Chris Baseford: Producer Psychology, Navigating Studio Egos, Surviving the Napster Era

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 Levi 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. My guest today is a very, very awesome engineer, producer and mixer named Chris Baseford. He has worked with some of the top names in music such as Nickelback, Monley, crew ever, Levine, Shinedown, Rob Zombie, and a ton of other acts. He is truly an a-list level guy, and it was a great episode. He's got such a unique but practical perspective on this whole game of production and life. I think you're going to love this episode. I introduce you, Chris Baseford. Chris Baseford, welcome to the URM Podcast. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. So you were just saying that it's wrecking your productivity?

Speaker 2 (00:02:15):

Yeah, I mean, we were just discussing, you see on Instagram or YouTube, this is going to be for some people the most productive time potentially of their lives where everything's stopped and they've got nothing to do, but do those things they've always wanted or maybe just really focus in on a forced focus on whatever they're currently working on. For me, everything went to zero. I had a sick wife who was locked in the bedroom. She didn't have COVID, but we were being super cautious of that. So she was in self quarantine for two weeks and I've got a four month old baby girl and a three-year-old super high RPM boy, and so my productivity absolutely stopped and for the first week I was trying to get, I was like, okay, they're down for a nap. I can run out to the studio and get some stuff done, my studio's on my property in my backyard, and so I'd run outside and bring the baby monitor and then within fucking five minutes I was back and the only way for me to stay sane was to just admit that I'm going to get zero done until my wife is better, because I was going insane.

(00:03:24):

I was trying to bounce back and forth, but it's kind of what happened.

Speaker 1 (00:03:28):

I think when you accept reality, it makes it way easier to deal because then there's a finite amount of downtime. The quarantine that she's in wouldn't last forever at 14 days, and then you can get your productivity back. I think that's better than just fighting it because of the amount of anxiety that causes when I haven't been able to do things that I feel like I need to do for external reasons. So I'm very much the just get it done. It's all mindset kind of person, but in reality, there are some external factors that

Speaker 2 (00:04:04):

Absolutely

Speaker 1 (00:04:05):

We have no control over and sometimes they win. And I've always found that when that happens 2% of the time in life, when it's that it's best to just accept it and then try to understand what the timeline is or what you think the timeline's going to be and how to make the most of it when you can finally resume.

Speaker 2 (00:04:26):

I've discovered just from working with various people, and I'm very much like you. I mean, I listen to the podcast and I hear you talk about the various people that you follow and listen to audio books or read their books and stuff like that. Outside of the music sphere, just productivity guys and entrepreneurs, I've been in that mindset for a long time. I figured out not necessarily how to do it, but I figured out that it is a very fine art or science, whatever you want to call it, in deciphering the difference of I'm banging my head against a brick wall. I should probably stop and I'm banging my head against a brick wall and I got to keep banging my head against a brick wall because if I keep doing it, it's going to break down and I'm going to get through it. Being able to recognize the two scenarios, which are very different scenarios. I don't know a lot of people who can consistently do it, but the ones who can are like they're wizards. I mean that in itself is kind of like if there's one thing I could figure out and be like, okay, I want to master that, it's being able to recognize the difference between keep pushing and be like, okay, back off and wait, so you don't smash your skull into a brick wall.

Speaker 1 (00:05:42):

I have a method for how to determine the difference. I'd

Speaker 2 (00:05:45):

Love to hear it.

Speaker 1 (00:05:46):

That's actually really crucial. You got to know when you're wasting.

Speaker 2 (00:05:50):

It's huge.

Speaker 1 (00:05:51):

Yeah, you got to know when you're wasting your time. For me, and this is not scientific, so this kind of comes down, maybe there's a way to metric it, but there's a feel. So basically if it feels like you're swimming against the current with everything you do, you put in a ton of effort and the results don't match the effort relative to how long you've been doing it. For instance, I had a beard oil company and great branding, great marketing. The product was superior to the other ones on the market. It was awesome, but we just could not get it off the ground. We tried for years and I just think that the market was not ready for it or didn't want it, and there's nothing I could do to make it grow. And I felt the same way in my band. It was just like we did all the stuff that the more successful bands did, but it didn't yield the same results. It's not that we weren't good, we were awesome. What was it? Something about it was just not resonating and it was a waste of time to continue. However, for instance, with URM, when we started the podcast, prior to launching and nail the mix and everything else, the plan was always to turn it into what it is now and what it's going to become. But it started as just a podcast and it was small.

(00:07:15):

It started with only 36 listeners, but directionally it was loved immediately and the reaction was great immediately. And so even though it was small, directionally, you could see that it was going the right way.

Speaker 2 (00:07:30):

So it's being able to recognize, I guess the momentum and almost like you said, kind of the feeling of current. And although it's hard, if you feel like you're kind going with momentum, then it gives you the confidence to kind of push forward on it. Whereas if all the momentum's just for whatever reason, especially when all the pieces you think are right, when you think all the pieces are right and it's still not working, I think that that's probably a bit of a sign.

Speaker 1 (00:07:59):

Well, yeah, because factors outside your control that have a lot to do with your success. You can work hard and you can be smart and you can have great ideas, but if other people aren't interested, then they're not interested and it kind of doesn't matter what you do. The thing is, the reason it's hard to tell the difference is because you're working hard no matter what. And at the beginning of anything, it's going to be slow. Even if you're successful, there's going to be slow periods.

Speaker 2 (00:08:26):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:08:27):

So you have to be able to recognize when this is just a slow period or this is natural because the idea hasn't caught on yet versus nobody wants this.

Speaker 2 (00:08:39):

The one thing that I've, and again, talking about not being a science, I mean, this is the least scientific thing and it's just leaving it up to the universe a little bit. I guess it's a little bit like the law of attraction idea, but until I find a better method, I've used the people that whatever I'm doing is attracting or that I'm working with or as kind of the sign. If I look back and I look at all the things that worked out versus all the things that didn't, no matter how hard I was working, like you said, you're always working hard and typically none of us are working on what we think are shitty ideas or we wouldn't be working on them, right?

Speaker 3 (00:09:20):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:09:20):

Or shitty bands. Yeah, exactly. Right. Although I know plenty of people who've worked with shitty bands and shitty ideas that ends up being very successful, then you're like, what the fuck? But they obviously didn't think it was shitty, so it is what it is. But when I look back, the things that didn't work out, no matter how hard I worked, typically the people that I was working with or the people involved, I'm probably not even still in touch with them today. It's almost like a little bit of a red flag if kind of, I've worked on projects where I'm like, man, this project's going to be awesome. There's a bunch of assholes involved, but I just got to fucking deal with it because it's going to be great. And no matter how good of an idea, no matter how much the pieces always work, you're putting up with a couple assholes or you're putting up with a guy who you thinks a little bit of a snake and you're just like, I'm just going to swallow my pride.

(00:10:12):

I'm going to bite my tongue and I'm just going to move forward. Those never work. Whereas the ones that seem, you're like, yeah, this is kind of a long shot. I don't know how great the idea is, but you know what? The people are cool. I really love this. Everybody's getting along. That's a guy I want to be doing business with regardless of whatever it is. And that's the thing that kind of seems to work. So that's kind of what I've resorted to at this point of just being like, okay, I'm going to just really analyze who's involved, who wants to be involved, who are we trying to pull into the fold, who's just naturally coming into the fold? And if that scenario looks good because of the people, then roll with it, if that makes any sense at all.

Speaker 1 (00:10:53):

Well, do you think that it's because when you're not getting thrown off constantly, alarm bells aren't going off, red flags aren't going off constantly about the people you're involved with, you personally can do a better job. You're not distracted by your own negative feelings about the situation.

Speaker 2 (00:11:16):

Yeah, maybe it's weird. It's like I try, if I'm going to do something and I'm going to dive in and there's no half-assing it, right? So I try not to do something and then resent it or then feel like, ah, fuck, I shouldn't be doing this or feel negative about it. I definitely try to put that positive spin on it. So I think during that time, I recognize that somebody's an asshole or somebody's unethical or somebody's got principles that don't align with mine, but I don't let it drag me down. I just kind of accept it for what it is and be like, Hey, that's part of the deal here. So acknowledge it, be realistic. Don't get fooled, but move forward knowing what you're dealing with. So don't necessarily, it doesn't really drag me down, but I do recognize that there's kind of some, I don't want to say shadiness going on.

Speaker 1 (00:12:03):

The way I put it is I trust people to be themselves. So if I feel like I'm dealing with somebody shady, rather than let it bother me, I just try to figure them out.

Speaker 2 (00:12:13):

Me too, a hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (00:12:14):

Yeah, just figure them out because what they say to you might not be trustworthy, but the thing that is trustworthy is them being themselves. And so if you understand them, then you can accurately maneuver or just make things work.

Speaker 2 (00:12:34):

You know what you're dealing with, so there shouldn't be any surprises If a contract comes across your desk or a business agreement, operating agreement for a business, and all of a sudden something's kind of off, you don't get bent out of shape you, you're like, yeah, we kind of expected that. Now we've got to figure out how to move past this, or whatever it happens to be. I'm using business as an example here, but I mean, it could even be working with a band where you've got somebody that's got ulterior motives and somebody's trying to, all the bullshit behind the scenes of making music and working with different personality types, and everybody's got their agenda, whether it's, oh, I got to get my publishing on this song, or I've got to whatever it happens to be, just as long as you know what you're dealing with and you're realistic about it, then you can kind of figure out the path forward. But if you've got the wool pulled over your eyes or you've got that the, oh, no, it's not that he's just trying to whatever, and he's like, no, no, the guy's an asshole. The guy's shady. So be it.

(00:13:31):

He's obviously bringing something to the table or he wouldn't be there, deal with the fact of what that person is and just move forward knowing what the facts are. So

Speaker 1 (00:13:41):

I completely, completely a hundred percent agree with you on this. This makes me wonder about actually being in the studio because artists are such wildly different people. And you're right, those types of ulterior motives, I want my publishing on this, or I want the credit for this, or my idea is better, or that person sucks, or whatever it is. You have to be a master at being able to handle those scenarios. You've got really big credits. You've obviously done this at the highest levels. Is this something that you learned how to do or is the people skills part of it something that just came to you naturally?

Speaker 2 (00:14:31):

I'd have to say if I reflect back, it's probably personality traits that were already ingrained and personality traits that happen outside of the studio and would probably be utilized if I went into a different field or whatever. Or even just thinking about social circles, it's a similar thing. That being said, I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of a list, either artists or producers or managers or a and r guys, just top level guys where you can kind of look and see how they handle certain situations. You can be like, okay, I'm going to learn from that and I'm going to learn from that. So you're constantly kind of molding your skillset, but the core of it, I mean, is kind of you're going to deal with situations the way you deal with them. And I've seen the hardass old school guys being like, no, fuck you. It's my way. I don't give a fuck. And I've seen almost like the ultra passive, okay, well let's make sure everybody's happy, let's keep the vibe. And I've seen that as well. And then I feel like I'm kind of somewhere in between. I mean, some of the artists that I work with, the fact that I'm from Canada is a little bit of a joke because Canada, you can kind of interchange the Switzerland and Canada analogy. They're like, oh, you're Canadian. Of course you're sitting on the fence.

(00:15:56):

Or I want to keep the peace.

(00:15:57):

But yeah, I think again, you have to look at who you're dealing with and you have to act appropriately. And again, I know some guys who are, you could take the most sensitive lead singer who needs to be coddled like a little puppy dog or it's not going to work. And you get the producer in there who's just beating him over the head and just being completely insensitive and the tough love and just whatever. He doesn't recognize that that's not working. And then you get the other guys where it's like they're just super passive and they just sit there and hit the space bar and be like, oh, man, that sounds really good. That sounds awesome. That sounds great. And meanwhile, your singer's needs to be beat over the head in order to get anything half decent, and he doesn't recognize that either. So I think you got to recognize who you're dealing with and be able to pull on some different skill sets to utilize kind of like what's going to get the best result.

(00:16:49):

And I mean, I'm talking about music production, but as you know, and I've heard talked about on your podcast a lot, there's a lot of psychology behind just managing personalities and bands or whatever. I've been pretty fortunate. There have been a couple band scenarios where band members are on the brink of getting kicked out mid session or album finishes, but the band breaks up before the album comes out. I have been a part a few of those. I've got colleagues who it seems like every other band it happens with, and I'm just like, what the fuck's going on?

Speaker 1 (00:17:24):

That has happened to me a couple times, and if I think back, it had to do with me not understanding who I was dealing with exactly. Maybe going too hard on the person that needed to be coddled or whatever it was, but whatever the mismatch was was so strong that it created a rift in the band and it brought, I mean, let me just say though, I don't think it created any problems that weren't already there.

Speaker 2 (00:17:54):

Just magnifies them and shows them.

Speaker 1 (00:17:56):

Yeah, the studio magnifies everything. I think I heard that the studio is the number one place where bands break up, and I think that that's true because that's, everything's on the line there. In a live performance setting on tour, you may not even be able to hear what the other person's doing. Right. You might not. Yeah, very true. I know some bands that in ears only have themselves in the click track. For

Speaker 4 (00:18:22):

Instance,

Speaker 1 (00:18:23):

You may have no clue that someone in your band isn't very good. I know that you're cooped in with people, but you can kind of go into your own world. Whereas in the studio, everyone who's there is working towards this same goal and they're all going to be on the spot, and everyone's going to know that they're on the spot and they're going to sink or swim. And how that all goes, I think will affect the longevity of the band or at least of their membership in the band. A

Speaker 2 (00:18:55):

Hundred percent. Yeah, and like I said, I've definitely had those experiences For whatever reason, I don't know why. I have no idea. And again, I try not to reflect on it too much. I just try to roll with it. But a lot of the people that I've worked with and a lot of the bands that I've worked with, I seem to either work with a lot of bands who have a very distinct alpha

(00:19:20):

Or artists who it's them and then the band is just kind of there to support, or the band has hired guns. I mean, I've obviously done the four teenagers who are equal parts who just got signed and are going to take over the world and are going to fucking kick every door down and just piss and vinegar. I've worked with them too, but the majority of my career up to this point has been a lot of, yeah, there's a band, but there's the alpha and he calls the shots, or there's an artist and the band, maybe they're part of a thing, but they're simply to support whatever the artist is, or simply just the band doesn't even come in and it's all studio guys for whatever reason. I'd say that's been three quarters of my career, so I haven't had to deal with the 19-year-old kid with the fucking massive ego who's actually done nothing that you got to put him in his place. I haven't had to deal with that as much as others. You're lucky. I know. I am very fortunate. Now that being said, I have worked with a lot of guys who are just like, okay, I understand you've been doing it like this for 10 years, but let's try this. So that's kind of the flip side is having to be in the studio with a guy and making a suggestion, and then he turns around and points at his 30 million seller plaque, and I'm like, okay, fuck.

