MAX MORTON: The Sound of Jinjer, From Ringtones to Metal, and Character vs. Perfection

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

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

Speaker 2 (00:00:06):

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

(00:01:05):

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 Ukrainian producer mixer named Max Morton, who has been at it for a very, very long time. He's best known for his work with Ginger, who is a Ukrainian band that has basically blown up recently. I think he is one of the most well-spoken and intelligent guests I've ever had. I'm going to get out of the way and just let you listen to this episode. I introduce you, Max Morton. Enjoy Max Morton. Welcome to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:01:58):

Hello, El. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:02:00):

Hello, how are you?

Speaker 3 (00:02:02):

I'm doing great. All the quarantine stuff and everything, but somehow, somehow I'm even feeling more optimistic about what's going to happen later in 2020.

Speaker 2 (00:02:12):

I was going to say, I mean, you've kind of been in a precarious situation just as far as war goes for a long time now, so it seems to me like you of all people would be ready for this current situation if anyone's listening years later. We're doing this during the COVID-19 crisis.

Speaker 4 (00:02:31):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:02:32):

If you're listening to this 10 years from now, but I feel like you of all people would be ready to handle this.

Speaker 3 (00:02:38):

Well, I don't know, maybe. I mean, I know that some people are quite scared, but at the same time they're scared, but they don't care at the same time. Maybe that's because of the war and before war we had a revolution, and then even before that we had Soviet Union falling apart, and nineties were pretty scary in Ukraine and all other post-Soviet countries. So yeah, I guess we are ready for all sorts of different hard situations.

Speaker 2 (00:03:04):

Yeah, I mean, I feel like you have learned how to make a career in an environment that's not very conducive to having a successful music career, and you've still made it work. I just feel like you've been kind of conditioned to handle bad situations, which is impressive. So actually, I did kind of want to talk to you about what it took to create a career in Ukraine, especially in the war years, and maybe we can relate that to how things are going now for people who are in our community that are very, very nervous about the future and don't really know how to handle a bad situation.

Speaker 3 (00:03:48):

Yeah, man, that's such an interesting topic. You see, in my case, I was blessed with a relatively normal knowledge of English, even when I was a little kid. So my mother found a teacher for me when I was like four years old, and it wasn't much back then, but it gave me, it initiated me in terms of the knowledge of English. And right now in the internet era, if you can freely communicate with people around the world, then probably your career will be okay, because if I only had Ukrainian clients and maybe Ukrainian, Ukrainian is a half Russian speaking, half Ukrainian speaking country, so I could probably also work with some other post USSR countries. But still, it's not enough. It's too small of a market for a metal producer. But I can work with Ben from France today with Ben from Mexico tomorrow with Ben from Ukraine another day and that way that I'm fine even during the hardest days, even now, although I feel like everyone now is being very careful with their expenses, so it's maybe harder to find the clients still. You can do something while you are short on cash. You can probably start something new for your studio being recognized like a YouTube channel, maybe some free mixes for clients, maybe some great deals, maybe do some samples or some mixed templates. Try selling that stuff and everything, so you can always find the way. Luckily, we are living in the 21st century and war now is slightly different from what war was in the 20th century.

Speaker 2 (00:05:31):

Yeah, just a little, by the way, how many languages do you speak?

Speaker 3 (00:05:35):

Well, in fact, I do speak three languages. It's Ukrainian, Russian, and English, but it's important to understand that most Ukrainians speak Russian and Ukrainian. These are two very similar languages, so it goes two and a half. It'd be Ukrainian, Russian and Russian, one and a half, and English is the second language.

Speaker 2 (00:05:56):

Okay. I was just curious about that because I didn't know if Russian and Ukrainian were worlds apart or if they were just similar with a few key differences.

Speaker 3 (00:06:08):

Yeah, pretty similar. Pretty similar.

Speaker 2 (00:06:10):

Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:06:10):

You could understand, you could understand Ukrainian if even if you don't know Ukrainian, you only speak Russian and you could still understand what we are saying. Same thing with Belarusian language, and even Polish language is quite close to what we speak. Yeah, it's the same Slavic group of languages and centuries of history. Even if we have war now, even though we have war now, we still have centuries of history that united us before.

Speaker 2 (00:06:41):

Makes sense. I wonder if it's kind of like when I go to Italy, I know Spanish, I grew up with Spanish and Italian. I might be wrong here, but it sounds to me like Italian is a blend of Portuguese and Spanish. That's what it sounds like when people are speaking it. And I don't speak Portuguese, but like I said, I do speak

Speaker 5 (00:06:59):

Spanish,

Speaker 2 (00:07:00):

So I can pretty much kind of understand what they're saying most of the time.

Speaker 3 (00:07:06):

Yeah, I guess it's pretty similar.

Speaker 2 (00:07:07):

What I think is really interesting here is that you made it work in an environment that, like you said, there's not a big enough market for a metal producer, and we have many, many students who are not in la, they're not in Nashville, they're not in major markets, and their number one question is, how do I make this work? How do I get known? And I think that you're the perfect person to answer that because you just said you have clients coming in from Mexico, you have clients coming in from France. When did that start happening? Did you, I realize it's probably a long story, but how did you get to the point where you weren't just working with Ukrainian acts?

Speaker 3 (00:07:52):

Well, in fact, I think everyone who is concerned about their future in sound engineering and sound production shouldn't really worry because it's a long journey. So it will take many years no matter how hard you try. Maybe you're

Speaker 2 (00:08:09):

Lucky. Absolutely right.

Speaker 3 (00:08:10):

It'll be faster.

Speaker 2 (00:08:11):

Absolutely right.

Speaker 3 (00:08:11):

But in general, I started earning as a musician. I started earning 18 years ago when I was 18 years. It was my first regular income, and I was not recording bands back then. I mean, I was recording a few friends of mine.

Speaker 2 (00:08:27):

What were you doing as a musician?

Speaker 3 (00:08:29):

I was writing midi. It was still a midi era, and they were using MIDI in karaoke machines and in ringtones for cell phones. So there was a Korean company, and we were Ukrainian slaves of the Korean company working for cheap

Speaker 2 (00:08:45):

In a sweatshop kind of situation.

Speaker 3 (00:08:46):

Yeah, yeah. I think pretty similar,

Speaker 2 (00:08:48):

A midi sweatshop.

Speaker 3 (00:08:50):

I was sweating pretty hard when I was working with Indian music, for instance.

Speaker 2 (00:08:54):

That shit is complex.

Speaker 3 (00:08:55):

Yeah, quarter tones and everything, and no click tracks. They were sending us music from all around the world. And for ringtones, it was pretty simple because you just have to make 30 seconds of music without any complex media programming. But with karaoke machines, it was a different story. You had to completely match the tempo track of the song. Then you had to write all the percussion, all the drums, bass, everything with controllers, with pitch information, with modulation, with sustained pedals, everything. You had to embed lyrics to the vocal tracks. You had to imitate, delay tales on separate tracks for guitars, for vocals, pretty complex media programming. And that was what I was doing for maybe a year and a half, maybe two years. I can't really say. Now.

Speaker 2 (00:09:47):

How did you learn to do this in the first place? How did you actually pick up those skills to begin with?

Speaker 3 (00:09:52):

I was a lonely kid. I had no friends. And when I was around 14,

Speaker 2 (00:09:58):

Like all of us.

Speaker 3 (00:09:59):

Yeah, exactly. And that's great. Instead of hanging around with other kids and having early sex with girlfriends, I was programming MIDI and playing guitar, and I was programming midi because that was the only friend I had to play with. I just was just very lucky to find that. There is a program called Cakewalk eight. I still remember I was told there is a program, it's called Cakewalk, go find it. And you couldn't get a legal city back in the day in Ukraine because there was no market. There was a huge pirate market, and you had to go to the special marketplace, special place where people were selling cities with pirate empathies and movies and programs. And I found the program and I installed it, and I could enter the note information and it made it sound like drums, like organ, like piano, like bass. It was amazing.

(00:10:53):

I just was completely lost in the possibilities of that. So my first passion to music came with playing along the midi that sounded like eight beat synth. It was sound blaster 16, a very old computer. And I was just playing acoustic guitars to those mids I programmed. And then I realized that it's quite easy for me to pick music by ear because I was trying to play music a lot back then, early seventies rock music and Prague art rock music of that era. And it trained me so much that I could finally start earning by picking music by ear.

Speaker 2 (00:11:32):

That makes sense. How did you get the gig with the Korean company?

Speaker 3 (00:11:37):

Bless internet in the late nineties. We already had internet. I mean, I just visited one of my metal forums I was reading, and they had a little job offer. I just called them. I've shown them my works. I made a test job and they took me to work. And during all the time I worked, I was counting. One day I made more than 3000 songs. I just picked by year more than 3000 thousand songs.

Speaker 2 (00:12:04):

3000 songs in one day?

Speaker 3 (00:12:06):

Yes. Because no, no, no, no. 3000 songs during two years of my work.

Speaker 2 (00:12:10):

I thought you said one day.

Speaker 3 (00:12:12):

Yeah, because more complicated ones, more complicated ones. Like for the Karachi machines, it took me one day, maybe two days to completely make, but later when I was more experienced, I was just making ringtones. Maybe I could do 20 ringtones a day easily. And it was crazy. It was intense. But that money, I was able to earn maybe one and a half thousand bucks. And it was huge money for young guy in Ukraine back then. And thanks to that money, I bought my first recording equipment, like studio monitors Yamaha eighties, HS eighties, and the first RME Fire Face 400. So it was my first setup, and I could already record some audio, could already earn the producer of the bands.

Speaker 2 (00:13:06):

Okay, that's pretty impressive. But where did the bands come from? First of all, it's a big jump from programming MIDI to actually knowing how to record. So

Speaker 4 (00:13:16):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:13:17):

Where did that knowledge come from, and then where did the bands come from?

Speaker 3 (00:13:21):

So once again, and I think I'll say that many times, bless internet because it was maybe a few years before the first social networks appeared, but we had forums, forums about guitars, forums dedicated to metal music and everything. And I was sitting on these forums and I was making some cool demos, drafts, like Andy sne Forum for instance, is another great place, a cradle of most of majority.

Speaker 2 (00:13:49):

You're another one of these Andy sne Forum people.

