Samus Paulicelli: Why He Quit Touring, His YouTube Workflow, and Mastering Hybrid Drums

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

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

(00:00:57):

Who knows, we might even respond. And number three, leave us reviews and five stars please anywhere you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, I want to thank you all for the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never, ever charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way possible. All I ask in return is a share post and a tag. Now, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM Podcast. My guest today is Samus, AKA six six Samis, who's a YouTube content creator, a multi-instrumentalist, a session and touring musician. But I got to say, he's one of the best drummers I've ever met in my entire life. I went on tour with him maybe 11 years ago when he was super young, and the dude blew my mind was thinking, this guy is going to have a fucking future. He's played with Devon Townsend, decrepit birth, Abigail Williams, goat whore, and a bunch more bands, and of course, he's best known for his extreme death metal drumming, but his YouTube channel, which has, by the way, 234,000 subscribers at the time of this recording, does all kinds of stuff that goes way beyond extreme metal drums. You really should check out his YouTube channel, his playthroughs of different styles and all the creative shit he does. It's just great. Anyways, I introduce you Samus. Welcome to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02:29):

Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:02:30):

Yeah, I was just saying, it is good that you're alive 11 years after the last time I saw you.

Speaker 2 (00:02:37):

You too, man.

Speaker 1 (00:02:38):

Thanks. I think last time I saw you might be the worst tour I've ever been on in my entire fucking life, ever.

Speaker 2 (00:02:46):

I remember you getting sick on that.

Speaker 1 (00:02:48):

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to leave. That was, I got swine flu.

Speaker 2 (00:02:51):

Oh, geez.

Speaker 1 (00:02:52):

That was better than the tour though. That tour was terrible.

Speaker 2 (00:02:58):

Oh, man. Yeah, that was a Finberg tour. That was like two months. That was like 60 shows. That was,

Speaker 1 (00:03:05):

It's like two and a half months, twice around the us. Abigail Williams, goat Horror, abysmal Don Doth, and one more band with a really, really long name.

Speaker 2 (00:03:14):

Success will write Apocalypse across the sky.

Speaker 1 (00:03:17):

Yeah, you were really young though, so I don't know. How much had you toured by that point?

Speaker 2 (00:03:22):

Well, my first tour was in 2008 in the summer, so maybe only a year.

Speaker 1 (00:03:27):

So you weren't all that burned out yet.

Speaker 2 (00:03:28):

Well, that tour definitely helped burn well, as far as Abigail Williams goes too, but that's a whole other story.

Speaker 1 (00:03:36):

Did you keep touring after?

Speaker 2 (00:03:38):

Not with Abigail Williams. That might've been my last one with them, and then after that would've been Summer Slaughter 2010 with Decrepit.

Speaker 1 (00:03:46):

I think that that Abigail Williams tour, we were joking about how it was a band ender. I'm pretty sure that a couple of the bands broke up on that tour.

Speaker 2 (00:03:54):

Okay. Well, what happened to doth after that? Did you guys do any other tours after that? We did a few more,

Speaker 1 (00:04:00):

But that was kind of like the death blow for us almost. It never quite recovered after that. It was really stupid because we had thrash and burn, and actually our manager urged us to take this tour because it was more money every night. Even though thrash and burn would've been way, way, way, way better, and I think it's one of my biggest mistakes. If I had to do it all over again, wouldn't have listened to them and would've taken thrash and burn for several hundreds of dollars a night less. It was only a month long and it would've been to more than 50 people a night and may not have been this giant demoralizing, horrible experience.

Speaker 2 (00:04:40):

Yeah, there was just so many reasons. That tour was rough, man. So many crazy things happened.

Speaker 1 (00:04:47):

So you did decrepit birth, and then what happened after that?

Speaker 2 (00:04:49):

Actually, you know what I completely forgot about Goat Whore. Dude, what about them? That was in between Abigail Williams and Decrepit Birth.

Speaker 1 (00:04:55):

Oh, you played in Goho.

Speaker 2 (00:04:57):

Don't you remember? They fired Nathan on that tour.

Speaker 1 (00:04:59):

Oh, no, I remember

Speaker 2 (00:05:00):

That. And me and your bass player, and Sally, I think her name was, we all helped filling in, and then after that I did. I ended up doing two tours with Goat Horror on bass.

Speaker 1 (00:05:08):

On bass. Yeah. I didn't know you played bass, so I just remember that that dude completely lost. His mind went psychotic, violent, and he had to be restrained or something and got his ass kicked and sent back to New Orleans.

Speaker 2 (00:05:24):

Yeah, he did get sent back that night. It was in Seattle, I believe

Speaker 1 (00:05:26):

It was in Seattle.

Speaker 2 (00:05:28):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:05:28):

I think he was threatening to kill people.

Speaker 2 (00:05:30):

That wouldn't surprise me. I know he got into a huge argument with goat whore's, merch guy, and I guess he was being so ridiculous that goat whore ended up siding with the merch guy over their own bass player, so they're just like, dude, you got to leave.

Speaker 1 (00:05:44):

Yeah, he completely lost his mind. I seem to remember him attacking a few people and it being this major, major thing, but man, it's also blurry. I didn't even think about that. I didn't even know you bass

Speaker 2 (00:05:57):

Well, I've fucked around on guitar since I was 14, and I always figured bass is a little easier than guitar. It's just the root notes and stuff like that, so yeah, it wasn't really too difficult. Nothing against goat horror, but it wasn't too difficult for me to pick up their bass lines and just learn it all by ear. It was really fun stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:06:16):

I think they're awesome. Was it weird at all being this super accomplished drummer and then playing bass?

Speaker 2 (00:06:22):

No, it was almost a nice break. I wouldn't have to set up and tear down a huge drum kit every night and I could get wasted and go on stage and still nail all the parts because Zach would keep the time. I wouldn't have to be the timekeeper anymore. I'd still have to nail all the notes, but yeah, that was kind of when I had to stop drinking after I toured with them, those two tours. Oh man, that's what did it for drinking for me.

Speaker 1 (00:06:51):

Yeah, they're professionals.

(00:06:53):

It's kind of absurd. When we toured, there was something that struck me about your playing to this day was that no matter what environment we were in, you always sounded great, and I know that you were using a hybrid rig back then. I know that there were some people who had already done that, like Nick Barker or whatever, but you had it dialed to where there were no mist triggers, there was no phasey bullshit, none of the problems that you normally find when people tried doing the hybrid kit thing, and then also on top of that, it didn't sound like a basketball being bounced on the floor really fast or like a typewriter. It sounded like just badass, well-produced drums every night. Did you put a lot of time into that?

Speaker 2 (00:07:37):

Thank you very much. I really appreciate that and yes, yes, I did.

Speaker 1 (00:07:41):

Let's talk about that. What was the setup?

Speaker 2 (00:07:44):

Well, on the tour that we did, my kit wasn't completely hybrid. I was just triggering the kicks on that tour, but previous to that, I was triggering the whole kit and now I'm triggering the whole kit for videos and stuff like that. But on that particular tour, I was only triggering the kicks.

Speaker 1 (00:07:59):

Okay, let's start with the kicks. You know how hard it is to get that right and you play absurdly fast, but then also play hard at times, and that's usually something that's hard for people to dial, like a setting where it picks up the speed but also doesn't start fucking up when you just do single kicks.

Speaker 2 (00:08:18):

Right. For me, it's really easy because I use triggers that aren't even touching the bass drum head. I have those access triggers that are attached to the pedal itself, so you can kind of dial it into where there's a little hammer on the side, there's like a trigger on the side of the pedal and there's a hammer and the hammer's attached to the spring assembly, so whenever the beater hits the head, you can program it the little trigger to hit the actual detonator so you don't have to worry about hitting the snare drum too hard and triggering the kick.

Speaker 1 (00:08:47):

Is it actually

Speaker 2 (00:08:48):

Called a detonator? That's what they call it? Yeah. Well, the whole trigger system is called the Eki like electronic kit, but yeah, they call it the detonator, the little thingy. I like that name. How long had you been fucking around with it before you got it dialed? Those

Speaker 1 (00:09:00):

Ekis did not take long, maybe a month to get those dialed in. What would be a month in terms of man hours for you back then? Because a month can mean anything. Someone could practice two hours a week in a month or a hundred hours.

Speaker 2 (00:09:14):

I was probably playing every other day back then for sure, so

Speaker 1 (00:09:17):

That's not even that much.

Speaker 2 (00:09:18):

Yeah, they're very, very accurate triggers. There's all these new triggers that they have not even access. There's all these other companies that make triggers that actually sit underneath the pedal. You put it on a certain angle, and apparently when the top of the foot board or the bottom of the footboard hits the trigger, I guess you have to adhesive it to the bottom of your footboard, which is kind of sucky. I don't want to put sticky stuff on the pedals, but I do have a bunch of those triggers that I need to do a shootout review kind of thing with. That would be fun.

Speaker 1 (00:09:45):

Have you encountered the purists ever that are super antit triggering?

Speaker 2 (00:09:50):

Yeah, but luckily I haven't encountered those guys in a while. It seems now I've kind of built up a fan base to where all my guys are just supporting me just because they know how busy I am and that using triggers really helps me save time, but there's always, there's always going to be the guys that are fuck triggers raw drums. Only Glenn Fricker always gives me a hard time about it. Him and I are buddies, but yeah, it's fun stuff, but obviously I wish I could record my full raw drums and have the time to mix it properly and do all that. I bet it would sound way better than the triggers, but the tune track samples I use are pretty damn good.

Speaker 1 (00:10:27):

Yeah, I was going to say that the thing about your triggered sound is that it, like I said before, it doesn't sound like a basketball or a typewriter. I think a lot of people get turned off by drums just sounding like a machine, but I don't feel that way when I hear your stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:10:45):

Thank you. That part takes time too. Getting all the dynamics right on the settings and the sensitivity and all that stuff, and even sometimes I still have to go and edit the midi track and change some of the velocities that aren't perfect, and for a dynamic fill, something like that.

