DANNY REISCH: Producer Psychology, Setting Boundaries, The Death of the Monster Producer

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

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

Speaker 2 (00:00:06):

Levi.

(00:00:07):

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. Who knows, we might even respond. And number three, leave us reviews and five stars please anywhere you can.

(00:01:03):

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 Danny Reisch, who is a multi-instrumentalist engineer, mixer and mastering engineer. He's the owner of Good Danny Studios in Lockhart, Texas, and he's worked with some of the best in the business such as Lizzo, Coheed, and Cambria, the Zombies Third Eye Blind, and many, many others. I introduce you, Danny Reisch. Alright, well Danny Reisch, welcome to the URM Podcast. Hey,

Speaker 3 (00:01:52):

Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:01:53):

You said something interesting to Ben in the pre-interview that I wanted some clarification on. I think it was on the topic of interns or assistants, and you said this quote, you're not getting paid, but we still don't want you to work here. Oh man, what does that mean?

Speaker 3 (00:02:12):

Yeah, so that's an interesting place to start.

Speaker 2 (00:02:15):

I try to find interesting places to start.

Speaker 3 (00:02:17):

Yeah, I was talking to Ben in particular about the range of quality of interns and on the worst end of interns that I've had are a very select, very small group of people who I've had to say thank you. We're good. And that's kind of a tough pill to swallow when someone says, Hey, you're giving your time for free. You're coming in here in an attempt to help and learn, and we just don't want you here. It's pretty harsh. It's really harsh. But the thing with a session and the way you sort of curate your session and run the show, it says a lot for the tone and the sort of energy and the vibe in the room to the band. And if someone's a presence in the session, who is taking away energy, who is injecting themselves in weird way, there's just personalities that it's just not going to work out. I've had to let interns go. That's what that quote is in reference to.

Speaker 2 (00:03:16):

That's what I thought. I mean, I think that we pretty much agree. I saw that you said that you'd rather have someone with less knowledge, but more people skills. And that's echoed through a lot of people who have come on the podcast. I think that that's a pretty universal thing, which is interesting. I think lots of people who are learning audio focus so much on the skills, which I guess you have to, but they focus on that and tend to live in this fantasy world that the skills alone are going to do it.

Speaker 3 (00:03:50):

No, yeah, it's very much a, I mean this business is all about relationships and it doesn't matter how, if you've got a Neve console or whatever you've got, it doesn't matter if no one wants to work with you because of your personality, because there's something there that just rubs people the wrong way. You're just never going to get work. It doesn't matter how good your, I mean, maybe you'll get some work, but that's not a long-term game for running a successful career. I think you have to, and you're missing out to me. You're missing out on one of the best things about working in this industry, which is the relationships that you form through working on these projects. And man, it really is so much about how you interact and the people you sort of run with. And I think it says a lot about you and what your values are.

Speaker 2 (00:04:44):

Is that something that came naturally to you or did you have to be taught?

Speaker 3 (00:04:49):

No, that came, I'm kind of a people person. I tend to be pretty outgoing and I've spent 15 years, 20 years in a van and touring and traveling. And I think just the experience of being a band person, it's a lot of couches that you're sleeping on. It's of people you don't know. There's a lot of good graces that you are depending on. And a lot of that comes with being humble and appreciative and sort of earning people's trust and knowing how to just navigate those situations. So I think that's sort of part of my personality, but certainly the just years of touring, it just teaches you just how to interact with people. I think a lot of that's just growing up.

Speaker 2 (00:05:36):

It's interesting about the touring thing. You know how there's sometimes these bands that they should be bigger. Their music's really, really good, they're really great on stage. They've got everything together, but they just can't seem to get ahead.

(00:05:49):

And I've known quite a few of those and I think without fail, in every one of those situations, I feel like outsiders will say, oh, they got robbed. It's an unfair industry, et cetera, et cetera. But from the inside what I've always seen is that they don't get along with people well, and they're shitty at relationships and they made, they make bad choices and that's why they're not getting any further. Nobody in any power wants to say yes to them because they're impossible to work with. And that's without fail. Seriously, every single time I have personally known a band that should have been bigger. It wasn't some external thing keeping them down. It was them not knowing how to relate to the world, keeping them down.

Speaker 3 (00:06:39):

It's tough, man. I mean, I absolutely agree. I've watched people just shoot themselves in the foot over and over and oh, they were robbed. They weren't robbed. They made sure that that didn't happen because no one wanted to work with them. That's what it is. And there's both sides of it. There are bands that I've had and artists that I've had trouble really, I mean the process is really just so hard. And I do this every day. What is it with this? Why is everything so hard with this on this record or with this band? And you talk to the managers, you talk to it, and it's like everyone knows, but no one wants to say it. It's a weird thing. And then on the other end, there are producers and mixers and people who on our side of things who have the same thing. And I've watched that in some cases it's helped people because there is kind of a thing where if you're kind of a bullshit asshole, it's like this self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't work in that world. That seems like maybe more of a

Speaker 2 (00:07:39):

Old school.

Speaker 3 (00:07:40):

Yeah, it's like an old school thing where it's kind of having a cocky ego about it. It's like, well, he must be important. Acting important. That's not my experience, that's not my world of music. But I've dealt with it a lot and those just aren't the relationships that I want to foster long-term where we work on multiple records or we end up touring together, whatever. Those just aren't the people I want to surround myself with. And the more I do this, the more, the longer you've been doing this, the joy of simply getting a great snare sound or a great guitar tone, once you've done this long enough, those things are, you can do them fairly. I mean, you have to rely on your skills, but you can pull those things off pretty easy. The thing that changes every single day on every record is the people.

(00:08:30):

And that's the thing that keeps it interesting. And those relationships are what keep me excited about coming in and doing something that maybe it's similar to a record I've already made, maybe I've been here before. But the people are different and there's so much to learn from new people. They teach you about yourself, they challenge you in new ways. So I dunno. Yeah, I feel like the people thing, we kind of just dove into the meta, but that's really the big picture. That's really the thing that kind of drives me and drives my interest in this.

Speaker 2 (00:08:59):

So in those scenarios where you have that you were describing where just like you're getting nowhere with the artist and it's just super difficult, do you ever start to question if you're the issue, it's done that to me at times.

Speaker 3 (00:09:14):

Yeah. Well, I mean anyone with any sense of humility would immediately go, is it me? Am I crazy? I do this all the time. And usually just these things just work. What is this? And maybe sometimes, I mean, it takes sometimes

Speaker 2 (00:09:35):

A bad fit,

Speaker 3 (00:09:35):

Sometimes it's just a bad fit. Maybe it is just about how you interact with that certain aspect of something that rubs you the wrong way. I don't know, people trigger each other in specific ways sometimes. But yeah, there is definitely that aspect. I'll tell you what I used to do. I dunno if you're familiar. Are you familiar with the day Trotter blog? No. It's a big blog in the early and mid two thousands based in the Midwest, tons of bands would come through and do these special sessions two hours in and out, four songs, live mix to two track. So my studio became sort of the Texas outpost during South by Southwest, ACL, fun, fun, fun fest. All of the big festivals that come through with tons of great bands in town. We would record these sessions. When you do the sessions like that where you've got five bands in a day and two engineers are mixing, it's really interesting to see which ones work and which ones don't.

(00:10:32):

And I'm trying to bring this back to the point you said about is it me? Because you can go through 10 bands in two or three days doing these sort of gorilla warfare sessions and one band, it just will not work. Sounds that worked. The kit sounded great before. Guitar tones were great, all the gain staging, everything is just working. The compression on the mix, everything is working and some band comes in and you're like, nothing. What happened? What happened? Is it me? Is something out of phase? Are my ears getting tired? And it's kind of the same thing with the personality thing. Sometimes it's just not the right fit and it's not you nine times out of 10 or the other nine bands you've worked with, everything sounds great and it just doesn't click. In those cases, I think it's better for those people just to work with people they click with and for me to work with people that I click with.

Speaker 2 (00:11:25):

The thing that's scary about those scenarios is, like you said, lots of times everybody knows it, but nobody wants to say it.

Speaker 1 (00:11:33):

When

Speaker 2 (00:11:33):

You get hit up by their management to hear about how things are going on, then the question becomes do you tell the truth or not? Because if you tell the truth, are you becoming a shit starter? Did the manager send that artist to you so that you would babysit them and you would deal with it? Or is it important for the manager to know this and will the manager agree with you? It's like a serious dilemma that I've had to face.

Speaker 3 (00:12:00):

Yeah, it's definitely an emperor's new clothes thing where it's like, who's going to say it? Is anyone going to say that this person is just a nightmare? Or is everyone, and who knows? Does the manager know? Does the agent know? Do the band members kind of know the ego trip thing or has everyone kind of drank the Kool-Aid and they're on board? It's a really weird thing to navigate. I had to do that a little bit with, I mean, here's another thing. When a band over the course of making a record has gone through multiple managers, bad sign, one common denominator. Definitely you, yeah. When you see those things happening, you're like, you know what? It's not me. This band has had four managers in the last year. I don't think it's me.

Speaker 2 (00:12:46):

Yeah, definitely not you. The thing is that I've had it go both ways where I talked to the manager and the manager was like, I know they're a total pain in the ass. Just do your best to get through it. We're on your side. And other times where I've said it and it completely backfired on me one time where a band was injecting drugs in my guest room and leaving needles on the floor and just Wow. Yeah, yeah, really bad.

Speaker 3 (00:13:17):

Next level bad,

Speaker 2 (00:13:18):

Next level bad. Trashing the place and bringing drug dealers to the studio and all kinds of stuff, shit you don't want, and the needles in the carpet and I have a dog,

Speaker 3 (00:13:31):

Oh, come on man,

Speaker 2 (00:13:32):

That's a line you don't cross. So I talked to the management about that. I felt like that was not drama starting, so that's a legit reason to talk to the management and that bringing that up ruined my relationship with that management. However, with that same management with a couple other artists or one other artist who was a total pain in the ass, I brought it up and they were like, yeah, yeah, we know. Just deal with it.