Speaker 3 (00:13:53):

I was more of a lurker. I wasn't posting too much. I was, but not too much. We were making a few cool collaborations back in the day on the Andy sne forum. But for me, the first clients were certainly Ukrainians. So other forums, Ukrainian forums. I was pretty well known back then as the engineer and as a musician who was playing guitars with bands on the local scene on our Ukrainian, not even Ukrainian, but I think on Kyiv scene of my hometown. So people were searching for ways to record their demos, and they suddenly came to me to do that. That's nothing special about this part of my story. So you just communicating with people as much as you can both live and in the internet, you do some demos, just demos of gear, demos of preempts, maybe some musical of your own, record your own band, and people start finding out about you. That's it.

Speaker 2 (00:14:56):

Yeah. I guess that it's the same as any place else. If you put yourself out there enough and you do a good job for people, then the word of mouth will grow. Absolutely. And people will hear about you organically.

Speaker 3 (00:15:08):

And once again, it's a very long process, so don't worry if it doesn't work out instantly. It's like a snowball that will grow, grow, grow, gain mass, and gain speed and gain energy that way. But at first, maybe some of the first clients won't be happy. Maybe you won't be able to properly communicate with them because it needs skills too. So some of your first experiences might be bad or unlucky. But still, I remember my first band, I was actually, my first band I recorded was even before the media days, I was 16 years old and they were playing black metal. I was not listening to black metal at all, but I had to record everything for them because they didn't know how to play the click track. But they had cool ideas. They had really cool riffing, cool lyrics in Russian. So it was very interesting for me to find out how to play black metal. So they were sitting near me showing me ideas, and I was playing what they told me to play and programming keyboards and drums. Also, there was one interesting nostalgic thing. I learned how to sample stuff very early in my life because with sound bluster cars, especially sound bluster live, you had a cool sample containers called Sound Fonts.

Speaker 2 (00:16:30):

I remember those.

Speaker 3 (00:16:32):

Yeah, you could program them with Vienna, I think the program was called. And I was searching for samples of naked drums in my favorite records, and I was slicing them out to have a snare and Tom maybe quieter, louder snare and a kick and a crash if I was super lucky. I was also sampling my own bass guitar, for instance. So it was a lot of interesting experience too. So when more advanced things like contact appeared, it was not hard for me already. Also, the concept of the dough itself, I found out about dolls when I was 13 years old. So cakewalk and the concept of the dough was already a very familiar thing for me.

Speaker 2 (00:17:15):

Man, this is really, really interesting to me. These are the kinds of skills that really set people apart. The people that I know that are really great programmers with MIDI or who just have a very, very extensive technical knowledge of how to operate the technology, they tend to do very well, as long as they're cool to hang out with, of course. But it really sets them apart because there's not that many people that are actually super proficient with it. And it's just very fascinating to me the way that you came across it. I've never really heard of a story like that before. It's also really fascinating to me that at 13 years old in the Ukraine, you already knew what daws were.

Speaker 3 (00:17:57):

Yeah, I was very lucky.

Speaker 2 (00:17:58):

Kind of mind blowing.

Speaker 3 (00:17:59):

I was very lucky. I just heard it from a friend, not a friend, even from a guy in the school. I could just miss the opportunity to find out about Cakewalk back then. And it was, man, I mean, I cannot express enough how amazing it was for me to find out, because I tried recording in different environments back then. So I had an old tape machine, a cheap tape machine, and it could record on one cassette and you could record what was recorded and record over dub on top of it. I was trying that as a little kiddo. I was trying to build my own guitar, electric guitar using parts from the vinyl players, also vinyl player had. So back then it was so magical because you had no opportunities, you had no tools. What's the most important, you had no tools back then, so you were exploring the hidden world of magic.

(00:18:59):

You were just watching the celebrities playing these expensive guitars and running them into great amps, playing huge shows with a lot of lights, changing instruments all the time. And he thought, wow, all these instruments, they must sound so amazing. They must sound so great on their own while you were trying to make something out of nothing. So it was a magical time for me, I think, because it made me hungry forever. And even now when I have all the tools I need and when every kid has mostly is able to record great albums with a cheap sound card slate, 15 bucks subscription, and maybe a microphone, and that's it. Even now I'm super hungry about other sound engineering technologies and things.

Speaker 2 (00:19:48):

You know what I find interesting?

Speaker 3 (00:19:50):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:19:50):

And actually, I was just talking about this with Will Putney last week. The people that I've met through nail the mix or the podcasts that are the most impressive, and they're the people that you know who they are. They're the most impressive people that we've had on. They still are fascinated by this. They may have been doing it 20 or 30 or even 40 years.

Speaker 4 (00:20:16):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:20:16):

And they're still just as fascinated by

Speaker 4 (00:20:18):

It. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:20:19):

The reason it's interesting is because I know quite a few engineers and musicians who they lose that passion, but they keep on doing it because it's the only thing they know how to do. And in my opinion, that's death. It's creative death. And what'll happen is that you won't stay current, you won't stay relevant, and your product will start to sound dated. It's a common bond between all the awesome producers. I know that.

Speaker 4 (00:20:47):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:20:48):

They still have that childlike curiosity about it and passion for it, and they still love it no matter how many times they've done it, no matter how many years, no matter how many awesome tools there are, they still want more.

Speaker 3 (00:21:03):

In fact, on one side you have love, and on another side you have competition. And these two things are the most powerful engines to run your car, so to say, your creative flow, to make it powerful forever

Speaker 2 (00:21:17):

When it comes to competition. And I love competition. It's so good. Do you have much in the Ukraine? It doesn't seem like you would've had very much around you. What were you considering your competition? Was it? It makes me think of when I was in a local band when I was 15

Speaker 5 (00:21:36):

And

Speaker 2 (00:21:37):

My dad came to a show and my band blew all the other bands off the stage, and we had a great show, and I went to my dad expecting praise, and he said, it's just three chords over and over and over again.

Speaker 3 (00:21:52):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:21:53):

I was like, but we were better than everyone else. And he said, don't compare yourself to those people. They're terrible. Exactly. Compare yourself to the best. And so I figure you were probably thinking of your competition as just the best producers all over the world, not necessarily people in the Ukraine around you, or am I wrong?

Speaker 3 (00:22:15):

Yes, you're right. I was actually thinking about my stepfather when you were telling your story, because he just said me the same things. I remember being super proud of recording a shitty cover with out of Tune guitar and stupid vocals, and I made it, I the Art, and I've shown to my stepfather and he said, man, that sucks. And actually, my stepfather was the guy who introduced me to all the classic croc bands starting from the Beatles ending with King Crimson and Pink Floyd and everything. So he's the person. I'm thankful for the music taste, and also I'm thankful for his criticism because back then I had no one to compete with because I was just a lonely kid playing music. No one around me listened to. But he always told me that you should not be happy about yourself because you're doing something average. You should always criticize yourself. You shouldn't be too perfectionist, of course, because that might ruin you. But thanks to him, even now when I don't feel I have anyone in Ukraine who could really kick my ass easily, I still feel like I suck at many things in terms of engineering. When I'm hearing some other guys, I mean, some biggest names in the industry is mixes and productions. I still feel like, okay, I've got a long way to go. I also feel like I'm still making mistakes, and each mistake feels very painful to me.

Speaker 2 (00:23:48):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:23:48):

So I think that's another thing. It's like a lifetime hunger I gained because I had no access to quality gear in my earlier years. The same thing with criticism. I had that share of criticism from my stepfather, and I learned to do that myself.

Speaker 2 (00:24:05):

One of the things that I've noticed really, really hurts producers and musicians in small towns or small markets is that they, and I've noticed this a lot, is they will compare themselves to the people around them.

Speaker 3 (00:24:20):

That's the wrong move.

Speaker 2 (00:24:21):

Yeah. Because I've gone to small markets to record bands like I've been flown in, and then I'll use a studio there that is supposedly good, but it's a piece of shit. And you can tell that the owner, he doesn't care.

Speaker 3 (00:24:37):

Yeah, man.

Speaker 2 (00:24:38):

And I'm not judging on financial terms. I understand the situation that maybe they can't afford the same things as you would at a studio in la, but that's not the criteria I'm judging on. What I'm judging on is the mindset of the owner, and typically they kind of don't care to make themselves the best they can possibly be. They compare themselves to the people around them who aren't very good, and they're happy with that. But at the same time, they don't understand why their career never goes further than that.

Speaker 3 (00:25:16):

That's very painful for them because when you're working, you shouldn't be just happy with what you have. You should always think about your final optimal best aim, your destination point. Where do you want to end? Would you like to end not, but go to the very top and record the very best bands, really enjoy working with super talented musicians all the time. Or would you like to record bad musicians forever being unhappy with their shitty takes and shitty music and out of tune guitars and horrible drumming and small budgets and everything else stinky feet? I dunno. Or instead, would you like to go higher and higher and higher? Of course, it's much harder on a certain level because you will still have to work with bad bands for a few years of your life.

Speaker 2 (00:26:16):

You know what though? You still have to work with bad bands even at the top, because of course, some bad bands get signed,

Speaker 3 (00:26:23):

Of course. But still, you have budgets. At least you have budgets.

Speaker 2 (00:26:25):

Yes. Yeah, you definitely do have budgets. So let me ask you then, where would you like to end up?

Speaker 3 (00:26:33):

I would like to end up as a person who is free to explore creatively without any time limits, so to say. What I mean is that I'd love to record my favorite bands, and Ginger is one of them. I think there will be more bands in the future I'll fall in love with as the producer. And there are a few of such bands right now, like Shock Run, gna, a few other bands I really love to work with. And we are working together for years and years, and I think we will continue. But I'd also like to spend a lot of time exploring my own music. So it's very hard to combine being a musician. I'm not even talking about being a touring musician, but at least being a musician who is able to regularly deliver new music, new records and everything. And the successful producers, those two things very rarely can be combined because both of them take so much time, so much effort, and both of them shape your mindsets in a different way. So a touring musician will develop into a different person from point A and the sound producer will develop in a totally different person. That's why, I guess, I don't know. I never had a chance to find out, but that's why I think, for instance, knowledge chose to become the producer instead of just touring all the time with Periphery. I may be wrong, of course.

Speaker 2 (00:27:58):

No, I think you're right. Will Putney, he's got fit for an autopsy. He does not tour with them because his priority is to be a producer, Bob, be Shell from Sen. I know that he did the touring thing for a long time, but I don't think he would do it full-time anymore. I think he'll do some shows, but I don't think that he's interested in doing a full-time band anymore. He wants to be a producer, and I agree, man. So when my band was touring, when we were active, my production side definitely became secondary. And I only did it when I could because my main focus was the band. It was moving the band forward and

Speaker 4 (00:28:43):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:28:44):

Being able to keep up with my playing, had to keep, my playing is in top shape at all times, and that's a ton of hard work. So man producing for me was a all encompassing thing. When I work with a band, it's all I would think about. And for as long as it took, and I can't think about a band I'm working with 12 hours a day.