Speaker 1 (00:10:58):

Do you think that the secret to getting triggers or programmed drums to not sound fake is in the velocities?

Speaker 2 (00:11:06):

Could be. Yeah. That's definitely part of it. What else? The samples that you're using? For sure. The first time I ever heard triggered drums unquote was puritanical with Nick Barker. I love it. Yeah. That blew me the hell away. The first time I heard that, I was like, I want my drums to sound like that, and that was the typewriter machine gun sound. That's what I wanted at first. I even went out and got the same Roland TD 10 module that Barker was using during that album. I was obsessed. That's what I wanted. But yeah, over the years I kind of developed a sense of, Hey, we want the drums to sound real too while I'm doing blast beats and all this fast shit. So then I started paying more attention to dynamics and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (00:11:46):

So something you said earlier is kind of interesting to me. For some reason I thought on that tour, your Toms were triggered. They had that Nick Barker kind of sound to them. I could swear they were, but if they weren't, that makes me even more curious as to how you went about getting your Tom sound. Is it in the tuning is in the micing?

Speaker 2 (00:12:05):

I do try to hit the Toms extra hard when I do fills. That just makes them sound more mighty. I don't know. You could be correct, but I could have sworn that I only did one or two my first, maybe it might've only been two tours that I ever did. I think by 2009 I had stopped triggering the whole kit just because it was such a pain in the ass. A lot of venues we were playing didn't have the right monitoring systems on stage, and I had all my drums filled with pillows and blankets, so they made no sound to the ear, but with the triggers on, they made sound and a lot of the venues we had just didn't even have monitoring. Nobody could even hear my drums on the stage, so I was like, all right, screw it. I'll just trigger the kicks. Plus, when I was triggering the whole kit and I had every single drum stuffed with clothes and stuff, they were so heavy to carry.

Speaker 1 (00:12:49):

Yeah, drums are already a pain in the ass. That whole thing about not being able to hear people on stage, they put off. No, sound is such a modern thing. We stopped touring as that started to become a thing, and on my last tour I didn't have an amp. It was just like an ax effects and all that. I did not like it really at all. Yeah, it was so disorienting not to have stage volume.

Speaker 2 (00:13:11):

Did you use in ears or anything, or do you just rely on monitors?

Speaker 1 (00:13:14):

No, I used in ears. Okay. And

Speaker 2 (00:13:15):

It still didn't

Speaker 1 (00:13:16):

Yeah, because it's not shaking you, I guess

Speaker 2 (00:13:19):

I can totally agree with that.

Speaker 1 (00:13:21):

Yeah. It's not shaking you and everywhere you walk, it's the same exact mix, which I think in the end is cool, but if you're used to a wall of amps and you walk over here and you hear more of that, you walk over there and you hear something else, and then there's nothing like that. It's almost like you're in a void and you're just in your own little world listening to the mix, and I think it's better

Speaker 2 (00:13:46):

For sure. That's almost like that's the end goal that we'd want anyways, but we're just not used to having it so perfect wherever you walk. Right?

Speaker 1 (00:13:52):

Yeah. I think if I had stuck around two or three more years, I probably would've gotten totally used to it and never wanted to go back. At the time, it just fucked things up for me, but I definitely think that this is something that modern musicians probably don't even think about now. It's completely the norm.

Speaker 2 (00:14:07):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:14:08):

Yeah. So besides just hitting hard, did you work on tuning at all?

Speaker 2 (00:14:12):

I feel like I'm not really the best when it comes to tuning. I really, really rely on the drum dial a lot. Do you know what that is?

Speaker 1 (00:14:18):

Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:14:19):

Yeah. I really rely on that thing and I make sure that every lugs at the same number and obviously from there you have to fine tune it a little more, but yeah, I kind of cheat and just use that thing all the time.

Speaker 1 (00:14:31):

I have a theory man, because drum dial's good, especially for live, but it's not something that I would use in the studio because it measures the lug tension, but it doesn't measure any of the wear on the head itself.

Speaker 2 (00:14:43):

It does measure the head tension, not the lug tension. You might be thinking of a different device, two different things. I know Tama makes one as well. That tells you the tension of the lug itself.

Speaker 1 (00:14:53):

Okay. That's the one I'm thinking of. I stand corrected.

Speaker 2 (00:14:55):

You could still be correct. The ear is way better than a tuning device, right? Well, depending on who you're talking to.

Speaker 1 (00:15:01):

That's kind of funny because yesterday on some nail the mix ad, some douche bag answered some question. Just use your ears and I swear, just use your ears is the stupidest audio cliche I've ever heard. What if your ears suck?

Speaker 2 (00:15:16):

That's true.

Speaker 1 (00:15:17):

Yeah. Just use your ears. What

Speaker 2 (00:15:19):

If you don't have good ears who you're talking to?

Speaker 1 (00:15:21):

Yeah. Just use your ears is such a open-ended bullshit statement because your ears develop over time. Your ears also burn out every single day that you use them.

Speaker 2 (00:15:33):

True.

Speaker 1 (00:15:34):

Just use your ears doesn't really help anybody.

Speaker 2 (00:15:37):

There's a learning curve too, right?

Speaker 1 (00:15:39):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:15:40):

Absolutely. To keep your ears.

Speaker 1 (00:15:42):

Yeah. It's like going to the gym or something. It takes a long time to develop the ability to hear details on the level you would need to, so someone's asking a question about EQing something and someone's just like, use your ears. It's the most non-helpful bullshit.

Speaker 2 (00:15:58):

Yeah, that's hard when you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, for sure. When I first started using a compressor,

Speaker 1 (00:16:04):

Yeah, that's one.

Speaker 2 (00:16:05):

Somebody told me, use your ears, and you know what I did? I kept screwing it up. All of my mixes were way over limited, and I thought I was using my ears, but I was still learning. How did you end up figuring out how

Speaker 1 (00:16:17):

To use a compressor?

Speaker 2 (00:16:19):

Easy mix.

Speaker 1 (00:16:21):

Well, what's interesting about Easy Mix is that it is designed for musicians who just want to have something that's not necessarily the greatest mix on earth for an album, but that's still good. That's still good, and for that purpose, it's actually pretty damn good.

Speaker 2 (00:16:40):

I don't use it all a hundred percent, but I use it in cooperation with other plugins that I have and I am happy with it.

Speaker 1 (00:16:47):

I've definitely heard a lot of people ruin things with it though. Really? Yeah. It just kind of goes back to what I'm thinking that what you said about the Toms is you hit them harder. I have this theory that the most important element in a drum sound is the actual drummer beyond any of the gear, beyond the type of drums, beyond the heads, beyond the mics, beyond any of that shit. It's how the drummer hits.

Speaker 2 (00:17:09):

You're not wrong.

Speaker 1 (00:17:10):

Okay, good. So you agree?

Speaker 2 (00:17:11):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:17:12):

Yeah. I mean, I've tested this where you take the same kit with the same settings, Sam everything, and switch drummers, and it might sound incredible with one dude and then total fucking garbage with the next person. I do believe you that it's in how you hit, but I guess when trying to develop that Nick Barker sound in how you hit, what kind of stuff did you focus on in your playing?

Speaker 2 (00:17:36):

Well, I was really just trying to focus on consistency with every single hit, trying to sound like a machine I'd put the metronome on and go over and over work on the timing, the control, the power, everything. I was just trying to get as machine-like as possible. How long did it take before you

Speaker 1 (00:17:56):

Started to hear yourself back and be like, all right, that's what I'm going for.

Speaker 2 (00:18:00):

Probably years for

Speaker 1 (00:18:01):

Sure. You started playing super young.

Speaker 2 (00:18:03):

Yeah, but I didn't start the double bass blast beats maybe until I was like 16, 17.

Speaker 1 (00:18:10):

Oh damn.

Speaker 2 (00:18:10):

I was probably like 20 or 21, maybe 19, so at least three years at least, and I was playing at least every other day of the week. I met you when you were 19. I

Speaker 1 (00:18:21):

Believe

Speaker 2 (00:18:22):

It would've been before that tour though, in 2019,

Speaker 1 (00:18:26):

2009.

Speaker 2 (00:18:27):

I remember turning 21 in 2008. Oh, well maybe you were not 19. I thought

Speaker 1 (00:18:32):

You were.

Speaker 2 (00:18:32):

Okay. Alright, nevermind. Maybe I just looked young. Well, yeah, you did.

Speaker 1 (00:18:37):

So why did you stop touring?

Speaker 2 (00:18:38):

The first reason was money. I was just not pulling in any money and the only band I was touring with at the time was decrepit Birth and they really weren't doing much. They were maybe touring two or three times a year at the most, and I just had to do something that would make me more money. I didn't really want to go back to the music store because it was a really fun job, but it didn't really pay the bills. It was working on commission plus $5 an hour. It was poop, so I was like, crap, I need to go to school and get a real big boy job here, and at this time I had met my wife, we weren't married then, but met her touring with Goho. I discovered that it was much cheaper to go to school in Canada, even with international student fees than it was for me to stay in New Jersey and go to Rutgers or something like that, which was like 40 grand a semester, so that's why I moved up to Canada right there because of the school price, and then I just ended up staying here. The free healthcare and legal weed and all. I can't complain. It's cold, but whatever.

Speaker 1 (00:19:37):

How long did it take before, I guess you were not unhappy with the money situation.

Speaker 2 (00:19:42):

Oh, how long was I touring before I was like, okay, I can't do this anymore,

Speaker 1 (00:19:46):

And then how long was it after touring before you were like, all right, life's not so bad anymore

Speaker 2 (00:19:51):

Since I never really made much at all on tour anyways, I was just really happy that I was touring and seeing different places and pretty much traveling for free and sort of coming home with a little bit of money, but I guess it was my wife who really made me see, Hey, if we want to get a house and have a family, have a

Speaker 1 (00:20:12):

Future.

