty massive problems and mixes something's way too bright or something like that, you can still use something like maybe a tilt filter, right? So what is it? El Alicia I think makes one this tilt filter that you can find a center point and crank it up or down and basically it just takes the entire frequency response around that center point and changes it.

Speaker 1 (02:14:28):

Oh, okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:14:29):

So yeah, you can turn up the lower mids and the bottom while you're kind of turning the top down an equal amount and it doesn't take much. You can do a quarter half DB kind of a thing and it can really change the overall, but you're not changing the balances really of the mix very much in that process. I'll do a lot of spot checking with single bands of a multi-band compressor. Not a lot is in every project, but for me to do that, if I hear something popping out like a bass guitar or maybe the upper mid range is kind of screechy, just grab one band of a multi-band and just find that one spot and have it just barely tapping on that and you can keep it kind of in check without massively changing the mix. And a lot of times something that sounds really, really out of whack, sticking out, you get that pushback in place and suddenly you realize it wasn't that bad after all. It's just you were really drawn, your ears are really drawn to that one aspect of it

Speaker 1 (02:15:21):

Makes sense.

Speaker 2 (02:15:21):

Always just make it sound the way you think it should sound. Don't worry about if you used one piece of equipment or nine pieces of equipment or plugins or whatever, do what you think sounds really good. Make sure you level compare and double check it against the mix. It's so easy to chase it down the rabbit hole and think you're getting better and then you step away and come back and suddenly you're like, what was I even doing? I take a lot of ear breaks and I don't mean ear breaks, just 15 minutes every hour, that kind of thing. I'm talking every time I do a single with one song even I'll play it, I'll mess with it, mess with it. I'll stop and I'll sit there for 15, 20 seconds with nothing. Just check an email doing whatever, go back, hit the space bar and it's like that gives your mind enough time to reset. So immediately as soon as you hit the space bar and listen, you're like, okay, I'm on track, or Wow, okay, I'm going the wrong direction. This does not sound right.

Speaker 1 (02:16:07):

So you mean every single time you take a single pass through the song,

Speaker 2 (02:16:11):

Not necessarily a single pass, but I cannot remember the last time I printed a song without taking a break from it for 15, 20 seconds and then going back and listening before I signed off on it and said, okay, that one's done. Because it's pretty crazy how often I've got a great sounding room. This northward tweaked room is just amazing, great speakers, everything. I've been in here since oh seven, so yeah, 13 years now. So I mean, it's like I know the room inside and out. I know these speakers, I know everything about it yet there's still plenty of times that my ears mess around with me and if I don't take that ear break for just a second before I say, okay, that one's done, I'll go back and listen to it and it's like, wow, it's a little dark, or this is sticking out here, or man, I'm going the wrong direction. This sounds crazy. The original actually sounds better than what I'm doing to it. Lemme go back and start over.

Speaker 1 (02:16:53):

Do you take those 15 minute breaks as well?

Speaker 2 (02:16:56):

No, not typically. That used to be my rule of thumb was I would take 15 minutes, every hour was a break time and it would just be either one solid break or throughout. Now I've just got to the point where I'll often go four or five hours and I won't stand up out of this chair, but it's just taking, but they're built in. I'm taking these constant little breaks

Speaker 1 (02:17:15):

Throughout

Speaker 2 (02:17:15):

The process.

Speaker 1 (02:17:16):

I call 'em pallet cleansers.

Speaker 2 (02:17:17):

Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

Speaker 1 (02:17:19):

Yeah. Okay. A question from Paul Emerson Mendenhall with so many different LUFS recommendations from platform to platform or the majority of mastering engineers making separate bounces at different levels for each individual platform, because I'm getting a lot of mixed answers when I do research online. Some people say, just make a master that sounds good and ignore the LUFS because every platform will normalize it while others are saying do separate bounces at different levels for each platform, and that got a lot of hearts on it, so it guess a lot of people are wondering,

Speaker 2 (02:17:54):

I don't measure LS at all, I just don't care. Is that how

Speaker 1 (02:17:57):

I should say it? Ls,

Speaker 2 (02:17:59):

It's an acronym, so you could LUFS is fine. I just say I don't know how other people say it. I say lts because it's easier than saying LUFS. So

Speaker 1 (02:18:05):

Lus, okay, I'll just say lus

Speaker 2 (02:18:07):

One syllable versus four, so I had to count. That's how slow I am.

Speaker 1 (02:18:10):

Economy of motion.