Speaker 4 (00:29:08):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:29:09):

Then stop and then go practice guitar for five hours. Absolutely. And still be a human.

Speaker 3 (00:29:16):

That's what you said about the engineers who don't have healthy ambitions, and they're just sitting there in their local studio doing nothing to become better. So you could probably combine an average band, an average studio activity, but you cannot combine trying to become the best producer in the world and trying to become the best in the world. That's just too much for one person.

Speaker 2 (00:29:44):

Yeah, it's true. I mean, another example, Kurt Ballou and Converge, I'm sure if he wanted to converge, could be touring all the time. People still love them.

Speaker 3 (00:29:54):

If I remember right, I remember the times when Devin Townsend was producing way more than he does now. Even if he does now, I don't know. But now he's super creative and he's the equivalent of a creative person for me, the best example of hyper creative, super talented musician. So he chose that over production.

Speaker 2 (00:30:14):

Yeah. However, he did learn how to mix recently. Have you heard the mix on the latest record?

Speaker 3 (00:30:20):

On the latest record would be,

Speaker 2 (00:30:23):

Well, actually, I don't know what the latest record is

Speaker 3 (00:30:25):

Because he does so much stuff. Yeah, he does so many.

Speaker 2 (00:30:26):

Well just look up the song Genesis.

Speaker 3 (00:30:28):

I will,

Speaker 2 (00:30:29):

Of course I will. It's fucking nuts.

Speaker 3 (00:30:31):

It's a little different. I mean, if you're mixing for yourself, you're still making something for your own band, so you're contributing to your own band if you're the professional producer,

Speaker 2 (00:30:40):

Dude. But this is not like a normal mix.

Speaker 3 (00:30:43):

This is, oh, I see. Well, Devin Townsend is not like a normal human being.

Speaker 2 (00:30:48):

Yeah. This is not some dude with a metal band who recorded and mixed his metal band. This song covers every genre of music possible, and it's like 10 minutes long, and it's ridiculous. It's fucking ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (00:31:03):

Devin is my hero. He's my huge hero.

Speaker 2 (00:31:06):

I love that guy.

Speaker 3 (00:31:07):

Yeah, he's amazing.

Speaker 2 (00:31:08):

Have you ever met him?

Speaker 3 (00:31:09):

I never had a chance to, because I'm still quite bottle up in Ukraine. I'm just sitting in the studio working most of the time, so I never go out and I don't think he ever was touring in Ukraine. I don't think so. But one of my dreams actually, if we're speaking about dreams, one of my dreams would be to record something for Devin Townsend or to mix something for him. Maybe one day it'll come true.

Speaker 2 (00:31:31):

Maybe one day it'll come true. He's a very open-minded person.

Speaker 3 (00:31:35):

Oh, yes.

Speaker 2 (00:31:36):

He's very, very cool. And sometimes you would think that people that are that respected or that high up might be tough to approach or tough to talk to. But I've always thought that he's an open human being. He's awesome. So you never know. It could happen.

Speaker 3 (00:31:55):

Yeah, you're very right about famous people. And in fact, I have another story about my, I guess it's one of my success stories. I once was a, and I still am a huge fan of Judas Priest, but back then I think I was obsessed with this band. And once again, bless internet. On one of the metal forums, I found the show organizers were searching for the interpreter for Judas Priest, thanks to my knowledge of English. I instantly called them. We had a small interview and I was translating for Judas Priest. It was crazy for me. So I helped them at the stage. I helped them to go sightseeing. I helped them at the press conference, and I never even made the photo with them. I was trying to be super respectful. I didn't want to waste their time, but I was just, they were like gods for me.

(00:32:51):

And one day after the press conference, Rob Halford approached me and he was talking a lot with me. We had a dinner together, and he was so, so kind and supportive, and I think they just gave me so much energy and belief that any regular human being, and actually they are from Birmingham, so they are from the industrial city. They were just poor guys without any money, without any possibilities, and they made it happen. So back then, for me, it just clicked my mind. I realized that you shouldn't come from a very special place to become successful. You shouldn't have special initial skills to become successful. You will learn during the process. What you should have is the belief in yourself, and you should be prepared to work really hard to fail often. And as soon as you fail, you should go get up and keep working. And then maybe many years ago, because I was 21 years old when I met Judas Priest, and I was already earning some money with ringtones and midi programming. So now only when I'm 36 years old, I feel like it starts happening to me. So it's like 15 years from that point to this point.

(00:34:13):

And I'm still, at the beginning of my journey

Speaker 2 (00:34:15):

Was meeting them. It kind of put it in perspective that they were not gods. They're just normal people who made it work.

Speaker 3 (00:34:25):

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I knew that they are not Gods, but, but I didn't, I could never believe they're so simple. I mean, they were so friendly, and it was ridiculous to me to understand. I just stopped being a fanboy since then. I just realized, man, I just want to meet them one day and show them how much I managed to achieve. You see,

Speaker 2 (00:34:51):

I'm very, very fortunate that I got to meet famous people very early in my life when I was growing up. There weren't people that were just famous for the sake of being famous. Now, generally, they were good at something, but I met a lot growing up as a result of that. Just it shaped my mind in a way that I never thought that anything was really impossible, because if they could do it, and they're normal people with lives, with families and normal shit,

Speaker 3 (00:35:22):

Harry is so right.

Speaker 2 (00:35:24):

Yeah. Because I think that when people look up to a famous person, and I don't mean like a Tom Cruise or something, I mean someone really well-known in whatever field you're talking about. So it could be someone that's well-known only in jazz or well-known only in particle physics. Who knows? So that's what I mean by famous person, someone who's at the top of the profession. The people who look up to them sometimes will idolize them in a way to where they disassociate them from their human quality. So they kind of think that the work is the person and they forget that it's a human who has problems and a life.

Speaker 4 (00:36:09):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:36:09):

And if you start to realize that, but I don't mean intellectually understand it. Everyone intellectually understands it. I mean, if you really, really feel that about them, feel that they're just people, it puts what's possible into perspective because they're just people and they made it work. They're not something different than you. That means it's possible.

Speaker 3 (00:36:32):

Exactly. Because when we just meet a person, a successful person, we just don't know how many times this person failed, how bad this person was at certain aspects of their profession before. We don't know that. We don't know about all the trials the person had. We only see this person now in the current state. And that's a huge mistake in most of the cases, because I perfectly remember how hardly I sucked at everything. I feel I am good at now. Right now, I remember learning things from ground up, and I had nothing in terms of knowledge back then. It's just because I was doing it so much and I was just doing it so much because I wanted to earn some money. With Midi, for instance, for everyone who's listening, just use every opportunity that is interesting to you that you find that resonates with you. Just use that opportunity to learn new techniques, be it midy or recording a live band or playing something. If you're a metal producer, most likely you'll have to play at least something, at least play good reefs and maybe good bass and maybe sing a little bit. That will help you a lot. So just use every opportunity to gain experience, and then one day we'll find out that you're on the top of your profession.

Speaker 2 (00:37:58):

I'm sure that when you were doing the ringtones, you weren't thinking, I want to do ringtones forever.

Speaker 3 (00:38:05):

Of course, I was dreaming to quit that profession, but that's the only one I had. And right now I realize, man, I never worked at the office. I never worked on non-musical jobs. And I think I'm very lucky because for me, I mean, I know so many musicians who just don't believe in themselves because they have an office job, the day job that is very different from musical passions of theirs. That may be very limiting for their, that's what you said. You met so many famous people when you were a kid, that you realized very early in your life that there are no limitations except your inner limitations.

Speaker 2 (00:38:51):

And what I think is fascinating about this conversation is when I talk about that stuff, a lot of people who don't believe in themselves or want to be pessimistic or negative will say that I only feel that way because I was lucky enough to have a famous dad.

Speaker 3 (00:39:08):

Oh, I see.

Speaker 2 (00:39:09):

Right. So it's because of how I was raised, which gives me this perspective, which yeah, okay. It is true that the way I was raised gives me that perspective, but it's not unique to my situation.

Speaker 4 (00:39:22):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:39:23):

You grew up in Ukraine doing the ringtones, and you still feel this way.

Speaker 3 (00:39:29):

I feel this way, yes.

Speaker 2 (00:39:30):

It goes to show that it doesn't matter where you come from, you can adopt the right mindset.

Speaker 3 (00:39:34):

You it should grow. Though, because I didn't understand this concept for years and years and years, only now, I feel like I can certainly say that it's the right way to think about things. Back in the day, I was just dreaming a lot and I was just obsessed with music. What I realized though is that there is no chance for you to succeed in something you don't like as much as to succeed in something you like. So I was always raised to become the programmer. So my mother thought that it's the only way to earn in Ukraine, and she's kind of right, because programmer is the best profession to earn money in Ukraine. But at the same time, she just didn't

Speaker 2 (00:40:28):

Know. Like a computer programmer.

Speaker 3 (00:40:29):

Yeah, yeah, computer programmer

(00:40:31):

Because everyone's getting hired by international companies, so you can earn like three, 4,000 bucks, which is huge amount of money in Ukraine. What she didn't know that I had this passion for music. She just could not know that. And when my passion for music started showing itself, when I started earning money by myself, she immediately stopped pressing on me. She said, just do what you want because I see that you are serious about that. And that's another example of why I'm very thankful to my parents. But you said that you're lucky. I mean, people are saying that you're lucky that you had a famous dad. Some people may say, I'm lucky because I had a great stepfather and great mother, but still both you and me, I think we had our problems and our hardships and our trials and errors and everything. And I think that every person, no matter where the person lives in, every person has a certain amount of chances in their life, a certain amount of opportunities to use. But not everyone notices them, and not everyone uses them. I notice that so many times when someone asks me to criticize the makes or to ask how to talk with the band, with the problematic band, especially, I'm giving my advice to a person and I realize that the person doesn't believe in themselves. The main issue is believing in yourself or not believing.

Speaker 2 (00:42:05):

The reason that I agree with you is because I know so many people who came from famous parents who didn't do anything with their lives. They got opportunities, but they didn't take them.