Speaker 2 (00:20:13):

Yeah, have a future. You got to make some actual money. Yeah, so that's what really kicked that decision and yeah, then I was in school for the next four years. What did you study? Well, it was called Agribusiness was my degree. It was like a minor in economics and a lot of business classes and a whole bunch of agriculture classes. I figured that I was going to get into the legal marijuana boom when that was happening in Canada and that didn't even happen. I ended up falling into an insurance job. My wife is a hairstylist and she all different kinds of people and one of them works insurance company said, Hey, I know Sam just got a degree. Tell him to apply here and we'll hire him, blah, blah, blah. I was there for two years and it was okay money, but it was really hardworking for somebody else when you want to be doing music stuff all day,

Speaker 1 (00:21:05):

So the urge to drum never went away during that time. That sounds kind of torturous actually.

Speaker 2 (00:21:09):

Yeah. The main torture part was the four years when I was in school because my drum set was still in New Jersey and I was up here with only a guitar, so I don't know if anyone remembers. There was a good year or two on YouTube where I was only really posting guitar videos and my drum set was not even with me. Unfortunately, it didn't get moved up here until we were doing the decrepit birth album Axis Monday and Matt was generous with the album money. He said, Hey, let's ship your drums up there and record 'em up there and all that. So big shout out to Matt Satello for helping me get my drums up here.

Speaker 1 (00:21:45):

Well, you just said that working for somebody else sucked. That's kind of always how I felt about things too. Anytime that I've been an employee of somebody or under somebody, it just fails. I can't do it. I have to be doing my own thing or everything just falls apart.

Speaker 2 (00:22:01):

If you have that kind of mindset, you just got to do your own thing.

Speaker 1 (00:22:04):

Yeah, there's no choice in the matter. I mean, you could choose to be miserable. I guess

Speaker 2 (00:22:09):

That's what it was, man.

Speaker 1 (00:22:11):

What was the next step? Then you start to realize that, fuck, I'm doing all right I guess technically in terms of money, but this really kind of sucks and my soul's dying. What then

Speaker 2 (00:22:23):

My soul was dying. Exactly. Well, luckily I had found out about live streaming. It was about two years ago now. Maybe live streaming is the savior dude. That really helped me quit my job big time. It is probably almost 50% of my income, pretty close, maybe 40 because I do a lot of session work too, but yeah, it's a big help.

Speaker 1 (00:22:46):

I think that people like you and I know that my company has been responsible for this. Make it look easy because all your content is really good. Right on point and thank you, man. It just is. I'm not trying to kiss your ass, but the thing about it is you've got a good natural kind of demeanor, so you kind of make it seem like it's easy. I was just saying, but as well as I do that, if you don't know what you're doing when it comes to live streaming or filming, you sit down to do it and it is the worst shit that could ever happen to you.

Speaker 2 (00:23:22):

Even if you know what you're doing in terms of filming, live streaming is a whole other shit show.

Speaker 1 (00:23:28):

It just adds another layer. The decision to live stream now. The mix I think is the best decision we ever made because originally when we were going to do nail a mix five years ago it was going to be prerecorded. We decided, no, we're going to do these livestream. We'll do other content like courses, but now the mix is going to be live streamed and it forced us to learn gear and learn how to do it. There was a sharp learning curve, but as we got bigger, we then invested in better gear and trained people and now that fucking COVID-19 happened and everybody is trying to learn how to live stream. We've already been doing it for years and just coasting. Really, really glad about it. I'm sure you've got a similar thing going on.

Speaker 2 (00:24:13):

I am very, very fortunate that I started live streaming when I did. That's all I can say.

Speaker 1 (00:24:19):

Just think about if you had to start now,

Speaker 2 (00:24:20):

Man, I'm actually kicking myself in the butt right now. Right before COVID happened, it was probably three months before it all happened. I had this brand new capture card in my Amazon cart, whatever you call it, and I was like, Hmm, you know what? I'm not going to buy this yet and now it's fucking $600. I'm like, well, there goes that. It was only 200 before. Oh, really? Holy shit. It jumped in price that much just because all the capture cards are just sold out everywhere. Everyone's streaming. Right. I'm still using my stupid little a hundred dollars webcam for all my streams and I wanted to hook up my nice cannon, but I need the better capture card for that. That doesn't have delay, but so for now, I'm still using the webcam. What kind of

Speaker 1 (00:25:00):

Capture card?

Speaker 2 (00:25:01):

It's one of those el Gato PCI capture cards that you actually install right into the motor board. Motor board.

Speaker 1 (00:25:09):

I've got one of those, but it's not internal.

Speaker 2 (00:25:12):

Yeah, I have the USB one, but there's a little delay. I don't like delay. I got to be be perfect.

Speaker 1 (00:25:17):

Yeah, we dealt with that with the delay. I can show you later how to fix it if you want.

Speaker 2 (00:25:23):

Well, I know OBS has all the adjustments for the millisecond delay left or right or whatever,

Speaker 1 (00:25:28):

But still wasn't good enough for you.

Speaker 2 (00:25:29):

I don't like having to go into there every time and messing with it. I do gaming streams too and different types of streams besides drum.

Speaker 1 (00:25:35):

It

Speaker 2 (00:25:35):

Doesn't save the audio delays in there.

Speaker 1 (00:25:38):

That's why we don't use OBS anymore because of that exact bullshit. What do you use livestream, which is more expensive and more complicated, but a hundred times better. We've also got some hardware for livestream, so our rigs, we have two of them are pretty expensive, but it's something that has made all the difference in the world because OBS, there's no way to save settings or anything. It's so stupid and so every time you do something different you have to change the settings completely,

Speaker 2 (00:26:07):

So what do you got? Video switches and stuff like that?

Speaker 1 (00:26:09):

Yeah. Nice. If you go to live stream.com, we've got this thing called the HD five 50.

Speaker 2 (00:26:17):

Is that one of those Roland thingies? I've seen the Roland video switchers.

Speaker 1 (00:26:21):

No, it's like this briefcase with a screen on it that looks like you launched nukes from it. It's really, really cool. How long did it take for you to figure that whole part out? The live stream? At

Speaker 2 (00:26:34):

Least a month. I was watching so many YouTube videos, how to do this, how to do that, and then I had to learn how to make my own custom gif, which I don't even use half of those. So many things that you have to think about and then there's the little alerts that pop up and you have to customize those.

Speaker 1 (00:26:51):

Yeah. Is it something where when you started making video, did you realize that it's kind of like another full-time job to just learn how to do it well?

Speaker 2 (00:27:01):

Yeah, pretty much. You don't want to look like an idiot on the internet if you're going to start doing it for your job.

Speaker 1 (00:27:07):

The thing though is I think that regardless of all that technical stuff, if you didn't have the goods when it came to the actual content, none of it would matter.

Speaker 2 (00:27:15):

That's true, yeah. Quality is definitely, well, the quality of the content itself is really more important than the video quality and all that. I think it's a

Speaker 1 (00:27:23):

Hundred percent more important. You can have a more raw looking video if the content is on point and no one is going to care.

Speaker 2 (00:27:30):

Example of that, for me, learning experience was fart metal that was filmed on my stupid phone. It was filmed on my phone, and you could still film something that goes viral on your phone, not a $5,000 video camera. It doesn't matter as long as the content is there.

Speaker 1 (00:27:44):

How much time do you put into your videos too much? What's too

Speaker 2 (00:27:47):

Much? Well, it depends on what type of video. If it's like an educational video, I'll go as far as doing research and writing a script, stuff like that. The drumming videos, that's a whole other pain in the ass. I'll make click tracks beforehand for every single song and then I'll make an audio cheat sheet, which is me talking into a microphone on an audio track telling myself what fills are coming up and that kind of stuff so that that way I can actually nail each song in one take and I'll probably, maybe every two months I'll film six or seven songs on a Saturday and then just edit them all and then I'll have that many weeks worth of drum videos and then say I film a batch of six videos that's technically six weeks of drumming content and then I can work on other educational content videos in between those releases. It's a big pain in the ass, but I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1 (00:28:37):

I mean, it takes a lot of work, but I think it's totally worth it. It's just interesting to me that I think a lot of people do it in the reverse order that you should. They'll start trying to live stream before they're good at an instrument or before they know how to record and they'll start making educational content about something that they're not that good at and don't actually have any real experience in. There's always people like that. Dude, it's so dumb because they sync all this time and money into streaming and cameras and all that, and their shit never goes anywhere because there's no credibility to it and people don't respond to it. The real order is get good at something, get some actual experience in it, kind of become an expert in it. Then the live streaming thing and video will make sense and then you don't even have to be like Steven Spielberg about it and you can do okay.

Speaker 2 (00:29:31):

Right. For sure.

Speaker 1 (00:29:32):

I'm sure that people hit you up all the time asking you about how they can get their YouTube channel off the ground. Tell me, this sounds familiar. You go and you check out their stuff and they're like the worst drummer on earth.

Speaker 2 (00:29:42):

Well, not necessarily that I don't want to be mean and say that people suck, but they do. It's usually me trying to tell them, try to have a consistent schedule but have good quality videos first and then have, try to have a consistent schedule and consistent content, but yeah, most of the time it's just a phone

Speaker 1 (00:30:03):

Cover. The consistency I think is super key. Were you always good about that?

Speaker 2 (00:30:07):

It's definitely been at least three or four years now that I've uploaded. Once a week I lose track of time, so it is got to be a few years now that I've uploaded it every Tuesday to YouTube

Speaker 1 (00:30:18):

Without fail,

Speaker 2 (00:30:19):

Whether it's any kind of stupid content, I try to make all of 'em good. Obviously, sometimes there's no time to make good content. Next week I'm actually going to post the drums only video mix just because this week I have so much other crap to do and not saying this is crap, this honor to be on here. Even on Instagram, I try to post once a day.