Speaker 1 (00:20:42):

Maybe there is something to it. I had Tevin Townsend on the podcast, God Love Devin. We were talking about Chad, Kroger actually, they kind of had a brief partnership or something, and we were talking about how Chad is, A lot of people think that they try to make music like that. And what Devin was saying, and this reflects my theory, is that that kind of music is who he is. It's his brain that creates songs that resonate with normal people in that sort of way. It's his drive that has propelled them to the top, but it's not an act. That's who he is to the core.

Speaker 2 (00:21:26):

I've become really good buddies with Chad. I consider him to be one of my best friends. So I get sensitive or I get defensive. I mean, they've got to be, historically have some of the most vocalized kind of disdain or hate or whatever you want to call it. And it seems like anytime I come into contact with anybody who's like, oh, you work with Nickelback, the first thing that comes out of their mouth is why does everybody hate Nickelback? And if I have to have that conversation one more time, I'm going to just fucking No, no, I don't. But I mean, it is one of those things where everybody seems to think they know what somebody's motives are simply by the outcome. Right? And ultimately it shouldn't even really matter, but for somebody to claim that what a guy, and I'll use chat as an example, but I mean you can use anybody, you can use any pop music.

(00:22:20):

It seems like anybody who's not a fan of pop music or is an artist or doesn't like mainstream music, likes to criticize thinking that it's contrived and that the motive behind it is disingenuous and all this other shit that really is like, who cares? But do you like the sound coming out of the speakers or not? To me, that's all that matters. And if you went and looked on my playlist or my iTunes, you'd be like, okay, cool. Yeah, you got Pantera. But then what comes on in the shuffle is Neil Diamond and the Everly Brothers, and people are like, what the fuck is this? And that's, do I like the sound or not? And Chad's very much the same way, and I mean, we hear music very similar, which is I think why we work so well together we hear sounds similar, so if it's tones, drum tones, guitar tones, balances, even song structures and that type of production and just frequencies, and Chad's a master at that. He doesn't stumble upon doing what he does, but it's not contrived in a disingenuous way, if that makes any sense. I

Speaker 1 (00:23:32):

Mean, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:23:33):

I mean, not to make this sound egotistical, and I tell this to young bands that I work with. I'm like, you have to be the biggest fan of your song or your record. If you don't absolutely love it from day one, if you don't absolutely love it, then it's going to be hard to, when I say sell it, I don't mean from a merchandise standpoint, but I mean really to connect, to connect, connect with people. Totally. I'm like, if you don't love it, how do you expect other people to love it? When I'm in the studio with Chad and we're making, whether it's a Nickelback song or whether it's a song for, I mean he works with a lot of other artists as well, regardless of who it's for, he's not going to say, yeah, that's done. I don't like it, but you know what, it checks all the boxes on the pop music chart, so it's good to go.

Speaker 1 (00:24:24):

That's what people think.

Speaker 2 (00:24:25):

I know, it's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (00:24:27):

It's really stupid.

Speaker 2 (00:24:28):

It is completely ridiculous when that song comes out, and I mean, to the extent of I'm a piece of a production that I'm working with, ultimately, if the artist is 100% behind something and I'm like 85% behind something, I'll try to bridge that gap of that 15% without bringing their a hundred percent down, but ultimately their a hundred percent satisfaction and getting behind it and being absolutely in love with it is more important than the 15% I didn't get for myself or for my ears.

Speaker 1 (00:25:01):

Yeah, I agree with that. I've always thought that, and I don't mean it in the dishonest way because politicians lie, but they do. You kind of have to treat it like you're running for office in a way. You have to be that behind your own message, in this case, music to really propel it to where you'd like it to go.

Speaker 4 (00:25:23):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:25:23):

I don't know a single artist that I can think of who has a career of note, whether it's pop or metal or whatever, who didn't have that feeling about their own music.

Speaker 4 (00:25:38):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:25:39):

It makes no sense. Why would they move forward? How could you possibly put the effort in required if you didn't feel that way

Speaker 2 (00:25:48):

About it? Well, I have definitely been witness to, I mean, one of the most eyeopening experiences that I've ever had was I was involved with a pop project, I don't even know how many years ago now, and it was like, I mean, I do a lot of different genres, but I've mainly been a rock guy and kind of dabble in the pop here and there, kind of wherever it crosses over or if there's a relationship with an artist that works, whatever. But it was a full on LA Pop thing, the most expensive studio in town locked out for eight months. There were days that I showed up and nobody came.

Speaker 1 (00:26:27):

Was it a known band?

Speaker 2 (00:26:28):

Yeah. I don't want to say who it was.

Speaker 1 (00:26:29):

No, no, that's fine. I just wanted to know the context.

Speaker 2 (00:26:32):

Yeah, totally. There were days that I showed up and there's a catering plate, and I am sitting there and I'm like, it's two o'clock in the afternoon and nobody's there. And at six o'clock in the evening I get a call being like, oh yeah, we're not going to work today. And I'm be like, okay, well, there's like $300 of catering on the credenza and this studio is $2,000 a day, and it's like nobody cares. And then that was just kind of to set up the scene, so that was already, I mean, I got into the music business as fucking the lights were turning on and everybody was leaving. So this to me being like, wow, this still does exist just on a very, there's the 0.0001% of the music industry who still has this, but it was very eyeopening because it was one week with five writers and then the next week would be four other writers, and every writer was the hot guy who had, and they would all come into the studio and be like, oh yeah, that song, that Rihanna song, I wrote that. And then you look at it and there's seven writers and you're like, huh, interesting. Okay, cool. Everybody stakes claim, right?

Speaker 3 (00:27:38):

Yep.

Speaker 2 (00:27:39):

There are definitely, that was very eyeopening to me. That was the very first time that I saw formulaic based music production or writing where it was like, here's the right way to do that. We got to go to that part and the song, or we got to change to that chord, or this has got to be this because of this. And I was like, fuck. It's very interesting because typically in the rock world, you're a lot more feel right. It feels right, that sounds right, whatever. And this was a little more formulaic, and as this was going on, I was kind of like, fuck, this does happen. People do make music simply to achieve the end goal of it being as catchy as possible or as accessible or whatever. Still at the end of that, whether you want to consider that disingenuous or not, at the end of that, every one of the five guys in the room was absolutely fucking in love with what came out the other end. So was it disingenuous or was it simply their system? And at the end of the day, do you like the song or do you not? And if you don't like the song, who gives a fuck how it was done? And if you do like the song, who gives a fuck how it was done?

Speaker 1 (00:28:50):

Dude, I just think it's their system who gives a fuck how it was done? Totally. That's always been my opinion.

Speaker 2 (00:28:56):

One of the things I love the most about producing music is I love and I don't get the opportunity as much as I'd like, and it's something that I definitely am aiming towards. I love taking bands that are four feet outside of being accessible to a big fucking audience and helping them move that line or helping them kind of walk over to that, not in a way that, oh, I'm losing my credibility or I'm sacrificing my art, or whatever, but being

Speaker 1 (00:29:28):

Just that little tweak. Totally. That makes all the difference.

Speaker 2 (00:29:33):

I get so much satisfaction over taking a band who, if the song came on in the car, my wife would be like, can we turn this off? My wife being like, fuck, what's this? I use my wife because she's just kind of the average everyday listener. Everybody's got that person in their life who's kind of like, I don't really care who it is, and I don't want to call them top 40 fans because sometimes a metal song will come on and my wife will be like, oh, who's this? This is cool. It's got cool melody, cool rhythm, whatever. She doesn't care. I love taking those bands and helping them just kind of be like, okay, cool. You've got 200 people at your show, this album we made. Now you have the ability to play for 2000 people or take the 2000. You'd be like, okay, you guys can play 1500 people right now. I want you guys to play for 15,000 people. I love helping people take that step and the thing that I sound like, I feel like I'm a broken record, I've probably said it a hundred thousand times, but it's usually new to them, is let's just use a random chord change. Let's say just from a E to a C.

(00:30:36):

It doesn't matter what it's, it's irrelevant. They're writing a song and be like, yeah, you know what? That second chord sounds funny to me. Let's say they're going to an A, I'd be like, it sounds weird to me. This doesn't work. I'd be like, oh, really? I kind of like, it kind of sounds different. I'd be like, why don't we go to the C? Why don't we go eat a C? I'd be like, yeah, but that's kind like the predictable thing that everybody does. That's what it sounds like it should go to, and my thought is, yeah, that's fucking right. There's a reason for a reason why. Yeah, I'm not smart enough to know the reason. I just know that it works, but they'll fight me on it and the conversation, and it's a philosophical conversation that you can apply to any decision you make in your life in any realm is I look at it and I say, you not wanting to play the sea because you think everybody does it and you think that's the contrived thing is no different than the guys who say, we have to play the sea because that's where everybody goes.

(00:31:38):

You are basing your decision off of external shit, whether you're going the heads or the tails of it. You're deciding based off of something other than what's serving the song and what's serving the production.

Speaker 1 (00:31:51):

Yeah. If you're just going to a be contrarian, that's the exact same thing.

Speaker 2 (00:31:56):

It's just the opposite of going to the C because that's what everybody does, and that's what works, right? Do whatever makes the song the best and forget about all the other shit right now. Ultimately, that usually plays into my favor because I tend to pop music, and when I say pop music, I don't mean just top 40, but I tend to stuff that we've been conditioned to over the last 50, 60 years of mainstream music, right?

Speaker 1 (00:32:25):

Popular

Speaker 2 (00:32:25):

Music. Totally popular music. So I mean, it usually falls into my lap because typically the weird shit I tend to kind of go away from, but that's also what's keeping their audience at 200 instead of 2000 because very much like we were talking about Chad Kruger, his ears, I think he's probably talked about it in interviews before, but we've talked about it a lot as well. When he grew up, his mom loved mainstream music. The radio was always playing top 40 or whatever. The rock station was always, she wasn't listening to weird fucking jazz. She wasn't listening to classical, she wasn't listening to any of that shit. Not saying it's shit. I'm just saying stuff. Yeah, I use shit for, I don't mean it as a,

Speaker 1 (00:33:11):

Shit is a great word. It means so many different things.

Speaker 2 (00:33:14):

I know, right? Mine's just like stuff, people, you think my music shit and I'm like, no, no, no shit, just stuff. But when he grew up listening to music, it was always whatever was popular at the time, so his ear got conditioned to that, and mine did too. My dad, my mom and my dad both always had the radio on. My dad loves music and he was always playing music and even my stepdad, when my mom got remarried, he liked, I don't want to say popular music, but he liked a different era of popular music that exposed me to stuff. My dad was always into current rock music, whereas my stepdad was into more oldie stuff. That's where the Everly Brothers came from. I would hear the Everly Brothers every weekend blaring on the stereo, and so your ear gets conditioned to very young to, and then that usually carries forward and you get exposed to different stuff as you grow older and you start learning and you liking different things. But I think a lot of what you end up naturally gravitating towards or what your ear gets drawn to is a lot of just kind of what you listen to kind of subconsciously. Not like I'm going to sit down and I'm going to listen to a record. Just kind what's playing.

Speaker 1 (00:34:28):

You can alter that by actively choosing to take in new influences, but actively doing it. I've always thought that the most important thing that a producer brings to the table is their taste. They have to cultivate their tastes, and for some people who are fortunate enough to have musical parents or music loving parents such as yourself or me, it was just there. It just happened

(00:34:59):

Naturally. But a lot of other people don't have that, and so I say to them that you have to create the scenario where you bring that into your head because whatever music is in your head is going to somehow those influences or those tendencies are going to somehow filter out. That's also why I stopped going to classes at Berkeley was because I hated the music that was being taught. I hated the sound of, there was a sound to the musicians there. I hated that stuff so much and I already had this theory that whatever you take in you shit back out musically

Speaker 2 (00:35:41):

Somehow.

Speaker 1 (00:35:41):

Absolutely, yeah. Somehow it's going to come out in some way, shape, or form. So if I'm sitting there learning chick choa tunes, he's great and all, but I don't listen to that stuff. It's not my thing. I don't like it. If I start transcribing that stuff I'm supposed to, it's going to influence my playing. If I start learning clues going to seep in, which is not my thing, it's going to come out. If I start transcribing orchestral stuff like what I did do, then that's what came out in my style. So I think that people need to take that seriously and if their tastes aren't cultivated enough to where they don't have that instinct for helping bands go to the right chord or whatever it is, go to the right riff, whatever the case may be, then I think that they actively need to make a point of taking in more music and making it part of their lives, which is easier to do than ever.

Speaker 2 (00:36:37):

Absolutely. I mean, yeah, I'm not sure how old you are. 40. Okay, so we're about the same age. I remember being a kid and having a paper route and you'd be able to buy one cassette a month or whatever it was, and you'd be very careful about which one you bought. You knew you were going to be listening to it for the next month until you got the next one. And yeah, there was radio, but you're just kind of at the mercy of whatever's being played and depending on where you live, it's going to be different. But then you listen to that cassette and you listen to it over and over and over and over and over again, whether it's a good or bad. And it's funny when you go back and listen to some of the stuff that you're like, fuck, I used to love that album.

(00:37:13):

I was a huge KISS fan when I was, I dunno, probably maybe nine to 17, I fucking loved Kiss and it was like a goal to have every KISS album when you're only buying one album a month or then when you get a little older, you've got a better job, part-time job. You can buy maybe two CDs or you do the Columbia House get 10 for as Senate. I did that. Yeah, I did that using my middle name, using my brother's name. I did it like five times. But you listen to that stuff over and over and over again, and then it's later on in life, you go back and you're like, man, I used to love that record. And there's some KISS albums that are unlistenable. I remember being a kid being like, fuck. I remember listening to that album for two months nonstop and I loved it. And now, but it's because you didn't have everything else to listen to. I know I'm getting a little kind of going off on a tangent here, but

Speaker 1 (00:38:06):

That's okay. We go on tangents.

Speaker 2 (00:38:08):

It's very interesting to me how bands in this day and age pick producers.

Speaker 1 (00:38:15):

How so? What do you mean?

Speaker 2 (00:38:16):

Well, okay, so I think a lot of people now, because there's no, I don't want to say there's no money, but there's just the money's not there that it used to be. I feel like people just kind of go to whomever.

Speaker 1 (00:38:29):

There is a lot of that for sure, the convenient option.

Speaker 2 (00:38:32):

Totally. If you live in Oklahoma and you're like, okay, cool, we got this little deal with whomever, and even if you got signed to a major, the budget still sometimes can't pay for what you think you were going to get, but whatever. Let's say you live in Oklahoma and you get signed to a kind of mid-level label and you're like, okay, cool. You guys got, let's say 30 grand to go make a record, and you're like,

Speaker 1 (00:38:55):

Cool. Reasonable budget

Speaker 2 (00:38:57):

For that scenario. Let's say you're kind of like a hard rock band, whatever, and your first album, you've got a little bit of a following, Hey, we are going to give you 30 grand to go make a record and you're in the middle of the us, or even if you're on the east coast or whatever, and you're like, yeah, these four producers that I love their work. They're all in la. Well, 30 grand's not going to get you even going to get you the travel and the expense of going and making a record out in la. So now you got to say, okay, well, who's willing to come to where we are? Okay, so that just cut out half the guys. They don't want to travel. Maybe they got families and they're like, fuck that. I'm not going out to fucking Oklahoma or whatever. No diss on Oklahoma. I don't want to go. Not right now. So you end up kind of going with what you can go with and then you're kind of like, okay, well who do we know? Or, okay, who's willing to do it for this or whatever. So there was a time, again, I got into the music business. I was pretty young. I think I had just turned 19, 18 even maybe when I got my first real studio job. I kind of got in, I think the year after Napster basically really started becoming a thing

Speaker 1 (00:40:08):

Those days.