Speaker 5 (00:42:20):

And

Speaker 2 (00:42:20):

I know lots of people who came from no connections, who have incredible careers because that's a great point. They spotted the opportunities.

Speaker 3 (00:42:28):

That's the great point.

Speaker 2 (00:42:29):

And I know everything in between also. But one of the things actually on the URM Career Builder course, one of the topics I was going to talk about, but then I didn't think of how to make it into a course, but I wanted to talk about learning how to spot opportunity. Something I think I'm actually really, really good at, and it's something that I've taken pride in being good at and have tried to cultivate because you need to learn to understand when an opportunity happens that can help you grow, even if it's like 2%, you need to understand what is an opportunity and what is the opposite of an opportunity.

Speaker 4 (00:43:09):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:43:10):

And learn to take action immediately, the ones that are opportunities. But you're right, I think a lot of people don't see them or they see them, but they don't believe that they can do anything good with them. They don't believe that they can take advantage of it properly. I think that that happens.

Speaker 3 (00:43:29):

Exactly. The great example would be, let's say the band contacts you, they want to record the song, and you start talking with the band, you realize that you just don't really get into their kind of music. You don't really like them personally, so you'd better not work with them, but they're offering you money and you think that you will. It's a nice offer for you in this case, most likely if you have a chance to pass it, better pass it. But sometimes you just feel the band that approaches you. For another reason. In my case, Eugene from Ginger approached me back in the day to help him with the video. So they didn't want me to mix their stuff. They just wanted me to help them shoot the video, because back then I was also a little bit into the video production. Were

Speaker 2 (00:44:18):

They well known

Speaker 3 (00:44:19):

Yet? No, not at all.

(00:44:22):

But I saw a few of their demos on the forums and on YouTube, I guess, and I thought that they're good, and something just made me feel intuitively that I like them. I felt that they have that kind of special potential. And a few conversations later, I was already mixing there for a single, so we were not even talking about mixing, but I said, man, I don't want to become the full-time video producer. I made a few videos for myself. I like making videos, but I don't feel like I can earn making videos. How about I just mix a song for you instead? And first of all, he was a little bit skeptical, but then it grew on him and we started working, and since then we're working on each and every project. That's the thing about opportunities. Sometimes you just want to look closer on the bands you are working with and also on the bands that surround you and you're still not working with. Choose the bands that you like. Choose the people whom you like and try to avoid bands you just don't like at all, because that will shape your circle of friends, circle of clients, returning customers who will be your surroundings. So you will be either happy person with great surrounding or unhappy person with horrible surrounding. You'll think that the world sucks and music sucks and everyone sucks. Instead of that, you can just be a very, very happy person.

Speaker 2 (00:45:53):

The thing that you said about trying to find something that makes you happy to do, it's an interesting topic because some people say that the idea of following your dreams is delusional because most people won't be able to achieve them, and it's just not realistic, and maybe there's some truth to that. However, I feel like if you want to be a professional producer, you are going to have to work really, really hard at it. So regardless of anything else, it's going to take years and it's going to take a ton of work.

Speaker 4 (00:46:27):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:46:28):

And so if you're working on projects that you hate, you're going to not be motivated to do the work required to get good enough to have the kind of career that you want. So yeah, here and there, you might have to do things you don't like, but you should make a point of seeking out things that you do, even though I don't believe that you should be inspired to work, you should work regardless of if you feel inspired or not. You should just work out of work ethic and habit. However, if you can add work ethic and habit to something that inspires you, that's the formula right there, because that's what'll make it feel like it's not work. That's allow you to have the motivation and the energy to work as hard as you need to work for as many years as you need to work to get the job done and to build a career you want.

Speaker 3 (00:47:20):

Yeah, I cannot agree more. What you said is just right in each and every aspect. I mean, following your dreams is not just, I want to become a professional game YouTuber, like PewDiePie, for instance. Well, you still could if you would work really hard on that work a few years on that. But in general, if your dream is to become, if it's a realistic dream, let's say you're obsessed with cars, you want to start building custom cars, you'll need 10 years maybe. But in the end, if you work really hard, you will build custom cars quite successfully. That's actually another passion of mine, and I really hope that it one day it will grow into the second business. So what I'm trying to say that about happiness, it doesn't mean that you will be happy all the time. You will have problematic clients. You will have horrible days when you'll do a lot of editing, maybe just very unpleasing recording sessions with musicians who are sloppy. You'll have to rerecord things. For others, it doesn't really matter. What matters is in general, are you happy with the direction you're going in or not? So does it work for you or not? If you have to go through dozens or hundreds of bad bands, but in the end you're moving forward, that's worth it. If you feel like you're going nowhere, it's a different story. So that's most important. Not that you just got to be happy all the time. Every day will be a pure joy for you. That never happens. I guess

Speaker 2 (00:48:59):

I actually just made a post about this, about how to know when to quit a project.

Speaker 3 (00:49:05):

Oh yeah. One and a half years. Yeah, I read it. Great. One.

Speaker 2 (00:49:08):

The thing is, I don't mean that necessarily for if you're trying to become a producer, because there's going to be several years of building up to it that you have to get good, and that's going to take 10 or more years. But I mean more, once you have a certain skill developed at something, there's something that you're actually good at saying that you know how to do a new business venture idea, something like that, not something where you're starting from the very beginning. If your goal is to become one of the best guitar players in the world, you're not going to be there in 18 months. You might be there in 15 years.

Speaker 4 (00:49:46):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:49:46):

So it's more like if you're already a really good guitar player and you want to try a new project from the moment you release that project. So you could have worked five years on it to develop it, but then from the moment you put it in the market, that's when I start the clock. But it's different for producers. However, I would say that if you spent your five to 10 years getting good and then you open a studio and 18 months to 24 months go by and there's no growth, then maybe you're doing something wrong.

Speaker 4 (00:50:24):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:50:24):

I'm not saying 18 months from 0.0, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (00:50:30):

The nice example would be my second studio, our second studio we're building now in Switzerland with my friend, and although we've just found the place to build it, and we only have the title and the logo and the website and everything, the place itself is not built yet. Still. We have 10 clients already in our portfolio, and I think by the moment when the studio is finally built, I think we're going to be booked for a year if not more. That's just because I guess we both know how to, both me and my friend, we know how to record bands. We know how to talk with bands, and we have a lot of friends already at this moment. So that would be a good example of what you were writing about in your post. So if you have enough experience and experience, maybe 10 years, 20 years, et cetera, the new business project that has been launched to the market needs another year, year and a half to see if it's going anywhere or not. Sometimes it just skyrockets. Sometimes it just moves slowly uphills. Then it's okay if it just doesn't go anywhere. That's where the problems are,

Speaker 2 (00:51:42):

And you have to be honest with yourself enough to realize that,

Speaker 3 (00:51:47):

Yeah, you'd better spend your precious lifetime on something else then.

Speaker 2 (00:51:50):

Yeah, absolutely. And so I definitely do encourage people to follow their dreams, but I also encourage them to be honest with themselves about how things are working out. It's like, well, what if I decided I wanted to become a professional basketball player?

Speaker 4 (00:52:05):

Oh, yes.

Speaker 2 (00:52:06):

Yeah, it's not going to work out no matter how bad I would want it. I don't want it. But just for example, someone was just telling me that they had this with baseball. They really wanted to be a baseball player, and at their high school, they were really, really the best player. But then they went to a new school that was in a bigger market that competed against better schools, and he was just nowhere near the caliber of the kinds of players that were going to make it into the college teams, and then not even close. So he just dropped it. It was not worth the time, basically.

Speaker 3 (00:52:53):

And here's where the important message lies. So this person, I don't know the person of course, but he could have worked much harder and make something extreme to get to the next level of playing baseball, and then he would notice that he can compete with these players of higher level, and he would finally get to the top or he would just quit. Because once again, it's okay to quit because as grow, our dreams change, our life aims change. They evolve together with us. So maybe this childhood dream of his was not something he would like to do when he's already a grownup person. I wanted to become a rockstar when I was a little kid, and right now I don't feel like I want to be the rockstar in the understanding of my teenage imagination of what the rockstar life is all about. So right now, I have different aims comparing to myself back in the day. So you should not really aim towards the same things, but if you still want to become, let's say, the best baseball player or someone else, and you are not there, then you should work harder. It means that you're not prepared.

Speaker 2 (00:54:11):

However, if there's some cases where working harder isn't going to matter,

Speaker 3 (00:54:15):

Absolutely, I agree. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:54:18):

If you don't have the talent, there's going to be people who work just as hard, who have more talent, and it is what it

Speaker 3 (00:54:24):

Is. In that case, it's very important to find something different and to be even happier about that, because I feel like true happiness, every person should have some special talent. It may be a bigger talent, small talent, but something that this person is potentially good at. And if you find this activity, be it sound engineering or building cars, or maybe building an orphanage for pets or maybe something else, or maybe teaching other people, when you find this very special skill that you can live in harmony with that you will be good at, then you'll be really happy. You won't be absolutely happy until you find your own. What word would you use for that?

Speaker 2 (00:55:14):

Your calling?

Speaker 3 (00:55:15):

Yeah, you're calling. Great word.

Speaker 2 (00:55:17):

Yeah. I wonder if everybody has one, though. I agree with you that everyone might have some certain talent. I think I agree, but sometimes I question that, and I don't mean this in a negative way. I just think that there are some people that are happy to exist, and absolutely, I'm actually kind of jealous of them because that

Speaker 3 (00:55:40):

Might be a talent as well.

Speaker 2 (00:55:41):

Yeah. Maybe it

Speaker 3 (00:55:41):

Is being a great parent, maybe.

Speaker 2 (00:55:44):

Yeah, sure. That's great. I know a lot of people who have very simple desires in life, and I don't mean that in a bad way. They want a roof over their head. They want a happy family. They want to make enough money for their needs to be met, and that's it. They don't care about being the best in the world at something or discovering a planet with alternate human life on it or something. They don't care about that kind of

Speaker 3 (00:56:12):

Shit. Just the social construct that makes us think that people who have huge ambitions and amazing skills and who are very special and unique are better than other people. That's okay to be different. I mean, for some people it's just living a normal life, maybe doing some little good things here and there, helping someone, helping the neighbor, helping, loving his children, her children, and that's perfect. That's fine. I also feel a little jealous about that because even now, I feel so deeply unsatisfied about everything that sucks.