Speaker 2 (02:18:11):

Yeah, so don't we even worry about it if a label comes along and they go, Hey, we need a radio master at minus 14 lts or something like that. Okay, yeah, I'll generate that for 'em. The last thing I'm going to do is try to generate six different streaming platform masters. One for Spotify, one for YouTube, one for this, one for that for two reasons. One is the chances that somebody's going to get all of those and not screw the pooch and send the wrong thing to the wrong place is next to zero.

Speaker 1 (02:18:39):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (02:18:40):

The second thing is there's no standard, and every one of these companies has changed their standard at least once in the last several years. Every single one of them has moved their bar up or down or whatever until they standardize and say, this is now going to be the streaming standard. Then you're chasing a moving target. I mean, you're literally chasing a moving target. So you go, here's your YouTube master, and a week later YouTube comes out and goes, okay, from now on, it's minus 16, not minus 14, and then all your YouTube masters that are labeled as YouTube masters are now wrong. Now they're only two DB off. It's not a big deal, but for years and years and years, we've listened to music on YouTube or whatever, and if it sounds good, it sounds good. Even if they turn it down, it still sounds good. And yes, you're leaving. You're leaving room for dynamics and stuff on there. But I mean, I don't know. I think it's silly to chase a moving target when there's no standard whatsoever and they can literally arbitrarily change it without any notice whatsoever

Speaker 1 (02:19:36):

And they will

Speaker 2 (02:19:36):

And they have. So I just say make the record sound as good as you can. Don't worry about streaming and all that. Obviously if you're doing like a Apple Digital Master, what used to be called mastered for iTunes, there's a certain process that goes along with that. But I mean, aside from that kind of stuff, just make it sound good. It's going to be fine. I can tell you right now, people listen to the stuff that I master all the time on YouTube. I can't remember. I don't think I've ever gotten a complaint from someone saying, well, this is way too smashed and you left all this headroom and all this kind of stuff. They like them, they're listening to the music and it moves 'em emotionally, and that's what we're all about.

Speaker 1 (02:20:08):

Great. This one's from Grant Clements. Most everything I work on is sent to me to mix and master as singles over a period of time. Other than referencing, what are some practices to help keep all the songs on the album cohesive? Should the album get a remaster once all the songs are complete and he means not additional, but like a redo.

Speaker 2 (02:20:31):

I have some projects like that. Most of them are not like that, but I understand that. I think if you're mixing it over a long period of time, that makes it a lot more difficult. If you're mastering over a long period of time, you can constantly reference the previous master, but mixing is so much more complicated than mastering and there's so many more ways that you can alter the overall tone and vibe with the mix than you can in the mastering room. So I don't have any advice from the mixing standpoint, but there's usually what I'll do when I'm doing what I would call a piecemeal project. We're doing one or two songs at a time over a course of time, and then they're going to eventually release it as one final release is I'll do them and keep reopening the same project and mastering within that project.

(02:21:15):

So I have the songs that are already done there to reference, and then when we're done, I'll go back and especially the sequence, because obviously you change the sequence and this song next to that song may really work or may be cohesive or it may not. If they worked, they may have been eight songs apart before, and so the subtle change over the course of the record worked, but now it doesn't. It just really depends. I have no problem going back and tweaking, and I don't even charge for that in those situations. It's like I just want it to sound good, so I'll make some subtle tweaks. The only catch to that is if they're releasing 'em as singles, then it makes it difficult to change them because platforms like iTunes, if the song is different, it won't automatically necessarily download as an album and it kind of screws up the whole process. You have to be careful with that, but from a pure audio standpoint, yeah, I keep referencing what was done before and try to make sure we stay in the same vein cohesiveness. If you're talking about one solid release

Speaker 1 (02:22:10):

Makes sense. Charlie Sand Bruce, wondering how do you approach very dynamic songs where it needs to get louder and softer over the course of the song? Do you ever use different settings in the same song to achieve varying amounts of loudness and punch to match the dynamics?

Speaker 2 (02:22:26):

Yeah, obviously it depends on the client. Some clients they want that, they want it to be massively dynamic. They don't care if it is going to translate really well or not, especially over broadcast. But a lot of times I'll do multiple passes and kind of chop 'em up. If I'm loading out on, if I'm working digitally, I'll just cut 'em up into individual objects and go from there. Yeah, it's not uncommon at all for me to process different parts of the song differently, especially if it's highly dynamic. There's times somebody will send me something and the intro is, it's honestly about three db too quiet and you can turn it up, chop it off right at the downbeat of the big first course, let's say, and turn the intro up three db and the client never even notices it. They're just like, wow, it sounds great, and it does sound better that way. They liked it as the mix, but when you get done with it, it just doesn't sound like it's done. It's too dynamic, especially on rock songs. So I have no problem doing that. If that needs to happen. Honestly, it's man, I'll do all kinds of crazy stuff if it makes the song translate better and sound better, I'm not like a purist dude that's going to get all bent out of shape because I've compromised the dynamics. I just want it to sound good and I want people to like it.