Speaker 2 (00:40:09):

Totally. And to make matters even worse, my first real studio gig was at Sony Music Canada, so one of the majors in their in-house studio. So I saw the industry crumble from the inside. I wasn't at some commercial studio that was kind wondering what was going on. I was privy to all the shit that was happening in one of the majors.

Speaker 1 (00:40:34):

That sounds fascinating. Actually.

Speaker 2 (00:40:36):

You know what? It's one of those things. I look back and I'm like, man, I wish I could go back now because obviously you're young and I was more concerned with trying to get a job and trying to learn and trying to my career. So a lot of that stuff I think I didn't even really pay attention to. It would be amazing if I could go back now and be like, okay, don't worry about doing a recall. I know how to do that. I don't have to stress about that. Pay attention to the conversations you're hearing in the hall when the president of the record label's talking with the head of marketing and they're talking about how there's not going to be an industry in two years or six months or whatever. I was privy to that stuff, but yet I was so just overwhelmed by the studio stuff that it didn't really sink in. But that being said, if it had sunk in, I might've just been like, fuck this, I'm out.

Speaker 1 (00:41:24):

This is actually one of the reasons I started URM. A lot of good people left. They jumped ship and I can't blame them for it, but I felt like somewhere around that 2010 era shit was really weird. It had been 10 years of the downloading thing. Lots of stuff had been decimated, lots of studios had been decimated. The home recording thing was in its infancy and most of the stuff coming out of there was pure crap. There was no real information out there about how to get good at heavier music, but there were no studios anymore to mentor people. So it was like, where is this going? I put so many years into this and it's just going to die. Fuck that. So that was actually that whole time period was one of the inspirations to start this, to replace in as much as you can online, still just online, but as much as you can that old mentorship system. Because otherwise I feel like with very few exceptions, heavy music was headed to the dumpster as far as the quality bar goes. Players were really starting to suck. Mixes were, I mean obviously there were always greats in every time period. And actually the Nickelback stuff always sounded incredible,

Speaker 2 (00:42:51):

The highest bar. I mean, if there's one thing that I can kind of share with listeners about my experience with Nickelback and the whole band, but Chad specifically is whether you like what he does or not, his bar is so high that whatever he does is going to be amazing. Now, if he's a sushi chef and you don't like sushi, it doesn't fucking matter. You're never going to like what he does. But yeah, anyway, sorry to kind of throw that in there, but yeah, you're right. It's, there's always the grs, but at that point in time, there was a lot of shit.

Speaker 1 (00:43:25):

And also you didn't know if labels were going to be around in five years.

Speaker 2 (00:43:30):

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:43:30):

They were saying things like five years from now, 75% of these labels are going to be gone.

Speaker 2 (00:43:36):

Well, plus the guys at that time at the labels, I didn't know anymore because either they were gone or they just promoted junior guys to cut costs, and then it's like, so yeah, it was a very weird time period for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:43:53):

Man, I remember when Roadrunner records, because my band used to be signed to Roadrunner, so I know them. They cut in one day. I would say 85%, maybe the number's wrong, something like that of their staff. Jesus Christ. I mean, heavy hitters,

Speaker 2 (00:44:10):

Like

Speaker 1 (00:44:11):

The dude who signed Nickelback Monte Connor, they didn't cut the small fries. They fucking eviscerated the staff, which blew my mind. It was like, if you're firing the dude that signed Nickelback and the dude that signed Slipknot, what the fuck is going on

Speaker 2 (00:44:32):

At that point? It's just a business mechanism. It's not about the music. It has everything to do with your salary is too high, and we got to get rid of your bonus that we're still paying because you brought in a fucking band that sold 30 million albums and all this shit. It's just becomes a business. And that's what happened was, in my opinion, is it turned into where just the nuts and bolts of the business, the spreadsheet was more important than the music and the bottom line, not even on a profit level, just an operating level. Everybody was more worried about costs and everything else than they were about music, which is just a self-fulfilling prophecy as we saw. But I remember when I worked at Sony, I mean, you're talking 2010, I remember when I worked ish at Sony 10, when I worked at Sony 2003. I remember, no, it had to be before that 2001 because I came to LA in 2003, 2001 or maybe 2002, it doesn't matter. But that time period, I remember going into Sony and literally walking in the building and seeing a line of people walking out their box,

Speaker 3 (00:45:42):

Oh man,

Speaker 2 (00:45:43):

With the security guy that we all know. We see him every day. I can't remember his name, but Mike walking out 50 people. And I'm like, what? Some of them just from kind of being in the building and seeing around and you're like, what's going on? And they're like, you see the look on their face, you don't even have to ask. And I'm like, holy fuck. What am I doing here? And I'm like a 19-year-old kid who's had blinders on being like, I'm going to make records for the rest of my life since I was like 15. And I'm just like, holy fuck what's happening right now? So it's interesting, you're talking about 2010 because at that point, the whole economy was in the shit, right?

Speaker 1 (00:46:23):

Yes, it was.

Speaker 2 (00:46:24):

And I remember a lot of friends not in the music business, like 2008, 2009, 2010, just being like, oh, fucking recession. Fucking recession. And somehow I'd been able to survive those years and still be making music, and I'd be like, not to sound insensitive right now, but fucking music business has been in a recession for 10 fucking years. My whole career has been in the middle of a recession in the music business. It's like, get used to it. That's reality. For me. It became reality for the rest of the world.

Speaker 1 (00:46:56):

It's kind of similar to this quarantine thing, whereas now I think a lot of producers are saying, this is how we normally live.

Speaker 2 (00:47:03):

Totally. I've seen all the memes. They're hilarious pictures before quarantine after quarantine. There's no difference.

Speaker 1 (00:47:11):

Yeah. I remember in around 2009 and 10, the jokes were that now everybody else gets to see what it's like to get paid. Musicians do.

Speaker 2 (00:47:21):

Yep. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:47:22):

Yeah. So that's why in that time period, I didn't get freaked out.

Speaker 2 (00:47:26):

I didn't either. I'd been living like that for my industry had been like that since I started.

Speaker 1 (00:47:30):

Yeah, exactly. I was freaked out about the direction that fair enough, heavy music was headed, quality wise. I felt like that right there was going to be the death blow, the sales part. I felt like a technology would eventually come around, and it did. It always does. But I felt like if the quality wasn't resurrected, then what would be the point of the technology that eventually came around and with so many really brilliant people jumping ship, it was just a very scary time. And that's why also right now having lived through that and also I got signed in 2005,

Speaker 2 (00:48:11):

You were the one who got a deal in 2005.

Speaker 1 (00:48:14):

Yeah, I was the last one. I was the last one to get a good Roadrunner deal, I think other than legacy acts, I think, no, I honestly think that at least in the world of metal, extreme Metal for that time period, we were the final band to get a real Roadrunner records record deal. We missed the cut off by two weeks maybe or something like that. But to me, I've grown up in the struggle of the music industry. So seeing this right now that's going on and I see a lot of people are freaked out and I'm not freaked out, and people might say that it's because I have URM, but it's not because of URM. If I was producing records right now, I wouldn't be freaked out. And it's because I think that history shows that no matter what crisis comes and goes, eventually the music industry finds a way to put itself back together because there's one fundamental thing that doesn't change, which is people love music. And since people love music, there's always going to be a need for the people who can make it on the musician end and the production end and business end. It's always going to be there no matter how it changes forms. So this current situation could last two months, it could last six months, but at some point the situation is going to end and then things will put themselves back together. It might be different, but they'll still put themselves back together.

Speaker 2 (00:49:49):

At least in la we're pretty much in total lockdown here. I mean, you still see people out, but for the most part, I don't think I've left the house in almost three weeks. But it's interesting that talking about, yeah, it will come back. But it's interesting how I don't even think it's affecting it that much because for music, production, business, whatever you want to call it, guys, even if you're not making a living doing, even if you just do it as a hobby, this scenario, I mean the business and just the world, the music production world has gone to this very kind of isolated, everybody's got their own studios. You don't record bands all at the same time. Like you said, we've been doing this for years. It's not a result of, I know people who are at home and they're like, oh, I've got to do Zoom meetings and blah, blah blah and whatever. And I'm like, I mean, we've been doing this. It's not a result. This lockdown, we've been doing this as just the way that things have gone. Right?

(00:50:50):

So interestingly enough, there's a couple of producers and a couple of writers that I've worked with that I do a lot of work with consistently, and probably within the last week when I've had conversations with them, they're calling me saying, Hey, I'm starting this project. I'm going to have this ready for you to mix in six weeks. What's your schedule? I've got more calls for work for upcoming gigs, like planning gigs. And that's probably my biggest complaint about the current music business as a producer or mixer, whatever. It's just a lack of scheduling. When I first started, it seems like everybody knew what they were going to be doing this time next year. Mine doesn't work like that. And it's not that I'm not busy, I'm always busy, but I very rarely get the layout the way that I want it on the calendar. But I've gotten more calls in the last week laying out projects like 4, 5, 6 months from now or three weeks from now or two months from now.

(00:51:48):

And what's happening is I'm talking to the people who are calling me for stuff and they're being like, yeah, so-and-so just called, they want to start writing a new record. And they're like, that was came out of left field. Everybody right now is tours are getting canceled. So they're like, okay, well let's be creative. Or I'm locked inside, so I have no other option but to be creative. So it's like this is actually making business increase because now everybody else is doing the same thing that we've been already doing for the last however many years, and we don't have to stop anything. The fact that I can't get a guitar player, I can't get a band to go to a commercial studio in la, I haven't needed that in years. So that doesn't stop me from doing anything. And everybody's got a rig at home, even if somebody's shitty at recording themselves. I've done so many FaceTime sessions over the last two weeks of just helping people get their shit set up and be like, listen, give me five passes through the song. Just make sure you give me the di and the guitar, then send me all the tracks. I'll go through and we can, we're doing stuff anyways. And it's not that drastically different from how we were doing it before. Whereas other industries have had to really change how they do things.

Speaker 1 (00:52:59):

It seems like quite the mind fuck for them. I was talking to a pretty high up a and r guy at a major label yesterday that I'm friends with, and he told me that for him at that label, they are busier than ever. I believe it. And what they're doing right now is stacking material. So they're getting ready for an explosion

Speaker 2 (00:53:22):

Basically. I am getting kind of on the ground floor as well, just like the ear to the ground kind of thing with getting calls from producers who are, I know they're like, listen, this band, we're not on album cycle, but they want to start writing. I'm probably going to have stuff for you to start mixing in June. I wasn't expecting that at this time. Or I'm getting calls from artists being like, Hey, can we start writing for a new record? How would we do that? And then I've got some online tools to be able to do virtual sessions.

Speaker 1 (00:53:56):

How are you going about that?

Speaker 2 (00:53:58):

So there's a couple of different ways that I'm dealing with it. I mean, I was on FaceTime or on messages with Chad a couple days ago. So he's got a studio at his place up in Vancouver. We'll get on messages on the computer, I'll take control of his screen or get the session, put the session in a Dropbox, get it on my end, let him share my screen so he can see what we're doing. And he'll be like, okay, cool. I laid down this guitar lick and can you edit it and then put program a drumbeat on it. Okay, cool. And I'll send it back. I'm going to write some lyrics. I'll do five takes and send them to you. So we've already been working like that just on some writing, just writing sketches. And that's starting to increase with other people. The way that I'm dealing with it with a lot of my clients, a lot of my clients have their own setups. And even if they don't necessarily really know how to run it, they have a setup so that way they can sketch stuff out,

Speaker 1 (00:54:51):

They can run it well enough to get the job done for what they need.

Speaker 2 (00:54:54):

Totally. Or what I've been finding probably three times a day for the last week is exactly what I just kind of described is we'll jump on the computer, I'll take control of their screen. I'll set up a session for them. I'll get their vocal on input. I'll be like, okay, go to the vocal mic. Okay. Yep. Okay. Level's good. I know it's not going to be clipping. We don't need anything fancy. Okay. What BPM, even the most basic operation I can get set up for them and be like, okay, they know how to hit spacebar. They know how to record. They know how to turn the volume up and down and be like, okay, cool. New playlist. New playlist, new playlist. Okay, throw that in the Dropbox. I'll comp it when I have a second. And it's been a lot of jumping around to that kind of stuff. There are some tools out there. I've been using an app called Session Wire.

Speaker 1 (00:55:39):

Interesting. I have not heard of that one.

Speaker 2 (00:55:41):

Yeah, and you should definitely check it out. I did some alpha and beta testing for 'em, a company up in, I think they're up in Vancouver as well, looking

Speaker 1 (00:55:48):

It up right now.

Speaker 2 (00:55:49):

Yeah, so their whole thing is, it's basically, I mean the elevator pitch is basically, it's like a Skype, but it's built for music production.

Speaker 1 (00:55:57):

Oh, this is cool.

Speaker 2 (00:55:58):

Yeah, it is. Definitely check it out. Even for doing calls like this, the quality is super high. I do all my video conferencing with my clients on Session wire now, so yeah, definitely, definitely a good tool to have. But there are a couple other ones out there that have popped up recently. Everybody's figuring out a way to do it. It's just kind of like what works with your workflow? I'm not really my workload right now, I don't have time to sit there remotely and hit the space bar for somebody. And especially if it's kind of like, okay, can't really, I'm not in the room with you. The communication as good as it can be, it's not going to be as good. You're better off just go do 20 takes and send 'em to me and I'll put 'em together.

Speaker 1 (00:56:36):

Yeah, makes sense.

Speaker 2 (00:56:38):

And then I can be doing something else. Right now I'm mixing two different projects at the same time, so it's like, okay, I can be doing working on that. And then tonight somebody will have a Dropbox folder of a new song that they wrote, and then tomorrow morning I can get up and I can program a bunch of shit and I can send it back to them. They can listen to it, they can it. It's basically throwing stuff back and forth. I know some guys, they're just like, oh, okay, how do we do this live? And I'm just like,

Speaker 1 (00:57:03):

Well, that you may need to let go of that one for a little bit.

Speaker 2 (00:57:09):

Well, and I have, unless it's one of my clients that am like, okay, we've got a deadline. We need to have something out. There's something very important. This is something that we kind of scheduled whatever, but as of right now, it's more or less helping people get set up to kind of do it themselves and then uploading stuff to me to kind of put together, that's how I've been dealing with it, which isn't that, again, it's not that much different than how I've been, things have been working for the last, I don't know, 10 years.

