MICK GORDON: Managing Creative Anxiety, The Sound of DOOM, Mastering Focus

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. I'm going to keep this intro short because my voice is really, really kind of shot from doing all these podcasts for you guys, but I am so stoked about this episode. You guys have requested him more times than I can count, and honestly, the first time he came on was one of my favorite episodes of all time. So I'm so happy to reintroduce Mr. Mick Gordon. If you don't know who he is, he's the composer and mastermind behind the soundtracks for Doom Prey, Wolfenstein, and a slew of other video games. It's one of the most brilliant guests I've ever had on. I'm going to shut up. Enjoy the episode. Welcome back, Mick Gordon. Hey,

Speaker 2 (00:02:11):

It's so awesome to be here, man.

Speaker 1 (00:02:12):

So awesome to be speaking to you. Honestly, what was the last time? It was almost three years ago, right?

Speaker 2 (00:02:16):

I would say something like three years ago, I think it was just Doom 2016 had just come out, so it was either 2016 or early 2017.

Speaker 1 (00:02:25):

Man, I feel like that was another lifetime.

Speaker 2 (00:02:27):

I feel like it was yesterday.

Speaker 1 (00:02:30):

Isn't

Speaker 2 (00:02:30):

That weird?

Speaker 1 (00:02:31):

That's the weirdest thing, man, is do you get this? I'll think back to five, 10 years ago, and it feels like yesterday, but last week seems like six months ago.

Speaker 2 (00:02:41):

I think it depends on how busy you are. So if you really, really, really, really super busy and you're like, oh, remember that time when we went out for coffee? And then you think, oh, shit, that was actually up this morning. And then there's other times where I think, oh, I've got to fix that thing that I remember to do last week. And then I realized that was two years ago and the world has moved on. So yeah, I totally get that can relate.

Speaker 1 (00:03:02):

I agree though. I do think it has something to do with how busy you are. Also, I think it's got something to do with how much time you've logged on Earth is a frame of reference type thing. When you're a little kid, if you only have 10 years to go against one year means a whole lot. If you're 35 or 41 year's, not so much. I think there's part of it's relative,

Speaker 2 (00:03:27):

And to me that results in this crazy anxiety. Sometimes I wake up with my heart beating, going shit time's running out,

Speaker 1 (00:03:33):

Fuck.

Speaker 2 (00:03:34):

Better get on with things. Yeah, exactly. Better get on with things. I don't know. Do you have that?

Speaker 1 (00:03:38):

Yeah. The thing is, I've had that since I was a teenager, so I remember when I was 16, there was a player on the Atlanta baseball team who just got signed and he was 19. 19, he got a $3.5 million contract. Yeah, pretty crazy. And I remember thinking, okay, I got to have a career by 19. This guy time's running out. If I don't have a career by 19, it's all over.

Speaker 2 (00:04:11):

Yeah, yeah. Whatever happened to that guy? Do you remember?

Speaker 1 (00:04:14):

Oh, his name is Andrew Young. You guys can look him up if you like baseball, but he went on to be a great player for many years. But yeah, I've always kind of felt that way and I still feel that way, and I feel like it's a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because it motivates you, but it's a curse too because it's highly irrational at times in that sometimes the worry wastes more time than you would've had actually if you had just done the

Speaker 2 (00:04:49):

Thing

Speaker 1 (00:04:50):

That you were worrying about

Speaker 2 (00:04:52):

And all worry. It is going to influence your decision making in some way. So you are not just deciding what to do today, but then you're deciding with the whole weight on your shoulders, all of a sudden the world's weight on your shoulders. And that can lead to somewhat irrational decisions, I guess. But I don't know, man. We do the best of what we've got, right?

Speaker 1 (00:05:13):

Yeah. How do you deal with it? So obviously you've got that same condition or whatever. How do you deal with it? Because reason I'm asking because I know lots of listeners and friends of mine have told me this, that it actually paralyzes them. It paralyzes them, especially the older they get, the more real the lack of time becomes, and so they are willing to try less and less things because they've got the fuck it not worth it attitude.

Speaker 2 (00:05:43):

Yeah. I have a little mantra that goes through my mind that says, commit and see what happens.

Speaker 1 (00:05:48):

I like that.

Speaker 2 (00:05:49):

Commit and see what happens. You can be sitting around debating the pros and cons forever and get nowhere. You're just sort of spinning on the circle, not going anywhere. Just pick a direction and go, just commit and see what happens. Really.

Speaker 1 (00:06:04):

I have a similar one, a mantra. It's very similar, is maybe not as eloquent. I just say, fuck it. That that's

Speaker 2 (00:06:14):

We used to do. Seriously. Yeah, no, that's a legitimate strategy. We used to do fear training back in the army stuff, and that was one of the legitimate strategies. No kidding. I remember we were trialing it on an obstacle course thing, and everybody's really high up and hanging off the earth on a couple of ropes, and there's a couple of folks that were really freaking out, and I would be at that point. There's a couple of things you can do. One is grounding where you literally just stop and try to focus on what's around you. So you look at the trees, you look at the birds, you concentrate on which direction the wind is going. You feel the temperature running of the little hairs on your skin, take note of where the sun is, and it sort of calms you down, and then you're able to move forward with what you want to do. Sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes the fuck it attitude is, what's it? You just sort of dive in and go for it. But yeah, commit and see what happens.

Speaker 1 (00:07:04):

What you just said though, that's interesting. You basically just spelled out some mindfulness meditation techniques that are used to help get you out of your own head, basically.

Speaker 2 (00:07:18):

Yeah, and I think it is funny how, look, I was really conscious when we jumped on to do this podcast of not going in this direction, and I don't feel we're going to go too much in this direction. Sorry. No, no, no, no, no. Hang on just for a sec. So I feel like this conversation is relevant in today's terms though, and you talk about mindfulness and grounding and all that sort of stuff, and to me, that can get quite esoteric, which is great. Absolutely. That's totally

Speaker 3 (00:07:47):

Cool.

Speaker 2 (00:07:48):

But I think the core essence of that is to concentrate solely on what's in your control.

Speaker 1 (00:07:55):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:07:55):

That's it.

Speaker 1 (00:07:56):

So I want to know, what was the thing that you did not want to do on the podcast?

Speaker 2 (00:08:01):

Oh, I guess just focus too much on current world events.

Speaker 1 (00:08:06):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:08:07):

I feel every podcast and thing is focusing on that at the moment, and I feel it's, once you acknowledge that which we've just done, you have to look at what our role in society is, what your role is, what my role is, and I feel we have an important role of supplying positivity and artistry and knowledge out to the world, and that's what we should be doing.

Speaker 1 (00:08:30):

I completely agree. Actually, as a matter of fact, I'm glad you said it. At the very beginning of this thing, I thought I wanted to be addressing it a lot. So maybe a rational voice can go towards my audience, which is your audience too, which has a lot of people in it that are very scared right now. And as the situation unveiled and kept on going, started to realize that it's the constant thinking about it that's causing more problems. There's the real problem, and if you are affected by the real problem, you deal with that. But if you're not, but you're thinking about it all the time, you're probably causing yourself a lot more harm than you should be. And taking care of the things that you can control is all we can do. And the best thing to do say that you're in the vast majority of people who are not going to be physically affected. There's going to come a day when this whole thing is over, and how you spent that time is going to play a big factor in what comes after that, how that goes. And that's why I think that focusing inwards on the things you can control and doing something positive with the time is the best possible answer.

Speaker 2 (00:09:54):

It's something that's really easy to say. It is difficult to do, but you have to focus on the things that are inside your control and ignore the things, the noise that you have no control over. Yes, it's horrible. Yes, it's nasty. Yes, it's uncertain. It's going to be that way whether you are focusing on it or not. So you focus immediately on the things that are inside your control, what time you go to bed in the evening, what time you get up in the morning, what food you're putting into your body, how you're spending your time, who you're spending your time with. That stuff is in your control. I understand if you're in an area that is heavily affected, that's going to be a lot more difficult. If you're susceptible to certain things, that's going to be a lot more difficult. But again, I feel that still rings true.

(00:10:42):

Focus on the things that are inside your control. And for me now, I know there's a lot of people that are quarantining or staying at home or self-isolation and things. This can be turned into a gift of time and space for you when there's any upset, that can be an opportunity to reinvent yourself, learn something new, practice something, do that thing you've always wanted to do, create things, get that stuff out into the world, focus on the music, focus on the creativity, focus on the positivity, and get that stuff out there. It's never been easier to get that stuff out there. There's no reason not to. Now, how you react to this situation is totally within your control, and that's the thing to focus on,

Speaker 1 (00:11:28):

Man, what you just said, gift of time. So that to me is such a profound way to look at it. And a part of me has been a little bit scared to talk about it in those terms just because I don't want to make light of anybody suffering. But in reality, when else in our lives has the world just paused, that that is a crazy, crazy thing might never happen again in our lifetime. And it's an opportunity, like you said to, there's so many things you could catch up on, something that you haven't been able to catch up on that's affecting your quality of life, at least in a mental way. Maybe something to do with your physical health, like you said, maybe there's something new you wanted to learn. There's so many options, and obviously they're completely situationally dependent, but there is absolutely no reason for why, number one, anybody should be bored. That's just craziness to me. And number two, I don't see why anybody shouldn't come out of this better than they were before, provided they're not obviously directly affected. So the things in your control, what are you choosing to focus on?

Speaker 2 (00:12:57):

I am choosing to focus on exactly the same things I was choosing to focus on a month ago, six months ago, a year ago. That is my work, that is my health, that is my fitness, that is relationships. That's the same thing. All that stuff is still there. If I don't have work on, I can create work, I can create things, I can get it out into the world. Time and space for me equals creativity. So I'm just pouring those energies and things into the various projects and things that I've had hanging around for a while and want to work on. I like this, this sort of mantra of a good life, which is music, mountains and water, right? Music you can replace with anything, but basically that's creativity, making things, doing

Speaker 1 (00:13:42):

Things, the thing you make,

Speaker 2 (00:13:43):

Yeah, mountains is the exercise aspect. Staying fit and healthy and doing sort of interesting things with your body, like hiking things or biking or whatever it is you want to do, but just getting physically active. And then the water is the food aspect. Make sure you're supplying your body with important nutrition and good food and stuff like that. It's really tempting at the moment to just sit down in front of the couch and watch Netflix and order, but that's only going to lead in one direction,

Speaker 1 (00:14:13):

Not a good one,

Speaker 2 (00:14:14):

Not a good one.

Speaker 1 (00:14:15):

It's not a good one.

Speaker 2 (00:14:16):

So music, mountains and water, that's all I focus on. That's all I've ever focused on. So that's all I'm focusing on now. That stuff is still within my control, and I'll keep focusing on that until that control's taken away from me.

Speaker 1 (00:14:27):

And if that control's taken away from you, then you'll deal with what's actually in front of you at that time.

Speaker 2 (00:14:33):

Yeah, you deal again with whatever's in your control at that time. And look, it's a hard pill to swallow, but this is all you can do. I feel though that this sort of approach, especially this mental approach, really is the key to stopping that high levels anxiety and fear and all that sort of thing. I mean, fear itself is just the unknown. Nobody's ever fearful of the thing that's happening right to them at that moment. That's a different reaction. The fear is the anticipation.

Speaker 1 (00:15:03):

Here's why fear is stupid. If you're afraid of it, that means it hasn't happened. So why are you afraid of it?

Speaker 2 (00:15:09):

Yeah, fear is stupid. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (00:15:11):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:15:11):

Yeah. So well said. Absolutely. So then again, you just focus on those things that are inside of your control, and I think it's important to acknowledge that news sources and politicians and various other things are really going to keep feeding that fear as long as it's there. And your fear is like an UNR beast, it's always going to be keep eating that fear. It is never full. Nobody ever gets full of fear. You have to actively cut that out. You have to abstain from those things to move forward.

Speaker 1 (00:15:45):

I kind of feel like those elements that you just mentioned, the media politicians, it's basically the equivalent of any product that you can just buy unlimited amounts of. Like if you go to McDonald's, if you want unlimited french fries, if you want to order 200 servings of french fries, they will give it to you. If you want to scare the fuck out of yourself and think that the world is ending and that there's no hope, you can do that,

Speaker 3 (00:16:14):

You

Speaker 1 (00:16:14):

Can plug right in and it's there for you. But I think it's important to understand also that those messages coming at you are coming from, some people are coming obviously for legitimate reasons, but the intensity and the way that they're worded are coming to you with an agenda intended to keep you watching because that's where profit comes from. So just remember that the more you're glued to the media, the more money they make, therefore they're better off.

(00:16:46):

I've always thought that if there's something truly important, you can figure it out anyways without gluing yourself to TV or to YouTube or to your feed or whatever. But what's, man, you know what I've been thinking this whole time that you've been talking about this is even when there's no crisis going on, this is normal life. If you wanted to focus on terrible things, there's terrible things going on all the time. And the only difference is that they're not in our face. Sometimes. Maybe if you lived in New Orleans when Katrina hit, then it'd be right in your face. But if you're in an unaffected area, you have to choose to go looking for this stuff. But you can find it. It's there if you want to be scared, you can be scared under normal conditions. So the same choice that you make in your regular life to basically not take in those, you can apply that. Now. The only difference is everyone's talking about it now, so you have to be more diligent about it.

Speaker 2 (00:17:56):

But then again, so there's two things to that, which brilliantly put, but the keyword there was choice. And the second thing that you said there where everybody's talking about it, that's true as well. But you can control the conversation as well. You can choose to talk about the same thing, but in a different way. And that's what I feel we're doing here again, is focus on those things that you can have control over. That is a choice. It is a choice whether you consume the fearmongering news or it's a choice of whether you use this time and space as a gift to pour into something that's practical and will give you a life all sorts of enrichment and enjoyment. And really the choice is that simple. It is just that choice. Easier said than done. But I think this is the time for a little bit of focusing inwards on yourself and thinking, what is going to be the best thing for me today is that spending seven hours on Twitter, reading horrible stuff or whatever, or spending that seven hours practicing my instrument or spending seven hours going for a jog somewhere or whatever, or maybe not in some places or just whatever it is,

Speaker 1 (00:18:58):

Going for a jog around your kitchen,

Speaker 2 (00:19:00):

Right? Seven hours of pushups, let's say that, whatever. But basically, if you have that time, it is your choice in how you spend it. It really is. Nobody is forcing you to watch the news. Nobody's forcing you to feel a certain way. All that stuff is under your control. So a couple of things that I do practically, because all this stuff is great, but sometimes the practical stuff is actually useful. I set a regular wake up time every single day. For me, that's

Speaker 1 (00:19:24):

What time is that?

Speaker 2 (00:19:25):

That's super early for me. It doesn't have to be for everybody. For me, it's four 30. Nice. I'm up four 30, but this is why I saw your message coming in this morning. Did I wake you up? No, no, no. You didn't wake me. I just saw it at the moment. I woke up. No, you didn't wake. I know not to sleep with Skype next to my face. But yeah, a regular wake up time is so important. It doesn't have to be four 30 in the morning. That's just my thing. The first thing I do is I take my two dogs for a walk. That's it. And we still do that. We still strap on their leads and in the area that I'm in, we're not locked in completely. So I can still take the guys for a walk. The point of that though is that it's a regular activity that I do every day. Again, that's very important. After that, then I'll dive into emails, then I'll dive into work. I don't spend all day reading emails. My email time is very restricted to 10 minutes, maybe 30 minutes. I do understand this takes me a little bit longer to get back to people, but it's something that I need to make a conscious decision of so I'm not answering emails all day.