Speaker 2 (00:56:53):

I think that if you're a creative person with big dreams, you're always going to be a little bit tortured because you're never going to be at the destination, because no matter where you get to, then there's going to be another destination to get to. And I've experienced this many, many times,

Speaker 3 (00:57:15):

And that's such a beautiful concept, such a romantic concept for me. I think it's so great to never be satisfied and to feel that inner pain and hating yourself a little bit all the time, torturing yourself about things that you feel you made wrong, maybe.

Speaker 2 (00:57:32):

Yeah, because you always want something better. You always want the next thing. What's interesting to me is you see this with musicians sometimes. And again, right, I'm not judging, this is not judgment, this is just observation. So there's a period of time when they're super passionate about it, and those would be the years when their band is on fire and they're doing their best work, and then they get a little older, they have families, and their music kind of starts to suck.

Speaker 4 (00:58:04):

Yeah, man.

Speaker 2 (00:58:05):

But they as people are way happier and they get a lot of shit from their fans for it. But when you hang out with these people in real life, they're the happiest they've ever been. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they stopped thinking about being the best in the world anymore and focus just on having a happy life. So I just think that people need to understand that if they do decide to go down the path of constant improvement and achievement there, by definition, they will never be able to be satisfied. You just have to accept it, because the moment you are satisfied is the moment that you stop improving, and the moment you stop improving is the moment that the rest of the world passes you by. So you can't let yourself ever get satisfied, in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (00:58:56):

Yeah. In fact, I think being a creative person who's creative forever and unsatisfied forever is being young forever. So it's like you stop. You're getting older physically, but you're still that teenager or young person inside who always tries to prove something to everyone around and to themselves. So that may be the case. And you told me the interesting thing, because I also stopped bashing bands I loved. I used to love that still release albums and still do touring, and it sounds horrible, and I don't like the music anymore. And I kept thinking, why are you even doing that, and why are you so uninspired? Then a few years ago, I realized because I felt like I'm entering the new age, the new mental age, and I don't want to prove everyone the same things I wanted to prove before. So I still feel very ambitious about sound engineering, for instance, but with music, I keep writing music only when I feel shitty. So when something makes me unhappy, that's when the melodies pop out. So I think when you're trying to reach happiness and harmony in life, that's when your music will stop being interesting to everyone around because you are not resonating with that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):

The best music I ever wrote was right after breakups. I never wrote about the breakups or anything. I never wrote music about anything. I just wrote music. But for some reason, it was always right after a breakup in those six months of feeling like shit, that the best music would happen always, every time.

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):

You could probably even use that for your advantage if you're the musician. Just generate situations that would force you to write more good music by feeling shitty all the time. But that's true. I mean, from my experience, some of the clients of mine who are more talented and who can write really cool pieces of music or lyrics are usually quite complicated. People in terms of their emotional life. They may be super depressed or super emotional. They have that storm inside and that storms help them, helps them create and generate things that are way above average. As for me, I'm just trying to ride as much tracks as possible for the future. If one day I feel like I cannot compose anything else, anything that's good, I'll just use my old drafts.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):

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

(01:02:36):

And these are guys like TLA, Will Putney, Jens Bore, Dan Lancaster, toy 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 game staging, mastering low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content and man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed. Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to URM Academy to find out more. What's interesting that what you just said about the creative people, I actually think that company founders are like that too.

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):

Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):

If you think about some famous examples, I'm just going to point these famous examples out just because everybody knows who they are, but if you think about a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk, these are tortured people. I consider real entrepreneurs to be artists. It's just their creativity is in creating a business. This might not be in creating music, but they're tortured people just like artists. I think creativity comes with torture, and I have not met anybody yet who proves me wrong. Now, I know people who are very, very good at creating things like in a corporate sort of way. Maybe they do graphic design, but it's not like art, it's just graphic design or they write music for commercials or hey, ringtones something that they're not passionate about. It's just a product really, and those people tend to be pretty normal. So it's an interesting thing. Also in the musician world, the dudes that I know who they'll play in a wedding band and then they'll go teach some lessons and then they'll sit in on a jazz gig and then they'll go do a studio session. They don't really have their own music that they're pursuing very hard or they just do it sometimes, but they're like a professional musician. They tend to be pretty normal too. It's the artists that are fucked up.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):

Yeah, man, that's so true. I also think that's one of the worst things that might happen to the musician. Let's say the rock musician in our case is going to work full-time as the wedding band musician or as the pop band musician, as a hired musician. So it just shapes your mind slowly until you are a different person and then you're fucked because you cannot operate the way you did before when you were free and poor and crazy young guy who just wanted to become the rock star.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):

That's why I quit Berkeley because I saw that that's what it turns you into. However, man, I know some dudes who went on to be like the guy in the pop band or something

(01:06:24):

In Justin Timberlake's band. They are not unhappy people. They're very satisfied with their careers and they're awesome musicians. They just don't have that creative kind of fire and yeah, you're right. Whatever you focus on is what shapes you. Exactly. That's exactly why I left that school. I didn't want to be that, but I admire anyone who does. I just think if your dream is to be an artist, and I mean artist in any sense of the word, whether it's entrepreneur or musician, artist, if your dream is to be that, and if that's what you are, if that's how your mental wiring works and then you end up as the wedding band musician, you're going to be very unhappy. It's very, very important to understand which type of person you are, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):

Yes, exactly. It's the same thing with certain writers and with scientists, just the same thing, by the way, the same thing you said about calling entrepreneurs, artists. I do that all the time. I mean, I think that art can be found everywhere. You want to build a Ford or you want to build a Lamborghini, one thing is just building reliable cars and other thing is creating pieces of art.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):

Yeah, absolutely. I feel no less creative starting companies than I did writing music. It's still the same thing for me.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):

You feel that fire and you are thinking about that all the time and your brain generates things that you're not even analyzing, just gives you ideas from the subconscious part of yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):

Yeah, it's interesting, but that's why I'm kind of jealous though of people that aren't artists because I feel like it's a lot easier to be satisfied, and at the end of the day, the real good question to me is what's more important achieving things or being content? I think that maybe being content is more important, but if you're an artist, you kind of don't have a choice, so you just got to accept who you are and go for it a hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (01:08:36):

I guess finding yourself really finding this because for some people they may have had problems in the childhood with parents trying to dominate them into a different life. For some people, it's very hard to find their true passion, even if they have no passion, find the true life, find their true selves, just what you said.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):

Yeah. Let's change tracks and talk about Ginger a bit. I want to talk about your relationship with them. Well, first of all, they're awesome, and your work with them is awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:09:09):

Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):

But I think whenever people ask me, how do I make it as a producer, get asked that all the time, and I say there's two ways. Number one is you work with a band that's tiny and you help them get better and they get recognized, and as they grow, you grow. You keep working together.

Speaker 4 (01:09:32):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):

And so there's that scenario or that's like Andrew Wade with a data, remember that's Jason Soff with Trivium. I know that a lot of my friends are that story. However, that story is pretty rare. And I say that the other way is that you work underneath people who are working with the kinds of bands you want to work with, and then through that you work your way up. So you start as an intern working for somebody who is, if you want to be a metal guy, you don't go intern in a country studio. You try to intern for the best metal producer you can find. Yeah, that's right. And then you meet people in the metal industry and so on, so forth. I think that that's the other way, but so you did it with the, and if I understand correctly, you grew with Ginger, right?

Speaker 3 (01:10:26):

Yeah, exactly. I even dare to say that. I mean my own personal musical experience. Back in the day, my band was slightly bigger than Ginger, but then I just concentrated on engineering, sound engineering, and they started growing really fast and working really hard, but we were, in a way, we were growing together with each release, with each mix and with each production. In fact, things you said. That's what I like saying. I usually, when people are asking me about how to become successful in sound engineering, I say that find the clients you like as people and as musicians and work really well on their songs and help them grow as hard as you can. Then they will grow, most likely, not everyone, maybe 10%, maybe 5% of them will grow into famous bands,

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):

Maybe 1%.

Speaker 3 (01:11:26):

Maybe 1%,

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:11:27):

And then you will grow together with them and you'll have a totally different set of job offers at that moment. Because right now when Ginger are now bigger than me, before they were smaller than me. Now, I mean everyone in metal community knows about Ginger, but only the guys who are into sound engineering may know about me, and that's fine. But what I'm trying to say that there are so many places in the world, not only places with well-developed sound engineering industries, so internship is not something you could use in Ukraine, for instance,

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):

Unless they wanted to intern for you.

Speaker 3 (01:12:08):

Yeah. What I mean is that I'm getting requests for internship quite often now, and I'm trying to explain people that guys, I just don't need anyone and you cannot be physically present in my studio. It's a small studio.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):

I was just kidding, but yeah, I know exactly what you're saying is that Route B isn't possible in most cases.

Speaker 3 (01:12:31):

It's a classical one. It is great, but it doesn't really work for most of us and the majority of the audience of unstoppable recording machines I understand are those guys who are building their way up from, let's call it from the bedrooms.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):

You've definitely got both, but yeah, I would say that's the majority because the majority don't live in places with well-established scenes.

Speaker 3 (01:12:56):

Yes, yes. So what you can do, what I did with Ginger and I was just lucky, and I think I did it with many, many bands. So the same approach. I was just being super friendly and supportive and was carefully working on each and every revision they sent me. And sometimes they were super happy, sometimes they were not, but they were still, and they are still the returning customers. They just didn't make it that high with Ginger, they did because they had their own share of crazy events in their lives that just made them who they are now.

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):

Yeah, there's something special about them.

Speaker 3 (01:13:36):

They had to go through things like becoming refugees, living without any money in the half rotten house without hot water, somewhere in the very as of Ukraine, just to tour as much as they could because it was near the border. So they were living near the border and they had the old van and they were living together in the small house going crazy. Just imagine the quarantine. How many people are going crazy now? They were just forced to stay together all the time, 24 hours a day touring together, like smelling each other's legs and farts and everything and just going insane without any money. They just had no other opportunity to earn. But touring, so they were touring hard. They were almost like repairing their van with their own hands. I am maybe exaggerating a little bit here and there, but they went through hell. I mean, I remember the first song I produced for them, not just mixed for them, but produced for them called Sit Ster All Over. They came to Kyiv and they barely, I made a huge discount for them like crazy.