Speaker 1 (02:23:28):

Great. Alright, two more questions.

Speaker 2 (02:23:30):

Alright.

Speaker 1 (02:23:31):

This one is also from Charlie Sandberg. This tends to come up a lot, so just I'm asking this on behalf of everyone who's asked about it so many times over the past few years. Is STEM mastering part of your workflow and do you embrace it? What are the advantages slash disadvantages?

Speaker 2 (02:23:49):

It is not part of my workflow. I don't embrace it. I have done it before. I will do it in certain circumstances and maybe it's just me. So this is a purely Brad Blackwood answer. It applies to me only. I feel like when I work in stems or when I have done it in the past, I lose the focus on how I'm listening.

Speaker 1 (02:24:09):

Thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:24:10):

I would say every mastery engineer probably listens differently. The mix engineers do, because I'm not listening to the ring of the snare or usually even individual instruments. I'm listening to sort of the energy within that certain frequency range and just how does it feel and how does it mesh with the other parts of the response. So I think as soon as I start listening to, Hey, is that bass popping out? Let solo that bass in here, what it sounds like, or let me hear what these guitar stem sounds like or whatever. I kind of lose my focus and I always feel like I'm getting lost in the woods every time I've done it. I've never enjoyed doing it. I always feel like I end up with a lesser product and there's a part of me that on a fundamental level, I disagree with it. I feel like I'm not helping the mix engineer. If they do it, they're doing it probably because they're unsure and they don't want to commit to something that is going to be a compromise to the audio, and I don't feel like them passing those decisions onto me helps them get any better.

Speaker 1 (02:25:05):

I agree with you.

Speaker 2 (02:25:06):

If it comes to me and the drums are way too quiet, I can say, Hey, can you turn the drum bus up and they can print it and send me another one and then at least they can listen to the two of 'em and I go, Hey, that second one's perfect. Then they go, okay, well this is where at least on this type of music, the drums maybe need to sit better or something

Speaker 1 (02:25:20):

You say. That's just a Brad Blackwood answer, but just about every really awesome mastering engineer I've talked to about this topic has a very similar take on you. Interesting. I think that sometimes it's just people trying to get a cheaper mix or something. I don't, I'm sure that's not always the case, but there's everything you said, and then I also think there's certain times where it's people trying to be sneaky trying to get the mastering guy to mix it for you.

Speaker 2 (02:25:50):

It could be usually when people reach out to me and ask, I tell 'em, I just don't really like working on stems. I don't honestly tell 'em I don't do it. I usually try to explain to 'em why I don't like doing it. There have been times that I've done it because the client is in a certain pinch, maybe they printed stems and they didn't print the final mix for some reason and they can't get back in the studio or whatever.

Speaker 1 (02:26:11):

Shit happens,

Speaker 2 (02:26:11):

But things happen, but I hate working that way. I just feel like I'm not listening. Right.

Speaker 1 (02:26:16):

I mean, shit does happen. Something that happened on my band's first record when we got signed a roadrunner was that the guy who mixed the original version destroyed the unmastered mixes and that the label wanted to get a remaster with Ted Jensen, and that was impossible because the Unmastered mixes didn't exist anymore, so we had to get a whole remix and it was remixed by somebody else. So shit does happen. There are consequences. You never know. Okay, last question. This comes from Antonio on Instagram. It's kind of a two-parter, but it goes together as an engineer, what can I do to submit my mixes to you in the best possible way for you to do your best possible work? And then the second part of that question is, what are the biggest mistakes that you tend to see engineers make when submitting mixes for you to master that prevent you from doing your best possible work?

Speaker 2 (02:27:24):

We'll start with the second one. It's a little more straightforward. I think things that people do that kind of tie my hands or limit what we are capable of doing, it can be as simple as, look, there's no need to ever top and tail your mix. Just don't worry about it. Leave space. You don't have to arrive to the downbeat of the first kick drum.

Speaker 1 (02:27:40):

Oh, by top and tail, you mean time at the end and beginning.