Speaker 1 (00:20:24):

Can I say something about that real quick?

Speaker 2 (00:20:26):

Shoot, please. Yeah, man,

Speaker 1 (00:20:27):

While we're on it, because if not, we'll blow right past it. So I just want to point something out that, alright, so you just said you're not the fastest at returning emails. Okay, so maybe you're not the fastest at returning emails, but does it seem to have affected your career negatively?

Speaker 2 (00:20:45):

No, I don't. I

Speaker 1 (00:20:47):

Don't think so. The reason I'm bringing this up is because I'm getting the gist that the actions that you take are very intentional and they're serving a purpose. For instance, the first activity you're taking engages that mountain side of your mantra just right off the bat before anything before your brain can be, I don't want to say poisoned, but distracted by shit going on in the world or by some email that's basically on fire or something. You're taking the first step to engage that mountain side of your life, which takes care of your mental and physical health. And so number one, you're making a choice to take care of you, which I think is great because a lot of people will wake up and just start scrolling and they'll scroll in bed for a long time, hit snooze, scroll some more, and those first few hours are so crucial. So I just wanted to point that out and also mention that I know a lot of people consider email to be productivity, which I don't consider it to be maintenance. And so it's something that we have to do in order to keep up and make things happen in this world. But don't ever confuse it with a productive task. You can do it less than people think they need to and still have a crushingly awesome career because if the actual part of your life that's productive brings value to people, they'll be cool with it.

Speaker 2 (00:22:32):

Yeah, totally. Totally, totally. No, that's a good point. I'm glad you've pulled us up on that one. I think that's all very, very valid. To add to that, even further, there is that old mantra of win the morning, win the day, and that is so important.

Speaker 1 (00:22:44):

I agree.

Speaker 2 (00:22:45):

Yeah. I try to get all that important stuff in straight away. So normally by 8:00 AM so I'm up at four 30, I've gotten up early, I've walked my dogs, probably done an hour, hour or two workout at that stage and done emails by 8:00 AM So that's all the stuff out of the way. Now. The day can start now the productivity can start now the important stuff can start. All that stuff is done. Dogs have walked, worked up early, done the nutrition thing, done the exercise, done, done some emails done, finished by 8:00 AM so that's when the day starts.

Speaker 1 (00:23:19):

I have a question about that routine shoot. So I don't know if you know this or not, but about 18 months ago, I completely changed my lifestyle, lost over 130 pounds at this point. That's crazy. Not done yet.

(00:23:34):

It's been a complete shift. Started waking up early, wake up. I used to go to bed at 6:00 AM solved lots of problems through a lot of dedication, and the morning routine thing became a crucial part of my day. But one thing that I've noticed, which I still haven't figured out, is that those first two or three hours, I have maximum brain power always. And so sometimes I feel like doing a workout first thing in the morning is counterproductive because that brain ram, I could have spent on something creative. And then when I get the first, I guess the first slowdown, that's the perfect time to go workout. And I actually heard Jocko Willink saying the same thing, that when he has a super crazy deadline, even though he wakes up at four 30 and works out, are you familiar with him, by the way?

Speaker 2 (00:24:28):

Yeah, yeah, a little bit,

Speaker 1 (00:24:28):

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, he was saying that when he has a crazy deadline, when he wakes up at four 30, he'll get straight to work and then he'll work out later because he doesn't want to expend the brain ram on lifting heavy things. But what are your thoughts on

Speaker 2 (00:24:43):

That? Yeah, no, I'd say the same thing. If I'm crunching on a deadline and the deadline is important, usually it's wake up and get straight into it. The point of kind of going over that before was not to try and copy this, wake up at this time, take your dogs for a walk, whatever, do some exercise. It's not that. The point is to establish some sort of regular routine that contributes in an active way to the things that you value in life.

(00:25:10):

So if you in those first three or four hours of waking up have already ticked a whole bunch of boxes in your life boxes, right? That over time is going to lead to a better situation for you. And that to me is the only way I've been able to figure out how to do this stuff. I used to be the same. I'd go to bed at 11:00 AM sometimes, so I used to get up at four o'clock in the afternoon and wake up then and hit all sorts of substances and things to stay awake and stuff like that. Your body just cannot continue. Some bodies can, I mean, Keith Richards obviously can

Speaker 1 (00:25:46):

Until they can't,

Speaker 2 (00:25:49):

But for them maybe that works for me. It just wasn't. And I was heading in this really, really dangerous sort of projection and you've just got to adjust. And for me, this regular thing, I really like this phrase of you are what you do regularly.

Speaker 1 (00:26:01):

I agree with that too.

Speaker 2 (00:26:02):

You are what you do all the time, and it is the regular activity of actively creating these positive actions that have a change on your body and creating routines around them is more important. So if getting the deadline done is more important and getting up at four 30, whatever it is, but getting up at a regular time and getting in and doing a few hours of work first is going to get you there. That pushes that needle a little bit further each day. It's not going to do it on its own. So yeah, that's the point of that.

Speaker 1 (00:26:31):

I heard a quote similar to what you just said, that excellence is a habit.

Speaker 2 (00:26:35):

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 (00:26:36):

It's not an outcome, it's a habit. And I really do believe that. I remember, I forget who it was, I think it was John Petru. Somebody asked him at some clinic I was at once, long time ago, I have a crazy job, so I have one day a week where I can practice eight hours. Is that okay? And John's answer was, you'd be way better off if you practiced 30 minutes every day rather than one long eight hour thing. If you do 30 focused proper minutes that are, you're basically creating excellence in those 30 minutes and it becomes a part of your daily routine and becomes a habit. That's how you move forward, not by basically splurging once in a while.

Speaker 2 (00:27:30):

Yeah. Yeah. John Tric does the most amazing clinics. I've done one of his, I think a little while ago, and I remember a guy in the audience put his hand up and said, how do I get better at string skipping? And John answered, practice string skipping.

Speaker 1 (00:27:46):

What answer did the guy expect to get?

Speaker 2 (00:27:49):

Great guy. Really, really cool. So yeah, so to me, yes. Again, just to reiterate that point there, I feel that is important that all this is is just creating some sort of regular action that contributes to what's important to you. If you are confused on how to get this started, I'd really encourage you to sit down and write down on a piece of paper or whatever it is that you are using your ideal sort of life. And I know this sounds pretty esoteric and weird, but just bear with it for a second, but what is important to you? Relationships, fitness. I want to get really good at the trumpet. I want write a book. I want to cut something out of my diet. I want to do whatever. Just write down what's important to you. Write down what you want to change, what you want to achieve, what your ideal life looks like.

(00:28:30):

The second step then is to sort of define actionable steps that represent those things because we are music. So let's just take playing trumpet as a thing that you want to get really good at. You write down, well, what does that actually look like? Do you want to be a dizzy Gillespie or do you just want to be able to bam out a couple of things in the local scar band, whatever it is? Then write down a series of things of what you'll need to do to be able to achieve that. So if it's a local scar band, it's probably knowing a couple of really cool scar phrases that you can pull out, right? Then you take those scarf phrases and you write them into your routine that you're going to do either every morning or whatever it is for something that's regular, that's the point, something that's regular, and then you work on that.

(00:29:16):

Each day that you come to that time, you practice those scarf raises, and then over time rather quickly, to be honest, you'll get better at that and do this with everything. If it's relationships, focus on who it is in that relationship that you want to spend that time with, and what does that look like? Does it mean that you're going to cook dinner for that person every evening? Does it mean that you're going to write a little love letter or something to that person every day or every week or whatever it is? These little actionable things achieve these goals in a way. I know this is starting to sound like a Tony Robbins thing, and it's not what I'm intending here, any of that sort of stone. But the point is, take these big ideas that you have, break them down into smaller chunks, break those down into actionable steps, things that you can actually do, and then do those things regularly. And that's it. Absolutely. That's the

Speaker 1 (00:30:05):

Secret, man. Okay, so I'm going to say two things here. Number one, I've been sitting here wondering if I should mention this because he's kind of controversial and I don't like this kind of controversy on the podcast, but I'm going to just say fuck it and do it, because I think that this is a very valuable resource, what I'm about to say. I am sharing no opinion on any of the controversy. This is purely a psychological tool. Jordan Peterson has something called the self-authoring suite, because other than being a controversial speaker, he is actually a clinical psychologist. It's called a self-authoring suite, and it's him and a bunch of psychologists put it together and it's basically, it's like 15 bucks, and they have either the self-authoring or future authoring, and it's basically a very, very meticulous version of what you just said, where for people who feel like they're directionless or they don't know how to get started, or they have a past, they can't quite reconcile in order to be able to have the clarity to move forward in a positive way, it helps them get it all out and actually write it down in a way that does help you move forward.

(00:31:27):

It's a really, really great tool for anyone who's just stuck. Basically. I'll say this too, everything you're saying to me right now is it's just music to my ears, man, because there's been several times in my life where I've done this sort of thing where I will write down what I want my life to look like in detail, no matter how outlandish it seems, down to the mundane aspects as well. But I'll take a week and just go deep and then not think about it anymore. But the thing that's interesting is when I take the time to get those thoughts out and actually think about the kind world I want to create, the kind of person I want to be, and then make a plan to get there, it does begin to happen little by little. And the thing, and kind of back to the first thing that I said about what you're saying is that the intentionality is so, so important, otherwise it's anyone's guess how you're going to evolve.

(00:32:29):

I mean, you can have a very, very big say in where things are headed. Obviously there's things outside of your control. Shit happens. Obviously if you're making music, you can't control certain things. Is the public going to resonate with your music? Who knows? Are you going to meet the right people who give you that opportunity? No telling you're going to get hit by a bus? I don't know. But there are a bunch of things, a bunch of other things that you can be doing all the time that will help you get a lot closer to where it is you think you want to be. And then not just that, even if you don't get to where it is you thought you wanted to be, you might get somewhere else that's equally as cool or that you didn't even know you had in you or was a possibility, but you got there because you moved forward intentionally. For instance, what I'm doing now, I knew back in the day that I wanted to do something that's kind of bigger than me. I had big aspirations, but I never saw it being URM 10 years ago. I would've never seen it as it is, and it is completely different than anything I would've expected. It's the truth though. I really, really strongly believe that if all you get out of this time period is to write this stuff down and understand yourself better and have a plan for moving forward, that's broken down, then it was

Speaker 2 (00:33:54):

Productive. Yeah, absolutely. I want to say, man, congratulations on it. Did you say 130 pounds?

Speaker 1 (00:33:59):

Yeah, something. I don't have a scale right now because I'm quarantined and the ex-girlfriend has it, but Oh

Speaker 2 (00:34:06):

Shit.

Speaker 1 (00:34:07):

It's in that range. Yeah, it's in that range.

Speaker 2 (00:34:09):

Dude, that's amazing. What would you say were a couple of things that you changed along that way, like practical things that you changed along that way to do that? You said 18 months, did you say?

Speaker 1 (00:34:18):

Yeah, 18 months.

Speaker 2 (00:34:20):

Wow. What did you change?

Speaker 1 (00:34:21):

Well, exercise. Okay, so a lot of people will say that you don't lose weight from cardio, and there's a lot of debates about it, but I think they're wrong. I think they're wrong. So I started moving. I put movement into my life on a very daily basis. So I used to have a pretty active lifestyle back when I was in a band, and then the band ended and then I adopted the studio lifestyle, and so suddenly I was less active. And then when I went from studio to entrepreneur where I was not interacting with anybody except for the computer, my lifestyle became completely sedentary. So it was progressive stages of less and less activity. And so I decided what was it that I was doing when I was in the best shape in my life? How was I behaving? So I modeled that, and obviously I couldn't be doing P 90 X workouts when I was 400 pounds, but I did what I could.

(00:35:29):

I walked around. So that was number one, because exercise also affects your state of mind, and if you are or an alcoholic or a drug addict or a gambler or whatever it is, there's a mental reason for why you got there. That shit doesn't happen in a vacuum. We're not talking like 20 pounds overweight that you didn't notice. It is a serious, serious thing, and it doesn't happen by accident. And so I figured I need to do whatever I can to get my mind and exercise is the pathway. It always has been in my life. Anytime that I've been happy, I've been doing exercise. So that was number one. And number two, I quit ordering Uber Eats.

Speaker 2 (00:36:18):

Yeah, man, feel it.

Speaker 1 (00:36:20):

Yeah. Got serious about that, a gallon a day of water. And I realized that any diet works, right? Whether you do keto or vegan or paleo or whatever the fuck, they all work if you stick to them. So I think what I actually ate doesn't matter as much as the fact that I stuck to it and barely ever cheated and didn't trick myself into thinking that it was okay to slide. And when I would slide, I'd get honest with it really, really, really fast. Practically though I'd log my food. So log everything, even the bad stuff, because when you log the bad stuff, when you see just how many calories

(00:37:05):

Are in something bad, you might still eat it, but over time you're going to chill out. If you have three weeks of so much progress and then you already know that entering that Pizza Inn is going to totally fuck you up, and you know that because three weeks ago you fucked up, it's going to give you pause. So exercise, pick a diet and stick to it, log everything. Make sure that you're getting proper sleep. If you need medication like antidepressants or whatever, get them and try to understand what your triggers are. And that's a little bit deeper, but I understood that I did a lot of angry eating, so there were a lot of things I'm ranting, so I won't take up too much more time with this, but

Speaker 2 (00:37:51):

No, man, I mean, I asked the question, but I think this is cool.

Speaker 1 (00:37:54):

Well, okay, so part of why I've been successful is because I'm very patient.

(00:38:00):

I can wait for years, however that comes at a price. Sometimes you're dealing with people and they do fucked up things and it's very, very frustrating. But you can't, at least in my world, and I learned this the hard way when I was in a band and as producer, is there's elements in the music industry and probably any industry that are fucked up and who are not ethical or who will play games with you or who just will not commit or any of these things. And some people might have it in them to want to not lash out, but stick up for yourself or be like, what the fuck? I've learned to not do that, just be patient. But the thing is that anger had to go somewhere when someone was fucking around with me. So I ended up, instead of turning it on somebody else, I ended up turning it on myself. So I would eat that anger away, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (00:39:05):

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (00:39:05):

So was I getting angry about those things? That's another story, but I think there was a lot of that discovering what the triggers are, and then once you're aware of them and you start getting the feeling that triggers something, you replace it with a positive habit. I was getting to something practical. Sure. So once you've discovered what it is that sets you off. So something pisses you off and then you immediately have a cigarette, something pisses you off, and you immediately feel like you need to have a drink. Something pisses you off, you immediately want to order a pizza. When that trigger happens, recognize it and immediately do something positive, like 10 pushups

Speaker 2 (00:39:44):

Or

Speaker 1 (00:39:44):

Something. And then you recondition yourself over time that when those things happen, you react to them in a positive way. Those things are going to keep on happening no matter what. People will keep on being fucked up. People will keep playing games. There will be shady people. It's a world full of people, and there's all types of them, and you can't avoid them. So you have to learn how to deal with them and how to react.

Speaker 2 (00:40:10):

I love this. You were focusing on the things that were inside your control.

Speaker 1 (00:40:13):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:40:14):

So it's your choice whether you order Uber Eats, it's your choice whether you have that app on your phone, it's your choice whether you replace those triggers with good positive habits or you continue to down the same path. But the other thing I really love about this story here is that you've really focused on this holistic approach. So it's really tempting to look at exercise and diet or whatever is suffering. It is like a punishment that you have to do to yourself to be rewarded with a better body or a better life or whatever. But I love here you've really focused on everything from the inside to your mind to your reactions to things, because all this stuff exists in the one vessel called your human body.