Speaker 1 (00:30:40):

What do you do when you just don't have good ideas?

Speaker 2 (00:30:45):

Okay. Here's the part which sucks for a lot of people. I have the advantage unfortunately of having a lot of followers that I can ask them, what do you think I should post next that, so I shouldn't answer with that.

Speaker 1 (00:30:57):

That's a good answer. I do that too.

Speaker 2 (00:30:59):

It's really hard to think of new content sometimes. Sometimes you got to go on the internet and see other stuff that's funny in another way and you're like, I'm like, how can I put that on drums or something like that. When I did the dildos thing, I don't know how I thought of that, but maybe I was seeing all these dildo videos on Facebook. There was just a bunch of dildo videos that were going viral on Facebook and I'm just like, damn, is there any drumming dildo videos and I didn't see any, so I'm like, all right, I'm ordering dildos. Let's do this. Got to take it from anywhere you can.

Speaker 1 (00:31:28):

I mean, I completely understand and agree. If I kept this podcast for instance, the exact same as it was in the beginning, there's no way I would've been able to keep it going.

Speaker 2 (00:31:40):

Really? Okay.

Speaker 1 (00:31:41):

Yeah, I've been bored out of my mind.

Speaker 2 (00:31:43):

Oh, okay. Okay. In that aspect, you mean

Speaker 1 (00:31:45):

Because you can only ask the same question so many times before you've run out of ideas or you have the same conversation for the 75th time and it's like if this is boring to me, it's got to be boring to the crowd too.

Speaker 2 (00:32:00):

I can't disagree. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:32:02):

So always trying to find new ways to approach to approach it, not just for the crowd, but to keep myself interested. I think that that's part of it. I think when people stick to a formula too much for making content, they themselves will get bored and then they'll stop being consistent. There won't be into it.

Speaker 2 (00:32:22):

Yeah. There's some times that I'm get a little sick of the blast beats, but I just got to find some kind of new song to put blast beats on and just make me like them. Again,

Speaker 1 (00:32:32):

There's this fine line between giving people what they expect and what they're happy with versus keeping yourself interested.

Speaker 2 (00:32:41):

That's true.

Speaker 1 (00:32:42):

Yeah, because there's times where I haven't wanted to talk to producers or just do metal stuff anymore. I tell that voice to shut the fuck up. This is what works. I don't know. It's a tough one though. You also don't want to not be yourself or do something that you're not that into.

Speaker 2 (00:33:03):

Yep, exactly,

Speaker 1 (00:33:04):

So you find ways to make blast beats cool for you,

Speaker 2 (00:33:07):

You have to, right?

Speaker 1 (00:33:08):

Yeah. I want to talk about that process so you get times where you're just not another fucking blast beat video over a done 700 of them.

Speaker 2 (00:33:17):

Well, sometimes it's hard for me to, there's been several times where I'll put a song into my software and start planning out blaby for it. I'm just like, you know what? This just sucks. I don't like it, and I'll just completely scrap the song. What's Jared? Let's Band. That was one of them that just didn't work out. 30 seconds to Mars. Yeah. I was going to do one of those songs and I spent an hour on it and I was just like, this isn't sounding good, so that one was in the bin.

Speaker 1 (00:33:42):

What's the ratio of shit you scrapped to shit you keep?

Speaker 2 (00:33:45):

It's a pretty good ratio. I don't scrap a lot of stuff. There's been only two or three of them that happened like that. I was just like, no, this is a no.

Speaker 1 (00:33:54):

When did you realize that this is actually a viable path? About

Speaker 2 (00:33:58):

A year ago

Speaker 1 (00:33:59):

That soon, I swear you've been doing this.

Speaker 2 (00:34:01):

Well, I've just been using YouTube to say, Hey, I'm still here, guys. I'm still doing my thing. Even when I was in college and while I was working at the insurance company, I was still doing a video a week and just still saying, Hey, I'm still here. I'll be at you in full force pretty soon. Just not yet, but I'm still here.

Speaker 1 (00:34:24):

I mean, that's actually how I knew that you were still in the game, actually.

Speaker 2 (00:34:28):

Okay, good.

Speaker 1 (00:34:29):

I wondered what had happened to you and then I saw that and I was like, all right, still good at drums. Awesome. So I'm sure that there were some people who continued following you as a result of that for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:34:40):

Absolutely. Oh yeah. At this point I've gotten a lot of my following just from YouTube and just social media stuff a lot more than I did from touring and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (00:34:51):

Are there a lot of people who don't even realize that you have that background?

Speaker 2 (00:34:54):

Yes. When I posted my video, I don't know how long it was to go now, but I posted a whole tour stories video and I found all my tour passes from my parents' house, and I showed all of them and told stories and there was a lot of comments that were like, holy shit, you were here and I didn't even know that was you, blah, blah, blah. Pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (00:35:12):

Again, man, that's that weird order of, I guess, things that YouTubers tend to do. They tend to do YouTube first and then get the musical experience, but you got the musical experience first and then did the YouTube thing, and I just think that's a better way to do it, even if the crowd doesn't know about your background. I feel like there's a level of seriousness, even though your videos are funny, there's a level of seriousness in the playing that is kind of undeniable.

Speaker 2 (00:35:41):

I appreciate that, man. Well, I do take this shit very seriously, even though I got to be funny. That's just who I am, but yeah, I take this very seriously for sure. Do you still practice drums? I don't even have time anymore. It, it's a practice. My main practice time each week is during the streams, just playing along to songs.

Speaker 1 (00:35:57):

Okay, so you said that your income is part streams and part video content and part sessions.

Speaker 2 (00:36:03):

Okay. Session work and Skype lessons sponsored YouTube ads. Probably the gist of it, there's mech and stuff, but those are small, smaller.

Speaker 1 (00:36:12):

I haven't seen your streams. I've only seen your YouTube videos, so what are you doing stream wise and how does that play in

Speaker 2 (00:36:19):

My most exciting streams are the gaming, no, I'm just kidding. The drum extremes. Tuesday nights at 7:00 PM Eastern and Saturday mornings at 11:00 AM Eastern. I play the drums for at least two hours. Lately it's been three hours because this, there's been a lot of requests coming in lately because everyone's home just hanging out on the internet

Speaker 1 (00:36:38):

And then that's a big chunk of your income just getting on there and playing drums.

Speaker 2 (00:36:42):

Yeah, people that's awesome are very, very supportive. They'll send in a tip with a song request and stuff like that, and dude, some people will send 50 bucks just for a song request and I'll be like, okay, I'll play your song right now. Some people are super nice and it's really great, man. YouTube has the whole membership thing now, which is just the Twitch subscription thing, which is like $5 a month and a bunch of people sign up for that, so It'ss been a huge help for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:37:09):

How long did it take for that to become viable? The streaming thing?

Speaker 2 (00:37:15):

I'm not sure what would've happened because when I first started live streaming, I was only streaming on Twitch, not on YouTube, and YouTube is where all my followers are, so I'm not sure what would've happened if I started right off the bang with Twitch, I mean with YouTube, because what I wanted to do was I was brand new on Twitch. I kind of wanted to practice live streaming on there first before I streamed in front of all my big amount of followers on YouTube, so I'm pretty glad that I did that, so thanks YouTube for banning me for live streaming. For those couple of months that I was considering, I had some pooping video on YouTube and they banned live streaming. I don't know why they banned me from live streaming because of that video, but yeah, once that was lifted, yeah, it was like the fall of last year, 2019.

(00:37:56):

That's when I started streaming on YouTube too, and then I was like, whoa, okay. There's a lot more people on YouTube than on Twitch for this kind of thing. There's exceptions for sure. The reason I started streaming in the whole first place is I saw this guy on Twitch, his name is Jared, the eight bit drummer, shout out to him. He is the reason I started doing this, he still gets a thousand viewers per stream and he plays video game songs on his roll electric drum kit, and his chat is bumping dude. It's like a party in his stream, so I was like, man, I want that, but for heavy metal stuff, so that was my inspiration for that.

Speaker 1 (00:38:31):

It's probably a blessing that you had a space to develop it in where there wasn't much of a crowd.

Speaker 2 (00:38:38):

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I feel like the first six months of me streaming on Twitch, there was not many people hanging out, maybe 50 people on the drumming stream, sometimes 75, there'd be 10 people watching me play Mario or something like that. Now it's way better than that, but sometimes you got to stream to nobody for a little bit. You have to.

Speaker 1 (00:39:01):

Yeah. While it was 10 people, was that goal in your head I got to turn this into an income or how did you get yourself through that?

Speaker 2 (00:39:09):

Not really. At that point I was just kind of just doing it for fun. At the beginning I saw how well eight bit drummers streams were doing, so I was like, all right. I got to somehow work streaming into my workflow here and for a while it was kind of poopy and then just out of nowhere people will just surprise you and just be really supportive all of a sudden like, bam, a hundred gifted subs or something crazy and then you're like, whoa, maybe this can be a thing eventually.

Speaker 1 (00:39:38):

Something else you said right now that I think is really key is knowing where your audience is. I feel like a lot of people, when they start trying to do career stuff on social media, they will try to use every single site and try to go big on everything, which I think is kind of dumb. I think you should pick one or two, maybe three where your audience is and really, really focus on that. For instance, I don't use Twitter because my audience isn't there.

Speaker 2 (00:40:10):

That's my least followed social media right there,

Speaker 1 (00:40:13):

But a lot of people will be like, why don't you work on Twitter? It's like, well, because my people aren't there. I can't disagree with

Speaker 2 (00:40:20):

That.