Speaker 3 (00:13:57):

They know. More often than not, I find that they know and it's like, Hey man, you know what? They're hard. I've had other hard artists. I have 10 other artists that are easy and they know and they know. Yeah, it's a weird game to play. The other thing is, I am sure this is the same with you, you get better at spotting. You listen to the spidey sense, the red flags go off early on and you just kind of go like, yeah, I don't think this one's for me. But sometimes people slip by the radar or they say the right things. The manager says the right things, the band says the right things. They seem like someone you'd totally like to work with, and they get in and it's kind like dating. People kind of keep their crazies locked up on the first few dates, and then they start slowly sneaking out there.

(00:14:45):

They start, you get a little taste of what's under the hood and it's like, oh man, this is not at all what I thought it was going to be. You guys kind of bait and switched me on this. You're nightmares, but I dunno, I try to, for me, sometimes you're too far in and you just go, I have to just see this thing through. It's going to be, I got to make my way through this record and I need to find something that maybe there's a challenging personality, but there's something about this record that I try to focus on. I go, I'm going to really focus on this and try to learn this and master this one thing and use this as an opportunity to learn and try to set the personal stuff aside or whatever, and find the thing that brings you joy in your day. Ultimately, if the, it's not your cup of tea, you got to find the thing that gets you through it.

Speaker 2 (00:15:37):

I think that the mark of a producer who's going to keep getting repeated work from a manager or a label is the person who can just get the job done, even if the band's a nightmare.

Speaker 3 (00:15:49):

Yeah, there's a lot to be said for that. There is. I mean, I can only think of one record in 17, 18 years that I've had to stop mid record and go, I just cannot do this. I just can't go back in the room one more day for this. So it's tough, but there is also a threshold, and I would put the hypodermic needle in the carpet move. I'm like, that would be in that territory for me too. I'm like, I'm not doing this, this. I'm not here for this and I don't want to brought into your world with that, and I don't want you to bring that world into my house, my studio, my dogs here, whatever.

Speaker 2 (00:16:29):

That's a band that burned down a house they lived in and killed somebody. So yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:16:35):

Oh my God.

Speaker 2 (00:16:36):

Yeah, before that.

Speaker 3 (00:16:38):

Oh wow. Wow.

Speaker 2 (00:16:40):

Yeah, I think I was justified.

Speaker 3 (00:16:43):

Yeah. Yeah, that is, wow. It's wild, wild, wild personalities in this. But like I said, that's sort of the fun because you mic up the same guitar amp enough times or that part, the engineering becomes sort of an invisible part of the process when you've done it so much. It's getting the sounds and shaping sounds. That becomes almost an intuitive thing, and it is more about just the way you sort of interact and hopefully get some joy out of your day doing this.

Speaker 2 (00:17:13):

The thing that I've noticed is that my ability to spot crazy has gone up considerably.

Speaker 3 (00:17:20):

Oh, sure.

Speaker 2 (00:17:21):

And one thing that I learned how to do is to spot who the crazy one is in the band and not feed their crazy.

Speaker 3 (00:17:30):

Oh yeah. Number one, getting that sense that you're like, this is the person, and then also kind of figuring out which way to navigate to avoid it and not trigger it and not antagonize it. Things can stay on a level if you keep people in their happy place. So figuring out whatever that happy place is for people is a huge part of doing this.

Speaker 2 (00:17:53):

If they're a paranoid type, for instance, because there's quite a few of those out there, but, and I've seen this in bands quite a bit, a paranoid person that's on the border of mental illness or who already is starting to get into that. There are certain conversations you can have with a normal person that won't cause any fireworks to go off, where if you have it with a super paranoid person, it just starts this snowball and just being able to feel that out to where you never go there. Oftentimes those people can be super easy to work with just as long as you avoid the landmines basically.

Speaker 3 (00:18:38):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, but there's so much psychiatry and therapy experience. There's so much that goes into all of that, and knowing that and being aware of it, it's a huge thing. I mean, there's a moment, let's say it's a new artist you're working with, you can tell they're maybe a little anxious about the thing. Maybe it's not full on. Maybe there aren't mental health issues. It's not that kind of spidey sense, just nerves. Even just nerves, which is a huge thing. Young bands are not super experienced. They have high expectations and they're not really sure. They're second guessing themselves. There's a moment someone lays down the first take or first vocal, you come on the talk back, what do you say right there in that moment? And if you don't have reverence for that moment and understand the importance of how critical the first thing that comes out of your mouth at the end of that is, and what kind of tone that sets, then you're absolutely missing the big picture of how you get the best out of people if you want to get the best takes. And that's what you're getting at is how do you take someone who you recognize these, there may be some issues or sensitivities there, and how do you just wiggle around those to pull the best out of them? And it just takes a lot of self-awareness.

Speaker 2 (00:19:55):

Have you ever seen Interstellar?

Speaker 3 (00:19:56):

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:19:57):

You just said there is a moment a few times. So I kept thinking of the Matt Damon. There is a moment scene.

Speaker 3 (00:20:03):

Oh, that's great.

Speaker 2 (00:20:04):

Which if anyone hasn't seen it, I'm not going to say what it is, but it's a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful scene.

Speaker 3 (00:20:11):

Yeah, that's a good little Easter record there. I must have channeling that.

Speaker 2 (00:20:15):

There is a moment is I saw it in the theater in an IMAX theater, and that part was just such a surprise.

Speaker 3 (00:20:22):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:20:23):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:20:23):

Anyways, let's not spoil it.

Speaker 2 (00:20:25):

Yeah, let's not spoil it.

Speaker 3 (00:20:26):

I might need to loop back on that one.

Speaker 2 (00:20:28):

It's a great movie. So on the topic of bands that it's not mental in us, it's just nerves, which is totally natural. One thing that you said is about baby bands or first timers is that they second guess themselves and they have high hopes sometimes I feel like their expectations are kind of, it's a weird thing for me to say because I believe in dreaming big. I have super unrealistic goals. I always have. That's why I've been able to accomplish things is I set my goals way higher than what's realistic.

Speaker 3 (00:21:04):

And then when you fail at that goal, you still did all years ahead. All right. Yeah, you're doing great. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (00:21:11):

But that said, oftentimes new artists will have completely unrealistic goals about what's possible in the studio, and that's a real tough topic for me to broach because I do believe in dreaming big, but at the same time, how do you keep the dream alive in the studio while also helping them understand what's actually realistic?

Speaker 3 (00:21:37):

Yeah. So for me, that starts before we're in the studio, and that has to do with, I would lump that in the pre-production phase of getting a beat on what the expectations are and making sure that we're all sort of on the same page with what's actually feasible with whatever practical limitations we've got of schedule or budget or whatever it may be. But one thing that's important to me is to, especially with young artists, is to not be too quick to bring down the hammer of schedules, budgets, timelines, or practical limitations with something someone's dreaming. You have to let, especially a young artist, you have to let them say those things, dream those things and try to lift that up if you can before you bring down the 10 reasons why it'd be easier just to do it this other way. I think that's a really important thing.

(00:22:36):

Now, it may not be feasible to do those things, but at least if you've recognized that that person has those dreams and expectations and know what they're talking about, you can start making it a conversation and a collaborative thing where you can shape it together and maybe come up with a solution for how do you achieve something that's hints at that, but we've only got these four days to get this one thing done, so what can we do to try to get there just within the reality? But I am conscious of not bringing that in too quick because I want people to feel like they've had a chance to get that off their chest and speak their mind. And then all of that would be, and none of this is happening in the studio day one. I like to try to calibrate people on that and have some of those reality check conversations a few weeks before. So it's not like a bummer on the first day of tracking when someone goes, yeah, you got that idea. Okay, well, lemme tell you 10 reasons why we can't do it like that, and we got to just go and we're just going to do it with the house kit and we're just going to bash through this. It feels dismissive, so hopefully there is a creative way where you can accommodate somehow and allow them to dream big, but then start kind of funneling the reality into the situation. As you're getting closer to the sessions,

Speaker 2 (00:23:58):

What are some of the unrealistic things that you feel like you sometimes need to funnel down to reality?

Speaker 3 (00:24:06):

Well, certain grandiose tracking plans. We want to have this massive, whatever it is, I dunno, horn section, string section, some massive thing come in or something. Or often what it is actually is someone has a reference or a number of references, maybe it's a record they love, it's a guitar tone. They love, it's a drum thing that they want to go for, a sound, they want to go for whatever it is, and the ability does not match

(00:24:32):

Where those players are. That's the one that is kind of omnipresent on every, that's not newbie specific. That's just the reality of wanting to do something and amazing, but not quite being there. That being said, I feel like it's important for bands to be patient with themselves and with the process and to know that you have to make a few records to get better at making records. It's not something you just come out the first time. You don't just land all of your hopes and dreams of your whole life on your first big record. It takes a while to understand the process and understand how to achieve more and which areas to dream big in. I feel like bands and sometimes my vision, I want a band to push further than they are willing to actually commit and go, and so it happens on both ends, but I do feel like bands often make the record they deserve at that time and that sometimes as much as I may want to take this thing further, it's like, you're going to do that on the next record. You're going to get there. You need to tour a lot more. You need to get way tighter. You need to practice. You guys need to do the things that make you as good as these bands that you want to sound like that. The reality is

Speaker 2 (00:25:48):

You're not there yet.

Speaker 3 (00:25:49):

You're just not there yet, and that's okay because it's hard.

Speaker 2 (00:25:54):

That reminds me of what a friend of mine who's a wedding photographer tells me about feedback he gets from photo shoots because oftentimes he'll take wedding photos and he'll get feedback, can you Photoshop my arm to look thin, make it look like I weigh 40 pounds less or something. It's like, dude, and do that. This is what you look like. This is you through Photoshop and editing and my amazing camera abilities. This is you. If you wanted to look better, should have started that diet six months ago.