Speaker 1 (00:57:41):

Lemme just throw this out there. If you're a touring professional band member, and I need to say specifically not if you want to tour in the future or did three shows in your state. I mean actually in the industry, your shit got canceled and you want to learn how to record better, hit me up and I will hook you up with a couple months of URM for free. But the criteria is you have to actually be in the industry and you actually have to have real tours canceled, not five shows up the East coast, so don't bother me with that shit.

Speaker 2 (00:58:20):

That's pretty awesome of you. And anybody who's in that situation that doesn't take you up on that is a fool. So that's pretty awesome

Speaker 1 (00:58:27):

Doing what we can.

Speaker 2 (00:58:28):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:58:29):

Do you even work with bands anymore who don't have at least one person who has a rig? I feel like that's almost unheard of now.

Speaker 2 (00:58:38):

I'm trying to think of the last one that I did.

Speaker 1 (00:58:41):

The fact that you have to think about it says everything

Speaker 2 (00:58:44):

Totally. Now it is a double-edged sword as technology is various technologies. I think there's anything that's from a productivity standpoint that's really good. There's usually in the technology space, there's usually some sort of unintentional drawback and like I said, take you up on that offer because a lot of the time it's education. It's just knowing how to use the tools. But what ends up happening a lot, that's a challenge for me is somebody will record something and it's kind of like it's, it's clipping. You hear too much of the room, they over compress it, they used the wrong mic, whatever it happens to be, and then that becomes the thing that you can never either get them to do it again because they're like, oh no, we already did it. I already did it. And you're like, no, it fucking sucks.

Speaker 1 (00:59:37):

This is exactly why they should take me up on it. A hundred percent. We will show them how to not do that. Totally, yeah. If you're listening and you're recording stuff for a producer who's going to mix your stuff or whatnot, if you don't want them to hate their lives, you should take me up on this.

Speaker 2 (00:59:58):

Absolutely. Well, it's an interesting point because as much as we all want to be known for our creative talents, sometimes there's certain things that you need or there's certain things of the process that is not so much about creative and it's more about execution. It's craft. It's

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):

Craft and execution.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):

Yeah, absolutely. So as country music has turned into eighties rock and me being an eighties rock fan, I've started to do more country music because they let me make records that sound like Def Leppard, and whereas rock bands don't want to sound like Def Leppard country bands do. I've been using a lot of Nashville musicians remotely like session musician and it's amazing. I've started picking guys, yeah, come up with great parts, that's cool. But when I need somebody to just play big, juicy open chords on an acoustic guitar chugging along to the song, any one of a thousand guitar players in Nashville are going to be able to perform that the way I need it. If there's two guys who I know when they record it, not only are they not going to fuck it up, but it's actually going to sound maybe even better than what I would've been able to do in the studio with them.

(01:01:05):

I'm going to use that guy. Of course, why not? Now, there are certain guys, and this goes whether they're in Nashville or whether they're in LA or anywhere else in the world, there are certain guys who I'm like, I love creatively what they do, and I'll put up with the fact that I'm going to have to do a bunch of repair work, or I'm going to have to get on Skype or FaceTime or Session Wire and walk 'em through a setup or whatever. But I want their flavor. I want their parts, what their thing is. But if I just need somebody playing power chords or doing meat and potato stuff, I'm going to go to the guy. If I have to do this remotely, who's going to be able to execute it the best, not only from a performance standpoint, but also from a recording standpoint. So yeah, I mean it's become a necessity. I think it's become a necessity for a lot of musicians if you're a hired guy, either a session musician or a touring guy, especially now when your tours are canceled. Here's the other thing about that I'll kind of offset it with, I'm not expecting somebody to send me back the most amazing recorded stuff. Honestly, if it was just kind of clean and done properly,

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):

You can make it

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):

Work, not fucked up, then I'm happy. So the expectation is, so I find a lot of people, they're like, oh shit, I'm going to be sending my tracks, and they just too much, and then they end up ruining it and you're like, Hey, do you happen to have that without all the extra shit you put on it and you hope they do? And they're like, oh yeah, I thought maybe you, but sometimes they don't. Getting just a clean not fucked up recording to somebody that's not problematic is that's status quo. If you can do that, you're fine,

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):

Man. I have two points to make first of all,

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):

Not to get into the technical aspect of things, but

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):

No, it's okay. We go everywhere on this, but we do this really cool challenge on nail the mix every once in a while where I will issue the no plugin challenge, mix this to the best of

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):

Your ability. I've failed that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):

Well, I doubt you would fail it. I would fail it it miserably. Keep in mind that some of these records just sound incredible, just faders up.

(01:03:14):

I did it with an OPEC record once a couple of years ago. I mean, that band is incredible. I was noticing that people's mixes were just overcooked. It's like Jenz Borin did such an incredible job recording this incredible band. You're making it sound worse than it did just faders up. So here's the challenge, mix it without plugins. Just don't fuck it up. I feel like it's kind of the same thing as what you're saying. Just don't overthink it, just get it clean and make it work. No clipping, but this is kind of the modern version of the argument. I used to give bands who were trying to get signed, which is if you have two bands, I always used to say this to unsigned bands when I was producing them, you had two bands, a and r is looking at two bands. They play the exact same style of music. They're just as good as each other. They both draw the exact same number of people. However, one of 'em has no image and very bad business sense, and then the other one has their shit together, all else being equal. Who are they going to go with? Worse, obviously it is like, it's not even a question, and I feel like this is a modern version of the same thing. You get two guitar players who could both execute the part exactly the same. I mean obviously with their own flair, but exactly the same level of

Speaker 4 (01:04:39):

Quality.

Speaker 1 (01:04:40):

One is not better than the other. They'll both get it to you fast. However, one of 'em will send you fucked up Des and the other will send you a crystal clear, perfect. Des, who are you going to go with?

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):

Absolutely.

(01:04:54):

Yeah, every time. It's really a no brainer when it comes to that. And that's the thing about, again, going on a little bit of a tangent, where we're at with technology right now is whether it be plugins or samples or just the style of music that happens to be desirable right now. And I'll say that across the board, whether it be rock or pop or country or whatever, the tool set has leveled the playing field quite a bit, but then it's up to the user to determine what you're going to do with that. And I think I do a lot of mixing for other producers and artists just sending me stuff, stuff that I didn't produce or didn't track or anything. I'd say that's an equal size of my business and my day, day-to-day, it's very easy to get a session from somebody and within 30 seconds make the determination of was this tracked in such a way where the producer, engineer, artist, whomever did it, had a vision or a sound and went after it. That's scenario one or scenario A or scenario B. Just track everything and we'll figure it out later. It's probably the easiest thing to identify in any session that I'm seeing for the first time as a mixer.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):

And what do you prefer?

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):

I really don't have a preference because there are, I'm going to contradict myself. There is a scenario C of a little bit of an beat in between, and that's kind of how I track. There's guys out there and I also get hired to track projects that I don't produce and don't mix. I produce projects that I do everything on. I produce projects where I just produce and I have somebody else engineer and I have other people mix it, and I kind of do everything in every form depending on the project and just kind of depending on what I want to do and what my workload is. I'm familiar with the different scenarios. There are guys who want to faders up. There's the mix, and now we're just worrying about some vocal levels and we're worrying about some overall automation and maybe some master bus stuff to just kind of glue it together.

(01:07:03):

But the kick drum was printed the way that we want it, and it was all eqd ahead of time, and then we were using Mike pre that have no EQ on 'em. They're going straight into Pro tools and we have to do everything after the fact, and when they send you the mix, they take off all their shit and now you're left with just very, very kind of neutral, just clean recordings. There is a middle ground, and when I track projects, even if I'm producing them and know where they're going to go, I kind of take that middle ground. So I like to point it in a direction. I like to say, okay, what's the song require? What are we trying to do? What's the sound of the band? If they have one, what are we trying to do as we're tracking it? Let's point it in that direction because I also feel what you're listening to inspires the next move. So if all you're listening to is either neutral, clean, no character shit

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):

As TLA calls it, documents,

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):

Documents, that's a perfect example. If you're listening to documents, it's not very inspiring. Just the way reading a document isn't that inspiring. Now, on the other hand, we'll use the book analogy here because actually I like that I'm steal that from TLA. Thanks buddy. If you start out the song and you're in the book and make it a suspense thriller, you paint it in such a way that that's all that could ever be, well then that's going to then inspire everything coming down the road. So I kind of like to point it in a direction but not get so locked into that direction that it's not going to inspire stuff because perfect example, if you're working with a hard rock band or even just a rock band, so take a band, shine down, let's say

(01:08:51):

Shine Down can have really heavy stuff and they can have stuff, I don't want to say not heavy, but just maybe not quite, so just kind of big riff arena rock and is a little more intricate and a little more layered and a little just a different style. If you track the drums for a song where you're like, okay, this could go a couple different directions, and we're in the very beginning stages of doing this, if you point it and go too hard in any one direction, that's going to inspire everything else down the road. Forget about fixing it. You can go back and fix anything you really can in these days. Now

Speaker 1 (01:09:27):

You're talking about the essence of the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):

So if you want to get technical, if you start EQing the kick drum super clicky and just we're like, oh, we're going to make this metal, and then that's going to inspire the production down the road, and it's going to be very hard to be like, oh, well, why don't we bring that back to maybe a little more mainstream rock and not be quite so metal. Again, you can go back and fix the kick drum, but that kick drum is inspiring. Your next move or the sound of the drums is inspiring your moves. It's not so much about what you can and cannot do later. It's about what's inspiring the next process.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):

It's a very interesting take because I was kind of brought up to think, commit, commit, commit, commit, which I really do believe in, but this is kind of like a version of commit, but don't commit so hard that you limit the artistic possibilities.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):

At least be aware of what

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):

You're committing to and what it means.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):

Yeah. It means more than just what the sound of the drum is. For instance, a guitar sound is huge. I'm a really fucking hack guitar player, but I love guitar tone. I love how I ended up recording was

Speaker 1 (01:10:40):

It's validating to Listen to

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):

Dude,

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):

It's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):

I mean, how I ended up doing this instead of continue playing in bands when I was 14 was I would get my guitar and instead of playing songs, I'd play chords and tweak my amp. I'd just be like, jut more eq, jet, more eq. Bram Bram more EQ as everybody else was playing songs, right? I'm like, fuck songs. I just want to make my guitar sound rad. But guitar tone's a perfect example. Whatever the guitar tone is is probably going to inspire direction of, well, what are you going to do next once you've got the rhythm guitar downs, now what are we going to do? Well, if the guitar tones a certain way, it's probably going to potentially inspire. If there's a counter melody, what is that counter melody going to be? Well, if the guitar tone's all just big heavy chugging stuff, it's probably going to inspire some more dark counter melodies or maybe the vocals, maybe the melodies is not even locked in yet. Right?

Speaker 1 (01:11:34):

Doesn't this make such a great case for tracking with Amp Sims?

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):

Yeah, which I've been on for as long as they've existed.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):

Okay. I can see that given this philosophy, that makes perfect sense,

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):

And again, I don't mind committing to stuff. I have a method, which I've been doing forever, where I'll have a stereo track and the left side is the right side is the Amim. I use an ax effects, but even before that, I used other stuff, but the di will be muted, but because it's on a stereo track, it always stays together, and when you edit it, you don't have to worry about your groups being on or off or all this shit, right? It's just almost like I call it a multi mono track, and I use that for a bunch of different things, so it's kind of a trick I hadn't seen anybody else do. I've been doing it for a long time and now I see other people doing it. I'm not going to take total credit for it, but if there's one unique idea that I've had in my life,

Speaker 1 (01:12:26):

I know another Canadian. I know another Canadian who does it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):

Yeah, who's that?

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):

Kay Ko does it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):

Okay. Well, he's like 20 years younger than me, so I'm going to call Frank on that seniority. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. He probably, it's not a novel idea. You just have to know that there's a plugin that

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):

No, it's a great idea. I've seen it on nail the mix now, and mind you, we've done 65 or more nail the mixes at this point, so there's been a lot. This has come up four or five times out of 60 plus, so it's not very common, but the first time I saw it, I was like, what is this? And then maybe it was Kane who did it, but whoever it was explained it to me, I was like, oh, that's crafty smart.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):

Yeah. I mean, I don't always do it, but I'll do it with kick drums if there's an in, in and out mic and they were already printed with the EQ that I want, and I know instead of just busing it to an auxiliary and then using that or grouping them together and whatever, I just want to treat that as one thing. I'll put it on a stereo track and pan both sides up the middle, and now I've got one track to look at and to deal with one eq, I'm treating it as a whole, right? Or a snare top and bottom. I do the same thing with that. Whereas once I have those, the way I want the balance is I use the trim plugin to balance 'em out the way I want. If the sounds all the way I want, I just want to treat it as one thing.

(01:13:47):

Now I just put it on a stereo track and pan 'em both up the middle. If you can use a stereo track as two mono tracks that are just always locked together, and you can even split the plugins if you want to queue different things, you can go in a multi mono mode and cue them differently, right? So just a track management thing, but anyways, where was I going with this? Oh, committing versus not committing. Yes, as long as you're aware of the potential. Another philosophical, not to kind of jump around too much again, but another philosophical concept that I follow is I like to go down lots of wrong roads or at least a wrong road to know that the other one was the right one. Does that make

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):

Sense? Yeah, absolutely. It's an interesting one because there's been many times in my life where I've made a musical decision whether it's when I was writing for my band or producing where I knew it was right, and there's a percentage of the time where it's like, this is the vision. This is what I got the vision, this is it. There is no other way. I'm sorry, but this is it. But then there's times where you're not so sure you think, but you're not so sure, and in those cases, I think it's worth exploring and sometimes you find that you were right, sometimes you find you weren't, but I think I would always just go with my gut on that one because I feel like there is sometimes where you just get that feeling of certainty where you just, it's right.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):

Yeah. I mean, we're talking about so many different decisions. I mean, over the course of let's say one song from the production, from beginning to end, from writing to mastering. I mean, there are a billion decisions, so there are certain decisions that you're like, I don't need to do X to determine that it needed to be y. I know that it's y. We don't need to fucking waste time on that. I mean, even as a mixer, I know some of my clients, to their chagrin, they will send me a song and I'm not a fast mixer at all, and they'll be like, Hey, when are you doing it? I'm like, I've got Monday scheduled to mix, and they'll be like, okay, cool. I'll say, yeah, I should have something Monday, Monday night, and then Monday night I'll be like, Hey, spent the day mixing, not going to send you anything.

(01:16:11):

Went down the wrong path. I'm going to start over tomorrow. And they'll be like, huh, did you send it to me to here? And I'm like, no, no. I wanted to, wanted to follow a path, and I followed it and it didn't work. I'll go back. The reason why that happens to me is because I find sometimes, and this might just be my personality, and I think other people maybe it's not quite as big of a deal as I find if I just always trust my instinct and just go with my gut. Everything just is the same.

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):

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 mixed members, get the raw multitracks to a new song by artists like Lamb of 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.

(01:17:30):

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 multi-tracks cleared for use in your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those of you who really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhance, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain, staging, mastering, low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed and enhanced.