Speaker 1 (00:40:21):

Our communities are on Facebook and I know that Facebook is considered passe kind of, but that's where our community is and so that's where we get the most engagement by far, so why would we stop doing that? I think that if we were following trends, we might consider stopping Facebook, but that would be a major mistake I think.

Speaker 2 (00:40:41):

Well, because of what you guys do, there's still a lot of people on Facebook that are into that.

Speaker 1 (00:40:45):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean if I was doing something else then maybe I'd pick a different one, but I mean we tried to move our community to Discord. We tried a few different things and it just never worked. Facebook was where it works, and I think you kind of got to know where your people are and use those channels. It doesn't matter which social site you're using as long as you're reaching people.

Speaker 2 (00:41:08):

I agree, for sure. Did you ever

Speaker 1 (00:41:10):

Try Patreon?

Speaker 2 (00:41:11):

I do have a Patreon as well. Yeah. That was a big help. Big help. Well, still is.

Speaker 1 (00:41:16):

So do you find that a lot of the people who sign up for that are finding out about it because of your videos first or they find your streams first and then your videos?

Speaker 2 (00:41:25):

I feel like they find me because of my videos first and then they realize that I'm doing streams and other things like that. That's what most of my people say. Every time somebody says, oh, dude, I love your stuff. A lot of times I'm like, Hey, what was the first thing you ever saw of mine that's important to me? That's data, so I'm always like, what was the first thing, and it's usually just some random drum cover and I'm like, okay, and then they just started watching my other stuff on YouTube, but it's usually just like some random drum video that somebody will like some kid I taught lessons to last week. He was like, oh, you're deck the Halls. Blast beats video. A couple of years ago I randomly saw that and I've been watching ever since. I'm like, okay, that's random, but thank you. It's usually just a random drum video.

Speaker 1 (00:42:08):

Do the YouTube plays factor well into your income or is that more just promotional for you?

Speaker 2 (00:42:15):

Most of that's promotional, especially when I do drum covers because most of the times with covers you can't keep any of that money. Some bands, they'll allow you to split the revenue, but it all depends on the record label and what deal they have with YouTube and there's so many things behind that, but there's certain videos like Fart Metal or any ones that original content that do really well, those will be pretty good, but that's not as consistent for sure. You never know what video is going to take off. That's another thing with making videos, you never know which of your videos is just going to take off. Some of them just get a whole bunch of shares and some of them they're just like, meh,

Speaker 1 (00:42:56):

Do you ever work on a video and you're just sure that it's going to do great and you put a bunch of time into it and just falls flat and then you put one together in 10 minutes

Speaker 2 (00:43:07):

And it

Speaker 1 (00:43:07):

Gets big

Speaker 2 (00:43:08):

Both. Yes. It's such a pain in the ass, dude. I hate

Speaker 1 (00:43:13):

It, dude. It's the same thing with producing records. You get these bands that you swear they're going to do great and everything seems like it's going to go awesome. Songs are right, the members are right, sense.

Speaker 2 (00:43:26):

That'll happen with bands too. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:43:28):

And then nothing happens. It gets released and nobody gives a fuck, and then some band, like a signed glorified local band comes in and you hear their pre-pro and it's like, is this a joke? And then it sells like 30,000 copies first week. You can never know.

Speaker 2 (00:43:43):

I feel like movies are the same way too.

Speaker 1 (00:43:45):

I'm sure you just never know. I think a lot of people, once something is successful, they act like they knew it was going to be. I remember Rashan Connery saying, there was a time period where I watched a lot of his interviews and he was saying that when he was doing the first bond movie, everybody thought it was going to fail and then it got huge, but that it was a total surprise to everybody, but then after it got huge, everybody was like, oh, we knew it was going to be a hit.

Speaker 2 (00:44:11):

Really,

Speaker 1 (00:44:12):

We just knew it. Yeah, so this is an age old thing. I see. It's not just in our world.

Speaker 2 (00:44:18):

Very interesting.

Speaker 1 (00:44:19):

There are no psychics. That's kind of why I get impressed by certain people like Brian Slagel or Monte Connor or whatever who have a string of bands that just kill it one the next, after the next, next because it is impossible to predict. So I feel like they're either really lucky or they're tapped into something.

Speaker 2 (00:44:39):

Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's awesome

Speaker 1 (00:44:41):

That the rest of us aren't tapped into.

Speaker 2 (00:44:43):

That's a good way to put that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:44:44):

Yeah. I guess that speaks to why you should just make as much content as possible and never stop.

Speaker 2 (00:44:50):

You never know which one is going to. I spent so much time on this video about stretches for drummers, and I think it still has less than 20,000 views. I went nuts with that with the green screen and everything, but nope, nobody cared about that one.

Speaker 1 (00:45:04):

And you think they would care because that's so important.

Speaker 2 (00:45:07):

Do people ask me all the time about wrist pain and arm pain and stuff like that? So I don't know. They'd rather look at dildos though when it comes to YouTube. Yep,

Speaker 1 (00:45:17):

It's true. We find that sometimes our most technical videos that are the best do the worst, and then you put up some, I remember we put up a video of Tom Lord algae talking to me about Billie Eilish and talking shit about people who talk shit about her. That video, it got like a hundred thousand views in two days or three days, something like that. It just went. Then we put out all these videos that are in depth, awesome, technical mind blowing stuff and look at 15,000 views or something.

Speaker 2 (00:45:53):

It's hard, man, because when you ask people what do you want, and you see a lot of people saying one thing and then you do that one thing and it's like, I don't get it. A lot of people said they wanted this one thing, why they click on it, but you just got to do it all. I guess

Speaker 1 (00:46:06):

We kind of have this thing over at now, the mix where a lot of people will be like, we want more country or more pop or not just metal, and then anytime we try to do that, it fucking fails. It does so bad. Oh, you have it? Yeah, and a band like OPEC for instance, who, I mean they're big, but they're not like pop band big. We'll do seven times as much as a multi-platinum country artist or something. For us, some of the death metal bands just fucking annihilate the mainstream bands.

Speaker 2 (00:46:37):

Really?

Speaker 1 (00:46:38):

Yeah, yeah. We'll get big mainstream acts and they'll do a fraction, but people say they want that stuff, but then when it comes down to it, I don't think it's true. I think they think they want it, but they don't actually. How does the world work? God, I don't know. How do you figure it out? I guess knowing when to listen to the audience and one not to. Can you figure it out? Do you try?

Speaker 2 (00:47:02):

Well, of course. I think everyone tries to do that to an extent, right?

Speaker 1 (00:47:07):

Yeah, so where's the line?

Speaker 2 (00:47:08):

Well, sometimes when somebody, you can think of an idea that somebody gives you and you're like, okay, that wouldn't do well, but then you just make a giant list of everyone's ideas and

Speaker 1 (00:47:20):

Just go for

Speaker 2 (00:47:21):

It. Just fire out the bad ones and make a master list.

Speaker 1 (00:47:26):

You know what I've noticed about YouTubers that I know that do really, really well, and this is regardless of if they have a real background in music or a real background in recording. The one thing that I've noticed they all have in common, regardless of who they are, is the consistency

Speaker 2 (00:47:43):

In terms of content or in terms of when they upload,

Speaker 1 (00:47:45):

In terms of how often they upload. If it's once a week, it's once a week. It doesn't fucking matter if they're in the hospital, it'll go up once a week and those people tend to do the best regardless of their background.

Speaker 2 (00:48:01):

People like schedules, dude, fluffing is FAQ Mondays. People like schedules. That's why I stream at the same time every week too. Same thing. You got to keep it consistent.

Speaker 1 (00:48:11):

Dude, fluff is a perfect example of consistency. I mean, his content's good and he's a great friend, but the thing that I think is his winning for him is that he's never inconsistent ever. We've worked with him several times on different projects and he never misses a deadline.

Speaker 2 (00:48:30):

Takes it seriously. That's what you need. Got to be an expert. You got to live it basically. Where do you see it going? See what going?

Speaker 1 (00:48:39):

Just your video

Speaker 2 (00:48:42):

Work. My whole career. Your whole career. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:48:45):

I dunno. Where do you want it to

Speaker 2 (00:48:47):

Go? Where do I want it? Geez, I don't know where the limit is. I just want to obviously just keep the incline going. I've never had a really quick spike, viral growth kind of thing. Some videos will go viral here and there, but I've never had just a huge jump and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing. I've heard that's a good thing. Sometimes you can get really big really fast and then people forget about you quickly, but what I'm trying to do is just always keep the growth rate on the incline, but just steadily. I don't want to ever boom, boom. I don't want to crash and burn any of that. I don't know if I'll ever be gigantic, whatever. I don't know what you call it, but beauty pie. I'm trying to do the best I can with what I have and what I work with and what I can offer people. Try to help as many people as I can along the way too. That's why I offer lessons. I try not to be a dick.

Speaker 1 (00:49:38):

Do you see yourself going

Speaker 2 (00:49:40):

Back to touring or anything like that? I don't know. That's a really good question. A lot of people who stream say that whenever they do a tour or whenever they take a break from streaming, whenever they come back, it's apparently not as good, so now I'm scared to go on

Speaker 1 (00:49:54):

The streaming drops off.

Speaker 2 (00:49:57):

I don't know. Clearly some people like Matt from Trivium can do whatever the hell he wants. He's always going to have a fuck ton of people on his stream and

Speaker 1 (00:50:04):

He's a machine

Speaker 2 (00:50:06):

Too. He's a workhorse.

Speaker 1 (00:50:07):

Yeah. That guy is one of the most focused motherfuckers I've ever met in my entire life. There's no secret as to why he's doing well. I think he approaches streaming with the same level of intensity that he approached his band and every single thing that he does.

Speaker 2 (00:50:23):

Yeah, he's really pro with it.

Speaker 1 (00:50:24):

Everything. So I think that a lot of people will go on tour and then just let the quality of their streams drop off. They won't take it seriously anymore and that kind of is what kills them.