(00:26:31):

That's not six days ago. It's a very similar sort of thing that I think it kind of goes back to that you were talking about. Oftentimes I think people are not aware of their own level and they're not aware of the level that the people that they look up to are at, either because new at it, they just don't really understand. One thing that happens in the metal world that's pretty common on the topic of references is people will have a budget to do a week and try to record an album in a week, and then they'll reference an album that had a $70,000 budget and was done in two and a half months with a band that's on their fifth album with the producer that's done 25 of the latest greatest metal records in the game. So what? It's not going to sound like that.

Speaker 3 (00:27:30):

No, I know. It's not.

Speaker 2 (00:27:32):

Not that band. It isn't this producer. You're not there yet, but

Speaker 3 (00:27:36):

That's why it's good to start. I think it's good to start talking about expectations before you're in the studio.

Speaker 2 (00:27:43):

I completely agree.

Speaker 3 (00:27:44):

It just helps everyone. You can avoid that deflated moment where people realize, Hey, maybe they aren't that good. Maybe their tone isn't that good. Maybe the song, maybe the part isn't that good when you hear it played back and everyone knows it in the room. But unfortunately, there's a lot of self-worth tied up in those lofty goals, especially for younger folks, and I think having that moment where you realize that your budget, that's one 10th, the budget of the record that you're referencing and that your abilities aren't there, those things are just, it's kind of a lot to swallow and I'm not necessarily hitting it straight on. I like to be gentle with people on that and kind of recalibrating and going, Hey, I love those sounds, but I mean, they probably spent a week just getting those sounds for that drum sound. That's a whole different level of process and we have to, I'd like to spoonfeed that a little bit early on so people can digest it a lot to swallow, and I don't want to do it on day one of recording where everyone feels deflated.

Speaker 2 (00:28:48):

What's tough about that, the budget argument is that you never want people to feel like they're getting less

Speaker 3 (00:28:55):

No or feel bad for what they

Speaker 2 (00:28:57):

Got because they can't pay

Speaker 3 (00:28:59):

Maybe the $7,000 budget for the record that cost a 10th of the big one they're trying to copy. Maybe that's an incredible amount of money to that band, and it took a lot, playing a lot of shows, doing a lot of tour or whatever to raise that

Speaker 2 (00:29:13):

Without a doubt.

Speaker 3 (00:29:14):

This is another area where me coming from being a musician, touring, doing that, I really appreciate when I see someone, everything's Venmo now, but I mean, I used to get paid. A bands would give me wadd up fives and it's like, man, this is straight up merch money that you guys have been earning for a year of shows, and you're handing out this to be in here for a week. You got to have some reverence for it and not make people feel bad for what they've worked so hard to earn.

Speaker 2 (00:29:47):

Absolutely. And also, I don't want them to feel like them paying less means that they get less out of me, even though it does mean a lot less time. I don't want them to feel like they get less of a mental investment.

Speaker 3 (00:30:03):

So

Speaker 2 (00:30:03):

It's a hard argument to use, but it's totally true. The budget is what allows you to take the time to do things a certain way.

Speaker 3 (00:30:14):

It just gives you so many more options on what you're going to go for. Yeah, I mean, that said, I did have an experience late last year. I did a record of this band and we did the entire thing. We did 14 songs to two inch, which is slow. It's not as fast as working on pro tools. You got to wait for a text to rewind, and you can't just do a quick punch. It doesn't work that way. We did 14 tunes in six days and it turned out so good, but I was really concerned about the timeline. They're just like, no, we want to keep it raw. And they were into it being raw and keeping the mixes rough and having sort of a more organic feel. And that was a case where I was the one concerned about the budget going, I don't know if I can deliver what we're trying to do in that amount of time.

(00:31:02):

And we went into it and with the expectations of going, Hey, we're going to keep this a little loose and raw. It was great. So it is a little bit about framing. You can get great results out of the limited budget as long as you are sort of dialed in on what you're going for, and maybe in pure X's case, it's just going, we want this to be a little more raw and accepting that that's part of the thing. Not only accepting but going, that'll make it interesting in a certain way and go, if we're not going to be in the Lexus, then we'll just drive the 20-year-old Honda Accord. We're fine with that and we like it and it's got character. Instead of trying to buy a, I dunno where this analogy is going by a used version of it and be disappointed with some clunker. It's just sort of accepting. It's where you're clocking in at with the budget and trying to just get good results out of it regardless.

Speaker 2 (00:31:55):

When you start having those conversations in advance, first of all, how far in advance and what are the kinds of things that you cover? For instance, one thing that I would always do is four months in advance, have a drummer send me a picture of his setup I needed to see or her setup. I needed to see how high the symbols were off of the shells, because some of these metal drummers like to bunch everything together and make it impossible to Mike.

Speaker 3 (00:32:27):

I know, and it's part of how they play so fast and articulately, but it's because everything's just right there within arm's reach. I'm like, I can't even get a mic in there. Even if I could, it's all going to be crash symbol.

Speaker 2 (00:32:39):

Then they say they want a natural sound.

Speaker 3 (00:32:41):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:32:42):

They want all natural drums, but they're set up in a way to where replacement is the only option. So I'll work with them in advance, get them to raise their symbols, spread things out, work with me on this. You want a more natural sound. This is how we're going to get one less bleed, more separation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, can actually position mics properly. We're working on this together, so if you raise your symbols now and practice like this now, it's not going to be a shock when you get in conversations like that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:33:15):

That's just about working together to actually achieve the goal, which is the thing. You can't just show up with your kid all clustered up like that and go, I want it to sound like this. I'm like, come on, you got to work with me on this. It is a collaborative process. I mean, I think that's great. You start that early because if what you're asking for is for people to relearn and sort of adjust their playing to accommodate, then that's another thing. You can't just spring that on day one and go, Hey,

Speaker 2 (00:33:42):

No, you can't.

Speaker 3 (00:33:43):

By the way, we're going to put this total different kick drum in here and we're going to raise your symbols three feet, and you got to give people some time with that.

Speaker 2 (00:33:52):

Doing that is asking for things to go wrong.

Speaker 3 (00:33:55):

I think so too. I mean, an important thing to me and I start around then is when generally three to four months out, we're looking at putting stuff on the schedule. So that means we're sharing demos, we're talking about references, we're talking about song structure, arrangement choices, tonal choices, all those things going into it. But I guess with the prep thing, beyond just adjusting your setup, I like to start having the conversation about, Hey, just because that's your kit, we may not be using every piece of that drum kit or just because you love those pedals live or that cab live, we may actually use a tighter cab for, we're not trying to reach the back of the room for the recording. We may be substituting some things here and basic whatever it is, just even on the furthest zoomed out level of just going, Hey, we may not be using all of your instruments just the way they sound as they sound. I may have something here that will get you the sound you want, easier, better, whatever. It's just about getting people, giving people time to think about all those things.

Speaker 2 (00:35:07):

When you're trading the demos and say that you start to spot some unrealistic stuff or stuff that is not going to work, how do you gently redirect so that people don't start thinking that you're a no man from the start?

Speaker 3 (00:35:25):

Yeah, yeah. No, that's a good question. I mean, the place to start always, and this is sort of referencing that moment that I was talking about, the moment where the talkback comes on after the first pass or the first take or the first vocal, the place to start for me is by praising the good. It's sort of like with my dog. You don't just spanking the dog when they do something bad. They never understand what's good and what they, it's like it's really basic. They

Speaker 2 (00:35:54):

Have no idea what the hell is going on.

Speaker 3 (00:35:56):

No, there's just a basic behavioral thing of leading off with something that they did really well. That's encouraging often is the place to, it puts people at ease immediately rather than you coming out with negative, with criticism, as constructive as it may be. Again, maybe someone's anxious, maybe there's some mental health issues there, and you hit someone hard with the wrong kind, wrong tone, wrong C, whatever it is, and it can really backfire on you, and you've kind of lost a moment to earn their trust. So yeah, the first thing is praise the good, and then let's talk about some of the other things that I'm hearing, wondering if you guys are, and often postulating, rather than saying, this section's bad, this turnaround is bad, there needs to be some kind of base movement in here to the transition's not working, whatever. Instead of just hammering down on it going, would you guys be open to exploring reworking that bridge?

(00:36:54):

Are you guys open to doing this? Are you, if you say yes, then we can talk and I can share my thoughts, but at least it's sort of a bit more of how open are you? And once you get in there and people go, oh yeah, no, we're open to exploring that. Okay, great. Well, I've got some other thoughts too, if you guys are down to hear them. I think that takes a little bit of the dynamic of me judging out of it, and it makes it more conversational and I mean, that's the place to go for me.

Speaker 2 (00:37:23):

Conversational instead of adversarial. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:37:26):

Instead of me going, I'm the guy, I'm Oz that sits behind this glass window, and I just go, Nope, not good. Nope, you could do that better. That should be better. That section, no one wants to work with that guy. It's too much time to be in the room with people making a record, and you want to spend it with people who are, get what you're going for and are encouraging of it.

Speaker 2 (00:37:48):

Older school producers were known for being monsters

(00:37:52):

A lot more about this stuff, but the thing that's interesting to me about that is it's not like the psychology of musicians and artists has changed, in my opinion. It's the same as it ever was. I bet if you took a musician from the 16 hundreds, they would have a similar psychology, obviously different circumstance, but similar artistic temperament as an artist now. So to think that artists in the seventies or eighties or nineties were different kinds of people than artists now is kind of dumb. We don't evolve that fast. So that said, seventies, eighties, nineties, producers are known to be monsters a lot of the time. Why did that work then, and why does it not work now?

Speaker 3 (00:38:38):

Well, I'll tell you exactly why, and I've thought about this a lot because I am a music history. I'm psycho for music. Studio is just filled with music history books, and I'm fascinated by that. It worked that way because they needed to match the ego of the rockstar. We don't really live in a time of rock stars, super successful musicians. For me now, maybe we are not living in a time of eccentric virtuo rock stars. It's more bands are, it's a different time. And the producers, I think back then needed to match a level of bravado and eccentricity and ego, and that was sort of their brand back then in a time when there was a lot of money in the music industry, which fueled a lot of ego. I mean, it really just fueled the whole system for rock stars to become, I mean, just huge rock stars.