Speaker 1 (00:40:55):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:40:56):

And it all kind of needs to be fixed. It all needs to be heading in the same direction. I don't even think of exercise as exercise. I think if it was training, I'm just training for a better life, a better something, right? It's training.

Speaker 1 (00:41:07):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:41:07):

What I find personally, when I think of it as training, then food becomes a way of fueling that training. So I'm getting reward for doing some, whatever it might be, some exercise thing, some difficult movement or whatever it might be, something considered exercise, a difficult task that is training. I'm training for that through the food aspect, through the sleep aspect, through the focus aspect, all that stuff is just contributing to the same thing. It's a holistic approach, just like what you've described there. So

Speaker 1 (00:41:36):

Dude, it's all linked. And I mean, there's a huge parallel here with music too, but if you just look at one of these aspects, what did you eat?

(00:41:46):

It's like, yeah, I could tell you what I ate, but what difference is that going to make if you don't know what your triggers are and you don't follow it, what difference does it make? What exercises I did, I did exercises appropriate for me? You have to do what's appropriate for you. But what does matter is how it all works together. Because say you're overweight and you want to get in shape and you decide I'm going to exercise every day, and you're super motivated for about a week, and then you get triggered by something and you have a pizza, and then you hate yourself, and motivation's gone. What good was the motivation in the first place? Those triggers are going to keep coming up. You have to deal with those. Then you'll be able to actually not be impeded on your

Speaker 2 (00:42:35):

Path.

Speaker 1 (00:42:36):

So know thyself is very important.

Speaker 2 (00:42:39):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I like that. I like how you've taken this from what we were talking about, which is either regular activity and you've taken one step back from that and looked at the intention behind that regular activity as well. And that intention is way more important. It can't be just motivation, it can't be vanity. It has to be something that has to be some sort of purposeful, meaningful thing behind it that is driving the intention to change these habits.

Speaker 1 (00:43:07):

Well, like you said, you're training for a better life, right?

Speaker 2 (00:43:10):

Right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:43:11):

There's some pot at the end of that Rambo, I guess.

Speaker 2 (00:43:15):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. No, that's cool, man. Congratulations. That's awesome. I'm so glad to hear that.

Speaker 1 (00:43:21):

Thank you. It's definitely quite a journey, but I guess the way it paralleled to music for me is I'm sure you find that people will ask you, how did you get that one sound, that one sound? How do you get something to sound like this? Or what did you do on that one track? And the real answer is, what do I do to get that sound? It depends on what's going on and the scope, everything, how it works together is the real answer. But if you don't think about the big picture when it comes to music, it's going to be really, really hard to create something that affects people the way that the person asking the question is expecting it to. I look at, man, I kind of look at all of life like this. You can't look at individual aspects except for when you're in the moment executing.

Speaker 2 (00:44:18):

Yeah, for sure. I guess so yeah, whenever I'm starting any project, I always try to sit down and focus on whatever the overall intention is going to be, what sort of sound we're going to achieve, what the goal is, how is that relevant, everything else that people are doing. Keep in mind I'm doing just video game stuff, so there's a lot of inspiration that's around me at the time. But if you're working on an album project or a song, what a remix, even it doesn't matter. You still, I think, have to have some sort of intention in mind there. And what that intention does gives you a yardstick to measure every decision along the way against. So just to talk about doom real quick, the intention of that is to get across this idea of sonic violence, aggression, mass weight, confidence, all this stuff. These are the intentions behind every

Speaker 1 (00:45:11):

Mission accomplished.

Speaker 2 (00:45:12):

And these are written down. This is the mantra, this is the Bible of the project. This is the stuff that is the goal. This is the stuff that gets written on the post-Its that get plastered around the studio, weight, mass confidence, sonic violence, aggression. And so when you have those things and you're dialing in a guitar tone, you're constantly measuring, is this mid range adding something that is contributing to the intentions behind this is rolling off the presence or adding a bit more distortion or whatever is that contributing to one of these intended goals here? And so when you go through the song and you work on millions of those little decisions, how much click is in the kick? How much compression is here? How are we approaching the riffs? What things are we cutting out all these millions and millions of different decisions? That's what ends up with that sound. And so when somebody says at the end of it, how did you get that sound? It's like by having the intention to go that place in the first place, I can tell you the exact settings that I used, but it's not going to

Speaker 1 (00:46:14):

Help.

Speaker 2 (00:46:15):

It's not going to help unless you have that same intention. And I think it's the same as I said, it's very easy on a video game project because I'm literally surrounded by the most amazing designers and artists and programmers in the world, and they're all working on some of the most crazy looking stuff you've ever seen. But they themselves are measuring how much color do we put into this level? What colors do we use? How violent is this thing? Look how much blood and guts and things are sprayed everywhere. What other ways can we illustrate this intention of violence or aggression or hell or possession or whatever it might be? It doesn't really matter. The point here is that you need to have that core concept, and every decision that you make gets measured against that. And it's weird. When I was younger, I'd hear people talk like this, and I would be like, that doesn't fucking help me, dude.

(00:47:01):

Tell me what your amp was. And it wasn't until I kind of figured out that stuff, it really doesn't matter. And until I think you've gone through a few things and you've reached that point, you weren't really fully understand that. So that practical advice I'd give somebody who's still struggling with that concept, like, no, I need to know how many string, what tuning should my seven string be in? Because I really want, what pedal did you use? What I'd say to somebody is just experiment with everything. Try out as many different things as you can. But while you're doing that, try and assess how each change that you make makes you feel. So how does the tube screamer make you feel? How does a heavy metal pedal make you feel? How HM two, how does that make you feel? What is the different feeling you get from playing a seven string versus an eight string versus a nine string versus a six string versus a cigar box?

(00:47:55):

What are the feelings that you're getting? For me, I remember when I was like 14, 15, I read this, gosh, I can't remember, it might've been Guitar Player magazine or something, and there was an interview in there with Steve vi, and he had this really great practical thing that he did when he was younger, where he would randomly put his fingers on the fretboard and form a chord. And what the chord was was not important. Major minor, suspended, this, augmented that diminished this doesn't matter. Randomly place it. He'd play the chord and instantly write down what feeling it gave him

(00:48:31):

And the feeling wasn't happy or I'm sad, or maybe it does start that way, right? I'm happy, I'm sad. This makes me feel angry. This makes me feel questioning. This makes me feel mysterious. Right? And once you practice that again, repeatability, you'll find that it will go from happy to, I'm standing on a wind swept rocky outcrop with seagulls in the background and whatever. There's a ship off in the distance, and that one cord can summarize that feeling or whatever it might be, or this one here, I'm floating in space, but I'm suffocating at the same time. This one chord can feel that way. And what you're doing by doing this is you're sort of practicing and training your body to react on an emotional stance with music and not a technical stance with music. And so when it comes time to illustrate those core concepts like sonic violence, if you're doing a doom game, you are searching for sounds and chords and notes and effects or whatever that represent that feeling that you have in mind, and the specific settings that you used on the culture vulture are irrelevant. Do you know?

Speaker 1 (00:49:41):

Absolutely. Man, that is fascinating. And you said it in a way that I've never heard it said before. This is a topic that I've thought about my whole life, the marriage of knowledge and intention with the feeling behind it. All. Right? Because what's music without feeling? It's bullshit. It's elevator music, basically. There's no feeling behind it. That feeling is the lifeblood of music. But when you start adding definitions, goals, just words, really, it's very easy to start to get disconnected from the feeling in the first place. And I haven't really experienced or encountered too many people who are able to actually explain how to create feelings through music and how to marry the two together. So I just need to give you kudos on the way that you just explained that. It's great.

Speaker 2 (00:50:47):

Cool, man. Awesome. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:50:49):

And the intentionality that you bring to the music and the intentionality that you bring to your life, which came first.

Speaker 2 (00:50:56):

I like why we talked about this sort of stuff because I feel your listeners is going to resonate with them because I would imagine everybody listening to this podcast at some point in their life have understood the challenge of practice and the need for practice. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that have practiced an instrument for hours and hours and hours. I'm sure there's a lot of other people that have practiced listening exercises or whatever it might be. But the intention of practice, all that stuff that I was talking about before with routines and focusing on what you really want to get good at all comes from practicing guitar and playing guitar. If I really wanted to get good at playing a certain solo, I would break that solo down into chunks. That's the practical steps. And then I'd just find out whatever that little technique was that I was having trouble with. And then I'd create little drills around that technique and just practice that. So I'm taking the big concept, I'm breaking it down into practical steps, and then I'm creating routines around those practical steps. And that's where I learned this stuff. I haven't read this stuff in books or I don't read or follow of any of that stuff that you might hear similar stuff. I am not familiar with that at all. This to me, all comes from music,

Speaker 1 (00:52:05):

Even more impressive.

Speaker 2 (00:52:06):

I even think when I finish a project and I'm really stressed out and burned out, I don't think of it as anything else other than that. I've been playing my guitar for too long and it's all out of tune, and the strings are rusty and it's dirty, and I need to take time to clean it and put new strings on it and retune and give it a polish. And I think of that with myself because at the end of a project, you've been working two years, very, very difficult circumstances. You're wrecked. You're absolutely wrecked completely. You need to go through that same process you'd go through with an instrument. You've just beat the fuck out of for two hours on stage or whatever. To me, it's all music. It's the thing. I don't know if this is getting too weird or whatever, but

Speaker 1 (00:52:47):

Not to me.

Speaker 2 (00:52:49):

So to me, that was always there when I picked up an instrument when I was younger, I wanted to connect with my father, and he was really into guitars, and I figured a way for me to connect with him would be if I learned guitar. And that was the sort of thing that drove that. So I had this bigger motivation behind it. I didn't want to be a rockstar. I didn't want to make records. I didn't want to do that. To me, it was just like, oh, he's into this and it'd be cool to have a relationship with the father. So how old

Speaker 1 (00:53:13):

Were you?

Speaker 2 (00:53:13):

12.

Speaker 1 (00:53:14):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:53:14):

Yeah, 12. So they came a little bit teenager just before teenage years. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:53:19):

That's interesting, man. I've never heard someone actually say that as their motivation, but if I really think about it, probably why I started too. I saw my dad playing violin and I wanted to connect with that.

Speaker 2 (00:53:32):

Yeah. What age were you when you started violin?

Speaker 1 (00:53:34):

Three.

Speaker 2 (00:53:35):

Holy three?

Speaker 1 (00:53:37):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:53:37):

Are you even a human at three? Can you pick up objects at three?

Speaker 1 (00:53:41):

Am I a human now?

Speaker 2 (00:53:43):

Are we ever human? Al?

Speaker 1 (00:53:45):

Yeah. I don't know,

Speaker 2 (00:53:46):

Man. Three. That's amazing. I have very limited memory of when I was like three. I can't imagine. I would've loved to have gotten into music at three. That would've been incredible.

Speaker 1 (00:53:55):

I have vague recollections, just like images. I remember kind of holding it. I remember his old office and I remember shitty Suzuki sheet music, but that was probably when I was a little older. The sheet music part?

Speaker 2 (00:54:14):

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's impressive, man.

Speaker 1 (00:54:16):

Okay, so when you were 12 and you had that inspiration, were you aware of it? Is this something that now as an adult you're aware of because you've analyzed it? Or as a 12-year-old, were you consciously thinking, I want to connect with my dad more guitar?

Speaker 2 (00:54:34):

It's probably a little bit of both. I think when you are younger, you have less of the inhibition behind making decisions. So it was just like, oh, this will work. This will be a thing. And then it's not until later in life you go, okay, you kind of understand maybe what led to that. So it's probably a bit of both,

Speaker 1 (00:54:52):

But then why'd you continue?

Speaker 2 (00:54:54):

I put that down to a range of different things. Probably obsessive personality is probably the big one I found. And I still find there's this joy in practicing something physical that you get better at.

Speaker 1 (00:55:06):

Yep.

Speaker 2 (00:55:07):

I dunno what that is. To me, that gives me a bit of an endorphin rush. I would imagine the best. I'm not same

Speaker 1 (00:55:11):

Here.

Speaker 2 (00:55:11):

Yeah. You know what I mean? Right. I'm not a drummer. I think if I had my time again and there was no guitars in the world, I'd probably play drums. But I'd imagine with drums, you've got your whole body into it, and it must be so weird to hold sticks in the beginning and not really be able to play things f correctly. And your teacher's trying to get you to do parallels and stuff, you don't really understand how that works. How the parallel translates to John Bonham, for example. You don't understand that correlation, but then after a while you look at really good drummers, man, and their whole body is into it, and that just must be such a physical release look at Travis Barker for somebody, and there's just, their whole body is into it, man. Whereas with guitar, you're still kind of controlled a little bit. You get lefthand there and your right hands there, whichever way it's going to be, violin's probably even worse. Right? That's very constrained. But anyway, yeah. So for me, there is an endorphin rush that happens from nailing something physically.

Speaker 1 (00:56:02):

Man, same here. That was what I used to love about guitar was when you nail something, you really, really nail it, that you've been working on for God knows how long. There's this feeling of, it's like vindication and power. It's weird. I don't know how to, there's an endorphin rush to it. It's like the circle has completed itself or something. It's like this very complete kind of feeling that I could only get through that.

Speaker 2 (00:56:31):

Yeah. So I think it's that. And I think that coupled with this other amazing thing that I have with music, I dunno if everybody else has it, but sometimes I hear something, and it still happens today, although immediately it does happen less, but I hear something, a sound or a chord progression and just for some reason, I dunno what it is, but it just hits you in a way. And when I was younger, I'd hear like, what's an example, say pack be's cannon, right? This is before I play guitar. And I'd just hear those open string chords and when it would get down and it would resolve and I'd be like, oh wow. What's this? I don't know. I'm feeling something to it, right? It's making me want to listen to it again and again and again, and again and again.

Speaker 1 (00:57:06):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:57:07):

And so with the instrument learning to play guitar, eventually you're able to play packable canon and give yourself that feeling. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (00:57:15):

That still happens to me. I know exactly what you're talking about. There's a certain movements that it's hard to describe because you're talking about something that's nonverbal.

(00:57:27):

So the easiest way to put it is it does something to me that makes me want to hit it over and over and over a drug. It actually happened to me the other night. I kind of had not listened to any of the new music for 10 years and I listened to a few of their songs just to check it out. And I found a couple that just had the most amazing chord progressions and melodies, just so gorgeous. And I think I listened in them for seven hours straight. Wow. The same song. It's kind of shit I used to do when I was 13 because it hits you a certain way, and so I do know what you're talking about. And it actually was always my goal with music to try to get closer to that feeling. Or I guess it's kind of what heroin addicts would call the first high or something.

Speaker 2 (00:58:22):

Sure.

Speaker 1 (00:58:23):

Always chasing that feeling that I'd get from these chord progressions that adhere somewhere else. I feel like that's what you're saying, so I feel like I can relate to it.

Speaker 2 (00:58:33):

Yeah, I think so. I think those things are the stuff that drove me. I never wanted to stand on stage and have admiration. I never wanted to have girls. I never wanted to have whatever it was. It was just, that wasn't the stuff that was motivating me. If I wanted that stuff these days, I'd become an influencer. Or there's other way. If that's your goal, if that's what you want to do, learning to play the guitar is not the way to do that sort of thing. So there has to be some other sort of motivation behind it. So for me, it was that stuff, mastering the physical aspect and then having the emotional payoff stuff as well.

Speaker 1 (00:59:05):

Were you an intellectual kid? I know that you said that some of this now upon analysis, but would you say that as a kid you were more or less in touch with your emotional side or your intellectual side?

Speaker 2 (00:59:18):

Probably the emotional side.