Speaker 2 (00:50:36):

But that being said, if the right tour opportunity comes along, I'll do it. If Devin wants me to do a tour or something like that, I can't say no to that.

Speaker 1 (00:50:44):

Yeah, why would you?

Speaker 2 (00:50:45):

Yeah, it all depends on the opportunity. So I'll never say, no, I'm not going to tour again. Right. So you never know what'll happen,

Speaker 1 (00:50:51):

But it's got to be the right situation.

Speaker 2 (00:50:53):

Yeah. I don't want to lose money going out on the road.

Speaker 1 (00:50:57):

Let's talk about recording. How did you learn how to do it? Your drums sound pretty good, man, and I know you're going to say easy mix or something

Speaker 2 (00:51:04):

And triggers,

Speaker 1 (00:51:05):

But a lot of people use easy mix and triggers and don't sound good. So where did that play in?

Speaker 2 (00:51:12):

I wonder just because I've been doing it so long. I don't know. I got my first daw, how old was I? 17, 18. I've been playing around with that. That was still midi drum samples that I was playing around with, but I don't know. It could just be because I've been doing it for so long and I've been messing around with MIDI software like Guitar Pro since I was 13, 14 years old. I feel like just the experience and just messing with different things and seeing what works and what doesn't is a big part of it. Learning what not to do and hundreds and hundreds of failed mixes. That just sounds like,

Speaker 1 (00:51:46):

Are there any things that stick out right away as what not to do if you had to just quickly on the spot and come up with a quick list?

Speaker 2 (00:51:54):

Yeah, don't make every single drum hit 1 27 velocity.

Speaker 1 (00:51:59):

Yeah, that's a

Speaker 2 (00:52:00):

Good one. A couple of my early drum videos are like that. It pretty much just sounds like the computer's playing the drums. I shouldn't have done that, but Well, it's out there

Speaker 1 (00:52:12):

Right now. With your setup, is it kind of like you can just sit down and go and it already sounds good, it's all pre dialed?

Speaker 2 (00:52:18):

Yes. I have a lot of templates saved. Oh yeah. The guy that recorded the decrepit birth drums, I had him come over here and make a custom EQ for my overheads that cut out all the Tom and snare frequencies and stuff, so it's mostly just symbols in that mix. I went nuts with my whole thing. I can even go more nuts if I wanted to, but just finding the time to do it. I even got another computer here that I have to put all my sounds on and transfer the files over just because I want another backup. But that takes time too.

Speaker 1 (00:52:53):

It all takes time. What are some of the templates that you've got?

Speaker 2 (00:52:56):

Well, the first thing I do when I open my program is I start the Easy Drummer and I'll turn on my module, so that's hooked up to that. And then my four overhead mics, well two of them are overheads and then two of them are closed mics for the high Hats and rides, and I have a template for those. I have a custom EQ for those, and then I have an easy mix template for that as well, just for some compression and boost. And then I have another compressor that I throw on that just to get splashes louder and then I throw everything onto a drum track and then I put another instance of Easy Mix on that just for another boost and then that just goes to the master. All my stuff is pretty much templates now, even down to when I open Easy Drummer and I have three different templates of Easy Drummer sounds that I use depending on what kind of song I'm doing,

Speaker 1 (00:53:46):

Like Death Metal

Speaker 2 (00:53:47):

Or like Death Metal or the Standard Easy two kit or the metal machine kit or the metal kit that Jason and Mark did. Those are all good ones.

Speaker 1 (00:53:57):

I feel like all these tools are really, really good if you know what to do with

Speaker 2 (00:54:01):

Them. Yeah, that's true. Well, I didn't know what I was doing the first five years I was using Easy Drummer. Figure it out though. But it took time. All this stuff unfortunately is just you have to have time to play with it and make mistakes. That's a big part of it,

Speaker 1 (00:54:18):

So if you take inventory of all the different things you'd had to get good at in order to make this work, it's like you had to get good at drumming in multiple styles. Had to get good at streaming, had to get good at filming, had to get good at recording, had to get good at talking on camera. Had to learn how to actually collect income from it,

Speaker 2 (00:54:37):

Editing videos,

Speaker 1 (00:54:38):

Anything else? Editing videos, editing, audio mixing.

Speaker 2 (00:54:42):

I feel like if I had a team to help me with all my stuff, I would get so much more done. I feel like soon I should do that. You're a lone wolf. I do everything myself. Dude, it's time. I was bursting at the seams last week. I don't know if you know Tony Fluffs buddy.

Speaker 1 (00:54:59):

Oh, Tony? Yeah, Tony. Yeah. Which Tony? No, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 2 (00:55:02):

He's been getting me my YouTube sponsors like Raid Shadow Legends and the mobile games and stuff like that, and last week he got me two of 'em. I'm just like, dude, I can't. I did it. I did two videos last week, but it was so much work. Dude, it took me three days to edit a video that was 16 minutes long.

Speaker 1 (00:55:20):

Why don't you get a helper?

Speaker 2 (00:55:21):

I know. I need to teach my wife how to do some shit. She's not working right now. She's home. Earn your

Speaker 1 (00:55:27):

Cut, man. If I didn't have help, I wouldn't be able to do this stuff. Are you aware who Gary V is?

Speaker 2 (00:55:32):

I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (00:55:33):

He's like a business coach online kind of huge investor guy with tons of social media content all the time on every channel. It's ridiculous, but he's got 17 people working for him. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:55:47):

That sounds good.

Speaker 1 (00:55:48):

Yeah, lots of people are like, how do I get my content on point? Like him and it's like, well, 17 people. That's how

Speaker 2 (00:55:55):

Linus tech tips.

Speaker 1 (00:55:56):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:55:57):

That guy is the man because of what he started with and what he has now. Do you know?

Speaker 1 (00:56:02):

It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:56:03):

Yeah. He's got a whole team of people and so much just cool shit in his warehouse and that guy is the man I want to be the Linus Tech tips of drumming saying it right now. You probably need some helpers, isn't that? Well, yeah, he's got at least 20 people working for him. He's got people that write his damn scripts for him. I want that. It takes work. Doing all this research and writing, what I'm going to say, sometimes I don't write a script. It depends on what I'm doing. What would be the

Speaker 1 (00:56:33):

First thing

Speaker 2 (00:56:33):

You'd delegate if you did get help? That's the problem because so many things that I do, I feel like I wouldn't trust somebody else editing it. I understand. I'm so picky and perfectionist with a lot of my stuff. I feel like I wouldn't ever trust anyone else editing my drum tracks. I feel like if somebody, all right, this happened once when we were doing the first Abigail Williams album and the guy who was editing the drums, first of all, quantize the fuck out of it. There was no, I was like, no, no, no, no. Put it back. There needs to be human element in there or else I don't want to be on it. I don't want it to sound like a machine. And then he added all these extra hits that weren't even there. I'm like, this is just so much more work. I don't know. I just had a bad experience with other people editing drums. I feel like for a lot of my videos that are educational content, I could get somebody to sort of get a headstart with editing on those. For me, just cutting out all the blank space in between me talking because there's got to be edits and fast cuts and stuff like that to make most videos good. But yeah, there's a lot of things that I'm just like, I don't want anyone else touching. I'm bad,

Speaker 1 (00:57:41):

Man. I find that the best way to use an editor or help is to not expect them to just get it a hundred percent, but expect them to take 85% of the load and then you're going to have to fix it. But spending 15% of your time as opposed to a hundred percent of your time is better.

Speaker 2 (00:57:58):

I agree.

Speaker 1 (00:57:58):

But it's really, really hard. You got to train somebody.

Speaker 2 (00:58:01):

That takes time too.

Speaker 1 (00:58:03):

Yeah, it's worth it though, man. I think it's really, really worth it. I think you should consider it.

Speaker 2 (00:58:08):

Yeah, I have been for sure. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:58:10):

Tony, by the way, I don't know who Tony

Speaker 2 (00:58:12):

Is. Oh, Tony is. He's Fluffs buddy. Oh yeah, I know who he is. Paradigm's manager, guy, friend. He's a good guy. He has a little agency where he helps a bunch of YouTubers get bonard videos and stuff. It's pretty nice.

Speaker 1 (00:58:27):

At what point did you start getting brand deals?

Speaker 2 (00:58:29):

I'm trying to remember the first one I ever did. I know Distro Kid was one of the first ones, but I don't know if there was one before that. I want to say at least 50,000 subs before I started seeking anything out like that. And even when you have that little 50,000, to me, that doesn't sound like a lot now, but

Speaker 1 (00:58:47):

It's a lot when you're starting.

Speaker 2 (00:58:48):

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. It's a lot when, oh, absolutely. I was super thankful when I had 50,000 for sure, but I don't know, I felt like anything less than that, why would any sponsor want to work with you kind of thing. But I see YouTubers now with 10 or 20,000 subs getting sponsored deals. Obviously probably only a hundred or a hundred bucks or two, but something to start with for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:59:09):

It's kind of endorsements as a musician, a lot of people start thinking about that before they built anything up and it's like, why would Ivanez want to give you a guitar dude? What's in it for them?

Speaker 2 (00:59:19):

I have 12-year-old kids on my stream asking me if they should apply for a Los Cabos drumsticks endorsement. I'm like, dude, you got to be kidding me.

Speaker 1 (00:59:26):

They're not kidding, that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (00:59:28):

No, they're not, but they're just young. They don't know any better,

Speaker 1 (00:59:32):

But I know 35 year olds that are trying to do that. It's not just 12 year olds who don't understand how endorsements work.

Speaker 2 (00:59:39):

You got to be good and you got to be able to give something back.