(01:18:24):

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. In my opinion, that's why people should not buy more gear instead of developing their ears. It's like when they see a shiny new plugin and they buy it, they think that that suddenly their EQ choices are going to change, and then everything sounds the same and it's because the person running it didn't change. It's just a

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):

Tool. We'll come back to this conversation. I want to make one note of that. You just hit on something that I'm a huge believer in, and I know this isn't like a tutorial podcast, but I want to give this to your listeners. In the quarantine era that we're in right now, I was going to make a little YouTube video to show people do this while we're in quarantine every six months, every two months, whatever that time period is for each individual, take a day, go into it, pull up a session that you're really familiar with, go through and AB all of your compressor plugins, pick two, throw the rest in your unused folder for the next three months,

(01:19:45):

And then just do that every three months. And so when you go to your plugins list, you don't have to make any decisions. You're like, I got an 1176 and make DSP Compressor Bank, or whatever it is that you happen to use, and you're like, okay, I got to do everything with that, and you can, but it's definitely something that I force myself to do. Unfortunately, when you get mixes from other people, they've got plugins all over it, so then you got to throw them all back and do that again. But it's a good exercise that I think a lot of people should do. I mean, I know guys like me who have got quite a bit of experience. It benefits me to just be like, okay, I don't need 14, 11, 76 emulations. I'm going to pick the one that I like and I'm going to use it and I'm just going to use that and I don't need 50 Fairchild, whatever. You don't need 'em all to that fact. You could probably do everything with stock plugins and be just fine. But anyways, coming back to the other thing, that's something I would recommend people to do, especially when you've got downtime. Take a day, shoot out your favorite EQs, shoot out your favorite compressors, shoot out your favorite reverbs and get rid of everything else. Just put it in the unused plugin folder.

Speaker 1 (01:20:47):

I completely agree. There's something about imposing constraints that strengthens you

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):

A hundred percent, and even if all it's doing is just getting rid of another one of those billion decisions that you have to make, it's good. So going back to what we were talking about before, what we were talking about before, something about decision making,

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):

We were talking about the billion decisions required to create.

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):

Yeah, I mean, there are those decisions where you're like, okay, yeah, we don't need to go down wrong roads. If I personally don't take chances or do something that maybe doesn't feel right, then everything just sounds the same to me, because I think in my head I've got the sound of perfect whatevers in my head. I've got the sound of a perfect kick drum in my head. I've got the sound of a perfect snare drum in my head. I've got the sound of a perfect clean guitar and a perfect dirty guitar, but none of that matters in the context of a mix. It matters how it works with the mix. If I don't go down different directions, I'm going to just start chasing the sound that's in my head of all these perfect individual elements that just don't really mean anything once they're all added together. I don't know if that makes any sense.

Speaker 1 (01:21:57):

I feel like there's a couple things here. First of all, and this is hard because I think nobody wants to fuck up, but you have to be open to fucking it up. A lot of beginners have a problem with this, but this is something that plagues people.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):

My best mixes have come from fucking up the one before it that nobody heard.

Speaker 1 (01:22:20):

I have a theory that it's the same thing as having to write the bad songs in order to get to the good one. I think that, I don't remember who it was, it was one of the Beatles or something like that. You got to get the bad songs out of your system. I feel like it's similar with mixes. Sometimes you've got to get the bad ones out of your system in order to get to the good one. I feel like part of it has to do with the light bulb turning on in your head towards where you really understand what's needed for that project. I think sometimes you start with your instincts, but your instincts may not be a hundred percent aligned with what that song needs at that moment in time. Sometimes it might, sometimes it might not, and if it's not, it's good to recognize that and go through it again. And it could just be that you needed basically a practice run. I mean, I do this too when perfect

Speaker 2 (01:23:21):

Example. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:23:22):

I'm shooting videos too. Sometimes I'll shoot at them three times. First time. It's not like I didn't study what I was going to say. Something is different by the time you go through it a couple times, it just becomes more ingrained and even though it's not mixing isn't performing on an instrument or talking on camera, but I feel like it gets inside you and you start to understand what's needed in a different way.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):

A hundred percent. And exactly what you said, doing a couple different takes to kind of do practice runs, whether they're practice runs or not. You made the perfect example of a being playing on an instrument. It's like, why is it perfectly acceptable for me to have a singer do 20 takes or a guitar player do six passes or a drummer punch in the field 30 times to get it right? But the expectation on myself is I have to, pardon the pun, nail the mix the first time.

Speaker 1 (01:24:19):

Well, because people don't understand what's involved. That's why.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):

Yeah. Well, and the other thing is, and just from a technical standpoint, and this is typically what happens to me, if I can shed some light on the technical reason as to why it happens,

Speaker 1 (01:24:33):

Shed it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:34):

What conceptually you think you need to do in order to make something happen sometimes isn't what the track will allow. For instance, if we use the analogy of building a house, and I'm like, okay, cool. I got all my materials laid out here. I've got some bricks. I got some two by fours. I got all this stuff cool. The homeowner really wants me to make this two story cape cod looking thing. And then you start putting it together and you're like, shit, I don't have enough materials to make this house. Two stories. Oh, okay. Fuck, I better rethink the first floor. Oh, shit, I don't have materials to make a Cape Cod. I've only got bricks. I'm going to have to make this a fucking brick house, so I better rethink my architecture. There's all these things that conceptually at the beginning, the artist, the producer, me as a mixer, even if I'm just given carte blanche to do whatever I want, I might be like, okay, I'm going to do this.

(01:25:24):

I'm going to fucking just, it's going to be awesome, blah, blah, blah. And I start doing it. I'm like, oh shit, this isn't going to work. It's usually the opposite. It's usually I'm giving way too much stuff and I'm like, oh, I'm going to make this awesome. And then realize I'm like, shit, this can all work together the way that I want to do it. I got to rethink the approach. And I think that's where guys like CLA who's very instinct and just kind of go, go, go and doesn't overthink anything. I think that's kind of where their experience and their 20 or 30,000 mixes really kind of comes into play is they've shortened the timeline of being like, okay, where do I want to take this? Where does it need to go? And then also being able to pivot mid mix. I have a hard time pivoting mid mix. Like I said, I get a sound in my head and I do everything I can to get it there, and then I realize that it doesn't work and I have to start over. But then when I start over, I'm intimately familiar with all of the warts and all of the moles and the dimples and everything, and I'm like, okay, cool. I know what I got to do now.

Speaker 1 (01:26:24):

I think that what you're talking about goes way deeper than just mixing a

Speaker 2 (01:26:28):

Hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (01:26:29):

One thing that I've pushed really hard on people as just a way to approach life is 10% planning, 90% execution. And the reason I make such a big deal out of it is because most people I know besides my business partners and people, we bring on nail the mix and stuff. Most people I know who are trying to achieve something typically will do 80% planning and 20% execution, and they'll spend all this time planning and planning and planning and thinking about how to make it so perfect and then not spend enough time actually working on it in order to be able to do what you just said, reassess, reformulate, re, whatever. If you say do 10% planning, which is just enough to know what direction you want to go in, you have the vision, you set the goal, and then you get right to it. Boom, 90% execution, you're working on it. You will know that much sooner whether or not you're going down the right path or the wrong path and be able to correct. And this is true for mixing. It's true for business. It's true. It's just true. Hundred percent in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:27:40):

Yeah, and it's interesting. I'm guilty of exactly what you just described, and I will throw in the addition to that. If you are an 80% planner and 20% execution, by the time you get to 40% of any plan, you've probably come across so many obstacles. You just say, fuck it, and you throw in the towel.

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):

Yes. Yep. That's the other reason why I push it so much is because just start it. Yeah, the planning. So obviously I'm not advocating that people just like for instance, quit the job without having a plan. Of course, of course. Say they want to do this production thing for a living and fuck it, no plan. Let's just go. That's dumb too. You're right. By the time you get to about 40% of the planning, you will generally talk yourself out of it. I've done that before

Speaker 2 (01:28:30):

Every time.

Speaker 1 (01:28:30):

The reason I push it so much also is because I know how natural it is to do that. I feel like it's in human nature or in most of our natures to do that, because executing can be kind of scary because it brings the possibility of failing. Nobody wants to fail, and I don't like the self-help idea of failing is good, failing sucks, but you got to be okay with the fact that it sucks and you have to go through, I feel like the 80% planning thing is just a really, really clever and veiled form of procrastination.

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):

I would have to agree with that as well. And I find when I'm honest with myself and I'm procrastinating about something, that's typically what I'm one of those people where I don't sit around on the couch and be like, ah, fuck it. I'll get to it later. I will distract myself with other shit to make myself feel like I'm working towards something and be like, oh, man, yeah, I've been working on that and been doing whatever. And then when you call bullshit on yourself, you're like, yeah, I've just really been fucking distracting myself from doing what really needs to be done, and it's exactly what you said. That's what it is. I'll be like, oh, no, I was working on that. I was thinking of this and I was thinking of that. Or when it comes to mixing or production, be like, yeah, I was refining my template. I was trying out new plugins. I was doing all the stuff that I preached to do, but I was doing it at the wrong time. It's

Speaker 1 (01:29:59):

Delusion. It's delusional.

Speaker 2 (01:30:01):

Totally, totally.

Speaker 1 (01:30:02):

And it's so easy to do. Guitar players do this too by looking up gear, for instance, they'll get on those gear review sites and just talk about amp sims and amps and all that stuff rather than working on their right hand picking, which makes more of a difference in your tone than any fucking amp you'll ever use. But that actually takes investment and you might suck at it, but while this planning stuff gives you this weird false sense of productivity, kind of, have you ever heard, I forget who it was, I think it was the founder of CD Baby or something. He said, don't ever tell people your plans, because what happens is your subconscious doesn't differentiate between the fact that you did it or didn't do it. So if you're talking about it and you're getting excited about it, something in you already feels accomplished for having done it, and it'll stop you from doing it, which interesting.

(01:30:59):

I actually have found that to be kind of true. A lot of stuff that I've done, I've done in secret or not really talking to too many people about it also because they never fucking get it until I'm done with it. So there's no way they'll ever understand. But also just to the point of starting before things are perfect, like man, if you are m and nail the mix that waited until we have what we have now gear wise, have this stream box that's over $10,000 and all these nice cameras and great microphones and staff and a custom website, and that's great, and I know a lot of people would want that, but when we started, it was just me, Joey, and Joel, and some GoPros and shitty PC that we built and a really, really bullshit crap site. You just have to get started,

Speaker 2 (01:32:03):

And the sooner you get started, like we were talking about with the mixing, it's like the sooner you kind of dig into it, the sooner you can figure out what the direction really needs to be and what needs to happen. Trying to figure out all the forks in the road before they happen, it's like, well, I mean, again, you don't want to just be hasty with decision making, but why stress out about four scenarios that are like five steps in? If you went a direction that doesn't even come close to those four scenarios once you get started, just deal with a couple moves ahead as opposed to the infinite amount of moves ahead.

Speaker 1 (01:32:40):

Have you heard of the concept of the black swan?

Speaker 2 (01:32:42):

Remind me,

Speaker 1 (01:32:42):

Here's the definition of Wikipedia. The Black Swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an ancient saying that presumed black swans did not exist. A saying that became reinterpreted to teach a different lesson after black swans were discovered in the wild anyways, point being that the problem that is actually going to fuck you up is the one you don't even know exists,

(01:33:14):

And there's no way that you can plan for it. Exactly. Right. So you just have to get started because there's going to be things that no matter how much planning you do, there's going to be things you did not think of, you didn't even know to think of them that are going to get in your path and trip you up. And so those are the actual problems that you have to solve, whether it's mixing or business or whatever. Those are the actual problems or the things that you didn't think of. If you already thought of 'em and you know how to solve 'em, then what are you doing? Just fucking solve them.

Speaker 2 (01:33:46):

And that goes to another point of we obviously want to be constantly improving whatever it is in our lives, going through the process and just doing anything, going through the process and having to get to those decisions and being able to make those decisions fast and being able to refine your instincts, and that's ultimately going to make everything else better, easier, more productive, more effective, whatever it is down the road, even if you did have perfect foresight and even if you planned it out perfectly, by the time you got to the end of that, you'd actually just kind of be the same as when you started. You wouldn't have actually really owned your craft or your skills or whatever it is that you're talking about. I mean, to make a bad analogy, I love golf. To make a really bad analogy, there's golfers who can go on a driving range and just hit the most perfect shots time after time, after time, after time, after time. They're on a flat level lie, nothing changes. The visual's the same, the wind's predictable. It's the same position on the court. Everything's the same. That has nothing to do with being out on a golf course. So every shot's completely different. So what you want to do is you want to figure out how to improve being able to adapt to whatever the situation is. The only way you're going to be able to do that is by doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:04):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):

So you can plan it all out and you can be right and get to the end of it, but your skillset or your mental sharpness or your refining your instincts or whatever it happens to be, you haven't actually, yeah, you got the end product, but the next time you want to do that again, you're just banking that you hope you guessed the plan, right? Again.

Speaker 1 (01:35:24):

Yeah. Well, what happens if you get served a dish with a bunch of different issues? I've always said that being a great producer or mixer equals being a great problem solver, obviously on top of the fact of having great people skills and oh, yada, yada, yada, all that shit. But really, in order to be great at this, you need to be a great problem solver, and every session is going to have its own unique problems. There are no perfect sessions. Well, something that makes me laugh sometimes is we'll get people to nail the mix who are brand new to,

Speaker 2 (01:36:03):

I think I know where you're going with this. Yeah, okay, so keep going.

Speaker 1 (01:36:07):

I mean, we have people who span the range from peers who are just in there because they want to see what a colleague does to people who are at the very beginning and then a lot in the middle who maybe have only worked with program drums and suddenly they're getting masu tracks or follow up boy tracks and crazy stuff that is totally not realistic for where they're at in their careers. And we give the tracks as they're given to us. I mean, all we do is rename them and number them so that people could just bring them right into the session, and they're all easily, but we don't fix anything. It is what it is. And so if there is a bad edit, the bad edit's there, if anything's fucked up, it's there. And some people will be like, I thought that you guys were supposed to be giving us pro tracks or that kind of attitude. It's like, buddy, this is how it goes. There is no such thing as,

Speaker 2 (01:37:14):

It's a fucking wild blast

Speaker 1 (01:37:17):

Except for maybe a Mutt Lang session. Maybe those are perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:37:20):

Those might be perfect. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:37:22):

Maybe. But the whole thing of it is that these people who mixed the actual version solve these problems,

(01:37:30):

You're going to have to solve these problems too, and they're always going to be something different. And whenever I see that attitude, I'm like, buddy, you've got problems that go beyond audio because your mindset is completely wrong, and don't try to insult them or anything. I just try to help them understand that actually this is how it is in the real world. You might think that there were problems because you love the final mix, but that's just a testament to how great of a mixer and what a great production and all that great mastering job. That's a testament to how good these people are, but they had to solve these problems too.