Speaker 1 (00:59:21):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:59:21):

Yeah, I was really bad at school until about 16 and I calmed the fuck down for the last two years of school because I realized that things could get really pretty bad if I kept going down the same path. So I just pulled my head in a little bit. But maybe that's just puberty and maybe that's just teenagers and especially teenage boys. You're a bit of a dickhead, right?

Speaker 1 (00:59:43):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:59:44):

Yeah, no, probably definitely more the emotional side. I'd say. I'm still more in touch with the emotional side. I'm not good at intelligently assessing a situation. I'll find, I'll have some sort of emotional reaction first, and then I'll try and think about it afterwards. And it's stuff that as I get older, I'm having to practice, but I find I still have an emotional reaction to something and then I have to stop and think, okay, why did I react to that way? Why am I feeling that way? And I look at these things now as indicators, the emotion that you have as some sort of indicator that something is occurring. So I try and assess it that way, but I'm new to that stuff, so it's taken me a while to figure that stuff out.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):

I would've never guessed that you're new to that stuff. You have a very intellectual way of describing emotions and how they work. I would've never guessed that that was not natural to you. So that means you must have worked really, really hard on understanding it,

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):

I think. Yeah, I think maybe that sort of stuff comes from the job as well. I,

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):

Yeah, I was about to say, sounds like part of the music.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):

Yeah. I have to sit into a room with, I have sit in a room with other musicians and artists and things like that, but there'll be programmers and there'll be producers in there that have never played an instrument before. There'll be CEOs and marketing executives and all this sort of stuff and everybody in a room together. And you've got to kind of explain things to them. And luckily now I'm in this incredibly fortunate position to be able to sit there and I can say some things and they'll somewhat trust me, which never used to happen. It is very difficult to explain the emotional intention behind some music to a bunch of marketing executives and CEOs and stuff. Whereas now I think they kind of go, okay, well we don't really understand what he's saying, but there's a bit of a track record there or something.

(01:01:31):

So maybe we'll cut him some slack and give him a chance with this sort of thing. Now that doesn't say that I still don't continue to fuck up on a regular basis. That's quite constant with me. And you sometimes put in very difficult situations where there might be several people on Skype screaming down the phone at you as to why something has gone wrong and you have to very quickly explain to them how you're going to fix it and that sort of stuff. So maybe the ability to communicate the music stuff has taught me to slow down and try and intellectualize it a little bit. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):

I think that that's an incredible skill. I think you're not giving yourself enough credit. You're pretty humble. But I've been talking about this on the podcast recently that one of the hardest things to do when you're communicating with a musician, either musician to musician or producer to musician or musician to producer, is to convey what you want out of an idea verbally when the idea is nonverbal, and get them to understand what the intent is so that you're on the same page. That's where a lot of band fights happen. That's where a lot of problems between producers and clients happen is in that misunderstanding. It sounds to me like in your job, being able to master that type of communication is paramount and you not only have to do it with one person if you're in a band working with the producer, you just have to establish contact between you and them,

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):

But

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):

You have to do it with teams of people.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):

Yeah, lots of people.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):

That's pretty impressive.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):

Well, I dunno about that, but it's a necessity. You cannot get these jobs done without it. So these jobs would not get completed and out onto shelves if this didn't happen. I think the first mistake you can make is think that because you understand it, everybody else understands it. So

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):

Yeah, that's a big mistake.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):

That's the first mistake you make. The second mistake I think that you make is having the assumption that everybody else is working with the same motivations as you are, and that's not the case.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):

What do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):

Right. So my goal on any project is to just make the best music as possible. That's it. And I will pull out every stop I have to make that happen. The producer who is responsible for 150 people and their wages and their family and making sure that the game gets shipped on time because the publisher above that person is screaming down at them. They don't really understand why it's taking you a week longer to do this five second intro section for this damn trailer. They want the fucking thing out now, otherwise shit, everything's on fucking fire. Hurry the fuck up. So that's their motivation. Their motivation is to keep everybody employed. And so when I'm doing the stuff on my end, I have to be wary of all the motivations on their side as well and how decisions on my end might actually impact what's happening on their end.

(01:04:27):

So it's the level of understanding, and it's the same if you're working with a producer or a record engineer or whatever. If you're working with a record engineer or somebody in a studio, you might be the 10th band that they've worked with that week. And so that same engineer probably isn't going to understand the importance of why you need that 12 string guitar tunes that way. And it's taking three hours to do that. So you need to find a way to explain to this person why it's important, why it's integral to the song, and at that same time be ready for them to say, you know what? It's not important. You've got your head up, your own ass. These are the important things that I'm identifying in your band. Focus on that. That's what a good producer should be doing as well.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):

So where do you draw the line? Because a parallel, and I've always understood by the way that the people on the other side of the situation are real people who have typically noble motivations such as keeping people employed. So when I was signed to labels, I never thought of it as us versus them or the evil. I always thought of the people as people who are doing their jobs, who want to do them as best as possible so they can keep their job and feed their kids. The boss wanted to have records that sold so that he could pay his employees, et cetera, those types of motivations. So then when there would be friction about they want to go in a certain direction, that's not quite what I had in mind artistically. It would never freak me out. I would understand where they're coming from, where their motivations come from. Whereas I think a lot of artists, they don't get it and will not deal with it in the best way. How did you figure that out? How did you learn to understand that about the other side?

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):

Yeah, I think there is no line. I think there's no hard definition for any of this stuff. I think it's all case by case.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):

I find when you're working with 150 people, there's 150 people with all sorts of different problems that they've got going on in their own lives. There's

(01:06:32):

All sorts of things. So there's definitely no hard line for me. I don't know, maybe actually just to backed a little bit on that, it has happened a few times, but I am very serious about not sacrificing the quality of the music that I'm putting out for their products. And I have to just constantly sit down to them and say, look, you are not paying me to just do it right. I'm not phoning this in for you. This is my life now for these two years that we've been working on this. I am invested in this as much as you are, and I know and I hope you'll trust me and believe me on this, that if I ship this and it goes out bad, we cannot change that. It's done. It only gets one chance to go out into the world. So if it sounds bad, but we made the deadline, trust me, nobody's going to care. You're only going to remember that it was bad.

(01:07:23):

You have to explain to them that it's important to do that. Now, on the other side though, you really have to have your shit together because if you walk in with that sort of level of confidence and tell everybody that you're going to make something amazing for them, just have a little patience. You really do need to pick it up on your end and do the 18 hour days plus to make it happen and make it amazing and make it the best it can be. So you've got to bring your level of professionalism and awesomeness that you're expecting to get from them as well. It's a symbiosis

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):

That reminds me of something that the CEO of Creative Live said, which is that you will get the type of work that you put out into the world. And what he meant by that is if you want to do high-end photography shoots, then what you need to put out into the world is high-end photography. If you want to be a death metal producer, then what you put out into the world is death metal. You will get back what you put in. And so if you're demanding some very, very high level of trust out of people, then you have to then supply something equal to that level that you're demanding or else there's going to be an imbalance and the relationship will not survive.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):

Yeah, absolutely. Now, of course, that is perfect world scenario and there is always a person, especially on the projects that I'm working on, that come in with a scalpel and say, we are done. It's done. Finish, finish. Now it's completed. That just happens. And they have to do that too. I mean, we'd work on it forever. Otherwise, to be honest, it'd never be done. So their job is important as well. And honestly, I dunno how those folks do those jobs. Can you imagine walking into 150 people and saying, no, I know you're not completely happy with it, but we're done. We need to get it finished, we're done.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):

I could, oh yeah, I could imagine doing it. I could imagine feeling bad about it, but I can imagine doing it. It comes from running a company

(01:09:21):

Because I think about those types of situations where there, there's things, there's factors that I understand that are very big picture involved that not everybody working on the project understands Everyone on the project wants to do the best possible job with what they're doing, and I'm sure that they have the big picture or what they think is the big picture in mind, but I've got a different view of the big picture, and so I understand how certain things will affect other things that they may not even know about. They may not even be aware of 60% of the things that I'm taking into consideration on a decision, and so I expect them to also trust me, I haven't led us badly yet that if we have to stop, it's for a good reason. I'll never make you stop just on a whim or something. There's always a really, really good reason. So I guess I do understand it, but I understand the other side too. I, I'm an artist as well, so I understand the, well, dude, if it's not awesome, what are we even doing here in the first place? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):

Yeah, it has to be awesome. You have to be putting out good stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's important. The other thing though too is I think these days it's so much easier to collect data. So when I have a game that comes out, I instantly get a hundred thousand opinions about it. What's fascinating is seeing what resonates with people and that thing that you spent two seconds on right at the end of the project that you didn't care about and you're embarrassed to go out there is the thing that everybody loves. And that guitar tone that you spent 16 weeks coming up with, nobody cares. Nobody gives a shit about, and it might be important to you, that's totally cool as well, but it sort of gives you a little sense of modesty or humbling in a way where you can say, you know what? I don't know everything. Sometimes I do have to take into consideration the opinions of the 150 people that I'm working with. That's all

Speaker 1 (01:11:15):

Important. Well, kind of goes back to what you can control aspect of this conversation is you worry about the things you can control, you can control the quality of what you're putting out, but you really can't control how people are going to react. You can't predict or control.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):

Yeah, no, it's funny.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):

It is kind of weird, man. How does that affect you moving forward when you, you worked on a guitar tone for 16 weeks that you thought was the shit, and then no one even mentioned, and then they mentioned some little little mistake that you plunked out and how does that affect you moving forward?

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):

I think the big mistake you can make then is go, okay, everybody, let's not do the guitar tone ever again and let's focus on that two second thing and we'll just do that on mass production. That was the thing that resonated, so let's focus on that in mass and that's the wrong thing as well. I don't know, man. You just sort of go through it all. You take it all on board. I find too, and I hope this really resonates with your listeners and knowing some of your listeners, I'm sure this will resonate with them, but I think a lot of it at the end of the day really does come down to personal taste. And I think one of the best things that you can do as an artist in any form, but especially with music, is cultivate your own personal taste. Right?

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):

I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):

And if that one thing that you spent two seconds on that is resonating with everybody, but you don't care for it, that's just an enigma. That's just a weird thing that happened. It's a funny story that you can tell on a podcast, whatever. I feel personally, I can't change my direction to focus on that one thing that my gimmick, Hey, this is the thing that's cool. You just again, kind of cultivate your own taste. I dunno, I'm trying to find different ways of saying that, but it's a tricky one.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):

I agree though. I think that your taste is the most important thing you can cultivate because your taste is what's going to dictate those millions of little decisions. That is your compass basically because you have an infinite number of decisions you can make every day when you sit down to work. What else is going to guide you besides, I mean you, like you said, the intention, which is written down on notes, sticky notes all over the place, right? You have that, but that could be interpreted also a billion different ways by a billion different people. So what really matters is how your taste and how you interpret it and the way that you interpret the idea of sonic violence is kind of why you're hired. It is down to your taste and how that works. And I definitely, definitely think one of the most important things you can cultivate are your tastes

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):

At

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):

The end of the day. I think with anything to do with music, it's your tastes that guide everything, either drummer, guitar player, composer, producer, it all comes down to your tastes.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):

Yeah, absolutely. The question of cultivating taste, I think just comes back to assessing how you feel about decisions and how it makes you feel. So you throw up your overheads track, right? Are you just reaching to that eight K knob on the SSL plugin because you saw CLA do it?

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):

Yes, sometimes,

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):

Most probably. But is it actually making it better or worse? Is it making you like it more? Is it making you like it less? Is it making you feel more angry or does it compliment the lyrics? Does it, these sort of decisions I feel is that's the real stuff behind it. I'm not doing that because scientifically it does something with the Smiley Fletcher MunchOn Curve or whatever. Nothing like that. It's more like how does it make you feel? And I think that's the same with any taste, look at artwork and think, how does this make me feel? Foods, drinks, whatever it might be. How does this person make me feel? How does this dress make me feel? Whatever it might be. It's that I think is cultivating taste, assessing how you feel about certain things or everything really assessing how you feel about things.

Speaker 1 (01:15:13):

Hey everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast, then you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration and information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the mix before, and if you're a member, you already know how amazing it is. The beginning of the month, nail the mix members, get the raw multi-tracks to a new song by artists like Lama, God Angels and Airwaves. Knock loose 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.

(01:16:05):

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

(01:16:59):

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. So what you work on requires a whole lot of technical skill, whether it's on guitar or with the mixing or any of it. It's a lot of technical skill involved. And in the creation of a skill or the development, not creation. Development of skill requires a lot of just wood shedding time. Whether you're working on practicing a mixing technique or a guitar technique, just I know that it requires a lot of just sitting there and working it out where I think it would be impossible to be sustaining that emotion the entire time. So when you are working on that stuff and you're developing those techniques and you have an emotion in mind that you're going towards, how do you keep from losing it?

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):

Right? Yeah. So there's a couple of practical things that I do for this. We spoke about this I think last time we did the podcast, but it's still relevant today. I still do these things. So after I've done my morning routine stuff and it's 8:00 AM and I'm about to start work, I do series of blocks of time, so I do two.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):

Oh yeah, we definitely talked about the blocking.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):

So I mean, we talked about it too much. I won't go over it too much, but essentially the concept is that you have so many hours in the day and that you need to get things done, but your body also needs to rest and et cetera, et cetera. So what I do is dedicate blocks of time to different activities, and this is the way that I find I get things done. So I block my time out for practical work stuff into two hours. So at 8:00 AM I will go from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM and then I'll have a 30 minute break. Now when I'm working from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM it's work. It's not social media, it's not emails, it's not screwing about, it's not reading about new plugins or whatever. It's, it's work. Well, it's whatever you dedicate that time to. So for me, it might be I really need to get this drum mix pumping and that's it.

(01:19:11):

That's all I'll focus on for those two hours. Now, at the end of those two hours, I will guarantee that I'm pretty not close to getting it done, but it forces you to stop and reassess, is this important? Do I need to spend another two hours on this or is it done? Or you walk away for 30 minutes and have a little break. You might have a cup of tea or a cup of coffee or something, lie down for 30 minutes, whatever it is, it's a rest break. It's a proper break. And that forces you come to come back and reassess because if after those two hours I go into a third hour, I find myself just doing the same thing over and over again waiting for it to change

(01:19:45):

And it doesn't. So you really need that break. So that's what I do. I break it up, I have two hours, then I have a half hour break, I do two hours, I have a half hour break, I two hours, I do a half hour break, a deadline time. I'll do five of these a day. So during a deadline during crunch, I'll do five two hour blocks during the day. If it's not deadline, I aim for four. So four two hour work sessions is an eight day, and that's the way I think it is, eight hours of work. It's not two hours of reading emails or fucking about or whatever it is, is eight hours of work. If it's a five hour block, then that's 10 hours of work. And you'll be surprised. I see a lot of people that say, oh man, I worked 18 hours. It's like, well, did you really need to work 18 hours and were you actually working or were you just staring at the computer hoping that something else would change in life? So it's focus, again,

Speaker 1 (01:20:30):

I remember a lot when I was going to Berkeley and people would brag to each other about how many hours a day they would practice, and sometimes they'd be like, I practiced 12 hours, I practiced 14. And usually the best players were like, I practiced four or five hours

Speaker 2 (01:20:47):

And

Speaker 1 (01:20:47):

These 12 hour a day dudes, they didn't understand it and it's because they didn't really practice for 12 hours, maybe practiced for 30 minutes and then kind of jammed around for a few hours and then practiced some scales for 15 minutes and then fucked around, played some songs,

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):

Tried pedals for,

Speaker 1 (01:21:12):

Whereas these four to six hour a day dudes were like, okay, 15 minutes this, 15 minutes of that logging everything just like workouts. It's all about focus. And I think that some people, I've heard them talk shit about the 40 hour work week or whatever, about the eight hours a day, five times a week as not being sufficient. And I guess in some cases it's not, but I think most people don't actually do 40 hours of work per week. I think that's actually pretty rare. I think, and I read this somewhere, I don't remember where that on average, your average nine to five office worker across industries does about an hour and 45 minutes a day of work.