(00:39:38):

And I think the producers of that time felt like they needed to bring that same level of persona, ego, whatever their brand is to the table, and they got work because of it. Nowadays, we are living in a world where there is way less money in the music industry and super successful musicians in my opinion, are not, I mean, there are still the fraction of 1% upper crust radio bands, but it's a different world to be in a moderately successful band. Now, you might still go home from tour and have to pick up work doing something, and you could go out and play in front of a lot of people, but we don't have an infrastructure of record sales that fuels that sort of inflated persona that the seventies and eighties that people thrived on. So I think there's a little more humility in our world of music now, and I think that the people who are still here are not doing it for the money and the fame and the flash and the success. They're doing it because they love it for the most part. I mean, you can point holes and poke holes in either side of that, but for the most part, I think the people that are in the music industry now are here because they're passionate and because they love music or they love the arts. And I think back then there was a lot more money and a lot more flash, and it attracted a very different kind of personality to those roles and that name producer.

Speaker 2 (00:41:05):

Yeah, I mean, I guess how are you going to get somebody that's that over the top with their narcissism and ego to listen to you if you're not matching their level?

Speaker 3 (00:41:18):

Sure. Well, it's like the Phil Specter thing. It's like I've heard those recordings where there's outtakes where he is working with the Beatles and just hearing him go back and forth with John Lennon on the talk back, it's like, this isn't even about this song. This is about both of you trying to prove who's the big dog in the room. And there is an element to that that I don't know. I mean, listen, those guys are selling millions of records, so what do I know? But they're just living in a different time and they're kind of living in an ego fantasy trip world. Maybe it served them.

Speaker 2 (00:41:53):

I'm sure it served them.

Speaker 3 (00:41:55):

I'm sure it did. I'm sure it did. But nowadays, coming in guns blazing with that kind of attitude, I feel like it would be really alienating. Artists are just, we just don't have that infrastructure in the music business anymore.

Speaker 2 (00:42:09):

Yeah, I think that in the past, there was enough money to put up with things. For instance, people would also put up with lots of bad drug habits. It's not that people don't do drugs now. I mean, you always hear about people ODing, but much more in the shadows, and it's not like, man, I watched some DVDs from tour DVDs from the nineties and eighties, and some bands are injecting right there

Speaker 3 (00:42:38):

Straight up on camera,

Speaker 2 (00:42:39):

On camera, no big deal with just having fun and that kind of stuff, that whole lifestyle. It's not that it doesn't happen, but it's not really, it's kind of frowned upon and people don't like to work with junkies. There's not enough money to justify it. I think in the past, there was so much money to be made. I just read Duff MCC Kagan's autobiography, holy shit, that band was worse than I thought they were when it comes to, I didn't realize the level

Speaker 3 (00:43:13):

Depth of it,

Speaker 2 (00:43:13):

The depths of drug abuse that was going on in Guns N Roses, it's way beyond what the media was portraying when I was a kid, and that it was already portrayed as a whole hell of a lot, but the level of it was just insane. That book's really good, by the way. But anyways, my point being Guns and Roses made so much money for so many people that I'm sure that the business minds were like, we'll, just figure out a way to deal with this.

Speaker 3 (00:43:45):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (00:43:45):

Get enough handlers, get them their drugs, get them their hookers, get them whatever the fuck they need.

Speaker 3 (00:43:52):

They're making so much cash. Nobody do anything to shake this up because we're all feeding off of it. I mean, the same thing in recent years. I mean, it's the same thing with Amy Winehouse. That's a different world, but it's not that it doesn't happen, but it is something that is sort of relegated to an area of music where the excess in that department generally matches some extreme amount of money that we're talking about. We just don't live in that world anymore. Records come out more or less for diehard fans. They're buying vinyl on tour. People are downloading, but the physical sales have slowed down. The streaming thing hasn't replaced that gap of physical product sales, and we don't have the cash that record sales accounted for really lubricated the whole system. It made the whole thing flow for better or for worse, because on with this send, you're talking about the extreme extreme excess where the whole thing, I mean, look at Van Halen or Motley crude Guns N Roses, just the excess that they were able to tap into.

(00:45:01):

We're just not there at this point in. We're just not. Those just aren't. It's just not where it is. And there has been a cultural shift, I think shift in the last 20, 30 years. There's been a cultural shift of talking about mental health, talking about drug abuse, alcohol abuse. It's not celebrated the way it was going from late seventies all the way through the nineties. I mean, we've lost too many important people to suicide and overdoses, and it's not a cool thing to be an excessive junkie, drug addict rockstar. That's not cool. That's actually a good thing.

Speaker 2 (00:45:35):

That's a very good thing. I remember in the nineties, they made heroin addiction look cool in the media,

Speaker 3 (00:45:41):

And

Speaker 2 (00:45:41):

I remember that Axel Rose would talk about being bipolar, and that got turned into, this is no towards anyone who's bipolar. It's a serious condition, but it was made out to be this cool artistic thing like, Ooh, Axel Rose is bipolar. He's so much more interesting.

Speaker 3 (00:46:04):

Yeah, yeah. It's weird.

Speaker 2 (00:46:06):

You don't see that anymore.

Speaker 3 (00:46:08):

No, you don't see that anymore. People are like, oh, should we get him help? Should we pull him off the road for a little while? Should we get him out of the spotlight? No. Back then it was like, this is going to be a catastrophic, massive, colossal, crazy event. Let's put 'em on stage and film it.

Speaker 2 (00:46:25):

Yep, exactly. So I think that the musicians coming in really should realize this and not get too big for their britches, basically. I think that that's something I'm noticing among a lot of successful musicians these days is they're not too big for their britches. And I think that when they are, that tends to limit their careers from the, because people don't want to be around that. They're afraid of it.

Speaker 3 (00:46:53):

Yeah. No, I don't want to be around it. I don't want to make that record. I'll just work with someone who is great to spend my days with. I'd way rather spend my time doing that. Yeah, it's a good shift. In general, I feel like the shift of being able to talk, I mean, even us today being able to talk about drug abuse and alcohol abuse, mental health, it's just not taboo anymore. And it's okay that people are addressing that head on. It's great. It's been good for the music biz.

Speaker 2 (00:47:23):

Yeah, I completely agree. I can't believe the kind of stuff that was normalized when I was growing up that was made to look cool. It's really, really bad at the time.

Speaker 3 (00:47:35):

It's disturbing.

Speaker 2 (00:47:36):

I didn't realize what a negative influence it was, and I thought that parents were just being assholes about it. But now looking back, it is pretty disturbing the messages that they were sending young people about what kind of behaviors acceptable.

Speaker 3 (00:47:51):

Yeah, yeah. Well, one good thing about us growing and becoming more self-aware as a people in 2020.

Speaker 2 (00:47:58):

Yeah, absolutely. So speaking of 2020, how's 2020 affecting?

Speaker 3 (00:48:04):

Well, my band other lives had a record come out a couple months ago, and I had five weeks of touring that got pulled off the schedule last minute. So

(00:48:16):

Not ideal, but we've been able to do live sessions through social media, do all kinds of stuff to essentially try to get out there and at least put what we've created out there. But I was expecting to be on the road quite a bit more this year, and that's not happening. So fortunately when I got word that our tour was being pulled the end of March, a ton of mixed work came in, and my world has just, I've just been deep into the mixing world. I've been doing some because we haven't had people in, people haven't been tracking. I've done a number of things where I'm sending tracks. I'll record on people's records, I'll send them tracks, they'll work on it. They'll send me something back to mix. People are just having to get a little more crafty with how we're going to collaborate and continue to work and be productive and do our thing. But it's been a little weird. I thrive on interacting with people and it becomes less of the job. It's more just time with my head between speakers, which is a little strange.

Speaker 2 (00:49:20):

It's interesting that you say that because so many people I have on are complete introverts. So many people who come on are like, this is great business as usual. Don't have to go anywhere, talk to anybody, just get to mix all day. And I've gone heavy with the podcast since COVID started three a week. So that's talking to a lot of people, and I'd say only 10% of them have been like, it's kind of weird.

Speaker 3 (00:49:44):

Yeah. Yeah. I may be on the extreme end of that though. I mean, I know a lot of people are very happy just to stay in their sweet spot, do their thing, work the hours that work for them, send the revisions out, and it's smooth sailing. But like I said before, doing it just to do it, just to mix. You've mixed enough records. I've mixed enough records. The thrill of doing it just to do it a point where without the interaction, it feels more like work to me. It's a little less fun to not have people in here. I also come at this from more of a kind of old school producer stance, and I think that's probably why I'm on that side of it. I'm the one guy for the other 30 you talk to that's like, no, I wish people were coming in and we could, I don't know, have more fun.

Speaker 2 (00:50:42):

So you said that you're like recording stuff and sending it to them.

Speaker 3 (00:50:46):

I am.

Speaker 2 (00:50:46):

I've heard of some people doing remote production sessions where they'll be on Skype. What are you doing to, I guess, be crafty and make it as close to the real thing as possible, knowing that it's not going to be the same until this shit's over?

Speaker 3 (00:51:04):

Right. Yeah. We've got a pretty crafty setup where I can video Skype. I can either video and film and they can be there watching and we can interact or I can screen share. I did a session last week where I have figured out how to patch out of our headphones system, so my talk back works, which is great, and it doesn't blast through the speakers. They get a sense of what the actual mix is, what the parts are I'm playing, and then I've got them on a separate fader on my headphones system. So it's pretty much just like having someone in there except for they're a little grainier, but it's crazy how instantaneous it is. I can lay something down and someone goes, Hey, how about can we try a couple different fills going into that thing? Or can we try this other fill right here? I'm in the booth. Either way, my assistant's out here and engineering. If someone's on the couch or they're on the laptop, I'm still in the booth in the exact same spot laying stuff down. So that hasn't actually really changed that much.