Speaker 2 (01:38:09):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:38:09):

Is that where you thought I was going with this

Speaker 2 (01:38:11):

A little bit. You took definitely more of a bird's eye kind of overview of it. I thought you were going to go, you get the beginners being like, okay, so what number is EQ got to be set at? Oh, yeah, we get those too. Oh, of course. I mean, I'm not going to defend those people because it's not defendable.

Speaker 1 (01:38:28):

They just don't know yet.

Speaker 2 (01:38:29):

But here, okay, so I'll comment to that. I work with a lot of producers who have 20 number one rock songs, just big albums, platinum records, and I will still get those guys being like, they'll send me a mix. They'll send me their rough mix, I'll take their rough mix and I'll do my thing and I'll send it back, and they'll be like, yeah, the vocal, I think we need to get the vocal maybe a little bit brighter. So in my rough mix, I had the vocal, the high EQ was set to maybe 10, so I'd say maybe try to 12. And I'm like, okay, you make hit records. But they even think, and I'm like, but they don't realize that my master bus might be adding eight db of top end, so what, 12 and without being 12, what? Yeah, totally 12 db of 10 K.

(01:39:20):

And I'll be like, yeah, but that's irrelevant in my mix because I've got so much other shit going on. Even if it was the exact same, I got other stuff, it's irrelevant. And I'll say to them, they'll be like, yeah, so maybe try 6.4 on the threshold. And I'm like, fuck, that doesn't matter. So I'm even telling this to producers. Now, that being said, where music has, from when I started to where I'm at now, 80% of the producers I work with, their background is writing, being in a band, if not both, versus when I started, all the producers used to be engineers,

Speaker 1 (01:39:58):

Hardcore engineers, like real engineers. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:40:02):

Totally. So that's where there's the discrepancy. So the generation now, I feel like I might've been maybe the last generation of guys who came up under the old guard or the old model of the studio hierarchy, which I'm so grateful for because I feel like it's easier for me to learn the new approach, which is less restrictive than for guys who only know the new thing and are just fucking a little bit lost in the woods. For me, there was such a strict etiquette hierarchy way of doing things. It was a very much more black and white because of whether it be the technology or whether it just be the way that the business operated or the people in the room now, it literally is wild west free for all right? So a lot of the people now are self-taught. They learned with presets, they learned with plugins. They don't know any of the theoretical background of what they're doing. It's just a lot of, for lack of a better term, and I don't mean it in a bad way because these guys do great work, but it's just a lot of guessing.

Speaker 1 (01:41:11):

Yeah. I've been saying this for a while. I've always thought that the most dangerous mixer or producer out there is one who has the old school upbringing, but who has fully adopted the new tools because some of those, I call them dinosaurs. Some of the dinosaurs are very resistant to the new way of doing things, and in some ways, their material doesn't evolve with the times. It's still technically awesome, but it's not bleeding edge, I feel like. And and also laptop dudes who are doing great work. So we just had someone on, now the mix, his name is Buster Odel Horn, who is totally new school, a hundred percent, and his work sounds godly, but he's like the definition of the modern version. But I've always thought that man, the people who have that old school background, man, if they adopted the new stuff wholeheartedly, they would be unstoppable. Combining those two disciplines would make them unstoppable. We try really, really hard to try to instill at least some of that old school work ethic and understanding, but there's only so much of that you can do without actually physically being in a location. I think that that's a big part of the traditional way that an engineer learns is by operating these massive, I know it's not about the gear, but the operation of it played a huge role in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:42:56):

Yeah, absolutely. And the best example that I can give to kind of from just from a gear scenario is a synthesizer. And the reason why I use this as an example is if you take any synthesizer plugin, okay, let's say massive or omnisphere or whatever, and this is just an example, you could apply this to any technical part of the process. You can literally with just about any plugin synthesizer, you can make just about any sound that any other synthesizer can make

(01:43:26):

Close relatively. Yeah, the filters are going to sound a little different. The oscillators might sound a little different. They might have different wave tables, but you're going to be able to get close. I constantly have clients, producers, artists being like, Hey, man, looking for a new synth. What synth should I get? I'm like, dude, you have Omnisphere. You don't need another synth. Ever. Learn how to fucking use it. And the problem is, because we're all software based, now you have to know how to use it. The first producer I worked with when I came to la, he started his career as a keyboard guy, but more importantly, he was on the bleeding edge of music technology, whether it be samplers for better or worse, beat Detective was basically his concept that they built for him.

Speaker 1 (01:44:08):

Pretty revolutionary, I'd say

Speaker 2 (01:44:10):

A hundred percent right. But he was on the bleeding edge of that stuff, which I learned a lot from him. But I remember when I first came to LA, he had a poly fusion synthesizer, which was the size of a bookshelf. It was 10 feet tall, six feet wide shit all over the place. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:44:26):

Looks like a NASA project.

Speaker 2 (01:44:28):

Absolutely. And it's almost more, I think, I mean in his studio, it was more of an art piece. We plugged it in, we used it every once in a while. I'd get fucking shocked every time I tried to use it, so I tried to stay away from it. But the point of it was if you wanted to use that thing, there was no shortcut. You had to know how to use it. You couldn't turn it on and just play a keyboard and a sound's going to come out. You had to start fucking patching stuff in. And these virtual synthesizers, they have all that stuff, but it's just already pre patched, so nobody really knows how to use it.

(01:45:01):

And that's kind of the problem. And I'm not saying that don't use presets or that presets are bad, but the problem with the current technology is not only do you not have to learn it, but also when I try to go in and learn how to make my own patches with something like Omnisphere, which I fucking love all the spectrasonics stuff, I'm not dissing this at all, but at least with the poly fusion, you've got this big massive thing in front of you. You can plug thing in and be like, okay, I'm going to follow this cable down. I'm going to plug it here. Okay, what's that? Okay, cool. It's easy to try it out. Whereas I find with some of the plugins, it's hard to kind like you got to page menus and everything's really small. And even with reason where you'd grab the patch cable and you're like, okay, I'm trying. It's clumsy. The fact that it's not a physical thing is clumsy. And it's almost the same way that some of this gear is knowing how to use a console, learning how to use a console. I was about to say

Speaker 1 (01:45:59):

That

Speaker 2 (01:46:00):

Is easier than learning how to use. If you looked at one of my mix sessions, my mix session, talk about a dinosaur, my mix session looks like a fucking dinosaur. I still have it set up like a SSL 4,000 G or E or whatever. It's a very archaic setup in the sense of I've got an SSL channel across every track, whether I use it or not, it's just there ready to go. And I have my auxiliary set up the same way that they show up on a board. It's very archaic, and it's something I'm working on to become a little more new school because there's definitely limitations that I'm imposing that I shouldn't be. But anyways, it's a lot easier to learn how to use a console when you have the big thing in front of you than it is to learn how to use the virtual version of it.

Speaker 1 (01:46:44):

Man. So when I first started learning 2000, 2001, there were several years that I tried to get information online on how to do this. And I think there was some online school in Detroit that had some info, and I tried learning a console through online and it just didn't work. No. And then I remember the first time sometime in 2005, producer friend of mine bought an SSL, and I had just been working in Daws for the past five years, and he invited me over to mix a record that I was doing my first sign band Man. I did not know what the fuck was going on, and it was a very strong moment. I am still faster on a D, but because of that, I decided to learn how to use one. And I felt like learning a console and then also even if you can't have a console, having a patch bay and having to think that out, I feel like the example you're giving of the synth is the best example, but it's also the most unrealistic, but something very realistic for people with home studio. Yeah. It's Patch Bay.

Speaker 3 (01:48:03):

Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:48:04):

Yeah. Patch Bay with a few pieces of gear. First of all, you got to wire it, right, first and foremost, or nothing's going to happen. And second of all, it forces you to within the constraints of what you've got, you can't clone your 1176. If you've got one, you've got one.

Speaker 2 (01:48:22):

Yeah. Pick what you're going to use it on or bounce it out or do something, but,

Speaker 1 (01:48:26):

But you have to make decisions. I also don't think presets are necessarily a bad thing either, especially if you're writing or sometimes the most simple solution to something is the best. And there are some cases where you just put on the reverb you like, and it just sounds awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:48:48):

Totally. I catch myself in that weird headspace of like, don't use a preset, don't use a preset, or I have to make my own presets. I can't be one that came with it. And it's total bullshit. Fucking the two voices, one on either side of your shoulder, right? It's total bullshit.

Speaker 1 (01:49:04):

If you're going to believe whatever works, then a hundred percent whatever works has to actually include whatever works.

Speaker 2 (01:49:10):

Totally. And that's something I used to be full SS SLI can't mix in the box and I couldn't mix in the box, and I had to figure out a way to trick myself into mixing in the box. And now I won't go back. Honestly, if you said, Hey, Chris, I'll pay for whatever studio you want, go mix on A SSL, I'd be like, no, I'm good. I'll stay in my studio. I'm good. I wouldn't want to. But there was a time when I literally, I had mental barriers, subconscious mental barriers that wouldn't let me mix in the box with a mouse or whatever, and I got over them.

Speaker 1 (01:49:46):

You're not alone.

Speaker 2 (01:49:47):

And I had to trick myself. But again, talking about being aware of a situation and dealing with the reality, I knew what the reality was. So I dealt with the reality the best I could, and I addressed instead of just being like, oh, I just got to keep doing it. I'm like, no, no. What's blocking me from doing this? And I figured those things out and I had nothing to do with mixing. It was all, what was it for me? So there's two things. I mean, the obvious one that you hear a lot of people talk about is tactile having something to touch. For a lot of people who have come from the old studio, that's an important thing. I know guys who don't know what the knob of an 1176 feels like.

Speaker 1 (01:50:21):

Yeah. Or they don't want to write automation with a mouse. They want to feel it.

Speaker 2 (01:50:26):

Sure. Absolutely. So there's tactile. So I started mixing in the box and it was an expense, but I was working on a project that luckily afforded me to do it. I got a decontrol.

Speaker 1 (01:50:39):

Yep, there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:50:41):

Okay. So that solved that problem. The next problem that I had, I'm a big proponent of waves plugins. I love those guys. They do awesome work, and I give them a lot of credit because their SSLE channel was the other thing that got me over the hump. Again, talking about reality and cutting through the bullshit that's in your brain. For me, it was less about what it sounded like and more about what it looked like. So for me to be able to turn a knob with my hand and have a plugin on my screen that looks like something familiar that I've been staring at for 10 years, enabled me to get rid of the menthol bullshit that was in my way. Now it's transitioned to a point where I still do that. I still like it. I still like the sound of it. I've become so accustomed to it.

(01:51:32):

I do like the sound of it, but I could very easily do a mix in the box with a mouse and fab filter and be totally fine. Do I like that? No. My preference is still to be on a control surface with some sort of SSL 4K emulation for a variety of reasons. But that literally, I had a mental barrier that I could not get past everything I did. I either hated the sound of or I hated doing until I fixed those two problems. And neither of 'em had to do with sound, and neither of 'em had to do with music. One of them was a feel and one of them was a visual.

Speaker 1 (01:52:08):

I think that it's very awesome that you shared that because on the outside and even in your own head, but outside of the problem, you could tell yourself or someone could think, well, those are bullshit reasons the way it looks. Who cares? But it matters because if you're being,

Speaker 2 (01:52:26):

It mattered to me.

Speaker 1 (01:52:27):

Exactly. It all matters. If it's affecting you, it matters. And if it's something that's preventing you from being able to do your best work, then it fucking matters. And I know that, for instance, I'm DAW agnostic. I don't give a fuck what people use. Love that. But I don't like Reaper very much. And the reason I don't like it isn't because its users are fucking annoying. It's because the plugins, the stock plugins look like 2003 a OL or something, or Sound Forge in 2001. It makes me feel like I'm using something from 20 years ago. And sure, I'm sure you could move the sliders to make it work great. One of the best mastering engineers in the world that I know uses Reaper and whatever, it works for him. But the way that it looks, it was the reason that I could never fuck with it. There's certain plugins that something about their GUI made it hard for me to think.

Speaker 4 (01:53:33):

Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:53:33):

It's not that I didn't understand what the knobs did, I understood what the knobs did, but there's something about it that got in the way of me thinking. And so I would gravitate towards ones where it just would come naturally. But to be able to identify that is what really, really matters, because it's going to be different for everybody. And I think lots of times people are afraid to admit what's blocking them when it's something seemingly superficial.

Speaker 2 (01:54:05):

A hundred percent. And the sooner you understand that and can deal with it, the better off you're going to be. And I agree with you a hundred percent. And I've had this conversation with, I've had this conversation with other producers, other mixers, plugin companies, software developers. I've had this conversation a couple times and we've gotten really deep into, there are studies as to your auditory perception based off of visual stimulus. It's a fact. It's an absolute fact that your brain will make your ears hear something based off of what you're looking at. So being aware of this and wanting to understand more about it, I kind of dug in a little bit, and I am 100% convinced you will not convince me otherwise. Well, let's say 99.9, I can always be convinced otherwise if there's data to support it. But as of right now, I am positively convinced for me, I can't talk about for you, I can't talk about for anybody else, but for me, what I am looking at, what I'm staring at, the overall, all the senses combining is going to, even if it's just a little bit, is going to tweak what my brain is perceiving my ears hearing.

(01:55:21):

So for me, the visual interface of software, of a plugin of just about anything is very important to me. And it affects so much more than just, oh, it looks cool. And that was the thing with the SSL plugin, that SSL plugin. I mean, I have done a tests to SSL boards, and when Plugin Alliance came out with theirs and UAD came out with theirs, I do,

Speaker 1 (01:55:50):

They all sound a little different for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:55:51):

Yeah. And I do care about what stuff sounds like. I'm not throwing that to the wind, but I'll tell you right now, when I first started mixing in the box, if AVID's EQ seven was wrapped in that Waves SSL channel, I still would've been able to be like, fuck, this sounds great.

Speaker 1 (01:56:08):

I believe it.

Speaker 2 (01:56:09):

But if I had to use the Avid EQ seven plugin, I'd be like, I want to fucking kill myself. I'll pay out of my own pocket to go fucking mix out an SSL studio. That's literally, for me, it impacts it so much. So I've done tests with people where it's kind of like in the old school, you'd have that piece of gear that wasn't patched in, you'd just go and flick the switch and be like, people are like, fuck, that sounds great. Yeah, the vocal just sounds, just needs a little excitement. You'd be like, oh, cool. I'll go turn the exciter on.

Speaker 1 (01:56:34):

Or just send them back the exact same mix the problem,

Speaker 2 (01:56:39):

Flip the left and the right. They're like, dude, it sounds so much better just because the stuff's coming out of different speakers. No, but it's one of those things where your brain plays tricks on your ears. I've done the test where I've taken, if a new plugin comes out and we use 1176 plugins, take 3, 11, 76 plugins by different manufacturers, you all kind of get 'em sounding very, very, very similar. You render them out so that way now you can't see anything. Right? And you can basically, what, you can switch audio, leave the audio playing, but have the visual switch. And even if the audio is not playing, and even sometimes if you know the audio isn't changing, but the visual's changing, you think you start hearing differences.