Speaker 1 (00:59:42):

Yeah. I mean that's all it is, right? It's not like someone hooking you up. They got to feel like working with you is going to help make them bigger, and then in that case, you're hooking them up and them giving you something is the least they can do. I've always thought that musician endorsements sucked because all you got out of it generally is like a guitar and it's like, oh, well thank you. I'm making you tens of thousands of dollars or more and you gave me a guitar. Awesome dude. But a lot of musicians will just accept that they don't know any better, and from what I understand, most signature deals are like 5%.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):

Oh sales.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):

Yeah, 5% commission. It's like, what? It's so bad. But I think that a lot of musicians have this weird idea about endorsements that just getting them means status or something.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):

I guess I kind of felt that way when I was first getting out there,

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):

So I,

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):

It's like getting the verified check mark on Facebook. Your dick feels a little bit bigger.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):

When I first got my first free guitar, I was like, this is the coolest thing ever. For sure.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):

After a while though, and I never asked to get paid or anything, I felt like that would've been entitled. I was never that well known, but in my mind it was like I know dudes that are way more well-known than me who get free guitars all the time, but they never get paid a cent and that's fucked up and they're just cool with it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):

Yeah, there are certain players that are definitely responsible for certain people of their following, choosing a brand because of them, like a hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):

I mean, if those players didn't play that stuff, those brands wouldn't be where they are, in my opinion. So musicians should get paid for it, but until they decide to basically demand it or just make their own guitar companies, it'll never happen.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):

Yeah. So what kind of heads do you use? Evans though? The ones I have on my kit right now are the coated UV twos. They're pretty new for them. Two ply coated head. Apparently the coating was put on with some kind of crazy ultraviolet technology, so

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):

Makes it better.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):

I do prefer Clearhead better because of the attack and the high end just for the fast heavy metal shit.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):

Yeah. I was going to ask why you're using Coated?

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):

Well, they had just put these out and they wanted me to make videos with them, and I was like, sure. I'm always down to help them and do anything they want. Pretty much it's Evans. I've loved their heads since I was a kid, so I'm very, very happy to be a part of their family and they asked me to try out these heads and I said, fuck. Yeah. It was weird going from the hybrid snare head though. I've been using that for five years at least, and that's the one that has the Kevlar in it, so it's extra bouncy. It sounds extra machine gunny, but yeah, this one's just like a regular two ply snare head, but it's still really good. I'm getting a nice bounce out of it, but I do prefer clear heads on the Toms just because More attack.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):

Yeah. I always took you for Clear Tom Head kind of person. Alright, someone wants to get sick ass drum tones. What's step one?

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):

Step one, I would say have a good drum kit, but you can sort of make a shitty drum kit sound good if you know how to tune really well. So I would say tuning is pretty important, being able to tune the kit

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):

And that's really hard to do, so that's why I think so many people kind of skip that step.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):

You can be really, really good, but the drum kit just won't sound good if it's out of tune. Right. So it's got to be in tune first and then how you play it is probably just as important. Where

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):

Does sample choice and microphone placement and all that come in for you?

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):

Well, yeah, I kind of said before, it really depends on what kind of song I'm doing or what would sound good if it's blast beats and I'm obviously using the death metal stuff, but in terms of just using Easy Drummer mainly because it's so easy, I still haven't even installed Superior Drummer. That's how much I'm okay with just using Easy Drummer. It's perfect for me. I'm just using the samples. I guess with Superior you can go more in depth on the shell size and microphone placement and stuff like that, but just more stuff that my brain can't handle.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):

When I was mixing all the time, I actually preferred to use the Easy drummer kits than the Superior.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):

Really?

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):

I felt like, yeah, even though Superior is technically better, I felt like it was too much power, too many options. I could get it sounding good with Easy Drummer quickly, and it was fine. It was fine. You move on from there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):

You just said something that's very important to me

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):

That less is more.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):

A lot of the times.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):

Yeah. Fuck yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):

That's why a lot of my mixes were shit at first. Oh, you were trying to do too much, doing too

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):

Much EQ on top of an eq on top of another EQ on top of another,

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):

Or even in terms of drum fills, sometimes less is more is something more simple, is more memorable, more catchy,

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):

And that's coming from someone who's technical as fuck.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):

I mean, do you consider what you do technical or is it just kind of how you think?

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):

I guess it's technical. I don't know. Ever since I was a kid, I was always trying to play really fast drum fills over and over again. I was five or six years old. I remember doing that, so I was just always trying to play loud and fast. I didn't even know about metal back then. I was just trying to just be like, everyone would be like, oh my God, look at him. I was just trying to be that kid.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):

Well, a couple years ago you posted a deport gear cover off of their newest record, and I think you told me that or you posted this. I don't remember if you told me you posted this, but that it's the hardest song you've ever had to learn. I don't know if you were kidding, Dick. You were being a dick because Okay. I went in and listened and I was like, this is not the hardest song he's ever had to learn.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):

I was being a dick. I remember you asking me that. Yeah, I was being a dick.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):

I couldn't figure out if it was like maybe there's something to the field that's just crazy and I'm not understanding why.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):

Okay. That's funny.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):

It was a good cover though.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):

Thank you. Yeah, that was a interdimensional summit probably just,

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):

Yeah, it was that I was like, I didn't understand. So you played with Mutiny within Oh yeah. Well, back when they were mutiny. Oh yeah. You just said, oh yeah. In a very interesting

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):

Way. Well, I had a very interesting time with them from the beginning to the end. It was an interesting ride.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):

I didn't realize that you played with them until looking at notes for this podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):

Okay. I could have sworn we had a few conversations about it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):

Maybe some of my memories from back then are cloudy. Were you around when Roadrunner came into the picture?

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):

I was around when we started talking to Getter. Yes. By the time they were signing to Roadrunner, I was out of the band by then and I was already with Abigail Williams or Born a Fire as they were calling it at the time. Was it just not the

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):

Kind of music you wanted to be making?

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):

It was, but there were some tensions in the band and the bass player started dating my sister.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):

Yeah, that's always fun.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):

Yeah, dude. It just made shit so awkward, man, and he was just always at my house at it. I don't know, it just made it super weird and I guess I was bottling it up to the point where I was kind of being a dick to them all the time, just about stupid petty shit, and they were just like, you know what, dude? We can tell you're not feeling this anymore. Just go somewhere else. And I was like, all right. Fuck you guys. I'm out of here.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):

I kicked a drummer out of doth once before Kevin for trying to date an ex-girlfriend of mine that I was still friends with. I was with this girl for six years and we parted as really good friends, so she was still in my life, but we were a year fresh from the breakup and this dude's trying to date her and it's like, Nope, this is not going to fly. One day he came to practice and his drums were all outside, and that's how I did it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):

Oh, no,

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):

Don't try to date my ex if you're in a band with me, come on.

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):

I will say though, that Mutiny was the first band I was in that were trying to take things to a serious level, and I was very happy about that. The bands I was in beforehand were pretty much just playing shows in New Jersey, maybe a state or two outside of it, and I found out that the band I was in before Mutiny got an email from Mike Gitter and they didn't respond to it, so that was the point where I was like, okay, this is not where I want to be. This band is not trying to go anywhere. I don't need to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):

So if anybody doesn't know who Mike Gitter is, he's a legendary a and r guy who was working for Roadrunner at the time, so I honestly think that Muni Withins problems, they were too serious. I think that's what kind of sank them.

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):

I can't disagree.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):

They had all the stuff going on. They could play.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):

The music was great.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):

Yeah, great singer. They were committed. They had all that stuff, but I feel like there's an element to being in a band that connects with people to where you're serious about it, but you're not that serious about it. You know what I mean? There's got to be something casual about it to where you're, I don't know. There's something personal that kind of almost felt corporate or something.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):

I feel like with them it was always just stern. People can't see what face I'm making

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):

Right now. Yeah. It was a stern face though. I've seen that Sink bands a few times being way too serious. The local band that has their best friend wearing a cruise shirt and with the really, really nice press pack and now it would be an EPK or something and has the nicest gear ever and lights and the nicest merch, but it's way more than appropriate I think. Feel like they were that band and I'm not talking shit. I think they just didn't know better.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):

They should have gotten a lot bigger than they did. I will say that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):

Yeah, I agree. Sounds like Mike Gitter was sniffing around your campfire for a while.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):

Yeah. Oh yeah. I haven't talked to him in a few years now, but he's a good

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):

Dude. Was that kind of mind blowing to have a Roadrunner dude sniffing around?

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):

Oh, absolutely. Especially after we were big fans of the whole Roadrunner United project and all that shit. We used to watch metal DVDs. This is when we were in Mutiny at AJ's house there. We would just sit there and watch all these metal DVDs over and over again. Just be like, we want to do that. We want to do this, we want to do that. And yeah, that Roadrunner project was one of them, and as soon as we got a call from, we heard the getter was interested. We're like, holy crap, this is big. This is Roadrunner, dude, Nickelbacks on Roadrunner. This could blah, blah it. It was big deal.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):

I know. I remember when I got the email from Monte Connor one day in 2005. I was like, is this real?

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):

Oh, yeah, with doth. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):

Yeah. Out of the blue. I just got an email. He's like, I heard this one song. It's six. Send me More. I was like, what?

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):

Awesome. Really?

Speaker 1 (01:10:22):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):

So he hit you up then that's even cooler. Hell yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):

Dude. That's the way to do it. I mean, everywhere I've read, every band I know that's done real well with few exceptions were the ones that were approached pretty much without fail.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):

I think Slipknot approach Road Runner though, right?

Speaker 1 (01:10:40):

Slipknot don't count because they break every single rule basically.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):

They had a billboard number one album with blast beats on it. They don't count.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):

Dude, that band is absurdly big. Did you ever try out for them?