Speaker 2 (02:27:44):

Yeah, at the beginning of it. Just leave the space. Nobody's worried about hard drive space to that extent, and you're not saving anybody any time. And the number of times that somebody sends me something and the very attack of the kick drum, the very opening kick drum or the attack of the guitar is carved off because they got the fade ridden too close to it. It happens so often and you're just kind of like, man, that was completely avoidable. You didn't have to waste your time doing that in the first place. We're going to do that. That's part of our gig.

(02:28:11):

Another thing, and this is kind of what I used to tell guys, it's changed a little bit because production has changed. I used to tell people, don't put anything on your mix bus for the sake of loudness, so don't send a mix in that's got your L one or L two or pro L two or whatever your limiter of choice is, or a clip or whatever on your mix bus. As soon as we get mixes that have flat topped waveform, a lot of things that we do EQ wise and compression wise, it just starts getting cashy and kind of nasty in the upper mid range and harsh and doesn't feel good. I realized that a lot of guys, most guys now probably mix through a limiter at some point so that they can give references to their clients.

Speaker 1 (02:28:48):

That's accurate.

Speaker 2 (02:28:49):

Yeah, because the clients, I guess for some reason can't use the volume knob, but it is what it is. With that said, I get that you have to do that, so at the very least I would say include that version with your non-limited version. There have been a few times when I've gotten mixes from people and I can't replicate what their limiter was doing here. They have a different limiter than I do, or it was hitting it differently, something else after it in their chain or whatever, and so they go bypass the limiter and print the mix and then I listen to it and listen to their limited mix and it's like, I can't get there from here. I don't have the way to do that. The mix is what I'm working with is different than what they had at that time. So in those situations, there's been times that I've actually worked off of the heavily limited mixes already.

(02:29:33):

If everything's pretty close, that's not the end of the world. You're not having to do anything. But if I'm having to start doing compression or something like that on top of that, it can get kind of nasty. So I say at least include a limited version. I tell guys it's probably best not to mix into the limiter, so just mix with your normal, you want to use compression on your stereo bus, eq, whatever. Do those things. Do those things like you would if you're mixing on an SSL or a need, let's say if you decide you want to create a loud version when you're done with the mix, strap a limiter across it and print that and give it to your client. What you're doing is you are altering the mix that they're hearing, but I should be able to get there from here. But when you mix through it and it's actually changing some of the levels and stuff because the way it's hitting the limiter and then you bypass that and send it to the mastery engineer, there's almost no way we can get there. As for good practices, I mean there's no point in trying to get super loud with your mixes. I mean, we were all working at 24 bit now, some people with 32 at 32 bits, you get what with 1500 db of dynamic range. I mean, your noise floor is so far down. I mean, back what, 30 years ago, if you were telling somebody you're worried about a noise floor or stuff happening at a minus 140 db, they would've laughed at you, right? I mean, that didn't even exist.

Speaker 1 (02:30:43):

I mean, I realized that there's that much range and the noise floor is so low. Is there a level of too low that just makes it harder for you to work with?

Speaker 2 (02:30:54):

In theory? Yeah, sure, but I mean, you have to think about it. Back in the eighties and through much of the nineties, we printed the DA tape 16 bit DA tape. We were making, generally speaking, more dynamic records than we make now, and so your average RMS level was pretty low compared to what we would have today because it's more dynamic. You had higher peaks and you're still working with a 16 bit medium. Now you're working with something that's got whatever, eight more bits, so 48 more DB of hedge room on top of that that you can play with. Literally, you could basically print your mix at minus 40 and it would probably be perfectly fine. I'm not advocating doing that. I'm just saying I see a lot of guys who push it right up trying to, my peak at minus two is that okay, it's fine. You don't have to stress over it. You could pull it back 10 DB and it would be no different really at all. Probably, unless you have a really noisy chain or something. I mean, some people have really noisy rooms, but most people nowadays are working pretty much digitally in the box and noise is not really the issue that it used to be.

Speaker 1 (02:31:59):

Got it. Alright. Well, Brad, dude, thank you so much for coming on and chatting. It's been awesome having you back. We definitely can't let almost four years go by this next time. At

Speaker 2 (02:32:12):

Least it didn't seem like four years, right? So

Speaker 1 (02:32:17):

Of the time dilation. I'm old and you're on Interstellar, but okay. That's exactly it. But seriously, thank you. It's been awesome having you on. It's been my pleasure. Thanks very much for having me. I hope that we could do more together. Okay. Then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post them to your Facebook, Instagram, or any social media you use. Please tag me at AI levy URM audio, and of course please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.