(01:14:56):

They paid me 30% of what I usually ask from Ben, and still, I also paid for the studio where we recorded the drums. So I left with a funny amount of money, with a funny amount of money, but I thought at that moment it was worth it. Something was great about that song. And then they received the offer from Nepal Records, and then everything started going uphills very quickly, just skyrocketing more tours, s touring USA recording the full length at my studio, and they got bigger and bigger and bigger and just went faster and faster. But first few years, it was horrible for them. They were lucky to have a normal bed to sleep while we're touring, and certainly they were all the time. They were worrying about their parents staying at the war zone. And that's the thing, it's very hard to understand unless you have experienced that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:56):

Yeah, I've never experienced it in quite that way, but I can relate because my dad was in Israel in 1991 doing some concerts when the Iraq war happened, and Saddam Hussein started sending the scud missiles into Israel, and he had to be, I remember he did an interview on CNN from a bomb shelter with gas masks on when I was 11. So just thinking about my dad getting missile was, it does interesting things to your brain. You said something that I have suggested to people a lot, which is if you think it's worth it and the band can't pay for something that's going to make it better, you should just pay for it. For instance, the drum tech, Matt Brown that I like to hire, not every band that would record with me could afford him, so I'd pay for it out of the budget because it was more important for me to have great sounding drums than not.

Speaker 3 (01:17:02):

That's a great point. Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):

If they couldn't afford all the drum heads we needed, I would provide same strings. Exactly. Whatever was needed. I mean, provided that they weren't a fucking terrible band or something.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):

I mean, I'm ordering strings from the USA and I'm setting up the instruments for the clients and I'm doing all that stuff just because I know that I will be happier in the end if we put the technical problems aside. If we need a tack here, well, I usually do the drum tuning because I'm happy. I love tuning drums, but still, if we need some additional expenses to make it really work well, I will always do that. If we need additional things like me arranging keyboards for them or replaying bass for them or writing backing vocals for them, I will happily do that because when you are working as the sound producer, you are earning three things. You're earning money, that's one thing. Then you're earning experience and third year earning reputation. So earning money is only one tiny part of that. The most important one is reputation, and maybe the same importance is experience. I'd rather earn a little bit more of the reputation and experience instead of just holding to my money and cutting the edges here and there, like saving on the drum tech, on saving on the drum heads or saving on, I don't know, the microphones or anything. It's very important to provide as much as you can. It will make you better than everyone else around you. I mean other engineers who do not do that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):

What's interesting, so it's kind of like three pillars, money, reputation, and experience, and they're all important, but if you focus on the money, you won't necessarily grow the reputation and the experience. However, if you focus on the reputation and experience, you will grow the money.

Speaker 3 (01:19:03):

Exactly, exactly. It's much easier for you to earn when you have great reputation, you always deliver best results, and then you find that when you charge, let's say five times more per song that you used to then getting some strings for the clients or some new drum heads for the clients isn't a problem anymore, isn't even something significant for you anymore. So that's the best way, in my understanding, the best way to evolve.

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):

What made you think that they were worth charging 30% to and then hiring the drum room yourself and all that? What about them made you willing to do that?

Speaker 3 (01:19:47):

We were friends for two years at that moment, and I worked on their single, then I worked on their album and it was already clear that they had huge potential. They were touring so much and so hard, and I saw that they would never stop on the current level because for them it was all or nothing. So they were aiming to become a successful professional, very popular and everything else, and I just supported them and I knew they had no money back in the day. Actually, their drummer, their ex drummer who was playing with them back then, he's my studio assistant now and my studio drummer, and he's my great friend and we were talking a lot and I knew everything from the inside out. I just realized that they won't be able to record the song if I wouldn't help them this way. That song just wouldn't have happened, and it happened and it gave them, actually, they shot a great music video back then. It was another huge step forward for them. So all these things together, they just made it click into the next level, the next step to success.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):

And you're saying that they always had the attitude of wanting it to become a huge band?

Speaker 3 (01:21:14):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:21:16):

No fucking around all about that goal.

Speaker 3 (01:21:19):

No fucking around. Well, they are regular people, so they know how to party. But

Speaker 2 (01:21:25):

Yeah, no, no, I don't mean no partying. I mean no fucking around with the music and with

Speaker 3 (01:21:31):

The band. Yeah, no, fucking around the music. Music is band. Yeah, exactly. Because once again, they just had no other chance. Another option for them probably would be to stay in the peaceful part of Ukraine as refugees to earn some below average money on the office jobs, and that's it. No perspective, nothing. And another chance, another option would be to tour really hard and they knew how to

Speaker 2 (01:22:02):

Tour. Where did they tour?

Speaker 3 (01:22:05):

First they were touring Romania and maybe Poland. I don't remember some countries that are super close to Ukraine. So it started from countries that are around Ukraine, so to say, and then their tours were growing bigger and bigger and were covering first world European countries already. So here they are, Germany, here they are. I don't know, I don't want to give you random names, but I remember that the stores were evolving from something every other Ukrainian band could do into something that would make Jaws drop. And then the first bigger festivals. And then I really remember the announcement of the First American tour for any band from another continent is a huge step.

Speaker 2 (01:22:59):

To be able to travel across an ocean to tour is a major, major step.

Speaker 3 (01:23:04):

But that happened with Nepal records. I mean, the budget you have to spend to simply travel the ocean with some equipment and tax and everything is, you cannot do that indie. You need to have someone with finances to support you.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):

Yeah, absolutely. So they got the napalm deal, they started growing, and then obviously your job offers started to get better,

Speaker 3 (01:23:32):

Of course. So that discount I made back in the day, it paid off I think hundreds of times if not more, because of course I can get better deals and I'm not hurrying to raise my rates. I'm always very careful with raising the rates, but when I feel like I'm buried in job for half a year or more, and I just keep getting your requests from bands that are well okay to work with, that's the moment when I realized that I think I should raise the rates maybe 10, 15% and see how the markets, so to say how my incoming requests react. So if half of the bands decide not to work with me, but my rates are twice as bigger than before, then I'll get as much money, but I will work twice less and I'll be able to spend my free time on something useful, maybe fighting new clients, maybe running the YouTube channel or anything.

(01:24:36):

So it's very important to raise the rates in my opinion, slowly, consistently. But you should not sell yourself cheap. And that's another thing I always say to the engineers who are asking me about some life advices. I'm saying, don't sell yourself cheap, because usually when you do you think that people will respect you more for that? They will say, okay, he made a huge discount for us. Maybe this guy, maybe let's not send him huge list of revisions. Maybe let's respect his work more and everything. But in fact, if let's say you're making a mix for 50 bucks, the psychology of the client will be, they will be listening to a 50 bucks mix and they won't treat it seriously. If you charge let's say 500 per mix, they will be listening a 500 bucks mix and it'll be a totally different mix for them. I know it sounds a little cheesy what I'm saying right now.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):

No, it's not. It's right.

Speaker 3 (01:25:47):

Yeah. And I mean, I know engineers who raise their rates after I told them to raise the rates, and since then they have way more respect from clients, easier revisions, and in general, they're much happier now.

Speaker 2 (01:26:05):

So I agree that if you are the $50 mix guy, people are going to think of you like the $50 mix guy. You don't want to be known as the $50 mix guy. However, in the case of Ginger,

Speaker 3 (01:26:16):

Even if you're great,

Speaker 2 (01:26:17):

Even if you're great, people won't respect you. However, ginger respected you when you cut them that deal,

Speaker 3 (01:26:23):

Right? Because that's all they had. They had no other money, that's all they had.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):

So you weren't the $50 mixed guy. You were just helping them because otherwise it just would not happen at all.

Speaker 3 (01:26:36):

Yeah, I was still the $300 mixed guy back then, but I just really wanted to help them and they knew that I'm charging more from other clients, but I charged them less because I saw the situation and I was friends with them. And that's why, and that's a totally different approach. I mean, many of us, many musicians would say something like, we are not signed. We don't have a budget. Could you please make a huge discount for us? But that's not the same thing. One thing is that you just cannot, or maybe you are just lazy to earn money or you just think that you have other priorities in life, like tattoo tattoos and car and everything. With Ginger, it was their only priority music and the only thing that they were lacking back then was money. So that's why it was a totally different story.

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):

It was a well thought out strategic decision to do the discount.

Speaker 3 (01:27:37):

Well, I did not treat it as a strategic decision. I just love them already as friends enough and I just wanted to work with them. And that's how we treat each other even now. And I'm very proud to say that when they come back to Ukraine to record the album, it's like an interstellar journey for me. So I saw them two years ago and I see them now and they're different people, but it's the same people. Very strange to notice the changes that happened with them from release to release from one studio session to another studio session like two years later. So we are friends, and that's the main thing in this aspect, and I love being friends with clients. I think that your returning customers should be your friends.

Speaker 2 (01:28:23):

Yeah, I mean if you don't enjoy spending extended periods of time with each other, that whole return client thing might not really happen

Speaker 3 (01:28:33):

Because if we are talking about the regular workflow of the studio, of course you should have free hours. You should regulate the hours when you work and when you say, okay, we're done for today. But with certain bands, it's very important to go completely nuts. And I mean when I record Ginger, there is no rest. There is no sleep. We have a couple of weeks to record the album and they go to another tour. So usually it's a crazy, very hard period of work. We may have some minor conflicts and then we solve the conflicts and we still remain friends afterwards. So you just could not work with a person you don't have an emotional bond with. You could not work that way with another person.

Speaker 2 (01:29:27):

Yeah, I agree with that completely. Where did you get your mixing skills from? And I know that this is kind of a crazy question because obviously you worked for years and years and years, but here's how I mean it. I have been to many tiny markets where we've talked about the person that's happy to be the local dude, and that's definitely not you, but also in a lot of these tiny markets, they don't really have an opportunity to, especially before URM or anything, there's no real way for them to get the information to get good enough to even compete on a world level. So what I'm wondering is because of where you live and where you grew up and where you're working from, how did you learn? Where did the knowledge come from?

Speaker 3 (01:30:21):

Yeah, that's a very interesting question. First of all, I must say that everyone who's at the beginning of the journey right now, you're living in the great time because there is so much information now, literally more than you can process. So the question of finding information is no longer a question. You can go to the U, you can just search YouTube and you'll get so many cool videos, cool hints, cool multi tracks and tutorials and everything. Back in the day, of course, we didn't have anything like that. I remember, well, first of all, just a lot of trial and error because I remember my stepfather bought some cities of Rolling Stones and Beatles and all that classic stuff, and he told me to remaster the cities. He didn't know the word mastering. I didn't know the word mastering. He just told me, max, these are sounding too quiet. There's not enough bass. Do something to make them sound great. And I'm taking this great sounding records and I'm ruining them with Steinberg old nineties plugins like multi-band compressor and DQ built in. I don't remember the program even maybe Early Sound Forge or something. And that was how I found out about mastering. So all the things I knew I found out back then were thanks to the lack of information. So I had no bad information to make me mistaken, so to say.