Speaker 1 (01:57:24):

I have the perfect way that people listening. If you don't have access to gear, the way that you can see that this is correct right now is go to edit some drums and make sure that it's a good edit, but don't consolidate, listen to it and look at it at the same time so you can see the line, the cut line, then close your eyes and do it again. And it's astounding how when you're looking at the cuts, you'll think you're hearing clicks and pops that aren't, you'll think you're hearing bad edits, and then you close your eyes and it's fine. So yeah, if you don't have access to hardware, go try that. And your mind will be blown by how true this is. I've done this, man, I've been doing this thing for years because I started using Kempers in 2013 before they came out and stuff.

(01:58:21):

I remember the Kemper was a very controversial topic. The reason I had access to one was I was working with a guy named Jason in a wheelchair, and Andy Nee got a pre-release model, and he was like, Hey, pro tip, this might make your situation a lot easier. I'll hook you up with them. Get a Kemper. So we got Kempers, he got one. I got one. Then we just profiled every single amp there. But for the next couple years, people would come in and be very against using it. And so would reamp their guitar through the real 51 50 with the Recto Cab 57, the standard, and then also that same setup modeled. And I'd be like, which one do you think is the Kemper? And I'd say nine out of 10 times the guessed wrong. I've been saying this a lot on the podcast lately, but I think that the best way to win a musical argument or production argument is by playing something for somebody rather than telling them about it

Speaker 2 (01:59:28):

A hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (01:59:28):

Make them hear it in a way that's unbiased, so they don't know what they're actually hearing. Then you can talk about it. We did this on a nail, that mix too with Forrester, ve, I believe it was February, 2018, he's now in the box, but he was an SSL hardware kind of guy, and he actually mixed really fast. So we had some time leftover. We were in this really nice room with everything. So the mix that he did was 90% hardware. They had the full UAD suite, they had everything. We were like, why don't we shoot this out against the real thing? We have the exact same stuff. Let's see.

Speaker 2 (02:00:07):

Did you guys do the settings the same, or did you let 'em mix it just by ear? Or how'd you guys

Speaker 1 (02:00:12):

Just by ear? That was the key actually done by ear. He was able to get them to sound indistinguishable from each other, but the settings were different. So if you try to match the settings, they're not going to sound the same. But that's even true from one piece of gear to the next two of the same model, 1176 made an hour apart might sound different. So that's true regardless of plugin or hardware. But yeah, we're able to make it sound, when I say indistinguishable, I mean indistinguishable just had slightly different settings, and it's not what I was expecting to happen.

Speaker 2 (02:00:54):

It's pretty incredible. I've witnessed, when I first got into the business, I witnessed, was it assisting or maybe it was tracking a mixing engineer who we had hired to do the mixes on a project that we had just finished mixed on. I don't know what it was. SSL might have been like a nine K or something. And then for whatever reason, months down the road, we had to go back and do a remix, or not a recall, but we had to mix it again. But there was a couple arrangement changes, a couple little things, but we couldn't get back into that room. And we were going to mix the rest of the record at that time. And they went into another room where there was an 88 R, which is a Neve, modern Neve, but is basically kind of like the equivalent of the nine K at the time.

(02:01:36):

But SSL and a Neve and of the day, you put the two mixes next to each other and there was very minimal outboard gear. Yeah, they were using nine 60 Lexicon and some Pol texts and some 11 76ers or whatever. But it was amazing how similar they sounded. And me being young and still thinking, oh, the gear, the gear, the gear, it's such a small piece of the pie that once all the decisions were made and you're tweaking to what the mix engineer was tweaking to what he wanted to hear, he's going to keep doing whatever he's got to do. Obviously the settings are completely different because it's a completely different console. But when you would flip between the two mixes, they sounded a little different. But you would expect, based off of all the propaganda that we get fed on a daily basis, you'd figure the difference between the SSL and the Neve would be chocolate and vanilla. And it was more like one was like 72% dark chocolate, and the other one was like 80% dark chocolate. And honestly, it's just a matter of how bitter do you like it? That's all it is.

Speaker 1 (02:02:32):

I think that's a great way to put it on the topic of propaganda.

Speaker 2 (02:02:35):

I didn't mean to make it that controversial, but No,

Speaker 1 (02:02:38):

No, but that's what it is. So I think that this goes back to what I was saying about talking about a musical idea is kind of a shitty way to get something across as opposed to showing somebody what it actually sounds like. And so I think that a lot of people will read online about the characteristics of certain converters, like burs, oh, Jesus will give better low end somehow or something. They'll read about API versus Neve, all that stuff. Or they'll talk about the harmonics that APIs add when you push 'em hard or whatever. What people don't understand if they've never used the gear, is that sure, that stuff might be kind of true, but really you're talking about the last 2%. And so those differences only matter if everything else, the other 98% is already taken care of. It matters for people who are competing best of the world against best in the world, and they need that 2% difference that makes all the difference. And it's not that one piece of gear is better than the other, it's just whatever you do your best work on. But in my opinion, this stuff only matters for the top of the top of the top when they're trying to differentiate one or 2%. And then at the end of the day, it even doesn't matter then because if they're that good, they'll make anything work.

Speaker 2 (02:04:09):

So I agree with you a hundred percent. And I always, again, being a little bit of a visual person, I always try to describe it as like, yeah, it's like a pie, right? Okay, so you're going to record an acoustic guitar. You've got a pie divvy that pie up into what really matters the most. And at the end of the day, the converter, that slice of the pie, that's the converter. You're not going to be able to see it.

Speaker 1 (02:04:31):

That's so funny. Did you come up with the pie thing?

Speaker 2 (02:04:34):

I mean, that's just how I've always thought about it.

Speaker 1 (02:04:36):

I'm just wondering,

Speaker 2 (02:04:37):

And that's how I describe it to other people too.

Speaker 1 (02:04:39):

Are you familiar with Creative Live by any chance? So right now, the director of operations for URM, he's the guy who, with my help started the audio channel

Speaker 3 (02:04:51):

Creative

Speaker 1 (02:04:51):

Live. Back in 2013. I was like the first person to do an audio course. I've done the most on there. And that's kind of what led to URM. But we were thinking of ways to describe things, how much matters in a guitar tone or a drum tone. We came up with the tone pie.

Speaker 2 (02:05:10):

Oh, cool. It makes total

Speaker 1 (02:05:13):

Sense. Yeah, like 60% drummer, 20% head choice, all that stuff. But yeah, the tone pie, that's what I was wondering.

Speaker 2 (02:05:22):

I hadn't seen that, but that's how I'd always envisioned it. And I think it's easy for people to understand, and it puts things in perspective. And even sometimes I do it too, if I'm looking to buy a new piece of gear, and for me, and even for other people, unless you've got infinite amounts of money or you're just independently wealthy, I mean, there should be a little bit of consideration given to something costs. For instance, if you can give me that little sliver of the pie for 300 bucks, I'm going to buy it. If that sliver of the pie costs me $9,000, I got to get new converters, fucking keep it, and I'll take my wife to Hawaii, fuck it. It's not worth it. So you got to kind of factor that in. I've always just, it's a very easy way to look at something when you visualize the tone pie and you're like stressing out over that little tiny sliver, and you're like, when you can visualize that or you see it on paper, you just kind of puts your mind at ease. You be like, fuck it. Don't think about it anymore. Move on. Now. I will play devil's advocate. I agree with you a hundred percent, but I'm going to play devil's advocate for a minute on the API harmonics or the whatever, the tubes or the digital versus analog, whatever. I'll play devil's advocate for just a second, and I'm going to go back to something that we touched upon a little earlier. I do give a lot of credence to the final product also being attributable to the experience.

Speaker 1 (02:06:45):

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:06:46):

And if I find plugins for me, I'll tell you right now, just again, cutting through the bullshit and looking at myself from an objective standpoint. I'll tell you right now, buying new plugin for me is 90% inspiration or excitement to try something new and probably 10% actual audio benefit. So when a new plugin comes out, and it's a very low cost to entry, when we were buying hardware or a microphone or something like that, or even guitars. For me, guitars, like I said, I'm a fucking hack guitar player, but just having a nice guitar sitting in the room makes me excited to want to go and get the work. So although I might spend some money on a guitar that I'll be like, fuck, I haven't played that thing in six months, and that's like $3,000 guitar that's sitting tied up there. But every day I walk into the studio and it's sitting that there, and it makes me excited.

(02:07:40):

It's kind of cool. That added zero to any of my productions, it didn't get plugged in. Why would you go spend the money on it? Well, it inspired me. It made me excited to want to go into the studio, and then when I look around, I see that, whatever. So I think sometimes gear and plugins can have the same effect, whereas I know if I have to do a mix, and maybe, I mean, I typically try not to work on stuff that I'm not excited about, but we all, every once in a while are like, okay, I just got to go knock this thing out. I'm not that pumped up about it. But if I know, I'm like, oh, dude, I just got this new thing that sounds exactly the same as fucking everything else, I'm going to be like, cool. I'm going to go mix through this thing and knock out this mix. And all of a sudden now, I just got through a mix that I really, I was dreading doing simply because I was doing it through a new converter that added point, point, 0, 0, 0, 1% difference. But it inspired me and got me excited to go and do something or inspired me to do something different. Maybe again, if you have a piece of gear being like, oh, cool, I got this new whatever, I'm going to put the vocal through it. Is it that much different than it would've been if I didn't have it? No,

(02:08:45):

But it got me excited. And if you're excited and you're happy and you're into what you're doing, ultimately that's going to get a better result. There is something to it, but you got to recognize what it is. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's where I tie the dollar amount to it. I'm like, oh, so-and-so's having a sale on plugins. You said something a few minutes ago, and I was going to ask you, I'm like, can I talk shit on a plugin company? But I'm not going to. Oh, when you were talking about Reaper, I was having a problem with manufacturers plugins who claim to have the absolute best sounding, and they do sound really good. I'm not going to say the name. They do sound fucking amazing, but they just don't work on a system. They eat up way too much CPU. And I bought one, and I contacted the company. I was going back and forth with them. I'm like, yeah, this keeps crashing my system. And their response to me was, use Reaper. Wow. I know.

Speaker 1 (02:09:39):

That's hilarious.

Speaker 2 (02:09:40):

And then when I replied back to that with, I'm like, well, I'm a pro tools guy. I've got an HDX rig. I've been on Pro Tools for 20 odd years. I said, I'm not really linked to Bubba. They didn't even reply back to the email with anything other than instructions on how to relinquish my license and get a refund. I'm like, awesome customer service boys.

Speaker 1 (02:09:57):

Yeah. Holy shit. I don't think you were playing devil's advocate, by the way. I completely agree with you. Whatever it takes to get you to do your best work. And yes, when I tell people to not succumb to gear acquisition syndrome or whatever, I don't mean never buy new stuff. It's more just don't trick yourself.

Speaker 2 (02:10:19):

Don't trick yourself. Yeah, you cut through the bullshit.

Speaker 1 (02:10:22):

Yeah, cut through the bullshit. But it's also true that we as humans get bored and variety, spice the life type thing. If we're always doing the exact same thing through the exact same tools, we might not be that interested because our brain will just kind of check out, phone it in, and that's the worst thing you can possibly do. So if having a new tool helps you not be checked out, then that's wonderful.

Speaker 2 (02:10:51):

Yeah, a hundred percent. You got to know what it is you're buying it for or what it is. Like you said, don't trick yourself, don't bullshit, and then just be realistic, be objective. I think that's ultimately the overall overreaching concept. It's just be objective.

Speaker 1 (02:11:09):

Easier said than done, but very,

Speaker 2 (02:11:11):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:11:11):

I'd like to think that I've gotten decent at it, but how do you go about maintaining your objectivity?

Speaker 2 (02:11:18):

I mean, I think it kind of depends what we're talking about a little bit. The simplest answer in life, I kind of take a lot of pride in being objective regardless of what it is. If a situation comes up, whether or not it's a gear acquisition or a part in a song or a debate with my wife, I take pride in being objective. So I'm going to go the extra step to remove myself and look at it from the other side as best as possible. And I'm very cognizant of that. And that's something, like I said, I pride myself on that. Just in life in general. It's hard to be objective. I mean, humans are typically kind of selfish people. So we are going to want to look at things in from the angle of whatever makes our case the strongest or whatever's going to benefit us the most.

(02:12:09):

So it's hard to kind of do that. I think talking specifically about music production, I think you got to strip away whatever it is to the bare essence of what that thing is. So if it is a piece of gear, if it's a mic pre, I'm going to stress out and spend a day a being Neve clones. Okay. How do you be objective about that? Okay, well, first of all, I probably wouldn't spend a day shooting out Neve clones, and I typically wouldn't get too far down that hole to begin with. But if you're going to do it, remove all the variables except for what the essence of that is. So if all it really is, is what makes your mic sound best, okay, don't look at the mic preamps. Make sure you don't know which ones which. Make sure you're listening to the same performance, going through everything to remove all of the variables to the essence of what it is you're doing. And the same thing with a song. I mean, from a production standpoint, it's amazing, especially talking about modern production. I have to fight, literally fight. And sometimes it's not the better way to do it, but I have to fight bands or artists to not fully flush out production on a song before it's even written.

Speaker 1 (02:13:31):

That's a toughie sometimes.

Speaker 2 (02:13:33):

Yeah. So talk about being objective, man. You can fool yourself into thinking you got a good song when it sounds good. When I say sound like sonically like, fuck, kick drum. Drums are fucking huge. We got superior drummer and got all these samples and fucking, we got ax effects with Mesa two c plus fucking awesome sound. And we're like, this is rocking. Even just one guy, you got trillion bass getting that fucking hardcore sound, and it's just everything sounds great. You're like, fuck, this is good. And you're like, actually, the song sucks, but it sounds pretty cool. So to be objective about the song, sometimes you got to kind of strip it down the essence, the song doesn't matter what the snare drum sounds like, it kind of doesn't, right? If we're talking about the song, so let's strip away that shit for a second and make sure we got a good song.

(02:14:16):

I guess as an overall concept, the way that I try to stay objective is just literally get rid of all of the variables except for the thing that matters. And then if you're having a hard time deciding, then you can start throwing back some of the variables. For instance, plugins. If you find three plugins that when you've done double blind tests, you can't tell the difference between them. Pick the one that you like, the interface better. And if you got two of 'em where the interface is, you're like, oh, I like them equally the same. Pick whatever one's cheaper. Pick whatever one's. Here's something I definitely want to preach, not to preach too much.

Speaker 1 (02:14:52):

Preach away.

Speaker 2 (02:14:53):

Support the companies of the shit that you like, if that makes sense. So if there's 4, 11, 76 plugins and they all sound the same, they all look the same, and you're like, I could use any one. And if they're all priced about the same, support the company that you think is doing the best work or you think is the best company, or you like the people and you want to support them, it's amazing how many people don't think about that. And especially when it comes to software is probably a little bit different, but hardware, I mean, some of the margins on these hardware companies are so tiny and they need to sell so many to make any money and to keep doing it. And it's like, do you want these companies to be in business five years from now? Do you want them to make new products? Do you want them to invest in a new thing? Then support them and you can support them by buying their stuff. Once you've pared down all the other stuff, be cognizant of who you're buying this stuff from, because I think that matters.