Speaker 2 (01:21:57):

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):

That's craziness.

Speaker 2 (01:21:59):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):

That's craziness.

Speaker 2 (01:22:02):

And again, you don't have to do four of these blocks or five of these blocks each day. I'm just doing that because there are deadlines that need to be met, and this is the only way those deadlines are going to be met. I don't have people behind me that are going to do it for me. That's just on my shoulders. So I have to, but you'll be surprised if you implement a single two hour block of time into your day to dedicate to something practical, it will get done. It will get done. It's so powerful. It's way more powerful than anything else. This is the secret I find to getting the things that I'm working on, getting them done on time and with focus as well, which is the point here. I work for two hours on the task and I have a half an hour break. At the end of the break, I assess, okay, what do I need to work on next? I now need to get the base relationship with the kick drum. I'll spend some time on that. If I get that done before the two hours, great, let's move on and get the snare in there. Right? Two hours is up. Cool. Have a break, come back. What's next? Always the next thing.

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):

Okay, so I know that you said that the big ideas are written down so that you're always looking at it like violence or something. But when it comes to this methodical step-by-step part of the process, so you're working on a block and then you feel like, alright, the next thing I got to do is the relationship of the snare, or is this something that's also all written down like a pilot going down a checklist?

Speaker 2 (01:23:23):

So there's a couple of things there so you can't see it, but often I have a whiteboard behind me on a project like Doom. Now this isn't gospel, don't take this as gospel. But on a project like Doom, once we've nailed the sound, I can confidently say that 80% of the music in the game is going to follow a similar thing. It's going to have drums, it's going to have percussion. There'll be something that represents a kick, something that represents a snare, something that represents some level of distorted midrange, whether there's guitars or synthesizers. There's going to be synthesized elements holding down the low end. There's going to be high end elements, et cetera. There's going to be melodies, there's going to be leads, there's going to be vocal components.

(01:24:00):

So I have this just the same way you would write down an album project in a studio where you have the name of the song going down the left side of this grid, and then you have the different elements going along the top side of the grid. So kick sna, toms, whatever it might be, is over there. And then what that gives you, that grid gives you a bunch of blocks and I just fill out those blocks as I go. So I sit here and I go, what is the next most important thing I need to do on that whiteboard? And then I attack that. The other thing that I do is I write everything down. I'm surrounded by notebooks. Those listening at home can't see this, but I'm literally showing al my notebooks at the moment.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):

Well, you actually write it down with a pen and

Speaker 2 (01:24:38):

Wow. Yeah, I actually write it all down. So I don't know. You can see that Al, but nobody else will be able to see that. So you'll see here I have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, written in as the weekend over here, and I have my tasks written down and what I need to do on each day. So that might be what emails I need to send. It might be what elements of each song that I need to work on. So by the end of Monday, I need to get the synths done, I need to get the melodies done, I need to get the vocal recording session booked, et cetera. And I have little circles next to each one of those tasks, and I fill in that circle once it's done, and then I can look at that and go, shit is getting done. And that allows me to sleep at night. Prior to doing that, I'd keep it all in my head and that's the worst thing anybody can

Speaker 1 (01:25:19):

Do, man. Man, man, man. Okay. So I have a really good memory, really good. It's a genetic thing. It runs in my family. Several people in my family have photographic memories.

Speaker 2 (01:25:34):

That's not fair.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):

No, it's a curse too.

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):

Nice. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:39):

So for the longest time, I would never use a calendar. I would never write down people's phone numbers. Back in the day when you would have to write down people's phone numbers, anybody born after 2001, you have no idea what I'm talking about. People's addresses, the kind of stuff that you didn't have in A GPS nowadays, the equivalent would be your calendar. I didn't start using one until a year and a half ago. Really? Now I use it religiously just between a few companies and the podcast and

(01:26:12):

I can't do it. But it got to the point where I was starting to fuck things up, and so I absolutely had, I had to put it down in some sort of medium and then that took my stress away. My stress just, I had so much stress around carrying the information in my head and I didn't even realize it, but all those dates and all those phone numbers and all, all those emails that had to be sent, all those contracts that have to be finished, it's really kind of dumb to just try to remember it all, but I just did it. I could, but then it got to a point where it was starting to really, really stress me out. Then occasionally I would not get something done or forget to write an email back on a project and get an email three weeks later asking me what's going on or that kind of stuff. And it's like, alright, this can't keep happening. This is stressing me out and I'm dropping the ball. It's time to give in and conform. And yeah, now I live by that calendar.

Speaker 2 (01:27:19):

Oh yeah, man, I'm glad that I find you've got to think of this as your external brain.

Speaker 1 (01:27:24):

Yes. It's just an extension of you. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:27:27):

Exactly. And it's just putting it there to free up your mind to do other things. And so when I have my 30 minute rest period, I'm resting. I'm not laying there going, okay, I've got to email al back about the podcast. I've got to do the contract for so-and-so. I've got to make sure I email this person. I've got to do this. I've got to buy milk. I've got, it's all written down. Once it's there, and if I have one of those thoughts and it's not written down, it goes in the book. There it is, and I don't need to think about it anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:27:52):

I think of it like brain ram basically clearing out your brain ram for other things.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):

It's so important. Honestly, I have every day written down for the week. I have a section off to the side for other tasks, just general admin I'd call it, but book a dentist appointment or go pick up the milk or book this travel trip or whatever it might be. All that stuff goes in there. I have a section down the bottom, which is what I call my waiting on section, which somebody told me was a thing, but I didn't know that. But it's like I write down who I'm waiting on for something. So if you and I are working on a project or something and I ask you a question, I write down there waiting on Al to reply to me about something or whatever that might be.

Speaker 1 (01:28:36):

That's smart.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):

So that way I can always look at it and say, Hey, it's been six days since I've heard back. I might do a follow-up off to the right hand side. I have some notes, just random notes I often find we have conversations and calls and I just need a section of paper to start writing some notes down. And then I have a couple of other things that I've gotten here. One, I've started doing this weekly praise thing, which I started doing last year. I find somebody there that I had started admiring their work. Could be an artist, could be a musician, could be somebody who's doing streaming online. It could be a plugin manufacturer, it could be anything. And I take the time to send them an email saying how much I really admire their work. I love the fact that they're pushing boundaries. I love the fact that whatever it is that they're doing is making my life better.

Speaker 1 (01:29:20):

How often do you do that?

Speaker 2 (01:29:21):

I do it weekly. I track one a week. It's just time. I'd love to do it every day. I think you should do it more often,

Speaker 1 (01:29:26):

Man. Can I ask you about that? Sure, man. Because I do that sometimes too with no agenda, just I want to thank somebody for something awesome they're bringing to this world. I feel like sometimes some people who create things, they might get a lot of praise, but I know this from being a weirdo that sometimes I don't listen to praise from most people and there's, I'll only really care if it's from someone I really respect or something like that. I remember once, many, many years ago, I think Will Putney hit me up and complimented me on a mix or something

Speaker 2 (01:30:09):

Cool.

Speaker 1 (01:30:09):

Then I cared about that. That meant something. Stuff like that. And so I feel like doing that for other people, it's a good feeling because I know that creators are weirdos and they might not even realize what a impact they're having on other people's lives. Sometimes it might take someone who's a peer of theirs or something to communicate it. So I try to do that for people too.

Speaker 2 (01:30:36):

Yeah, that's important. I think it's really cool. You understand the feeling that you get when somebody does that for you.

Speaker 1 (01:30:41):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:30:42):

But to me it's legitimate. To me. It's like, man, this plugin is making my life so much easier. I need to find out whoever developed this thing and send them an email because this is incredible. This is great. This pedal that I just bought, it's amazing. I love the artwork, I love the sound. It does something that I've never been able to find in anything else. I need to tell this person that. So it's not like bullshit compliment stuff. That's the worst. No, that's the worst.

Speaker 1 (01:31:04):

No, no, no, not fake at all.

Speaker 2 (01:31:06):

It is literally like, Hey, you don't know me. I don't know you, but something that you spent your time and energy on is making my life better.

Speaker 1 (01:31:14):

What inspired you to start doing that?

Speaker 2 (01:31:16):

I think it was probably a reaction against the majority of the emails that I was sending, which is work related or stress related. So it's all just, Hey, shit's going wrong. When we've got problems, we've got issues, we've got problems, we've got issues, we've got problems, we've got issues, blah, blah, blah. Every email is that. To me it's like when you're working on a project, it's just problems and issues. That's all it is. And it's like, you know what? I'm going to take the time just to send somebody a cool message because I find I'm getting an emotional release out of sending that as well because it stops me to, sorry. It forces me to stop and think what are the things that I'm enjoying at the moment? What is this new pedal that I've got? I'm really enjoying it, so I'm going to just spend 10 minutes and type up why I am enjoying it and then send it to the person. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:31:59):

This is really, really interesting because one thing that the self-help gurus say, which rubs me the wrong way for some reason, is they talk about gratitude, but the way they talk about it just makes me feel uncomfortable. It feels forced. So it's just a very Hallmark card or something. It just feels like a very, very fake thing, this whole gratitude thing. But the way you're saying it is very, very real. And I know that there's times where someone will create something that is so, it makes my life so much better, like a road caster thing. I need to tell them how fucking sick it is. It has made my life. I'm not saying this because they gave it to me or anything. It's sitting here right in front of me. So I was like, man, this thing really has made my life a shit ton better and they should know about it. I actually get excited about it when I go to tell people these things. And I used to feel uncomfortable about it because sometimes people get weird about being fanboy. So I would kind of not say anything. I didn't want to make them feel uncomfortable. Then I decided that they should just

Speaker 2 (01:33:21):

Know

Speaker 1 (01:33:22):

Because they did something great.

Speaker 2 (01:33:24):

Again, commit and see what happens. You just do it. Just commit and see what happens. And I find I love responses. Sometimes I get like, oh man, the whole office was having a really tough week, and we got your email in and we circulated around the office and everybody loved it. And it's like, man, I'm not even doing it for that reason, but I'm so glad that there is that reaction. There's that response from it. It's powerful. We're so isolated on a lot of the things that we do as well and getting some sort of personal reaction, even if it is via an email, means so much more these days. It really does. It's powerful.

Speaker 1 (01:33:58):

How did that even come about

Speaker 2 (01:33:59):

Again? Yeah, I just thought I really want to tell this person something.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):

That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:04):

Yeah, was no, I mean I know you were talking about self-help and gratitude things, and I'd always look at these things just because you mentioned it and I'd be like, this is cool, but do I really need to write down every day that I'm grateful that the sun came up today?

Speaker 1 (01:34:19):

Yeah, that's what it is. That's what it's makes sense. It just felt really insincere to me. It's like, yes, thankful for the people in my life that love me. Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:34:29):

Yeah, cool. And maybe there is something powerful that works for a lot of people and I think that's great, but what you could take from that is just turn it into your own thing. And sometimes I'll find just some, I don't know, like a kid on SoundCloud or something that's got two views and I'll listen to it. I'm like, you know what? This is actually creative. It's interesting and stuff. And I'll just find out who they are and send them a message. And if you don't hear back, I don't care. It's like it's giving me an opportunity to stop, enjoy something, tap out the reasons why I enjoy it, and then you hit send at the end and that's kind of it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):

So when people compliment you, how does it affect you? I know you get a ton of praise, man.

Speaker 2 (01:35:08):

I hate it to be honest. I ignore it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:11):

I figured what you just said. That's why I felt uncomfortable about this is because that you proved it. That's what it is. I know creators are weird about it.

Speaker 2 (01:35:22):

Yeah, I think it depends on the compliment, and that's part of this process when I'm tapping out these emails is I'm explaining why this thing that this person did is making my life enriching my life at that time. So whatever it might be, a piece of artwork I saw or a compressor, I just bought a pedal, I found a plugin. I'm using whatever it might be, a YouTube video, somebody did whatever it is. It's like, Hey dude, I like this. For these reasons. I find the tough stuff to receive when you're a creator is, Hey man, I really love your work. Or man, I just love the stuff you do. It's amazing. You're like, fuck off. It doesn't mean anything. I'm sure it doesn't. And maybe that's just a limit of the discourse of the time, and that's maybe all that the person is feeling comfortable saying. Maybe they can't illustrate all that as well. But there is a cynical voice in me, which I feel all of us musicians developed through practice, which is saying they don't mean that there's nothing genuine there. So I guess I'm just trying to take an extra step and be genuine with that praise mail that we're sending off.

Speaker 1 (01:36:24):

I think you're right. I also have told myself I shouldn't believe the praise because then I have to believe the bad stuff too. Can't cherry pick it, right? So I would just shut out the good stuff and shut out the bad stuff. Just shut out all of it. But the stuff that actually means something to me when I get it is the stuff that's thought out. For instance, I was doing a one-on-one with a URM student. Sometimes I do them, I don't really have time for them anymore, but every once in a while I'll do them just to talk to students personally. And it was a conversation where I realized that I was getting in over my head in that the person obviously had nobody to talk to and had some pretty serious psychological issues and some PTSD going and just he needed to talk to a professional, not to me. I was happy to talk to him, but what he was looking for out of the conversation with me was not going to happen with me. I'm not equipped for that. So what I said was, I really think you need to see a psychiatrist.

(01:37:39):

And I spent the 20 minutes or whatever talking to him about getting help, and then that was something like 10 months later he hit me up to tell me that he actually did do it. And since then he ended up losing 80 pounds. His relationship with his wife has been repaired. He got a raise at work, all this stuff, this cascade of just good shit because he went and he got on the medication and he's dealing with whatever the problem was. So that one meant something. It was a detailed, tangible thing. It wasn't just like, love what you do. It was an actual thing. And I was hearing exactly how it helped. So I guess it's the same as what you're saying is when you take the time to actually tell somebody exactly why and you put the thought into it so that they know that you're being genuine, then I think it sinks

Speaker 2 (01:38:38):

In. Yeah, man, I think you do. And I think we've all had that experience, especially in the music industry. I'll tell a really quick funny story. A couple of years ago I did a talk at a conference called GDC, it's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. It's well worth going. It didn't happen this year, sadly, it was going to be happening last week, but it was canceled for the obvious reasons. But anyway, I try to go every year. It's an amazing thing. If you want to get into the game industry, I'd highly suggest checking it out. Anyway, I went along and

Speaker 1 (01:39:02):

What's it called again?

Speaker 2 (01:39:02):

So it's the Game Developers Conference, GDC,

(01:39:05):

Just search GDC. It's huge. It's like 30,000 game developers all around the world converged onto San Francisco for a week. So if you want to get into games, that's the place to go. Anyway, I went along and I did a talk with an awesome buddy of mine. He was my audio director at the time on a project. His name is Jed, right? Jed's an amazing sound designer. Really, really cool guy. Anyway, a day afterwards I happened to be in town with my brother. My brother was also traveling around the world and he's not into games. He's a high intelligent scientist PhD guy at the moment.