Speaker 2 (01:31:58):

Yeah, but you also had no good information to build off of,

Speaker 3 (01:32:02):

And my mixes sucked back then because of that. But many years later, I was learning how to EQ and I was comparing a lot what I loved doing, and I still do from time to time, I take some great sounding album. I open it up in my host in the door, and I just find pieces of audio that are naked. I'm listening to guitars separately to the drums or the drum reverbs. I'm watching the levels. I just see how loud in the mix is the vocal take. For instance. Another cool thing would be to find the isolated tracks. I'm not sure if it's completely legal, but I'm coming from the country where the margin of legal versus illegal is slightly blurred. So I remember finding the Multitracks from Guitar Hero, I guess, of Devil Driver, and everyone was like, oh my God, multitracks of devil driver. Let's slice these drums in samples and let's tone match the guitars and everything. So it was another great way to learn. You're learning by tone matching the guitars from your favorite record, and then you see the EQ curve and you realize, ah, so there was a 12 DB of something you didn't notice, for instance. So all these things were little bricks of knowledge. I was slowly getting together and I remember it was a very old, very old tutorial video, mix it like a record

(01:33:40):

Maybe. I know that it was the only one about mixing rock music.

Speaker 2 (01:33:44):

How old? I'm going to look it up.

Speaker 3 (01:33:46):

I think maybe at least 15 years old.

Speaker 2 (01:33:50):

I bet it's great. I'm looking it up right now.

Speaker 3 (01:33:53):

It was interesting, and the guy has a very specific approach to mixing very different from what we're usually hearing from producers at Nail the Mix. So he's a lot of plugins on every track, and he sculpts it slowly from stage to stage, but it was the very first tutorial I saw makes it like a record, and what I realized is that you cannot really blindly rely on any tutorial or on any mixing video because your tracks you'll be working on are way different. So you will have to figure it out by yourself, especially if you're working with really amateur bands, then you're dealing with different problems that are not covered in professional tutorials. Instead of learning how to mix a well-recorded drum set, you should learn how to detect hit points correctly on the snare That's played very poorly and each hit is different.

Speaker 2 (01:34:56):

Yeah, actually that's why we started Mix Rescue.

Speaker 3 (01:35:00):

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:35:01):

And enhanced was because I think now the mix is great and revolutionary, but at the same time, if you're a total beginner and you're working with OPEC and Masu tracks, that's just not real life.

Speaker 3 (01:35:15):

That's not real life. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:35:16):

Yeah. It's totally not real life. And I know that some people who are at the beginning of their journeys will get nailed the mixed sessions and think that that's how it is, and then not know how to deal with real life. That's why we started mixed rescue, but I completely agree. You need to know how to do these things on the worst possible scenarios, and I think one of the most important things that you can learn when you're starting is that no mix can ever be replicated. So if you do exactly what's in a tutorial, it's not going to work. You need to approach tutorials more like concepts, and then once you get the concept you need to work to integrate it into your own workflow,

Speaker 3 (01:36:02):

Then you'll develop the instincts. So to say

Speaker 2 (01:36:04):

Exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:36:05):

It's like watching the child learn the first language, the native language, so you don't know how to speak and what words mean and how to build the sentences, but he's watching the parents and he's copying the parents first. It sounds clumsy and funny and he doesn't know how to express their mind, but then it slowly turns into the language the person knows the best. So I think it's the best way to study everything and engineering the same thing. You have a lot of, let's say we all have a lot of tutorials now, so the best way would be just to explore, let's say knowledge tutorial or Jens bores tutorial, and then just by combining everything you've heard here and heard there, find something that you feel is right. I know it sounds a little bit like nonsense, but I feel like intuitive way to learn things like mixing or making music, composing music, maybe even singing intuitive methods of learning are the most effective because that helps you instantly get to the instinct part of your individuality instead of just developing the patterns that you don't completely understand. Just coping someone else's workflow.

Speaker 2 (01:37:26):

Yeah, the copying somebody else's workflow thing is, man, it's so hard to get people to understand this because it's so tempting.

Speaker 3 (01:37:38):

Yeah. There are certain things that are just perfect and they will work perfect for everyone. Like the CLA tricks, the free CLA tricks about the snare that you can get of the slate channel, you just boost everything. And one day I just realized that you could boost something to the very limits and no one's going to die, and it was a mind blowing experience for me life before and after that. Such things are very important to copy. You can take someone else's methods and use it successfully, but until it becomes a natural part of your own neural tree within your brain, so until what you imagine in your head as a mix, as a song gets linked to what you do with your hands, with the plugins or with hardware, doesn't matter. Until that links gets established, you won't be able to effectively use someone else's methods, someone else's tools, someone else's techniques.

Speaker 2 (01:38:39):

Yeah, absolutely. So you learning a CLA trick is very different than a beginner learning a CLA trick for you or anybody else who's experienced. If they watch a CLA tutorial or nail the mix and they see some technique because they already have an understanding of how mixing works, they can plug it in and make it work, but that's because they already have an understanding. There's already a framework in which that makes sense, and so they'll already understand how to use it basically for a professional such as yourself or one of your peers to get a trick like that, that's more like an answer to a question. How does someone do this thing I've been thinking about or there's this problem I've been having that I just haven't figured out how to solve. Boom, there's the answer. That guy does this special trick that works, but if you're a beginner or intermediate and you don't really have know what you're doing, you don't have a context for using that trick, and so it's kind of useless.

Speaker 3 (01:39:51):

Yes. That's very important to no matter how hard things look to you at the first stage, it's very important not to hurry and on one side it's important to develop that intuition I was talking about earlier. On another side, it's very important to try to understand the processes that are happening when you're doing this or that. So let's say we're talking about levels, setting levels in the door, why many of us keeping faders at zeros? When you understand that things are getting instantly easier for you because you will write automation much easier, you will enjoy writing automation and so on and so on. So it's very important to take a lot of time to wait until it gets deeper into your subconscious level, and then you will notice that certain things just start happening. They were hard for you at first. You could not hear the compression first. Then a few weeks later you'll hear the really well just let it sit somewhere there deep in your brain and it will work for you instead of you almost instead of you.

Speaker 2 (01:41:02):

Yeah, and this could take years.

Speaker 3 (01:41:04):

Yeah, years.

Speaker 2 (01:41:05):

It will take years. Actually not could take, it will take years,

Speaker 3 (01:41:08):

But that's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:41:09):

Well, yeah. I think what you just said about not hurrying is so, so crucial, and I've felt this way too. I think it's just natural to want things to just happen. We want our goals to happen quickly. We want to get good at something quickly. It's just in our nature. We don't want it to take 10 years, but you just have to definitely just kind of accept it because everybody would like for things to move as fast as possible. I think that if we could just watch a tutorial and then suddenly be incredible at a new skill, that's a nice dream.

Speaker 3 (01:41:48):

It'll be a different mankind and a different civilization. Everything would be different rules of life

Speaker 2 (01:41:55):

Basically, so to say. Yeah. So you just have to accept that it's in for the long haul and that's why I think back to what we were talking about before, it really is important to know yourself and to know what it is that you want and what it is that brings out your best because the shit's going to take a long time.

Speaker 3 (01:42:15):

Oh yes. Anything I don't remember. There is a rule of a certain amount of hours you have to invest into anything to make it work really well. And another thing

Speaker 2 (01:42:25):

People talk about the 10,000.

Speaker 3 (01:42:27):

Oh yeah, roughly 10,000. I don't know if it's true or not.

Speaker 2 (01:42:31):

I don't know if it's true either. I think it's more like 20,000

Speaker 3 (01:42:34):

Maybe. Yeah. I know that with anything like let's say with sports, I'm bad at sports, but I had my periods of life when I was visiting gym for quite actively and I had my progress. Everything was happening fine, but I never had that feeling that professional sportsman sports like athletes professional or athletes better say feel. They say, I feel joy when I'm moving. So just my moving just by making exercise, I feel very excited. I feel physical and mental excitement for me, I never experienced that and I think it's because of that experience they have the whole body and the brain have developed into a different state. Same thing with us engineers. We are okay to listen to certain things over and over and over again hundreds of times without getting crazy. I know because when I started living with my girlfriend back in the day and I was mixing and she was just sitting in another room and one day she just came to me and said, man, I just cannot hear the same fragment of the song for hundredth time. It just drives me crazy. And I just didn't even notice that I've been replaying one little piece. I've been queuing. So it's very important to understand that these things take a lot of time because you will become deformed, you will become shaped into a different human being. That's what we're doing by learning engineering here.

Speaker 2 (01:44:12):

I'm just thinking about how nuts you must have made her.

Speaker 3 (01:44:15):

Well, now in fact, we still combine the studio and the living apartment because it's very practical and because I know that my equipment is safe here with me with the criminal situation here, I just don't want to leave the equipment somewhere in the rented place. So she still lives with me, but she has deformed too, so now she just doesn't care. Sometimes she doesn't even notice what I'm doing. I'm working on something and she just doesn't notice. Then I'm saying something she doesn't notice and she's not deaf. She's okay, but that's just 10 years together.

Speaker 2 (01:44:53):

She's just adapted.

Speaker 3 (01:44:54):

Yeah, 10 years together with the audio engineer makes you a different person.

Speaker 2 (01:44:58):

Yeah, I can imagine. I've definitely had live-in girlfriends when I had my studio in the house and they have to adapt, otherwise they're going to go nuts.

Speaker 3 (01:45:11):

She has, by the way, I mean having somewhere to help you from time to time, I've been mixing for 10 hours and then she notices something unexpected from her point of the room just comes to the room and says something about the bass or about the highest frequencies. That's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:45:28):

And it's accurate.

Speaker 3 (01:45:29):

That's quite accurate. She doesn't know the engineering, she doesn't know how the IQ works and how to compress and everything, but her perception of music is spectacularly correct, and I think that's another thing to think of because quite often the beginners have more than they think. They don't know engineering, but they probably hear the worst mistakes the engineer could do if you know what I mean. Why I'm saying that. I remember hearing of some of my favorite records when I was a teenager and I had some ear infections, so I had something in my ear and the compress over my head, and I was putting headphones on that construction and I was listening to the crappy copy of Led Zeppelin first fourth album when the live is going to break, and the impression I had back then was the same that I have now. When I have great room and nice acoustic treatment and the speakers and I still turn that song on, I have the same impression. So it doesn't even matter what ears you have, doesn't even matter what monitors you have certain about the sonic qualities of the music of the mix. You can still notice it's just important to start noticing, get initiated and start noticing things.