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):

I did not. I didn't even know that whole thing was happening and then Jay was in the band. Same thing with Dream Theater too. I wouldn't have had a shot against Manini, but I didn't even know Portnoy had left them, and then I heard from Monty, I think I was talking to Monty on Facebook one day back when I actually talked to Monty and I was like, dude, they're getting a new drummer. They need a new drummer. And he's like, oh yeah, they already picked him. I'm like, damnit, but I couldn't have played against Man Genie. No way.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):

He is pretty amazing. He's also their age, which kind of makes a difference.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):

That makes sense, yep.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):

But I don't know. I think you could have qualified for that type of gig easily. I couldn't see you fucking it up musically. I could just see. Maybe they want someone that's 50 years old, because that does make a difference if you have to hang out with somebody all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):

For sure. But yeah, dream Theater songs, well, certain ones. I used to study Mike Portnoy's, liquid Drum Theater, VHS tape back in the day, man, since I was, I swear like 15 years old, I've been able to play dance in Eternity Perfectly. I still do it. I just watched it so many times over and over again.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):

When you say study, what does that mean?

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):

I just sit there and watch the TV over and over again. Press Rewind when it was done. I would watch it all the time. That VHS tape is probably so just worn thin. That tape.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):

How did that translate into playing though? Because lots of people watch stuff and it doesn't translate into playing.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):

I don't know if it was because I watched it so many times. I was able to just visually watch what he was doing and figure out how to count everything because it was a lot of odd time signatures with Mike Portnoy, and it's funny because nowadays I hate playing odd time signature songs that I've never heard before, especially on a live stream going into something blind, but I don't know. Yeah, it could have been just repetition. I swear I watched it so many times. That whole thing front to back and just watching what hands he was using for certain symbols and certain fills and all that stuff, man, I just was analyzing it, just soaking it all in.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):

Did you imagine yourself playing it?

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):

Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):

When you were soaking it in?

Speaker 2 (01:13:01):

Yes,

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):

So one of my roommates at Berkeley who totally failed at life. He's a fucking addict. No, it was really, really bad. He drank about 80 bottles of Robitussin back when Robitussin had drugs in it and completely fried his brain 80 at once. No, not over the course of four months, over the course of four months. That's a lot. You know how people in college dorms would stack beer cans?

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):

He had a stack of Robux involved. My God dude. Yeah. This guy had perfect pitch and it was one of the best musicians I've ever met in my life, better than so many people, but he would tell me that he didn't need to practice much because he would practice in his mind. Sounds like what you just said, and then he would That only goes so far though. Well, yeah, he didn't play drums,

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):

But no, that's totally true. When this is very true, when I'm doing my drum covers, when I'll pick a Saturday and film six of them, I'll sit there in front of the computer for an entire week studying my cheat sheets before I go to sit down to play it, because when I go to sit down to play it, that's actually the first time I'm sitting down to play the song. There's no practicing days before I'm sitting there memorizing it in my head all week before I go to sit, so that is totally true, but it only goes so far because you have to be able to physically play the stuff too, right? I am just being a dick all week and assuming, oh yeah, I'll be able to play it. I just want to make sure I memorize it first before I go so I can actually nail it when I play it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:36):

Well, I think that if you hadn't done all that work all those years on your technique, maybe you wouldn't be able to just nail it sitting down, but I think that it's safe to say that you're on a technical level that allows you to just do that. Just get the mental game in.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):

That's what it is. It's mental preparation for these videos,

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):

Mental preparation, but on top of well over a decade of technical work.

Speaker 2 (01:14:59):

Very true.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):

Does it ever happen that you do all the mental prep and then you sit down and it's just not working now and again?

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):

Probably sometimes

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):

Sounds like not that often if you just said Probably sometimes.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):

Well, I can think of the last batch of videos. Actually. The video that I posted this week, tequila was a very rare occasion that that was the second take I ended up doing for that song. Usually I do it an all in one take and that one, the first take was just, nope, I don't remember what I did. I either fucked up a really important fill or just did something that didn't work with the trumpets or whatever was going on and I had to do it again.

Speaker 1 (01:15:34):

Sounds like that's a rare event

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):

Sort of, but that's because of all the mental preparation I do the week before I film. I got to do my homework. There's no time to fuck up around here.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):

Do you think that if you hadn't done all the years of technical work that you would be able to visualize the way you do?

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):

Maybe The visualizing is something that I've been doing since I was a kid. I've always just been able to pick things up, not just visually, but by ear too. My mom always was really surprised with me being able to figure out songs by ear on the piano when I was a little kid.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):

Do you have perfect pitch?

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):

I don't want to say that I do, and then you play me a note and then I get it wrong, but I'm pretty damn good with pitch.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):

Well, the thing about pitch is that it's not something you have to try to be good at. That's why I was asking.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):

No, no. It's definitely something that develops over time. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:16:25):

It develops over time, but it's like the natural inclination is there. That's why you could probably figure it out by year as a kid. If you don't have that, it's going to be really tough to develop.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):

I've always felt like since I was a kid, I just was able to interpret things differently and just make them easier. When I do a Paradiddle, for example, I don't even pay attention to the full pattern. I only pay attention to what the left hand is doing, and I just have to make sure that whenever the left hand isn't playing anything, that's when the right stroke happens. That's such a weird way of thinking about a paradi,

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):

So you're basically filling in negative space.

Speaker 2 (01:16:57):

Exactly. It's so weird to think about that way, but that's how I interpret paradis and play them if we all do weird things like that. I mean, did you ever take lessons or anything to teach you how to think? Well, not in terms of that, but I will say that when I learned drum lessons, I was taught in a way that I've never heard anyone else teach before how to read music. Maybe you have, it was called phonetic rhythms, and every different group of notes would be a word that you would say, so a quarter note was Pie, twoish notes was Apple, and then four 16th notes was a huckleberry.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):

It makes it easier actually. It's like a hack.

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):

Yeah. I feel like there's just so many hacks that brain hacks and I just stuff like that, how I explained what the para did, all just weird things that you can do to make yourself understand something better.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):

Do you do that with odd times too?

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):

Sort of, yeah. Really just focus on certain accents in the pattern in order to understand that odd time signature better.

Speaker 1 (01:17:56):

That's the way that I did it. They warped my head for a while and I couldn't figure them out until I just started thinking 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1 or whatever. That kind of stuff. Just break it down into little repetitive chunks that are super easy to think about, and then suddenly it was easy. It wasn't hard at all.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):

For some people, it's way easier to think of four groups of three. Instead of thinking of three groups of four, they're the same thing, but if you flip 'em around, you kind of interpret it a different way. It's weird.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):

Sounds like part of your, I don't want to say secret, but part of your method is to figure out how to simplify things for yourself so that it's totally digestible so that then you're not using, I mean you are using your brain, but you're not having to think about it when you're playing.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):

It lets you free up for other things. Right? Well, just thinking about what Phil is coming next or just anything, it just lets you just free up space. What kind of guitar accents are coming soon? What can I do on the ride bell that is going to compliment that? Do I hit every single hit or just the alternates of what the guitar is doing? Just any stupid little thing like that. If you're planning a weird fill that's on a weird beat. If it's not a two, four or an eight or anything, even if you start on one hand, which hand are you going to land on the crash? This sounds weird. It's hard for me to explain, but stupid little things like that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):

They add up though.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):

They add up, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:19:21):

I think that one of the biggest things to fuck up a musician is their conscious mind thinking about what they're doing. Too much

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):

Overthinking. Then all of a sudden you forget how to play

Speaker 1 (01:19:31):

Drums. It's the same with guitar. I've had moments where I'm in the middle of a song that we played like 300 times and then it's just blackout. What's going on? What,

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:19:47):

I'm glad I'm not alone there. You're not alone, man. I know of a really famous violinist who that's happened to on stage playing some piece that he's played hundreds of times, just totally forgetting where he is and what's going on, or it happens crazy stuff. Channeling a demon or something. Basically. I know that you said that you're open to whatever, but as far as if you get any really, really good offers, but in your head, ideally speaking, do you want to do something where it's a combination of touring and videos or would you be happy if it was just video forever?

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):

That's the tough thing because I interact with so many people online and it's always nice to think, man, it would be so cool to hang out with all these people in person in a live setting, so I feel like if I never go out there again to do stuff, there will be a part of me that's like, oh man, that would've been fun, but it won't be the end of the world if I can never leave the house again. But it would be cool to, I'll say that. I don't know. I just feel like there's so many people in my community who would just be so cool to hang out with in person. I've just gotten, there's a group of loyal followers that I have that are on my streams. Even when I'm just sitting there playing stupid mobile games on my stream, these people are always there just hanging out. They're just like my pals now, and there's people like that that they're just so cool and it's just really nice to have people like that around just the loyal ones that they're there no matter what. They're there for you. They're there for your personality. That's what really makes this shit really fun. It gets me emotional sometimes. Actually.

Speaker 1 (01:21:25):

It's one of the coolest parts with now, the mix we do in-person meetups nice. Everywhere we go, they happen. Whether we're there or not, it's one of the coolest parts for sure. Actually meeting people in real life that are supporting you online, it's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:21:40):

It's a really cool feeling.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):

Yeah. Alright, man. Well, I think this is a good spot to end the podcast. I want to thank you for coming on. It's been awesome catching up with you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):

I really appreciate you having me on here. It's been awesome catching up with you and yeah, this has been a pleasure, dude. This has been really fun talking to you. You're a lot smarter than I remember, sir. Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):

I don't know whether to take that as a compliment.

Speaker 2 (01:22:03):

No, no, no, no. This is a compliment. I'm not saying that I used to think you're dumb. I'm just saying that it is just been really nice nerding out with you and just talking about just stuff in depth like this and just the questions that you asking me. You're you're very smart dude, and I am.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):

Well, thank

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):

You. Very happy to say that you're my buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:22:20):

Yeah, man. It's a cool thing and I'm very proud of what you've done. I'm glad you didn't disappear.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):

Me too, man. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:22:28):

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 al Levi URM audio, and of course, please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.