(01:39:35):

And he's like, Hey man, I really want to check out this GDC thing. Now you have to have a pass. The pass is a lanyard that you wear around your neck and it has your name and things on it on a piece of paper that's printed that he's on your chest. And I said to Jed, the guy that I did the talk with a day ago, Hey man, can we just borrow your pass and I'll give it to my brother? We'll go check out the conference and things for an hour and we'll come back and Jed's like, sure man, go for it. No worries. Anyway, we walk into the conference with our passes and this guy comes up to us and he said, Hey guys, I really loved your talk yesterday, Jed, man, I really loved that section. Did I really loved your talk. That was amazing.

(01:40:09):

Now, he didn't realize he was talking to my brother. My brother was just wearing Jed's past, right? It's clear that this guy wasn't even there. He didn't understand that Jed's actually a French guy and this guy is like my ran a brother that just felt so insincere and I thought, man, what's this guy's motivation? Why even waste the time to do this sort of thing? Is it just to be nice? If you want to be nice, just come and have a chat about something, right? No need to pretend. So when I get sort of insincere compliments or whatever, I have that sort of, there is a sense of cynicism behind it. You're like, does this person want something? Or I dunno, there's an instinctual kind of negative reaction that it is there. So I dunno.

Speaker 1 (01:40:49):

I feel like because we have to deal with so many people in the creative world, once you are actually doing business in the creative world, you have to encounter so many people and there are a lot of people that are full of shit and there's just a lot of drama. As much as you'd like to avoid it, it's there. And a lot of bullshitting ass kissing, all that stuff. I think that in order to just keep sanity, you kind of become a detective for this kind of stuff. Yeah, man. Almost developed a sixth sense for it. So just as a self-protection

Speaker 2 (01:41:24):

Mechanism

Speaker 1 (01:41:25):

I think.

Speaker 2 (01:41:25):

Exactly. I think so.

Speaker 1 (01:41:26):

To stay away from that stuff. So do you have time to take a few questions from

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):

The audience? Yeah, sure man. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:32):

Awesome. They were super stoked that you came back on.

Speaker 2 (01:41:37):

Oh cool. Oh dude. Anytime. Really.

Speaker 1 (01:41:39):

Well, thank you. I'm really glad you came back on.

Speaker 2 (01:41:41):

No, I'm glad to. I love just to take a moment to give you some proper praise too, man. The nail mixed stuff has just been so helpful. Even for me,

Speaker 1 (01:41:48):

After

Speaker 2 (01:41:49):

Watching the session that you guys did with Machine Down in Austin, I had to change the way I was doing Mix Bus compression to something similar to what he was doing.

Speaker 1 (01:41:58):

Dude, that shit was mind blowing

Speaker 2 (01:42:00):

Much to my dismay. It didn't sound as good as when he was doing it, but he was such a great subject and things and the fact that you're able to get access to these guys and do these eight hour sessions with them is so powerful. There's so much just watching their taste unravel in front of you during that process. Not copying down the settings or anything like that, but just the approach and the process that you do with these really long form mixing videos is really, really super cool.

Speaker 1 (01:42:29):

Well, thank you for saying So what's interesting, we have other types of content that's more super focused on the fast tracks or this one's about how to hear compression and it's like an hour and a half of just that. So some people have complained a little bit about the length of nail the mix, and I think they're not getting it. It's not supposed to be a tutorial. It's supposed to help you understand how the mind of this master is approaching this and it takes time. It's not a tutorial. So if you want a tutorial, you can go watch a tutorial, but this is more about learning how a process feels and how a process is approached, which I wish I had that when I was coming up would've been mind blowing. Dude. Have you liked that one? Have you seen the Will Putney one?

Speaker 2 (01:43:25):

No, I haven't seen that yet,

Speaker 1 (01:43:27):

So I don't know if you know but Will is Machine's Protege?

Speaker 2 (01:43:31):

I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (01:43:32):

Yeah, machine has spawned some.

Speaker 2 (01:43:34):

Oh yeah. I can imagine

Speaker 1 (01:43:35):

Some talented, have you heard of Zach Sini?

Speaker 2 (01:43:39):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:43:39):

Yeah. Zach Sini came up through Machine, which is his name. Josh Wilbur too. Will Putney. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:43:46):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:43:46):

Machine Spawns great mixers. But Will Putney's is like the machine one, but on steroids with hardware.

Speaker 2 (01:43:56):

Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:43:57):

It's crazy. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:44:00):

So right now that you're telling me this, right, normally I'd go, wow, ail, that's awesome. But it goes in the book. I have a section here of things to check out because so many people tell me, Hey man, you should check this thing out. You should listen to this music, you should watch this movie. You should check out this Netflix series. You should read this book. And normally you go, yeah, man, I'll do that. And an hour later you've forgotten the conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:44:19):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:44:19):

So it goes in the book right when you mention it. That's cool, man. Thanks for the heads up.

Speaker 1 (01:44:24):

If you got a lot out of the machine one, this will, how much do you use outboard?

Speaker 2 (01:44:29):

So right in front of me, just quickly. I know we wanted to get some questions, but I have a hybrid setup. I have all my stuff in front of me. I don't have stuff off to the side. Everything I have, I'm standing in front of my system now and I have everything here. The reason I have it there is so when I'm tweaking that compressor, I can hear the difference. I don't just have to lean over to my right, dial something, come back and go, oh, is that better or worse?

Speaker 1 (01:44:50):

Isn't that the stupidest thing?

Speaker 2 (01:44:53):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:44:53):

It's stupid. I've never understood that. No one has ever given me a good explanation for it. It's something that is bothered me about studios with hardware for 20 years that you're getting out of the listening position to tweak it. How the fuck do you know that you're, when it's behind you on the floor, how are you tweaking an EQ on the floor turned

Speaker 2 (01:45:22):

Around? I think the only way you achieve that is like how CLA does, which is where you have that setting for the base of the 1176.

Speaker 1 (01:45:30):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:45:30):

And then if you need a different setting, you just buy another 1176.

Speaker 1 (01:45:35):

Well, I mean it works for him, man. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:45:38):

Sure man.

Speaker 1 (01:45:39):

So questions? Questions?

Speaker 2 (01:45:41):

Yeah, sure. Let's do that.

Speaker 1 (01:45:42):

Okay. So Matt Clark is wondering how does writing pieces for specific game events differ from writing songs? Is it a similar process in general? IE pick a mood and develop the idea from there.

Speaker 2 (01:45:54):

Yeah, it always starts with the concept. So that emotional stuff that I was talking about before, how when I was younger I would have a certain emotional feeling that would come around from Packable cannon. I still search for those emotional reactions when I'm writing something, so I don't stop on a phrase or a riff until it's making me feel something. And I always start there, whether it's a game event or whether it's a song or whether it's something else. I always start there. Once you've got that, then the technical side takes over and you go, how do I need to illustrate this riff or melody to best intention that it's going to be used for? So a combat track, for example, has a different intention behind it than a game event, like a cut scene or something and you just illustrate it that way. And when usually what happens is six months into the project you've got your themes down, so you have your theme for hell. For example, you have your theme for the Doom Guy. You have your theme for this creepy angel character. And so when that person is on screen, you're just reiterating those themes. Once you've got those themes down, then you can print music, I call it. The stuff flows really quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:46:57):

Just out of curiosity, do you ever write song songs?

Speaker 2 (01:47:02):

To be honest, I actually think of pretty much most of the music that I write for video games as songs. So each one has a verse, a chorus, a bridge, a breakdown, all this sort of stuff. And then again, it's just how that plays back. That differs after we do the game itself, I then move on to soundtrack production, which is where I take all these little bits and pieces and then form songs so we can release an album and the album is full of stuff that can be two minutes to 12 minutes or whatever it might be, just like an album.

Speaker 1 (01:47:31):

Okay. You just reminded me of something I wanted to tell you about. I watched the metal choir video.

Speaker 2 (01:47:38):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:47:39):

And I wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed it for a few different reasons. First of all, normally when I've seen those types of things, they cringe me out for some reason. And this did the opposite. I thought it was just fucking badass,

Speaker 2 (01:47:58):

Cool man.

Speaker 1 (01:47:59):

And I thought it was so cool that you had legit motherfuckers in there. The dude from aborted and stuff, real people from throughout the different genres of metal in there on something that is a major mainstream thing. So I think it's so cool to be able to take this kind of music and present it to the world in a way that they'll actually consume, but then not just that to bring in people that are from the underground in the scene into it is really, really cool. And that video just sounded fucking cool.

Speaker 2 (01:48:44):

Oh, cool, man. I'm hoping we can do some longer stuff with that in the future. It was a whole day. It was a massive endeavor. So I'm hoping we can do a little bit more beyond a three minute video in the future. Everything has changed at the moment. The game studios that I work with are all working from home at the moment, so things have really, really slowed down. The metal choir recording session itself, we did pretty much exactly a year ago in Austin at this point. And I think now, if we were trying to do that right now, we wouldn't be able to. A year ago we could do it. We wouldn't be able to do it this year. But yeah, I mean putting it together, the ensemble of people that we put together, it was really based on what they would bring to the choir. A choir works best when you have a range of voices. If you just get 10 people with the same voice, it's not going to really work out. So

Speaker 1 (01:49:27):

Yeah, it was diverse. I was super, super impressed by it. It was so well researched with all those vocalists. You didn't just grab a bunch of metal vocalists. I know who those people are. Those are very specific choices.

Speaker 2 (01:49:45):

Yeah, absolutely. And when I did an open call out for these metal singers and things to just send me some screams and stuff and then we'd put together an ensemble based on whoever would apply, and I thought nobody would be interested. I thought it was a stupid idea. Everybody was telling me it was a stupid idea. So we gave it a month for applications and I thought over a month I might get 20 people that might be interested.

Speaker 1 (01:50:08):

20,000 later,

Speaker 2 (01:50:10):

I put the call out, dude, and within two days I had 2000 and we had to cut it short because it was just, and honestly I said, we said no to so many amazing people. We could have done so many more amazing things, but we had sorts of union considerations. We had working in the US considerations. There was so much stuff that had to get people's schedules, man, like tour schedules. Trying to line that stuff up was insane. So yeah, it was an endeavor.

Speaker 1 (01:50:33):

Well, it just goes to show you how appreciated this is by the metal community. I think metal gets portrayed a lot when in the commercial world, for instance, in movies when they have the metalheads in movies. Have you ever noticed how wrong they get

Speaker 3 (01:50:52):

It? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:50:53):

Normally when there's something in the commercial world that takes on any metal, they just get it so wrong. Everything about it's just wrong. So something like this that's authentic, it's the real thing. The music is the music and the vibe. You figured out a way to be the real deal in something that as major as that game. I think that the community at large recognizes it and appreciates it. I think that's why you had 2000 people.

Speaker 2 (01:51:26):

Yeah, it was insane. Oh, that's cool, man. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:28):

But alright, next question. I can't pronounce this guy's name, so I'm sorry. Jawa or whatever. Dear Father Gordon. Oh

Speaker 2 (01:51:35):

God.

Speaker 1 (01:51:35):

Surely dynamic variation isn't your main concern when doing music for a demon shooting video game, but that setting leaves you with very little dynamic range to work with if the music is to be present at all times. Are there any implications from this? Is there any time you had to sacrifice drum punch or dynamics between sections or anything else in favor of making the music more in your face? And thank you for the noise you create heart emoji.

Speaker 2 (01:52:05):

That's cool, man. So dynamics can be illustrated in several different ways, not just volume, not just louder versus quieter. Dynamics can also be illustrated with frequency, quite powerful. So you can have something that's very loud, but if your frequencies are really well taken care of, then you still get this impression of dynamics. You can see that a lot in the EDM world. Listen to noisier stuff, man. You can hear every kick drum, snare drum, and it sounds like everything is on your nose, but everything is clear.

Speaker 1 (01:52:31):

Listen to what

Speaker 2 (01:52:32):

Noisier.

Speaker 1 (01:52:33):

What is that?

Speaker 2 (01:52:34):

That's a EDM outfit. Three guys noisier.

Speaker 1 (01:52:37):

Oh, I've never heard of him.

Speaker 2 (01:52:38):

Oh, check 'em out, man. Your brain will be amazing stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:52:41):

You know what I do? I don't write things down a notepad, but I use notes.

Speaker 2 (01:52:48):

Oh, nice.

Speaker 1 (01:52:49):

This comes from my friend Johnny Minardi. Shout out if you're listening. I use

Speaker 2 (01:52:55):

Like phone notes,

Speaker 1 (01:52:56):

Apple notes, right? Yeah. I just write shit down. So when people give me ideas, if I don't write this down

Speaker 2 (01:53:04):

Now

Speaker 1 (01:53:05):

I'm going to forget. How do you spell it?

Speaker 2 (01:53:06):

So

Speaker 1 (01:53:06):

N for November.

Speaker 2 (01:53:08):

Ois. So OIS I-A-O-I-S-I-A-N-O-I-S-I-A-N-O-I-S-I-A.

(01:53:14):

Yep. Great. Noisier. Check 'em out, man. Amazing. Blew your head off. So anyway, getting back to the questions. So dynamic range. Look, when we are doing a video game project, the mix is being taken care of in real time. So what I mean by that is that certain elements in the mix, and this is every element, this is gun shots, this is screams, this is footsteps, this is music that's playing. All of the sonic elements are being mixed in real time based on what the player is doing. When there is a really important line of dialogue, for example, that comes in, everything gets dropped in volume so that dialogue can be heard. So we're not mixing things preemptively, we're kind of mixing it on the fly. The system is doing that. The game while you're playing is mixing the music, the sound, sorry, the game in the background is mixing while you are playing. So the music is very loud. It's pretty much zero dynamic range. It's very, very loud. So it can be turned down and up in the mix when certain things are happening in game. I hope that makes sense. It's kind of difficult to explain. If I had 20 decibels of dynamic range in my music when that really quiet moment played, you wouldn't hear it. If something else was happening at the same time, it would just disappear into the background.

(01:54:32):

So then when it comes time to do the soundtrack, we do proper dynamic range mixes for all of the music. So when you pull music out of the game and listen to it, it sounds terrible. It's really, really loud. The album releases are mixed with dynamic range of course in mind. I hope that explains that.

Speaker 1 (01:54:47):

Yes, I think it does. I think that's a great answer. I think some people are going to need to listen to that a few times though, but just trust me, if you didn't get that rewind, listen to it again. Yna Halen is wondering, can you give us some tips on how to blend extreme metal sounds with industrial synthesized sounds without them sounding like two different songs played at once?

Speaker 2 (01:55:11):

Yeah, good question. So a lot of it again, comes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is having a unique core concept behind every decision that you make, right? The worst examples of what you're talking about are when I find you take two opposing things and try to force them together. So you take a speed metal track and then you put a synth patch over the top. It sounds terrible because it's not meant to go together. Those things haven't evolved together. To me it always sounds like that weird trend that happened in the nineties of taking classical music and stuff and putting boom bat drum beats underneath. Do you remember that trend for a while Al? And you'd have Mozart and stuff and then there'd be like whatever underneath it, right?

Speaker 1 (01:55:55):

I remember that. It made me shutter.

Speaker 2 (01:55:59):

You can't just take two things and sort of ram them together. I mean, well, you can, but to me, my, that one

Speaker 1 (01:56:07):

In particular is so bad.

Speaker 2 (01:56:10):

Our collective taste, then our cultivated taste says that it doesn't sound good. So you have to start with concept, and that concept might be let's make a really quick defined, aggressive piece of music right now. When you start with that concept, that is the first thing you get down that influences everything. So that is going to influence what the guitar part is doing. The riff itself, it's also going to influence what the synth part is doing, and what you see now is that both of these things are being decided upon together. They're under the same umbrella, if that makes sense. You are deciding on how these things work together based on how they're going to work together, not through force.