Speaker 2 (01:47:00):

This is why I've always respected the opinion of the, I know lots of musicians and engineers will discount the opinions of people who don't do it because they'll say, oh, they just don't understand what they're, and that doesn't matter.

Speaker 4 (01:47:19):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:47:20):

Actually, as a matter of fact, their opinion probably matters a little more. Exactly. Because they don't understand what they're listening to. They just know if they like it or dislike it, and if something bothers them, they might not know how to say it technically, but they know something bothers them and they don't want to listen to it anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:47:43):

Exactly. Enough.

Speaker 2 (01:47:44):

And that's great to know.

Speaker 3 (01:47:46):

Another important thing is that as everything in our modern life, things are getting slightly more generic, like let's say with cars. Cars are getting better, safer, better fuel economy, maybe faster, more comfortable, quieter everything, but they start being a less emotional than back in the days when you had muscle cars in America and those crazy French cars and Italian supercars and everything. So same with music. The old music you're listening to may have the weirdest tones you could ever think of, like crazy sounding guitars, Fay, weird balances, weird panning under compressed, over compressed, oversaturated, everything. But they have so much life and character and that's very important to understand that us being engineers sometimes we get obsessed with fixing technical issues and making things sound right. But there is always the different opinion, the opinion of the audience, the opinion of the listener, and sometimes listener will prefer the record that sounds wrong, but has a lot of character

Speaker 2 (01:49:02):

Because it will stick out in their mind. They'll recognize the identity without realizing that they recognize the identity. And if everything is homogenized, especially to the untrained listener, they're not going to be able to differentiate, so nothing's going to stand out to them.

Speaker 4 (01:49:21):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:49:21):

So in my opinion, it actually is preferable to do something that might not be as technically correct, but that has some character because that's the only thing. If you're looking at a pattern your brain can turn off. If the pattern is, I just heard 10 metal songs and they all kind of sound the same, your brain is going to turn off to those songs by song three. You're not going to remember how many songs you heard by song six. It's like what's even going on? But then if you have something that sounds completely different, well that is going to capture your attention.

Speaker 4 (01:49:58):

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:49:59):

I don't think that people should try to be different for the sake of being different, but I do think that character is a lot more important than technical perfection.

Speaker 3 (01:50:09):

Certainly no one should be different for the sake of being different. That never works well, usually just works weird and funny and everything. But that's important for us engineers to preserve the character that the client wants to have in his song, especially if there is a character. Not always there is something special, but sometimes, I mean like with Ginger, they want rough guitars. They just hate modern than high gain tone because they're so tired of the modern than high gain tone. He's been touring with 65 or five for years and he just got tired of the tone. So let's say on macro, we used the non-high gain fan ramp and we crank it up to power ram distortion, which is a wrong thing for many of us metal engineers. And we used the treble booster as a pedal, so not a tube screamer, but a treble booster, the range master treble booster, which is noises fuck. So we had to use the noise gate while recording and it ended up sounding really, really cool. I was so happy with what just was coming out from one microphone and it didn't sound like any other amp I was using. Same thing with drums. I know that some people hate the snare drum on their macro album.

Speaker 1 (01:51:32):

I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:51:33):

Yeah, I love it too because that's how V lot sounds. That's snare drum sounds, slav. It sounds like he's squatting and saying all sorts of nasty words in Russian or in Ukrainian because that snare sounds like a character he wants to deliver. And when they play raggy, that snare fits. When they play lots of ghost notes in a super slow reef, it fits when they play the breakdown, it still fits and it's so interesting that it contrasts with the rest of the kids. So the kick and Toms are bassy and deep, but the snare is dry and high and 13 inch spiky and irritating a little bit, and that's how they wanted it to sound. That's funny because I understand people who don't like it. I wouldn't probably use that snare for my own music. I would never use it, but here we are. We are producers. We got to do what the client wants. If the client is knows what he wants.

Speaker 2 (01:52:33):

I actually love how unique it sounds.

Speaker 3 (01:52:37):

Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:52:38):

And I think that it's interesting that it's not like you had to do anything crazy. You just didn't use the same kind of amp that people use 99% of the time. You just didn't use the same overdrive that people use 99% of the time. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:52:56):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:52:56):

You just change some of the variables. It's not rocket science, just change some of the variables.

Speaker 3 (01:53:02):

Same with vocals. We just, I know that TDY is a first take person. Her best takes are the first takes, and she just gets irritated quite fast if I want her to polish something because man, I mean the raw emotion is more important than technical perfection. So we usually do two, three takes per piece and then we maybe do a double track and then we invent some backing vocal lines and quickly record them too. So it's very raw. We didn't work hard on vocals too hard, and I was also using all Ana analog processing, so it's like most of the tone you hear on the record has been captured during the tracking. Everything else is just some spatial processing here, some tiny multi-band just kissing the needles there. But what we wanted to do, I wanted to hear her sounding like on the record while tracking.

(01:54:04):

I wanted to know that it will work in the mix. That's why we instantly committed to the tone while tracking. And that's also what I not, I don't do that all the time. I mostly like to record raw stuff. Most of that mix you hear is what we were using when we were tracking guitars, almost no EQ drums. I eqd them on the board. I used some parallel compression, but that's how they sounded coming from the board. Plus minus a few little tweaks. And same with the vocals, just the preamp, some eq. Then 1176 some more pull textile EQ and LA two A and that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:54:45):

I love the idea of having it sound like the record when it's being tracked, even though it's not appropriate for every situation. I've always thought that one of the best ways to get a vocalist to give you great takes is to make sure that whatever they're hearing in their headphones makes them feel like a rockstar, basically. They should feel like they're on stage and it sounds incredible and they just sound like a god or a goddess basically. I've always thought that that is so much better than just giving them some raw shit with a little reverb.

Speaker 3 (01:55:23):

So true. Especially with reverb, because they may be distracted by reverb and they may even intonate and worse than they do. So what I do, I like making the singer happy, and I do some singing too, so I know that anyone who enters the studio, I want to make the person relaxed. I want to make the person comfortable. I want to say that I will help with everything they feel unsure of, be it backing vocals. So they don't know how to write backing vocals. I'll do backing vocals for them. I just write the scratch tracks for them to repeat, or let's say they're not sure about the lyrics because English not native language for someone. I will help with lyrics, so that's okay. And of course, the mix in the headphones is very crucial for anyone. For Tati, of course, it's a different story because she's on stage all the time. So what we wanted, we wanted to replicate that live balance in her inners. We wanted to make that inner balance closer to what she gets in the studio and vice versa. I mean, I'm also present in some of their sound checks. So

(01:56:35):

When we are at the soundcheck, I'm trying to build a comfortable mix that resembles the studio mix. But speaking of the studio mix, she's very uncomfortable when she hears too many details. So getting that great finalized in your face sound into her headphones would be a wrong decision as well. So we replicated the concert environment in the headphones with a little reverb here with some low pass filtering there to take off some of the highest frequencies. And also she was holding the microphones in her hands, like the Sam seven B. That's much easier for her to behave like she's on stage. That's very interesting because I don't have a window in the studio, and we decided not to use the cameras. So she was singing and I was just hearing great consistent sound. Then I saw the video she made for herself, and she was moving the microphone like crazy. I didn't even know she's moving the mic. So she has that natural feel of when you have to step aside from the microphone, when you have to move it off access a little bit and everything, that's very cool to work with great musicians, and that's actually the only situation when you can afford committing to the mix on the tracking stage when the musicians are good.

Speaker 2 (01:57:50):

Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. Because your options, the more you commit to during tracking, the less options you're going to have for fixing things later. So yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:58:01):

Yes, of course.

Speaker 2 (01:58:02):

It's got to be done with the right act, and I think what's also cool to hear is how willing you are to alter your method depending on who you're working with.

Speaker 3 (01:58:12):

Otherwise, it would be just the death of me. I mean, I would lose the passion to engineering. As soon as I have that feeling, I go and listen to the lo-fi dark ambient or something, or really listening the seventies music with mustache guy playing Gibson, less Poles cult everything, just because otherwise I'm going just insane by doing generic job. It's a cool title, unstoppable recording machine. It's a great title, but when turning into the unstoppable recording machine, that might be the end of you.

Speaker 2 (01:58:45):

Well, I mean, you do need to chill out at times and not let yourself become basically a robot with it. I think it's not just you that'll lose the passion. Your clients will lose the passion for working with you.

Speaker 4 (01:58:59):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:59:00):

Clients do not like to feel like they're going to a factory style studio. I remember very, very clearly that clients always wanted to feel like they were getting a custom job.

Speaker 3 (01:59:14):

Absolutely

Speaker 2 (01:59:15):

Not the same shit that you do for every single band. They don't like that at all.

Speaker 3 (01:59:20):

Besides, the custom job is the best rewarded job. Once again, bringing the parallel with cars doesn't give ads as far as they know, they don't invest into making commercials. They're just Rolls-Royce. Everyone knows that Rolls-Royce is the best car in the world, so to say. So if you want to become the Rolls-Royce of sound engineering, then you will have to work hard to create a masterpiece each time. But in the end, it will pay off to you because you will be experiencing an interesting journey with each project you working on because you're trying new things and you are on a journey with the band. They're entering the studio, let's say for the first time in the life. They don't know you yet. They don't know how the studio operates. They don't know what to expect from that situation. That's why you have to be their guide. You're meeting them, and then you are taking that journey together and you are showing them everything, explaining them, everything, experimenting with them, maybe even making some errors together with them. But that's much more joyful process, and in the end, it will pay off much more.

Speaker 2 (02:00:33):

I agree. Well, max, I think this is a good place to end the episode. Agree. I just want to thank you.

Speaker 3 (02:00:39):

Yeah, thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (02:00:40):

That was a good closing statement. I just want to thank you for coming on. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Speaker 3 (02:00:45):

Thank you very much. In fact, it's such a great pleasure to be on the other side of the microphone, so to say. I've been listening to so many podcasts. I'm so happy to share something.

Speaker 2 (02:00:54):

Yeah. Well, we should do it again sometime.

Speaker 3 (02:00:56):

I'd love to.

Speaker 2 (02:00:57):

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 a levy URM audio, and of course, please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy

Speaker 1 (02:01:18):

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.