Speaker 1 (02:15:50):

I like that a lot actually.

Speaker 2 (02:15:52):

Nobody thinks about that.

Speaker 1 (02:15:54):

As a matter of fact, I know that they don't. I think people who aren't involved in the making of a product, just like they're not involved in the making of whatever record, they don't know. They don't know what went into it, and they don't know how many resources were expended or how hard it is to keep it up and multiplied across their entire product line. It's a lot more than people appreciate. I think often the creation of products is kind of taken for granted very much. I completely, completely, completely agree with you. I wish people would think about that more. I have heard this weird argument. I've heard it towards online learning, but also towards plugins that some people think that it doesn't matter because you can't hold it, which I get in the tactile way. You were talking about how it's better for you to have something you can actually touch, but that's like a personal preference thing. A hundred percent. What they mean is that it's not a legitimate product, which is, I don't know how they can possibly think that.

Speaker 2 (02:17:01):

Well, when I've had this conversation with other people, I get a lot of colleagues, clients, whomever, just asking for advice on certain things or whether they're putting studios together or they're like, Hey, I'm trying to mix my own demo here. What should I do? Whatever. And if I point them in the direction of software or hardware or whatever, where they need to make a purchase, and the conversation comes up, they're like, well, which one should I get? And when I've kind of dug into this conversation, the best way that I think about it that don't necessarily, it doesn't necessarily address that in its sense, but it kind of touches upon it, is pick a software company. If you buy a waves plugin for a hundred dollars, think about that. Less about, I gave that waves a hundred dollars and they gave me a plugin back. If you're going to think about this plugin as being just kind of valueless, think about, I got this plugin, I gave them a hundred dollars to go develop a new one.

Speaker 1 (02:17:57):

Yeah, exactly. Or I gave them a hundred dollars to help ensure that when the next Mac operating system comes out, it'll work

Speaker 2 (02:18:05):

Still. Somebody's still in the building to update it. Yeah, exactly. So I proudly and I will fly this flag until I'm dead. I have never in my life used a cracked plugin.

Speaker 1 (02:18:18):

Man. I'm so glad that it's harder than ever to do that. I remember 10 years ago or something, everything had cracked versions.

Speaker 2 (02:18:28):

I would show up to studios and they would be like, oh yeah, man, take this home. You can take it home. I'm like, I don't have that plugin. They're like, take the crack. I'm like, Nope.

Speaker 1 (02:18:36):

I'm so glad that waves cracked down on it. Did you hear about how they used to crack down on it, sending spies?

Speaker 2 (02:18:42):

Spies?

Speaker 1 (02:18:43):

No. Yeah, they would send people to studios. They would book time as a client in certain towns just for the sole purpose of getting a chance to see if they had their plugins on there, and then somehow took care of it. They did this from what I understand, by the way, towns like Nashville.

Speaker 2 (02:19:03):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:19:04):

They didn't just do it in some random places. They did it.

Speaker 2 (02:19:07):

Yeah. They went after the big boys.

Speaker 1 (02:19:09):

Yeah. They went to places that were profiting off of them a ton, and then just stealing their products.

Speaker 2 (02:19:18):

I mean, we could have another three hour conversation on the whole piracy of anything for that matter. And I love all the crazy rationale that you'd get, be like, well, I don't have

Speaker 1 (02:19:34):

The money. I don't make money off it. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (02:19:35):

Yeah. Well, you know what? I really want a Ferrari, but I can't afford one that doesn't entitle me just to go take one. Fuck you. Especially when there are options. It's like you have pro tools. It comes with free plugins. And by the way, it's like that plugin that you're bitching about paying 50 bucks for. I paid a thousand dollars for 15 years ago when it was TDM. You should be thankful you only have to pay 50 bucks for it, because I paid $1,500 for it. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (02:20:04):

We have a rule. There's absolutely no mention of cracked plugins allowed in our community whatsoever. Good. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:20:12):

Good. It's bullshit. It's complete bullshit. And I don't care who you are. I don't care what your reason, you can't rationalize that to me at all. Especially now when everything is so cheap. And I understand that's relative. People may like, oh, well, Chris, you're out there in LA in your studio. You got lots of money to spend on plugins, but I don't care if you don't have the money, then you don't get it.

Speaker 1 (02:20:35):

And there's sales waves. That's why I said waves earlier are always putting things on sale. There's always a way if you really, really can't afford things at their full price, just wait a little bit. Wait till Black Friday.

Speaker 2 (02:20:49):

Totally. Well, perfect example. The SSL bundle. So you get the two SSL channels and the SSLG comp. When that first came out, probably I don't even had to, 12 years ago, whatever that came out, literally, I get the wave sales as well, and I think it came across a couple months ago. I saw the waves, the SSL bundle come across for 79 bucks or something. I paid $1,500 for that when it first came out.

Speaker 1 (02:21:15):

Holy shit. 1500 well spent though

Speaker 2 (02:21:18):

A hundred percent because an SSL is $250,000 or 1500 bucks a day at a studio. So I mean, absolutely well spent, but again, I didn't bitch about the fact that it was $1,500 and then go steal it. I'm like, okay, well, what's my option here? My option here is mixing on an SSL or mixing with whatever else I have. And I made the investment. So I mean, literally, there's no rationale that I will accept. And it's not to happen so much anymore because cracked down on it a lot, but I used to help a lot of my clients, when we would start projects, I would update their rigs and kind of get 'em up to date if they don't know what they're doing and kind of help administer their systems. If I came across cracked plugins, I'd refuse to do it.

Speaker 1 (02:22:01):

I back that.

Speaker 2 (02:22:03):

So I'd sit down and they'd be like, okay, we're going to start an album. We're going to be working together for four months. Okay, let's make sure we're all up to date. We got all the plugins we need, whatever. And I'd go sit down at the rig, I'd start to update Pro Tools. Let's go sign into their Waves account, start updating stuff. I'd go into their plugins folder. I'd look in their plugins. There'd be a bunch of cracks. I'd be like, get somebody else to do this. Fair

Speaker 1 (02:22:20):

Enough.

Speaker 2 (02:22:21):

Or get rid of 'em.

Speaker 1 (02:22:21):

It's so important in our industry that man, man, and you know what? I hate stuff like support local music and that kind of stuff, because those types of sentiments, I always feel like it really means support bad music. Yeah, support good music, but yeah, exactly. Support good music. But I feel like out of purely selfish interest, even if you don't have an altruistic bone in your body, support these companies because you want music production to continue the end. That's why. So it's not about support your local scene or any of that kind of bullshit. Do you want this thing to keep going?

Speaker 2 (02:23:01):

Yes.

Speaker 1 (02:23:02):

Okay. Then you have to put money in

Speaker 2 (02:23:05):

And there's enough options that you can, it's almost like if you want to donate to a charity, there are so many options. You can pick what you want to support and why. And you can do that with all of these companies across the board. There are companies that as good, they could make the best product possible. I will not give 'em any more of my money because I have other options from companies that I feel are either doing better work in terms of the quality of their product or are doing better business in terms of their business customer relationship. They're my partner in all of this. Whether I have a relationship with Universal Audio or Avid or whatever. I'm saying this as, I just ripped Avid, a new asshole on Instagram yesterday for their bad update of Pro Tools. But I mean, ultimately, we're partners, right?

(02:23:52):

They need me. I need them. And if you don't need them, then you got other options. Well then go support somebody who you want to support and who's going to treat you, who's going to reciprocate that? There's lots of opportunities to help push that forward. Same with bands. I mean, if you're going to go buy band and you just want a black t-shirt with a cool logo on it, instead of going to the surf shop and getting a whatever, why don't you go find a band that you like, or you like the guys and buy that black shirt with the logo on it? You have options. So utilize them to help support that. And I think that ultimately just kind of comes back around when, because ultimately we are all in that position. At some point.

Speaker 1 (02:24:30):

It comes around when there's a new music or new plugins or new whatever, that everybody benefits

Speaker 2 (02:24:37):

From. The crazy thing with when piracy, it was at its height, and it was at a point where I'm trying to break, I'm trying to get into the music career in the music industry as like, I want to do this for a living. This is my career. This is my passion. I, I've never thought of doing anything else since I was 15. And so as the height of piracy is going on, I'm adamantly against it, obviously. But it would be almost like a nightly conversation with anybody who you're meeting for the first time, or it was the conversation at dinner on Thanksgiving or Christmas. When people find you're in the music business and your girlfriend's uncle wants to say, well, isn't the music business done? I've never bought a CD in months, whatever. And so the conversation would always come up, and it was just crazy to hear all of the different opinions on it. And I said, well, you do realize that at some point, this is going to stop when I say this, whatever it is that you are consuming or whatever it is that you want to see or listen to, at some point, if nothing's being put into it, it's going to stop. And you talked about, you're like, yeah, I saw a lot of guys get out. Why did they get out? That's why they got out.

Speaker 1 (02:25:50):

That's exactly why they got out.

Speaker 2 (02:25:51):

And luckily for musicians, it sucked for fans. Fans didn't realize it, but they had to subsidize their lack of record sales with ticket prices and merch prices. So the fans are still paying the same amount of money. It's just being allocated differently. You're going to a concert, you're paying quadruple what you paid for back whenever, but you didn't buy two CDs from the band over the course of the year. So it's probably actually works out worse for the consumer. But anyways,

Speaker 1 (02:26:18):

I would agree with you. I think it does actually.

Speaker 2 (02:26:20):

It probably does. I mean, I've never really dug into the metrics of it, but I mean, it's something that luckily for musicians and bands, touring and merch got them through the shit storm, right? Music production guys, that didn't help us at all, and that's why a lot of guys got out. That's why we've all had to kind of develop ways of figuring out how to do things more efficiently. I'll say more efficiently. That's going to mean something different to everybody, whether it means cheaper or faster or whatever, however you do it. I mean, it's had an effect on everything. It hasn't necessarily been a good thing. It definitely hurt, but people didn't realize that. They're like, oh, I get a cd, or I get this MP three for free. And I was like, okay, cool. You like that band. You like the music. Obviously you like it. That's why you stole it. Do you want another one? Well, it's not going to happen if that band can't fucking continue to do this. They got to go get day jobs.

Speaker 1 (02:27:14):

So I completely agree with you. I did think it was stealing at the same time when it was happening in my mind, I realized there was no way back. So

Speaker 2 (02:27:25):

That's what happened is everybody was just kind of like, well, we're all in this together, so let's just jump on board, right?

Speaker 1 (02:27:29):

Yeah. And so streaming's great, but I remember for many years I'd have friends who would, and I never supported them, even though I agreed with them, I never supported them because I felt like it would be trying to surface tsunami or something. I had friends that were trying to start movements to stop downloading and bring sales back to music, and it's like, dude, quit wasting your time. This bell cannot be unr. It is what it is. This is our path. There's going to be a new technology that changes it. We're going to have to adapt, but it's not going back to the way it was, and so just stop. I agree. They're stealing the music, fucking everything up. But now that the physical product has been devalued and there's really easy ways to consume it, it's not going to go back to the harder way of doing it.

Speaker 2 (02:28:25):

No, the harder, more expensive, more restrict. Yeah. No, it's gone completely. And ultimately, there's not enough people. The generation that has gone past, and we've gone through a couple of them now with, well, I guess one and a half, but that have grown up with this media consumption model, they don't know any different. So nobody's said to them being like, yeah, this is how people, they're able to do this because of this. They're like, they don't care. It's never the thought of the person getting paid. And again, it's funny, when we used to have those arguments, they were arguments when we used have, they were definitely arguments. They were arguments when you used to have those conversations with people, they'd be like, well, fucking, I don't get it. I mean, fuck, doesn't your boy there that you're working with, he's got a jet. I'm like, yeah, he does have a jet. He's fine. Do you know how many people he employs?

Speaker 1 (02:29:25):

They don't think about that.

Speaker 2 (02:29:26):

He's going to stop employing those people, or he's going to stop paying them what he, and it's like, yeah, you know what? His fucking jet pilot's going to get laid off enough first. That's a first world problem before you've ever had one. Right?

Speaker 1 (02:29:39):

Yeah. Well, I just remember, man, when Metallica took the stand against Brutal it brutal and everyone brutal. Everyone was going against them, and man, Lars was right. I don't care what anybody says.

Speaker 2 (02:29:51):

Totally.

Speaker 1 (02:29:52):

Right. He was so right. I knew he was right at the time too. It made me very unpopular with some people because I took Metallica's side. He was just right. It was so obvious. It was so clear, and he kept saying, it's not about us. We're rich. It's about the smaller bands and about all the people that we employ. That's who it's about. We're not taking this stand because of our paycheck.

Speaker 2 (02:30:16):

Yeah. How do you think that impacted his drum tech?

Speaker 1 (02:30:19):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:30:20):

You're telling me his drum tech makes the same money he made 20 years ago? Absolutely not. Well, maybe now he does, but there was a time when everybody was, I was, like I said, I was getting into the industry as that was happening. I was trying to get jobs at studios being like, fuck, we're not hiring a guy that will work for free. We don't want the liability. We don't want anybody in here, let alone getting a $5 an hour runner job. It didn't matter. You're right. And Lars, Lars was right. It didn't matter. They're all rich, and a lot of them, although maybe aren't making as much money as they did in the heyday, are still okay. They're at the very, very, very top, and they're the least amount of people that benefit from, I dunno, you take any other industry and you pull out the revenue and it collapses. So I don't understand where people look at this and be like, oh, we can pull out all the revenue and everything's going to be fine,

Speaker 1 (02:31:10):

Because people who weren't in it didn't stop to think about what goes into making it.

Speaker 2 (02:31:15):

Yeah. Simple as that.

Speaker 1 (02:31:17):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:31:17):

I hope I'm not coming across as fucking Lars right now.

Speaker 1 (02:31:20):

No, no, not at all. Not at all. Sorry, Lars.

Speaker 2 (02:31:23):

No, but yeah, I mean, it is what it is.

Speaker 1 (02:31:26):

I'm pro streaming, by the way, and I'm going to have to end this now, but I'll just say that I think that we have entered, we're at the very beginning of a golden age for music. I think that COVID, 19 aside, the next 10 years, in my opinion, I could be wrong, are going to be very good for the music industry and very lucrative for artists in the way that it hasn't been since, who knows? 20 years ago

Speaker 2 (02:31:53):

Or maybe ever.

Speaker 1 (02:31:54):

Yeah, maybe ever.

Speaker 2 (02:31:55):

Because yeah, because we've got avenues to basically keep control over it now so we can, yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:32:02):

Yeah. I think it's awesome. I agree. But Chris, thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 2 (02:32:07):

Thank you. I appreciate you having me. Yeah, dude, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Very cool. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:32:12):

Okay, then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends, as well as post them to your Facebook, Instagram, or any social media you use. Please tag me at AI Levi URM audio, and of course, please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.