(01:56:54):

And what that does is it does restrict, you cannot take, man, it's difficult to explain, but it doesn't mean you can take any guitar riff and then any synth sound and then put them together. You have to make a decision on how those two things are going to work together. Practically how you do that is through experimentation and listening and all the other stuff that this podcast talks about. A lot of the time it's just trial and error, focusing on what frequencies each instrument is taking up. Do you want them to sound blended together like they're one instrument or do you want to hear separation that's going to influence your decision? Those sorts of things. I don't really have any further preact practical tips than that because it's not like you can buy a plugin that'll do it for you or anything. It's lots of careful consideration.

Speaker 1 (01:57:39):

I have something to add on this topic because I'm not going to mention names here. I am not. But on one of my own records, one of the visions I had was that I wanted to create the sound that was a hybrid of guitar and synth and a lot of the riffs would get followed by synths, but the synth would be nasty too. And so you wouldn't really be able to tell where the synth starts and the guitar finishes or whatever. It's just one big sound and it's heavy as fuck. But the producer I was working with thought of metal and synth as two separate things, like the way that synth is usually done in metal where it's like you have your guitars and then you have your synth and they sound like oil and water basically. I think I would've probably been able to communicate it better now because it was over 10 years ago. But what I was trying to get them to understand the whole time was that it's not supposed to be two separate things. They're part of the same thing. You can't be thinking about it as a ripping guitar tone with a synth on it. You have to be thinking about what it is When those two things are blended together, I think what is the bigger thing you're creating here?

Speaker 2 (01:58:58):

So to take a practical route to answer the question, if you and I ail were working on this project together and you said, what I want is this mesh of guitars and synths that just sounds like one massive thing, I would instantly say, well, let's try this. Let's try to make our guitar tone sound like an aggressive synthesizer and let's try and make our synthesizer sound like a really aggressive guitar tune.

Speaker 1 (01:59:22):

Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:59:23):

Instantly what you're going to get then is a practical approach. You're going to unplug your amp and go straight direct into the board with a distortion pedal on it because all of a sudden your guitar now sounds like a synthesizer. You might take a synthesizer and then run that out through the cabs through all sorts of crazy fuzz pedals and stuff. Then I can guarantee you when you put those two things together, you're going to get something that's interesting. I dunno if it's going to be perfect, but it's going to be interesting. So that's what I mean by a concept. The concept there is let's make our guitar sound like the synth and the synth sound like the guitar, and then we'll get somewhere. Again, you have to, this has become such a catchphrase, but for me it's that change the process, change the outcome. So change what the guitar is doing, change what the synth is doing that will lead you in an interesting place where you can find something that works together. If you're going to try and combine a James Hetfield riff with synth or whatever, it's just, I dunno, man, it's really hard to make that approach work.

Speaker 1 (02:00:16):

Yeah, oil and water.

Speaker 2 (02:00:17):

Yeah. I hope that helps.

Speaker 1 (02:00:19):

See, that's the kind of approach I was hoping for on that record. You couldn't just take a 51 50 with a rectal cab and do the standard metal thing and expect this to work. Of course it wasn't going to work. It would've needed an approach like what you just said.

Speaker 2 (02:00:34):

Yeah, and somebody will say like, oh, but Ramstein do it. But it's like, yeah, listen to their guitar tone. It's very specific and listen to what it's playing. It's very specific. Listen to the synthesizer and how it sounds. It's very specific. Listen to the arrangement and what it's doing. It's very carefully crafted. They're never playing the same riffs together. The synth is doing some arpeggiated riff over the top of the guitars, which is the guitars in that band are more like a percussive element doing this, whatever it might be, and the synth of the top is doing a de whatever. That's how they get away from it. Yeah. Anyway, digress.

Speaker 1 (02:01:11):

Great answer. Thank you. Okay, this is from Linus Cornelius, and just so you know, Linus works with Jens Boren in Sweden at Fascination Street Studios.

Speaker 2 (02:01:21):

Cool.

Speaker 1 (02:01:21):

He's badass. So he says, bands have come to me with your music as inspiration slash reference. So just so you know, the bands he's talking about are legit bands. So bands have come to me with your music as inspiration slash reference for the drum sounds, and it's been really tough to get even close. So thanks for the challenge, you bastard. Question, how much does it matter for you to have just the right sounding samples or is it more about the way you process and mix the drums and do you have any favorite sample libraries that could help me in your direction? And thanks for making game music so interesting.

Speaker 2 (02:01:57):

Oh dude, that's such a great message. I really appreciate it. Funny story. I was in Sal once having some food with some guys and out on the street we saw Jens and we're like, man, do we go talk to him or do we just wave or do we do nothing? And we did the very Swedish thing and we did nothing. So that's funny. So Well, I'm sorry that everybody's coming to you with that. That's too bad. He's a really nice guy. Oh man, that's such a great story. Yeah, so look, dude, you could answer this question for me. I'm sure, man, it's all about picking the right sound for the right job. Hey, I'm going to come clean here and say that 90% of the drum sounds come from superior drummer. I have some kicks and some snares that I've collected over time from various different places and stuff, and I use those for reinforcement.

(02:02:42):

But I find there's so much that you can do by routing microphones in interesting ways in superior drummer that can lead to all sorts of things. One thing I've been doing recently is taking one of their kits, I can't remember which one, but it's one that has a lot of different room mics, like five different room approaches. There's like a talk back mic and a close mic and a distant mic. I can't remember which one it is, but anyone will do. And I route each one of them down to a separate track and then I process each one of them differently and I do things like set up gates on the rooms so they pop a little bit louder when the snare hits or they duck a little bit when something else happens. Then I'll take all of those microphones and run them through another bus of four or five different tracks and I layer up different effects on each one of them. So all of those five will go through this five for different buses and there'll be a lot of distortion on one. There'll be another one that's gated, so only the click of the kick and the snare is popping through. And then I'll take one that's only opening up on the snare and

(02:03:40):

Things like that, and then I'll compress all that stuff together. So by the time you're listening to it, it might've gone through five different bus routings of all sorts of different effects and things, but it's all just to get a different sound. The thing that I really do focus on, and I'm sure you are the same, is that each time I'm adding something, I'm making sure it's retaining or enforcing the groove of the song.

(02:04:03):

And I think that's the most important thing there. I see a lot of covers of BFG division and stuff like that, and everybody forgets the groove and the groove's the most important thing. Everybody just attacks it with this six top and it just sounds like a morse code or something, right? Everybody doesn't hear that each one and three of that has an enforced groove. I'm making hand signals to Al, but this doesn't make sense. But the groove is like, that's the groove. Everything from the high hats to the rooms to the compression are all reinforcing that groove. So yeah, man, but I'm sure you could answer that question better than I can.

Speaker 1 (02:04:46):

Devil is in the details though, always.

Speaker 2 (02:04:49):

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (02:04:50):

I feel like when people do covers, I'm always fascinated. I don't mean this in a condescending way. I mean this, I'm actually fascinated by the things that they miss and the things that they get. Because sometimes I feel like there's crucial things that, so they'll get the obvious things, the low hanging fruit, like the notes, but then the crucial things that give it its character like the groove or whatever, won't get that. It's really interesting to me. Stacey Meyer says, my question is on session management and inspiration.

Speaker 2 (02:05:23):

Nice.

Speaker 1 (02:05:23):

It seems like you're using multiple dowes and nearly all of the songs are 25 to 30 minutes long. How do you keep up with all of those files and keep up with songs that size and how do you stay so inspired to write hours upon hours upon hours of music for a game like this?

Speaker 2 (02:05:38):

Yeah, there's two questions there. I'll attack the first one.

Speaker 1 (02:05:41):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:05:41):

So yes, I have three different types of, actually I have four different types of sessions. I have writing sessions, and so this, I might open up FL Studio because I really love the MIDI tools in FL Studio. They're just really quick. I find the MIDI tools in cubase, I find the MIDI tools in Ableton to just be a bit slow. I find the MIDI tools and pro tools are whatever. So I have writing sessions. I second, I have what I call design sessions. So this is where I make sounds. So this is where I'll come up with the drum part. I'll come up with the guitar part, the synth part, whatever sound, designy parts, whatever it is. Each one of these is built in its own session file. This might be an FL studio, it might be an Ableton, it might be in Pro Tools if we're recording stuff to build sounds.

(02:06:24):

This is to build parts. You could think of this as your tracking session essentially. The third type of session I have is a mix session. So this is where I start taking all of these parts and making the arrangement of the song and doing the mix. That's happening in a third session. And then the fourth, sometimes we do like a post mix or a mastering type of session, or I need to do something that is very game industry specific. I need to have it arranged in a certain way so the stems come out in a certain way or whatever. That's honestly, it's pretty irrelevant unless you're working on the same stuff that we're working on with games. So I'm not doing everything in one session. That's insane. No, to me, if you're working on a 30 minute piece of music and you're trying to build everything, mix everything, everything in the same session, there's ways of doing it. But for the way that I work, you just can't. The CPU power just isn't there. The RAM isn't there sometimes. Just to get a synth part, my CPU is pinning. It takes so many resources to get to that point. So

Speaker 1 (02:07:22):

I imagine your CPU is a tricked out beast too.

Speaker 2 (02:07:26):

Oh yes. I mean this system that I'm standing in front of here, we built just for the Doom. I build a new system pretty much every two years, but it's a beast of a system. There's like 32 gig of ram and I think, I can't remember what the CPU is, but yeah, we don't stuff about, I can't have computers failing when I'm working. They all need to be pretty rad. Yeah. And then your second question was the inspiration. I'm going to be an asshole and totally say that inspiration is for amateurs. I agree with the rest of us. Just get the job done. Yeah, I don't, I'm surrounded by lots of great artists and things like that, and everybody's working to a deadline at a schedule and we all need to get things done. Can't really wait for inspiration. You just get on with the job, find it, go out and find it, commit, see what happens. That's the

Speaker 1 (02:08:10):

Thing. So fucking bonus when it hits. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (02:08:14):

Sure.

Speaker 1 (02:08:15):

So Bobby Phillips says, I'd like some insight into the technical side of video game composition, delivering layered composition so that as the action ramps up or down different elements of the music come in or out. Do you just deliver the layers as standard stems, or do you have to deliver them in a certain format with a certain piece of software for the programming team to implement?

Speaker 2 (02:08:35):

Yeah, so not to sound, I dunno, how can I say this? So with games, look, games are all about the cutting edge. So the tools that I'm working with often aren't even publicly available. It's stuff that has been built specifically for that project game. People talk about this is engines, it's the game engine, and we will build tools to work with that engine, and the tools are often specifically made for that game. So the tools that are made for Doom only work with Doom, it's just made specifically for Doom. It's not relevant to anything else, but essentially they all do the same thing. You have to make the decision on your end when you're delivering content of how much control you want to hand over to somebody else. And for me, I'm not comfortable in handing mix decisions over to somebody else on the game team.

(02:09:26):

The reason I say that is that often the implementation side is handed off to a junior. So you might have somebody that's just straight out of college, or you might have somebody who's 19 years old, is going to be in responsible for mixing this stuff that you've spent a fortune on to make and time. So if that 19-year-old is about us, sure, go for it. I think that's great. But for me, I like to have that control on my end so I don't hand over stems to do this stuff. I work with a, what's called a horizontal system. So we take a long piece of music, it might be 30 minutes long, and then that is sliced into lots of small segments, we call them. The segments can be anywhere from a minute long down to two seconds long. And so what you end up with is this a 30 minute piece of music sliced into several hundred files, and then these files jump around and play back in different sequences based on what the player is doing. It's infinitely way more complicated than that, and that's the quickest of explanation I can try to give. Does that make sense, Al, or do you want me to go on?

Speaker 1 (02:10:31):

It does. Okay. No, it makes sense me. Right. Cool.

Speaker 2 (02:10:34):

If you want to get into some of this stuff and learn how it works, I really recommend you check out a program called Ws. You can download it for free. There is a lot of studios around the world that use Ws. Just search W, so that's W-W-I-S-E. And it will allow you to play around with these systems. It'll allow you to slice your music up into little bits and pieces and put markers everywhere and trigger it off various different things. And yeah, there's lots of great tutorials for it on their website. Check it out. A lot of us use that. We used it on Doom, we used it on Wolfenstein. I've pretty much used it exclusively for about 10 years now. So if you can get your head around that, it'll give you a really good understanding of how video game music works.

Speaker 1 (02:11:14):

I mean, I guess it's like anything else. If you want to learn how to do it, it's out there. We're living 2020. There are beautiful things about this time period, such as information.

Speaker 3 (02:11:26):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:11:26):

Speaking of Wolfenstein, Peter, Albert Stewart, a piece was wondering how was working with Ms. SU's, Frederick Thorn, Andal on Wolfenstein? What did you take away from that experience?

Speaker 2 (02:11:36):

Oh man, Frederick's just a lovely human being. He is infinitely creative. It's interesting sitting down with him and talking about music. He doesn't, not even thinking of like, man, I want to make a heavy riff, right? He's just got all this music inside him, and the only way he's been able to figure out how to express these emotions that he has is through Masu and eight string guitars and 33, he's a proper geek man. Check out his studio pictures online of the stuff he built. They're

Speaker 1 (02:12:09):

Amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:12:10):

It's a different level, dude.

Speaker 1 (02:12:12):

Yeah, it's a dream,

Speaker 2 (02:12:13):

Basically. Yeah, he's incredibly intelligent when he's expressing music, I don't even think he thinks of himself as some hardcore metal dude or whatever. I think it's just like the way he's figured out how to express his emotions. And it just happened to relate to eight string guitars, if you've ever seen Masu Live, and I saw them on the recent tour, and it's just like they're all back lit. So there was not even lights on the front of the guys. They're all back lit from behind. So you just see these giant Swedes take the stage and this massive sound coming, and it felt like this mothership had just landed in front of us, and this was alien sound that was coming, and it just, it doesn't even feel like metal to me. It's Frederick and the guys. So yeah, he's great, man. Really cool question.

Speaker 1 (02:12:56):

Gabe Caribalo. What up? Gabe says, I know that many myself included, consider your Doom soundtracks to be magnum opus, but I'd like to know what works of yours or your personal pinnacles of pride. Also the Prey soundtrack is stellar work of art. What was the briefing like for that composition?

Speaker 2 (02:13:18):

Yeah, of course. So two questions there. The first, to be completely honest, I don't even listen to the stuff once it's out there. I never really go back to it. I can't

Speaker 1 (02:13:25):

Stand after two years, man. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (02:13:27):

I can't even stand listening to it. The other day I had to pull open of the tracks to find some stems, and I didn't even hit play. I just went, oh, that's that bit I need. And I just clipped it out and took it out from there. I hate it all. I can't stand listening to it.

Speaker 1 (02:13:40):

I understand.

Speaker 2 (02:13:40):

Sorry if that's confronting to hear. I dunno. I'm just always thinking about the next thing. I'm always just trying to fix the mistakes of the past with the next thing. I think that's it. But anyway, to move on to the second question, which I've been rad and I've totally forgotten about. What was the second question? Sorry, dude.

Speaker 1 (02:13:54):

Second question was,

Speaker 2 (02:13:56):

Oh, pray.

Speaker 1 (02:13:56):

Yeah. What was the briefing like for that

Speaker 2 (02:13:59):

Composition? So Raphael, who was the creative director on that project, he's a musician himself, and he came to me with this concept of Western in space, which has been done a few times, but he had this really specific idea of, what did he say? I think he said something like Sergio Leone with Moog synthesizers. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And it was just exploring that concept of a western in space, and we just did that over and over and over and over again. But again, it's focusing on what does it feel like? So if you're in a Western film and all of a sudden you find yourself in zero gravity, what would that sound like? Right. So that's the concept, and then you explore that concept. So those sorts of things. Yeah, that's a tricky one.