(00:52:12):

The thing that I miss is having a full band and tracking the tape and doing the whole thing and building from the ground up. I've just been mixing like crazy. It's all mix work lately, so I'm thirsting for that side of it where you're getting into new songs and doing massively changing songs. The way a song is presented, the way that the whole album feels from the get-go, rather than just going like, okay, I got another record to mix. I got to start that one in two weeks. For me, having the variety and doing some tracking, producing, having bands in mixing, that's what keeps it fun to me and not feeling like I'm just showing up to the office to do the same thing every day. So I'm missing having the experience of having the band in. But for the meantime, I'm very thankful that my schedule is filled with a ton of mixed work because there's a lot of people that are hurting right now, not just in our world, but in the film world, in the world, in the world, everywhere. So having any amount of work, I'm very thankful that I've been able to stay busy, especially since my plan with the other lives touring for the rest of the year has kind of been thrown out the window.

Speaker 2 (00:53:26):

Interesting. Talking to you in Texas, and the news says one thing about Texas, but sounds to me like your life is somewhat still shut down.

Speaker 3 (00:53:36):

We are very shut down.

Speaker 2 (00:53:37):

Yeah. Texas, what you hear about Texas is that nobody cares and business as usual. Fuck it.

Speaker 3 (00:53:45):

Yeah. There's so much of the, there's this thing Texans have, I don't know if this stems from Texas being its own country at one point. Texans are proud of Texas.

Speaker 2 (00:53:57):

I mean, it is the size of Germany.

Speaker 3 (00:53:58):

It's huge. Yeah, it is massive. You can drive from where I'm at in Austin, 10 hours west and just hit El Paso, and there's all of the other side of Texas getting to Louisiana on the other side. So you got about 16 hours to drive across Texas. Texas are proud of it. I don't know. It's a weird thing, but there's also this old school thing here where people, and I mean, it's not just Texas, but there's a thing where people in particular feel very much infringed upon if they're asked to do anything that's outside of the way they do it or the way that their daddy did it or the way they grandpa did it, and they feel like it's like you're treading on their liberties by having to wear the mask. I know this is a divisive thing. I don't even want to get into that, but there's been a lot of,

Speaker 2 (00:54:49):

We'll leave the politics out of

Speaker 3 (00:54:50):

It. Yeah. There's been a lot of resistance to the mask wearing in Texas, and there's been a lot of sort of not clear direction from the governor, which has only fueled the people going, I don't need to shut my business down, or I don't need to stay home. And then of course it spreads. So it's bad here. It's bad in Florida. There's a number of places it's especially bad, and yeah, it's

Speaker 2 (00:55:16):

In California,

Speaker 3 (00:55:17):

Things are very much shut down here. Whether people adhere to it or not is a whole other thing.

Speaker 2 (00:55:21):

The reason I'm bringing it up is not for political reasons, actually don't talk about politics on here. It's because I have seen some studio people that I know recording and I'm thinking to myself, well, I'm not going to call you out. It's your choice. But I don't know if I'd be comfortable bringing musicians who I don't know where they've been in to work with me face to face at this point, but also I'm a little more paranoid than most people. But it seems like you're not doing that.

Speaker 3 (00:55:52):

We're not doing that yet. I'll tell you what, I've had maybe two sessions where it was me and one person in working on a tune, and maybe we're just finishing some overdubs and they're not crowding my space and I feel fine with it, but for the most part, yeah, we're still not, like you said, I don't know if one of the guys in the band has still works at a food delivery place and he's interacting with 30 people a day, 50 people a day, 200 people. I don't know if someone's a bartender. There's a lot of service industry in the music world, and those people are in contact with a lot of folks, and it's nothing personal, but I don't know if one of them had it. I don't. It's just one of those things, it's just not something I'm going to play around with.

Speaker 2 (00:56:43):

Yeah, that makes sense. So as far as the mixing work goes, what is the typical turnaround now? Has your turnaround gotten faster because there's less stuff going on production wise?

Speaker 3 (00:56:56):

I don't know if the turnaround has necessarily gotten faster. I think my schedule has just piled up the way it used to on the mix side. For me it's about the same, but yeah, it took a little while to get that padded out the way I am when I'm able to track and mix and do all these different things and obviously there's a lot more projects to work on. It's a lot more calendar days to fill.

Speaker 2 (00:57:19):

What role does your assistant play when it comes to mixing?

Speaker 3 (00:57:22):

Max is, I don't even calling him an assistant because he is worked with me for seven years and

Speaker 2 (00:57:28):

Everything.

Speaker 3 (00:57:29):

I mean, he's like a partner to me. Really?

Speaker 2 (00:57:31):

Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:57:32):

But with mixing, mixing is sort of an insular thing. It's not something that two people are doing oftentimes, but when you need that second set of ears and you're like, I did this mix, I think it's cool. Are those guitars too harsh? Is there too much 2K in that? Is this muddy in your room? That sort of thing. It's really important for me to get feedback and I rely on him probably too much for that, but I really appreciate having a second set of ears that I trust in a room that I trust. He's also got a mixed room and he's got great ears. It's just the bounce in the mix to someone else to go, Hey, before I send this out, is there anything, is this sticking out to you or

Speaker 2 (00:58:15):

So does he do any prep work or any of that kind of stuff for you?

Speaker 3 (00:58:18):

Occasionally, yeah. When I get sessions in, it depends. The first thing I do when I get a hard driver, I get files is open it up to see what kind of spider web of insanity I'm in for. Sometimes people have sort of already mixed and they're sending me a session and I have to untangle the web. In that case, max is great at going like, Hey, I got rid of all this insane busing and these crazy effects that are routed and this is cleaned up.

Speaker 2 (00:58:45):

Too many people watching nail the mix, and this is one of the unintended consequences of nail the mix is that we'll get beginners who will watch something super advanced and then try to do it before they're ready and then send it to somebody with all kinds of weird parallel buses and

Speaker 3 (00:59:07):

Parallel bus and the buses that go nowhere and you're like, what

Speaker 2 (00:59:10):

Is this? Yeah, buses into buses next to other buses, into other buses that are and none of it's

Speaker 3 (00:59:15):

Labeled,

Speaker 2 (00:59:16):

Forget

Speaker 3 (00:59:16):

About it.

Speaker 2 (00:59:16):

None of it's labeled.

Speaker 3 (00:59:17):

Yeah. That said, sometimes I'm sure it's the same for you, sometimes the mix gig is ground up. I've got waves, I'm starting from zero, I'm rebuilding the session. I just set it up the way I mix and we're off to the races. Sometimes you're hired to mix when someone else has already gone pretty far and they figured out that that's not going to work. Someone in the band was going to mix it, whatever, and you inherit their, it tells you a lot about people's personality actually looking at their sessions. I actually love looking at it interesting to see what people did, but it can be tough, man. It can be really tough if they've gone too far with it,

Speaker 2 (00:59:59):

If they've gone too far with it and they basically sent you a session with plugins and they kind of mixed it into a corner. It's too complicated of a setup to be able to fix problems or anything, but it kind has a sound. It's kind of like the beginnings of a vision. How do you fix it without erasing that vision?

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):

Oh man, that is the absolute hardest question. You just nail one of the hardest things if there's already kind of a vibe but you can't really change it or at all. It's propped up with toothpicks. It's about to crumble

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):

House of cards,

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):

But it kind of works. It already almost resembles the thing that's really tough. That's really tough. I think the move is to try to figure out what is creating the vibe? What can I take from this? What's the absolute, distill it to the absolute core of what is making that work and try to incorporate some of that and ditch the rest of this stuff because sometimes it is, there is something good there and I get sessions from people that home records sometimes and you're like, man, this is absolutely insane sounding, but it's like working. Yeah, that's a really tough one. I think you got to just take what's working and do your thing. Otherwise the mix takes so long. If you're trying to work around someone else's nomenclature, busing all the plugins, the gain structures all completely screwy. It's just so hard to get any work done and I don't want to work like that. I think you got to do the thing that you do and that's hopefully why people are working with you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):

Yeah, I completely understand. I guess the only downfall is what if they get attached to the roughs? What do you do?

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):

Did you say what if or when they are one or they get attached a thousand percent definitely attached to the roughs that they also don't like, but they love, that's the tricky thing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):

Yeah, it's such a weird situation.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):

It's so weird. But here's the challenging thing is we can get there as mixers or as engineers, producers as well because we can get sort of entrenched in our world and it's important to recognize in yourself too. I can get defensive about a mix and go, man, you guys are revision by revision. You are turning this into Swiss cheese and it's turning into a, now we're in this weird uncanny valley version of the mix. That's neither your thing or mine and it's bad,

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):

Sterile,

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):

It's bad. When I start getting mixed revisions where people are making suggestions to limiter settings to me I'm like, okay, I'm not listening to that guy because that's just you trying to hold on to the way that you did it and I have to do it my way because the happy, there is no happy balance and I think that this happens a lot of times in music, in an effort to compromise, people will go half and half on something and a lot of times it's not better than doing one of those fully and committing to it.

(01:03:11):

So my goal with if I'm going to give on the mix side and go, okay, let's say I send a mix out and band's like We want this way different. My initial instinct is like, well that's wrong, but then you start thinking about it and you're like, okay, it is their record and maybe I didn't produce it and I am just serving as the mixer here and I want it to sound like me and be my thing, but ultimately it is their record and I want them to be super stoked on it, me getting my way and them not getting the record they want. It's like who really wins there?

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):

So I remember this one scenario where this pretty well-known band, I was friends with their producer mixer, well producer, the guy did a test mix and lost to some big time metal mixer, but I went to the studio and visited them at the end of the recording and so I heard the roughs, they were slamming, they were so awesome, but there were a couple things about them that didn't totally work. Like the snare and the kick kind of sounded way too similar, but they were powerful as hell, but there wasn't enough differentiation and I knew there were just some technical or there were just some issues with it, but the overall vibe was I had never heard this band sound so slamming awesome before and nobody had, this was a band that was kind of disliked a lot and this was like suddenly they were cool and it was great to hear them like this, but the producer lost the mix because he couldn't quite get it there. So he went to this big time mixer who made it technically amazing, but that vibe was completely gone,

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):

Man, it's so hard,

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):

But it was a way better mix.