Speaker 1 (02:14:43):

That's an interesting scenario.

Speaker 2 (02:14:45):

Well, you have to do these things though. Come up with these concepts. The more detailed and interesting of the concept, then the better the execution will be.

Speaker 1 (02:14:56):

Yeah. Alright. Nathaniel Garza says, Hey, dude. As someone who's been feeling really ambitious with guitar tones as of late, what was your workflow like when dialing in that gnarly blend of synth and guitar throughout both soundtracks? I noticed it seems to ebb and flow based on how aggressive you wanted the tracks to appear, but I was wondering how you approached it from a workflow standpoint. I appreciate your love and work on the Doom and wolfenstein stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:15:21):

Oh, cool, man. Yeah, this is a really, I get asked this question a lot and I never really know how to answer it because the honest truth is that it's different each time. I can't really tell you the one special plugin that made it work or the one synth patch that made it work. The workflow again is that same thing. Start with a concept and then play around with all the tools that you have to see what you want to see, what you can get. I mean, there is a couple of things that'll add to that just to help with your question here. Number one, I'm not dealing with lyrics from a vocalist, and when you are working on any other piece of music that might be sent out there, if you have a vocalist that's going to dominate, so that's going to dictate a lot of what your guitar tones and whatever is going to do.

(02:16:03):

The vocal is going to be the most important thing. I'm not dealing with that all of a sudden. I have a lot of mid-range that I can play with, and usually that's where I start to push things. I can push more guitar tone there. I can push more synth tone there. So there's definitely that. Writing a great riff, like a really catchy, cool, groovy riff will get you so much further than great tones. If you can have a riff that you singing back in your head two days later after you wrote it, it doesn't matter how you illustrate that thing, it's going to come across pretty well. There's a lot of experimentation. I will often just fool around with a guitar tone and I'll just record. I usually track my DIA first and then I'll just bounce out, say 10 different tones, and I don't spend too long on each one.

(02:16:46):

It's just like, try this amp combo, try this pedal in front of it, try this pedal after it, try this room thing, whatever it might be. Just try different things and bounce out, say 10 of them, and then I'll do the same with synths. I'll just bounce out like a distorted dispatch. I'll add something in there, do distort it in a different way, try a different synth, whatever it might be. Just run it through some pedals, run it through the culture vulture, whatever it might be, and just bounce out like 10 of them. And then I've got a whole bunch of options I can do, and so I'll find Guitar Track two works really well with synth track four, but it might only work for this one riff. And then 20 seconds in when there's this different part, I might need something else and that's when I'll use Guitar Track seven in the left channel, and I might use synth track eight in the right channel and stuff like that. It's just a lot of playing around with it and assessing and listening and going back over it again. I hope that answers the question.

Speaker 1 (02:17:35):

I think so, man, I kind of didn't want to ask this one. I bet that you've been asked this one 18,000 times, but so many people have written this that I feel like I owe it to them. This question is literally in here. I counted 17 times.

Speaker 2 (02:17:53):

Okay. I'm not, yeah, cool. Go for it.

Speaker 1 (02:17:58):

You're not what?

Speaker 2 (02:17:59):

No, I'm good. I'm not an alcoholic. All the rumor are false.

Speaker 1 (02:18:02):

Okay. Yeah, that was the other question that gets asked a lot. So I can't pronounce this guy's name, and he actually says, you must have gotten this question a lot, but how does one start in the soundtrack business? How should my portfolio be? Should I diversify doing orchestral and metal and electronica? Should I approach companies with my portfolio? Is there a better way? I'm a hundred percent coolest over here, and there's basically 17 or 18 different variations of that question.

Speaker 2 (02:18:28):

Yeah, yeah. So there's a couple of things. Look, before I attack that question, I'll say something generally, which is going to help people that may not be interested in video games, but I feel is still very important. Music as an art form has always, throughout history, been attached to something cultural. Music has always been used to tell a story or get important information across or whatever, look through any example of music through history, and there's always a cultural attachment to it, even if it was bombastic music from the 18 hundreds when they were trying to celebrate the industrial revolution, right? There was a cultural attachment to it, and these days, in 2020, trying to get your music out there without a cultural attachment is next to impossible. Throwing music up onto band camp, throw music up onto YouTube, throwing up on music onto SoundCloud without a reason for people to listen to it, is really going to get you nowhere.

(02:19:25):

I will be the first to tell you that the music that I write is dumb. It's simple, it's basic. It's not the greatest music in the world. I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world. I'm not the greatest mixer in the world at all. But what I've been able to do is find ways to attach the music I write to this cultural phenomenon called video games, and that has allowed me an audience because people just don't listen to the music. They're listening to it within the context of how it is attached to the culture. Make sense? I think hopefully.

Speaker 1 (02:19:53):

Absolutely

Speaker 2 (02:19:54):

Right. I feel that's important these days. If you want to get your music out there, if you find you're the type of person who's sitting at home and shitting all over this band that you see getting popular because Oh, the singer's a chick, or Oh, they're just playing dumb one riffs or whatever it is, look to the reason as why that's resonating with people. There'll be a cultural attachment to it, right? It's true. And if you are upset because your music isn't out there, then that's your failure of having a cultural attachment, right? Video games are an easy way of doing it. Look at something like U Two's Sunday Bloody Sunday. It is such a huge song that was attached to a cultural situation that was happening in Ireland at the time, and without that attachment, that song's very basic. It's simple, man. It's like marching snare drums and stuff. So it's think of any great song and there's a cultural attachment that goes with it. Anyway, moving on to the second.

Speaker 1 (02:20:43):

That's a great answer, by the way.

Speaker 2 (02:20:45):

Cool, cool. So practical stuff though. If you specifically want to get your music into something like video games, I would be concentrating on a few things. Number one is I'd be really, really well aware of what music that you want to make and whether that suits video games. So your question there was, should I write orchestral stuff or should I write metal stuff? It's like, if you don't even know that at this point, I would discourage it because you're going to be finding yourself in so many of these situations, writing music that you don't want to write. You need to have some sort of burning desire inside yourself to write orchestral music. Austin Wintry is like that, will Roge is like that. These are my buddies who work on some of these most amazing video games, and they yearn to write orchestral music, and they're amazing at it.

(02:21:31):

You will know in yourself of what type of music you want to make. So find that out first. The second thing is to get really, really, really good at that. 10 to 15 years ago, video games were seen as the crap alternative to TV music. If you weren't good enough to write music for TV or even radio, you'd get a job in video games, that's not the case anymore. If they want to hire Han Zimmer, they'll hire Han Zimmer. If they want to hire Trent Resor, they'll hire Trent Resor. If they want to hire whatever, they'll hire that person. So you need to be really, really, really good at whatever it is that you do. I'm not saying go write Trent Resor music as good as Trent Resor. Do your own thing really, really, really well. Be the best that you possibly can be with that. The third thing I'd say is get your music into a state that it is somewhat unique when compared to other things. Game developers these days, because games are going very much like the music industry. And what I mean by that is oversaturation, as in there's hundreds of games coming out almost daily at this point.

Speaker 1 (02:22:39):

Really? It's at that level.

Speaker 2 (02:22:41):

Yeah. I mean, you jump onto Steam and there's like 20, 30 new games popping up every day. It's like there's so much stuff out there now. So the need for a video game to stand out is absolutely parallel with your ability as a musician and your need to stand out. You need to be different. You need to offer something that's unique. You need to offer something that's special that will attract game developers because they will look at what you do and say, Hey, if we hire this person to write our music, it's instantly going to separate us from all the other music out there that we consider to be generic. So I hope that makes sense. Be unique. It's very, very important. The fourth thing I'd say is to know game developers get out there. You've really got to meet people. You can't just throw stuff up on a band camp and SoundCloud or whatever it is, and expect people to find you. Nobody's going to come looking for you. You need to go find them. That's so difficult to say right at this current moment, but

Speaker 1 (02:23:35):

I mean, this moment will pass.

Speaker 2 (02:23:38):

This moment will pass. Thank you. I would say get out there to game events. GDC is a really good one. GDC is a really, really fabulous one. You'll go there, you'll meet 30,000 different game developers in a week, and you'll make some really great contacts. But if you're stuck in this current situation, I would be finding that unique thing that you do, that one little thing that is different, that little thing that makes you special, and sharing that with the world on mass. So stream that thing, whatever it is. Put YouTube, give videos together of that thing. So many of the times I find amazing musicians to work with because I'm looking at something unique that they do on YouTube. If I want an amazing throat singer, I'm going to hit YouTube and look for amazing throat singers, for example. So find that thing that you do that's unique and start producing that and getting it out there. Really long answer to that question, but I hope that's kind of covered most bases there.

Speaker 1 (02:24:29):

Yeah, that's a great answer. And can I talk to you for a second about uniqueness?

Speaker 2 (02:24:36):

Sure. Let's do it.

Speaker 1 (02:24:36):

Is that something that you had to try to do? Lemme tell you where I'm coming from. I've always thought that if you don't do things, because other people say you have to say, if you go to music school and they make you study jazz, so you study jazz. I mean, if you basically follow your own tastes and you worry about just getting as good as possible, you'll then be as unique as you're going to be because it's who you are. So as long as you're following your own tastes, I think that the best way to get your unique vision out there is to try to get as good as possible. You already are you? I don't think you should have to try to be unique because you already are, but I could be wrong. I'm wondering what your take is on that.

Speaker 2 (02:25:25):

Yeah. Well, I think there's several stages that you go through. Humans by nature learn through replication. So if you want to learn how to do something, you're going to watch somebody else who's an expert in that, and then you're going to inherently copy what they're doing. That's how we learn. The next stage from that, once you develop that, is interpretation. So once you've learned your ability to make music, then it's a new language that you can use to express emotions. Now, that's where your uniqueness will come together. That's where all these things that you've done in your life, your experiences, your relationships, your frustrations, your angst, your happiness, your joy, whatever it is, you can now express those feelings with music. I'm really, really, really fucking angry at the moment. I'm going to make this music. I'm really, really, really happy at the moment. I'm going to make this music, that sort of stuff, and the way you do that will be different.

(02:26:17):

I guarantee that to everybody else out there. I learned that and the importance of that through my mentor named Charles Deanan when I was working with him for a few years on the Need for Speed series from electronic arts. Need for Speed is a driving game. Now, if you've ever seen a driving game, I can guarantee you they're all exactly the same. You drive a car, why you drive that car is either twofold. You're either in a race or you're being chased by the police. That's the two motivations of driving in, driving games. So the challenge when you're trying to do a driving game once a year called Need for speed

Speaker 1 (02:26:55):

Or running over pedestrians,

Speaker 2 (02:26:57):

Sure, yeah, I could go carmageddon. Yeah, you could do that. Running over pedestrians, we could do that one need for speed. Never went that route, sadly, as much as I would've enjoyed. No, sadly. So anyway, making a car game every year needed a completely unique approach, and Charles was brilliant at it. One year he pulled us all together and said, we're going to make all of the music in the game from sound effects, from sound design with cars. Cars are amazing sonic machines. There are so many sounds that you can get out of cars, and we made all of these amazing kind of musical sound design sequences of cars whizzing by, and then people panting with breath and slowing the race down, all this sort of stuff. Anyway, that was one year. The next year we're doing another spin need for speed game, and he said, let's take pop songs and things that are alternative songs that are popular at the time and do big orchestral trailer versions of them.

(02:27:56):

So we took tracks from 30 seconds to Mars, and we took tracks from Rise Against, and we took tracks from Billy Claro, whatever, all this sort of stuff. And then we did these big orchestral trailer remixes of them. We had rum working with us who went on to do Game of Thrones and that sort of stuff. So anyway, the point of that is that 12 months between those two, it's completely different direction to the same car game. It's racing game, and this was his thing. So being unique was really important, and I find that still important today. When I'm working on a project, I'm like, how can we make this unique? What can we do differently with this one? That's what leads to decisions like metal choir and working with octopus and extended range instruments and obscure death instruments like the angling, which is made out of a human thigh bone and stuff like that. It's just to be different. It's just to find a unique sound.

Speaker 1 (02:28:50):

Love it. Okay, final question. Sure,

Speaker 2 (02:28:52):

Man.

Speaker 1 (02:28:53):

This is from Dal Oldman. How did you come up with the idea for your Doom instrument? Was it pure experimentation that you ended up with running sign wave through all these split chains of effects? Or did you get inspired by someone or something?

Speaker 2 (02:29:08):

Yeah, so it was inspired by a concept from Tony Visconti, and it was inspired by the reverb system he came up with for David Bowie on Heroes at Hanza Studios, and the system that they came up with was three microphones set at different distances in a room. So you've got one really close to David, you've got one midway to David, and then you've got one at the opposite end of the room to David. The microphones, by the way, would be set on gates, and these gates would only open when David Bowie would reach a certain volume with his voice.

(02:29:42):

So essentially what would happen is here is as he got louder, more room and reverb would come in now anyway, what I loved about this concept and draw a concept from it, is that you're creating a set of conditions that are influenced based on what the input is. So the input in this scenario is David Bowie, the conditions are the gates on the microphones, and they're changing based on the volume that he's throwing them. That's a whole set of input, conditions, outcome. So for me, looking in my studio, I looked around at what I had and I saw, well, I've got pedals and I've got sign waves, and I've got noise, and I can set up rhythms and all this sort of stuff. Let's set up these arrays of equipment and have them basically change on what I'm sending them with the sine waves and noise.

(02:30:32):

The reason with sign waves and noise was because those two things are very simple. A sine wave is very simple. Noise is very simple. You can do a lot with that. You can do rhythm pulses, cool bases, cool lead lines, whatever. But because it's simple, the input is simple, which allows for more complicated conditions to change. I hope everybody's following here, and that's kind of what led to the Doom instrument. Basically, I'd set up 16, 17 bits of hardware, and then I would pulse different combinations, sign ways and noise through these things, and based on pretty much what the amplitude was, certain things would turn on or turn off or change or move around. Some things would feed back, et cetera, and that's where that came from.

Speaker 1 (02:31:13):

That sounds fascinating.

Speaker 2 (02:31:15):

It's a complicated one. If you're interested in learning more, jump on YouTube. I did a whole big breakdown at A GDC talk about that. Just search for doom behind the music, and there's a GDC talk there that's an hour long that really geeks out on that stuff. It even goes into the specific pedals and the microphones and stuff like that, so check that out.

Speaker 1 (02:31:32):

Oh, awesome. Well, Mick, thank you. Cool, man, been awesome talking to you again. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (02:31:38):

No, cheers, man. Thanks so much for the time.

Speaker 1 (02:31:40):

Let's not wait three years

Speaker 2 (02:31:42):

For the next time. We'll see how long it takes me to get another game out. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (02:31:46):

Yeah, true, true. Alright, man. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:31:49):

But no, I appreciate it. I love everything you're doing a nail. The mix is such an incredible resource that you are, and PO Podcast is such an incredible resource. I've learned so many things by watching Nolie, by Machine, by listening to Billy Decker, all this stuff that has come from your content. So I think that's so powerful these days to be able to share that stuff, and I thank you for doing it. So thanks so much for having me on. It's a real privilege.

Speaker 1 (02:32:12):

Consider yourself a guest on this anytime. So anytime you want to come on, just let me know. 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 AAL levy URM audio, and of course, please tag my guests as well. Until 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.