Speaker 3 (01:05:02):

Yeah, well, it's like which one wins the technical, the technically better mix or the one that's got the vibe and ultimately I think you got to go with vibe and I think the same thing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):

They went with technical

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):

On

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):

This.

Speaker 3 (01:05:17):

Well also the technical is expensive usually and people feel like they should use the thing that costs them money, so there is that thing, you've sunk the money into it. You're not going to go back to the vibe. But we struggled with this a little bit on this most recent other lives record because there were a couple demos that early demos that were never intended to be used on the record that we ended up going back to late in the game. I

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):

Hate it when that happens

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):

Late in the game. I mean we're almost done. I mean we're turning the record into a label in a month and there's that thing where you go back and listen to these, there was a couple songs, you go back and listen to these early demos and it's like, are these just better? Is this just better? I mean it doesn't sound better, but is it better? And and we ended up using those and we had to scramble, but ultimately if the vibe is there, if the spirit's there that I think is going to resonate with people more than the mixer ego thing of going, but the mix is so technically good on this one. You have to kind of give up the ego a little bit as a mixer sometimes go, yeah, but there's this cool vibe with this other thing. Maybe it's a little hazy or the kick punch isn't quite right or it doesn't quite have the bottom end that the other mixes do, but there's something to this. It's got a vibe and I think you have to go with vibe ultimately. And I do think that cool sounds or interesting sounds, I lean that direction over unquote good sounds once you do good enough, it sort of, I don't know, it just sounds

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):

Good.

Speaker 3 (01:07:01):

Yeah, it just sounds good. Okay, well yeah, it's not going to stick with me, but that's tough as a mixer also, just knowing when you've kind of gone maybe too far, maybe you've polished something too much, maybe it's a little too slick and you've kind of over egged and figuring out how to revert out of that a little bit and bring hopefully a little bit of the vibe from the demo or the rough mix into it. It's tricky.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):

This happens on big records. This is not something that's unique to any different level. A really famous example is on the self-titled Slip Knot record that was done by Ross Robinson. I believe that track six spit it out was from their demos and if you go back and listen, I don't think anyone really noticed, but if you go back and listen, you'll hear that it sounds completely different. And for some reason they just were not feeling the Ross Robinson version. They went with the demo that they did before they were signed and nobody noticed or cared.

Speaker 3 (01:08:06):

Well, that's the thing is it's only a thing if you know really, I go back and listen to records and I told you I'm voracious with rock history. I am so fascinated by the circumstances that led a band to make the record they did or what lined up to allow a band to make a certain kind of record at a certain time. And it is so interesting when someone does point out and go, oh, well these two were recorded at this studio but this producer, but that didn't pan out. They redid most of the record, but they kept these songs. I never heard that ever, ever listening. I mean, these are records that are songs that I know so well. It just never struck me that way because people don't listen to music like that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):

I know, dude, when that first slip knot came out, I think I listened to it for eight months straight when in the year 2000, like eight months straight, and it wasn't until three years ago that their a and r guy told me the story about that and I was like, wait, it does sound different.

(01:09:05):

It's the same kind of thing where people think, I kind of like this philosophy in life. Nobody cares. What I mean by that is it's not that nobody cares, but people care about the details a lot less than you may realize and they're not paying attention to you in the same level of details. You're paying attention to yourself. And this is one of the reasons that I think that people should get over their social anxiety too because I think that a lot of times people with social anxiety feel like they're being looked at or judged a lot more than they really, really are. People typically take a lot of things that face value and the same goes when you're listening to something. You're just taking it as it's presented to you. Unless you're told this is a different recording altogether, why would you even think that in the first place?

Speaker 3 (01:09:59):

Yeah, really what it comes down to is people just aren't judging you that hard because they're too worried about how everyone else is judging them and how they're presenting themselves. We all need to just stop doing it. It just doesn't have to be that hard. Just be yourself, okay, and there's however many other billion people and if you're not the one, then go hang out with some people who you can be yourself around. It's going to be way more enjoyable. Yeah, I agree. It's tough though. It means that you have to accept a lot of things in yourself in order to get over some of those fears. And it can be hard for people and it can be hard as a mixer too, to get over your mixing ego and accept that something that maybe that is a little vibey or weird or maybe the low end is a little weird on that other mix, but it's okay.

(01:10:54):

Have people making revisions on songs and they'll go, oh, is that the exact same? Could we copy the exact same first hit from the second chorus over to the third chorus? I just want to make sure those hit exactly the same man. No one is listening to your record and comparing the way these two choruses hit back to back and go, you know what? I think the second one might be just a tiny bit. It just isn't quite as tight on that first downbeat. No one's listening like that. No one's grading you like that. No one gives a shit about that. If the song doesn't appeal to them energy wise or the singer doesn't appeal to 'em or people are way more zoomed out. It's like big picture. No one is making up their mind on whether they like it because of all these technical things, and I was just so much self-consciousness tied up in all that it's tough. I want to shake people sometimes ago, this does not matter. But at the same time, I'm also, I want you to be happy with your record.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):

At the same time though, where's the line? Where do you draw the line? Because at some point those decisions do matter because you do need to reach a certain level. I think with your work a certain standard at the same time. You're right, people don't listen the way we think they are as mixers. So where do you draw the line between get over yourself versus this is actually an important detail to fix.

Speaker 3 (01:12:18):

Yeah. Well, I'd lead in by trying to do that as much as I can until we get to a certain number of revisions and then I have to look at it and go, is this actually getting better or are we just pushing different fruit around the plate? There does reach a point where, and this it's because we're mixing at pretty extreme levels now compared to how things used to be. There's a lot of compression, there's a lot of limiting. Every mixed revision, everything you turn down, something else is going to fill that pocket. The bucket is always full. It's always already at maximum capacity. We're already limiting the shit out of everything. If you turn that guitar up a tiny bit, if you turn that bass down right there, if you turn the snare down right there, it is going to change the vocal, it's going to change percussion, it's going to change the rever, it's going to other things that are, and you can't know other things are going to fill that space.

(01:13:07):

And the same thing happens with eq. You dip a bigger chunk out of 200 on something, something else is going to fill that space. And the problem that I get to is, and this is when people start giving me really, really, really nuanced mixed revisions, really, really deep level stuff where I have to listen in headphones a few times to even catch the thing they're talking about. There is a point where you've just kind of smeared the mix into this weird place that maybe the levels are where you wanted, but you're just on this base. You're kind of just putting out these little micro fires. Oh, well I turned that guitar down, now this bass is too loud. Let's turn that bass down a little bit. And then big picture, you're like, are we just basically, did you just want the vocal louder?

(01:13:55):

People have a hard time thinking in terms of negatives and thinking of in a subtractive way, which is actually a little more helpful with a mix. What is blocking the thing that, what do you actually want out of this? Because when I get really, really detailed mix revisions, I don't know what the goal is of that revision sometimes. What are you really trying to do? Do you just want to hear more character in the vocal? Maybe I need to change some compression or saturate it differently. Or maybe the reverb treatment or the slap delay. Maybe something just needs to change a tiny bit rather than you trying to go around communicating with me and self-medicate, self prescribe the solution through me hacking through all these other parts of the mix. It can be destructive. That's when the red flags go up. I'm like, this is actually just tearing down the good work. We need to talk about what you actually want out of this. What is the goal?

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):

A good simple example is if you get a mixed note, could you please turn up the guitars, vocals and drums? I want to hear them more. Really what they want is the bass to be a little quieter always.

Speaker 3 (01:15:04):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):

Yeah. It's important to know what they actually are asking for,

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):

But fortunately I work with James as managing me and he's really careful about when we go into a mix, when we set up a project, it's communicated how many revisions we can go into because this a mixes isn't ever really done. There's just a point where you go, I think that sounds good. We got to move on. You can always keep going and with the wrong personalities, especially with someone that maybe wasn't totally happy with how the tracking went and they're trying to kind of fix it through you through the mix, you can just go so far down the rabbit hole with people and I think it's good to just set some of those expectations before and go, Hey, we're going to do three mix revisions. If you want to go further than that, we will have to charge. We just don't have the time to do eight or 10 mix visions on a single mix.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):

Is that your typical three?

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):

Yeah, we start there and if someone's got a small thing, I'm like, I'm not going to go, oh, you wanted that? You wanted that bridge guitar down an extra half a db, we're going to bill you because that's the fourth thing you've emailed me about. We're not harsh with it, but I want people to get what they want, but I also want people to be thoughtful and try to work and go, Hey, give me all of your stuff. I don't want a spreadsheet from each, I've seen this a spreadsheet. Each band member has a column and they go through and I mean, it's only one time I saw this English band. I've never seen anything like this in my life. And there are cases where someone's asking for something up and someone else is asking for the exact same thing down or different, and I'm not going to sit and babysit and triangulate with the band to try to figure out what they want. I need them to have that convo and come to an agreement as a unit and go, this is something we'd like. Here's the list. And then I get revision one out to them. You guys have that. I can't be on board for the whole conversation of every part, every, you know what I mean? We've got too much stuff going on here.

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):

What I would do is I would have them elect the point person, so I don't choose the point person. They choose the point person. So it already sets the precedent that they need to communicate with each other. And I make it super clear, I'm not going to be responding to any mixed notes outside of what this person sends me. So if you have revisions you need, you send them through him and that way it filters out the opposing mixed notes. Otherwise you'll get one thing from the guitar player then asking to turn the vocals down. The vocalist will text you at midnight asking for the vocals up and it's just a disaster.

Speaker 3 (01:17:56):

Oh, that's a big boundary crosser for me. I'm not into that, but yeah, it's so true. You get the contrary feedback. You're getting it, like you said, you get a text from one guy, you've got emails from this guy, it's too hard to keep track of. Yeah, it's too disorganized and you end up burning a ton of time.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):

How do you set those boundaries? Man, that's actually something interesting to me because there's a very informal kind of nature to this type of work, and a lot of it is about being personal with the clients and musicians as we know, don't necessarily go by any normal clock. And so to them it might not be weird to text somebody at midnight with an idea. How do you set the boundaries to where they don't feel like you're being an asshole, but also at the same time it's clear what's not allowed and what's respectful.

Speaker 3 (01:18:55):

Yeah, I think it's every bit as important to that is every bit as important as clarifying expectations in terms of what the goals are with the record beforehand, that having the boundaries when a working relationship has crossed into personal or someone has overstepped or they're communicating in a way that does not work for you, you got to tell 'em and just be straight up. And it's not weird, but when I get text messages, Hey, can you send this or can you do this? Or someone texts me or Facebook messages me or hits me up on Instagram immediately I'm just like, send me an email. This basically does not exist. If it's a text to me, this is going into a black hole void of the world of text messages. I know everyone loves to text and it's casual, but it just gets lost. And if I get that at midnight and I'm going to sleep or I'm in another session and someone's asking for something, I'm not thinking about it When I check back in eight hours later, I've already had 16 other text messages and it's gone.

(01:20:02):

So I'm just really direct with people where anything work-related, if it's is mixed revisions, if it's an idea, if they want to send me a reference, I heard this great song, we should do this on that tune, that's awesome. Send me an email immediately. Send me an email. Then I've got it all. And it just trains people to go, okay, Danny likes to work where there's a paper trail, there's no paper trail with text. I can't keep track of it all. I've got too many clients, we've got too much stuff going on. And so yeah, for me it's about sort of training the people you work with to work in a way that works for you. And I have to do that to stay organized because things will slip through the cracks if they don't. So that's the thing for me, email, everything's an email.

(01:20:45):

I can search it. I can find you if you ever mentioned it, if it ever came up, boom, there it is. That's the thing for me. But I'll tell you what, there are other boundaries. There are the bands that want to push beyond the time that was discussed and that was agreed upon for the day. And there are people that will push boundaries on drug and alcohol. I mean, there's all kinds of boundaries that get tested, and I just think it's really important to tell people that this is how I like to work and this is how I need to do it to stay and where I'm able to do my best work. I need to have these things in place to make sure that I can deliver my best work for you. And if you turn it that way, people are a little more receptive and I think they grasp what you're going for, which is that you're not trying to shut them down or not be excited. It's just that this is work and it's 1130 and you just texted me and I'm excited about that, but you're going to have to email me or sorry, we talked about that. This is what I need in order to be fresh the next day. I can't keep going until 1230 tonight with you and be back here at 11:00 AM tomorrow. It's just not going to work.

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):

So on the topic of going extra hours, that's a really interesting one because on the one hand, I'm sure that if you're in the final scheduled hour of a session, but something great starts happening, you're not going to want to just stop it because it hits the hour, right? No, you're going to keep if something truly great's happening. However, if you do that, you're setting the precedent that you'll go over that time, which is not a good precedent to have because then suddenly, so say your end time is six, but something just magical is happening at five 30 and it takes you till eight 30 to get it done. You kind of just set the precedent that eight 30 is now the stop time.

Speaker 3 (01:22:35):

Yeah, that's the danger, especially if that happens early on in a process. People go, oh, there isn't really a stop time. He'll just go whenever. It's a very dangerous game to play with. I'm pretty firm with it. What I will do, and this exists again only because such a great relationship with Max, my partner here, if a band is, if they're on fire, or a lot of times bands fly in to work with me, so they're staying here, they're in town, they're in Austin, and we have a limited time. You guys want to work another four hours? Knock yourselves out. I have to go home for my sanity, but if you guys want to keep cruising, max is here. He's been here all day. You trust him. He's been engineering with me. You guys keep going. That is the best solution for me to be able to allow people a little breathing room on that, but also do what I need to do to take care of myself.

Speaker 2 (01:23:28):

Have you ever had any pushback for doing that?

Speaker 3 (01:23:31):

Yeah, yeah, sure, definitely. Yeah. But here's the thing. A lot of this we're, again, I'm fortunate to have James from stateside taking care of a lot of these details with the band's management, clarifying, going, Hey, just so you know what one person considers a day may not be what another person does. You're booking a day of time, that's X amount of hours. Just so you know, we're not there to work 18 hours today that it's very clear what the time range is, and even before that line is crossed going, here's what the fee would be if you choose to continue going, it's an additional X amount hourly to keep going that long. I mean, on a project that you're going to be on for two months or that has a big budget and you're working, and again, some of this scales in a different way. If I'm on a project for six weeks, maybe it's a little different than the band that's just in for two days.

(01:24:31):

I can give a little more, and ultimately what happens is if I give a little more, the expectation is for the band to give a little more, it's got to hurt you a little bit. If it's going to rob me of X amount of time with my wife and dog and sleep or whatever else, then it's going to have to hurt you a little bit too. And that's fine, but that's just fair is fair. You're going to have to pay a little bit more for today. If you want to turn it into a 14 hour day, you can pay for that if you'd like.

Speaker 2 (01:25:00):

Makes sense.

Speaker 3 (01:25:01):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):

That's very reasonable. Especially if you handle it upfront. And I think that that's the big thing is the more you handle upfront, the better because then you're not setting precedents for bad behaviors and then surprising them three weeks in when you just reveal that you're totally not cool with something that you've been allowing for several weeks,

Speaker 3 (01:25:23):

Which feels weird to them. They're like, well, why have you been doing, it's a very unclear message. You can't wait until it's nod at you and you finally have the nerve to say something

Speaker 2 (01:25:34):

And then you're mad.

Speaker 3 (01:25:35):

Yeah, well, yeah, totally. So it's better just to, I mean, again, it's like expectations just communicating, and that just comes from experience and doing this enough to go, Hey, in the event that this happens, here's how we'll play it. And everyone goes, okay, good. And everyone is easy to agree with that. When I say it as plain and simply as we just talked about it, it's easy to agree to when it's an email, two months before you're in on the day, you wait till the day. Everyone's like, come on, man, we're in the thing. We got to keep going. Or you get an aggressive passive aggressive band member that's like, Hey, man, we paid for this. We need you here, blah, blah, blah. It's like, dude, we already talked about this. This isn't, we're not winging that discussion. This is already, we've already clarified how that's going to work.

Speaker 2 (01:26:20):

One of my old mentors told me, be a dick at the beginning. Basically, Dick, if you have to be a dick, be a dick at the start. For instance, if it's something like the band is using the kitchen and then they leave it a complete and total mess, be a dick at the beginning so that it's just taken care of because if you wait, then they're going to actually think you're a dick and you'll probably approach it in a much more aggressive way

Speaker 3 (01:26:46):

Or you're passive aggressive about it. It's just bad. It fuels a bad dynamic. I mean, the other thing, and this kind of loops back to where we started about the intern thing. We talked about what the worst case scenarios of firing someone who's working for free, but in the best case scenario, you're working with someone. It's sort of the same with the interns on where your lines are defining lines. And I like for interns to be not, I'm not abusive. I was abused as an intern because that was in the late nineties and it was a different time. And again, we talked about the egos. That was still a thing when I was coming up.

Speaker 2 (01:27:21):

You define being abused as an intern.

Speaker 3 (01:27:23):

Oh, just brutal. Just cruel stuff where too much toilet cleaning or in this case with Summit Studios where I started, we'd do, this is a massive nine studio complex. We would, there'd be a massive orchestral, like a scoring session or something like that. There'd be 50 people in the room wrap up all the XLRs. Okay. I took an hour and a half and wrapped up however many I'm learning over under. Engineer comes in and goes, okay, unwrap 'em all, do 'em again. You're just like, oh, come on, man. You're just being so hard. But you know what? I'm really good at wrapping cables, but I don't do that stuff. I'm not harsh with the thing where it's like,

Speaker 2 (01:28:05):

You're not hazing people.

Speaker 3 (01:28:07):

No, I'm not hazing. I'm not hazing. But it does, just to loop back on the thing about sort of being a dick, I'm not really trying to be a dick. It's just letting people know that when you've agreed to something or when we've got, or what our expectations are of you as a client or you as an intern, and if you cross that, it's not like, I'm just going to call it out and we're going to talk about it and then we're going to move on. I'm not going to harbor some weird resentment. I'm just going to go, Hey, you guys need to clean up the kitchen. We can't. I am not into leaving it like that all day. It's just, it's my workspace too. We're sharing this. We always keep it clean in there. That's it. Done, and then we're onto the next thing. I don't want to leave any of those things fueling any weird stuff. And it's the same with the interns. I am not trying to be a dick, but I do want them to be slightly afraid of me just a little bit, just a little enough to know that I'm watching and that

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):

And enough to respect you

Speaker 3 (01:29:03):

Basically, that it's the minimal amount of that, whatever, the minimum amount of being a dick is required to make sure that there is some level of respect and letting them know that you're watching and that you have high standards and that you are holding them to those same standards. That's basically where it's at.

Speaker 2 (01:29:22):

There's a way to do that without hazing.

Speaker 3 (01:29:24):

There absolutely is. You don't have to make people scrub toilets to take it out of them that they were talking during when you came on the talk back after a take. It's just you talk about it and you go, yo, take ins, talk backs on. You are dead silent in here, and that's it. And then we don't talk about it again,

Speaker 2 (01:29:40):

Man. The thing also about cleaning is, yeah, okay, maybe there's a situation where cleaning makes sense, but if it's phrased as we're all working here and this is just one of the jobs that's very different than, you fucked up, go clean the toilet.

Speaker 3 (01:29:57):

It's a huge part of it is how do you do it without making it personal? Because none of this needs to be personal. And people, like you said about the email thing or texting, these are band people. They're not nine to five. They don't know the politics and all the courtesies of proper emailing and office hours and all the communication and all that stuff. A lot of people are bartenders, waiters, Uber, whatever they are outside of being a musician, they're not sitting at an office, most of them, most of my clients anyway. You kind of have to teach people a little bit and just train them on where your lines are, and if they don't know, they don't know that they've done something that's pissed you off, then they're just going to keep doing it. And you harbor this resentment and the relationship sours, it gets taken out in other weird passive ways.

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):

Absolutely, man. And that's so true life wide too. I mean, you want the secret to a good relationship with a significant other. Bring shit up when it happens, don't let anything fester.

Speaker 3 (01:30:59):

And when someone calls you out on something just for a second, just that split second where the worst part of your brain goes, they just infringed upon, they called me out, I did something wrong. No, I must be defensive. Just stop for a sec and go, maybe I actually just did something wrong. I could just apologize and just go, oh yeah, totally didn't even think of that. I'm so sorry. Lemme grab that. And then you move on with your day and hopefully have some peace and joy in your life, which is all I'm after is to enjoy our time doing stuff that we love to do, which in my case is make slam and mixes and record bands.

Speaker 2 (01:31:39):

So speaking of Joy, let's talk about Summit a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:31:43):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:31:43):

When you started there, from what I understand as kind of a luck of the draw moment, can you talk a little bit about how you got in the door?

Speaker 3 (01:31:52):

Okay, so just to step back, just to show just the time of this and the stupidity of it and me being 1617 Summit was bought by Summit Sound is the name of the studio for a long time, and then it was called Summit Burnett when Ed Burnett took it over big, big time studio. Rolling Stones recorded there. Bob Wills made all his records there. James Brown recorded there. I mean, it was a huge echo Chambers, tape machines, massive studio complex. I didn't know any of that. I didn't know there weren't detailed studio websites. Now, I looked up in the phone book at the time, it was owned by a contracting group called A SC. They bought the Studio complex and had an installation division, so A SC Summit. Burnett was the proper name of the studio. When I started working there, A SC happened to be the first recording studio listed under the recording studios tab in the yellow pages, which is where I looked them up.

(01:32:52):

I looked up, I just went and went to the phone book and said, I'm going to call every recording studio and see if anyone will let me drop a resume off to try to be an intern. And that was the first one in the book. First one in the yellow pages, a SC Summit Burnett. I went over there, the reception said, yeah, I can arrange a meeting with you. And one of the engineers, we have a guy that comes in two days a week, but he's open to having more help. And I went and met with him and at the time, the engineer that worked there, Mark Petty that I worked for, Mark Petty was an A and Phil Rogers was in Studio B. Mark was not super hip to Pro Tools at the time. It was still pretty new. We're on Pro Tools four. Right? Then it just switched over to Pro Tools from Sound Designer, and I happened to kind of know it because I had a version of Pro Tools Free that had just come out.

(01:33:46):

So I basically earned my internship by knowing a tiny bit more about tools than the engineer that worked there. I mean, at the time, most of the serious projects there were all on two Inch and Pro Tools was done to transfer. They would multi-track to it, but it wasn't used the way it is now where the entire studios based around Pro Tools. So yeah, just having a little bit of edge on Pro Tools got me that internship and then I started skipping school to show up for more days when the other guy that was doing the other two days, once he moved on, and then it kind of became a thing where I was there almost every day just hanging out in the back of the control room reading manuals and sitting by the tape machine waiting to, it was literally a tape pop. I'd sit in the corner.

Speaker 2 (01:34:35):

So as the world gets more and more digitized and online, that traditional intern role, it's kind getting replaced by a new version. I think like a new style of intern in that sometimes it's remote work. Hazing isn't quite what it used to be. It's kind of frowned upon. That said. Are there any characteristics of the old way of being an intern or hiring interns that you think, well, more the old school way of acting like an intern that people who want to find internships should incorporate into their skillset or how they approach things?

Speaker 3 (01:35:20):

Yeah. Yeah. I do think you're right. We don't have the big studio complexes. A lot of those have closed. I mean, certainly in LA and New York, Chicago, I mean there are big studios still open, but I mean, it's no secret that part of the recording world has had a really hard time adjusting to the new music industry in the last 20 years. And along with that comes the system of apprenticeship that has been in place for so long and more people have home studios, they have project studios, they just have a mix room. So you lose that whole kind of process and sort of familial thing of being part of a studio group. And along with that came a lot of a higher level of expectation and a standard that it's easier to reinforce when you're in an environment that is a really proper studio.

(01:36:17):

There's staff on there at the studio just for the studio's infrastructure. The day rates were way bigger back then, so there was enough to where it is a bigger group of people working on these sessions and supporting the studio as a business. Everyone was a lot more professional. Things are a lot more casual now because there's seemingly less on the line when a label's paying 2,500 bucks a day for a massive studio and producer and a solid engineer. And that's a different thing than going and going to your buddy's recording space and throwing him 300 bucks and he's got an assistant quote that there's just a different level we're clocking in at terms of expectations of behavior and professionalism. And fortunately for me, I got a lot of that before that, just on the tail end of that world. And it really instilled a much different type of work ethic in me and a reverence for the process than I think a lot of guys that I get emails and gal that I get emails from today going, Hey, I want to be your intern. I'm like, well, did you just decide that last week? Or is your mom making or dad making you do this? Do you want nothing more in life to be at the top of your game in the recording world or are you kind of just, studios seem cool, I'm going to go just hang out with this guy. There's a different level now.

Speaker 2 (01:37:44):

Man, that is the worst kind of intern

Speaker 3 (01:37:47):

In

Speaker 2 (01:37:48):

My opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:37:49):

They don't even want to be

Speaker 2 (01:37:50):

There. Really. I've had that happen. It's like, why are you coming by? It's such a waste of time, man.

Speaker 3 (01:37:55):

Well, it's a waste of your time. It's a waste of my time. Interns are not going to help save me any time. It's going to take about three months before they actually can do anything. That doesn't take more of my time from me. There's a process of getting them calibrated on workflow, where the lines are in terms of interjecting in the room, all that stuff where they can actually even anticipate anything and kind of know, okay, they're talking about that kind of overdub. I'm going to go ahead and get those four 20 ones on stands while they're talking about it. It takes a while to get to that point with people. So I'm not willing to just have someone in willy-nilly to share all of the time and expertise and work that I put into getting to this place. If they're not committed to actually helping and staying on long enough to where they're going to do something for me, I'm going to get something out of it. I'm not just running a free education program in here. I'm fine working on my own. I'll just work in here on my own.

Speaker 2 (01:38:55):

This is why I have such a strong moral objection to that movement that's trying to make it illegal to have free interns.

Speaker 3 (01:39:05):

Oh, I laughed at that. I saw that and I was like, are you kidding? They don't provide you with anything until you teach them. It takes a while.

Speaker 2 (01:39:13):

Yeah, man. I remember when I was a few years ago, I put out a post asking for an intern at URM, and this has happened a few times. Those people bombarded me with hate. I'm trying to exploit workers, and this is just another fucking the last vestige of a corporate system that's being torn down by good people and all this kind of shit, modern day slavery, like all this extreme stuff. And it's like maybe you don't understand that in reality, the intern is getting a lot more value out of me than me out of them for months, like you said. And actually something really cool, the c Chicos, I don't know if you know them or not, Kane and Kevin c Chico out in Vegas, they charged their interns at first.

Speaker 3 (01:40:04):

Oh God. That's hilarious.

Speaker 2 (01:40:07):

It's hilarious. But it makes perfect sense.

Speaker 3 (01:40:09):

Does

Speaker 2 (01:40:09):

It makes perfect sense. Those interns are getting to sit in on some pretty major records and are getting to learn next to some pretty masterful people. Why should they not pay to be there at first before you even know what kind of value being exchanged?

Speaker 3 (01:40:29):

And there's plenty of people that are dropping 20, 30, $40,000 on recording educations and those places.

Speaker 2 (01:40:35):

Exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:40:36):

You might learn theory, but real bands are not recording at the recording school. You're not getting real, it's not real experience. It's theoretical, which is good to learn signal flow and all that stuff. But I mean, look at the money that gets dropped on that. I'm like, man, come be my infant turn for two to three years. You tell me if I gave you more than that full sail education worth of value.

Speaker 2 (01:41:05):

I've got a little moral war going on with big recording schools.

Speaker 3 (01:41:10):

Before you do one thing that I just thought of when you were talking about the people that are bombarding you about how could you do this, blah, blah, blah. Question for them, how much money have you spent on recorded music this last year? Did you just pay for your Spotify? Have you bought any records? Have you bought any of the product that we've made, that you have this upper moral hand? Have you actually contributed to this system to allow for the money to trickle down to the absolute lowest wrong, the studio intern? What have you put into the top of that waterfall and how far down do you think that that Spotify monthly subscription goes? Because it's not reaching, it's not enough to cover the intern. It's barely enough to cover me and keep the lights on in the studio. So just thought I'd put that in those people's pipes of smoke.

Speaker 2 (01:41:59):

Well, they made that comment. I mean, so they affected change.

Speaker 3 (01:42:04):

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:42:05):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:42:06):

Can't you feel the change of comment?

Speaker 2 (01:42:08):

Yeah. Making Facebook comments equals doing something

Speaker 3 (01:42:11):

About it. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome to 2020. Okay. Yeah. What were you going to say about the

Speaker 2 (01:42:15):

No, that I have a little bit of a moral battle going on between URM and the big recording schools. We charge so much less, and we always hear that people get more in three months than years of recording school. And I think that is really fucked to take people going into this industry and charge them 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, $80,000 for an education that yeah, there's some value to it. Sure. Signal flow is a great thing to learn. And obviously if you're super, super driven, you can turn that old school education to something good, but by and large, nobody actually cares if you went to that school. It doesn't actually matter in your career.

Speaker 3 (01:43:05):

Yeah, we're not lawyers, we're not doctors. You don't have to have this to practice. No one has asked to see my diploma to see if I'm in fact certified to record their album. It will not get you any clients at all.

Speaker 2 (01:43:18):

No, it definitely won't. So I think, and then also by nature, because those places are so big and have invested so much money at Berkeley, there's 20 or something, SSL rooms, that sort of thing. What it does is because of the money invested, it keeps them from being able to adapt quickly enough to how fast our world is actually changing. So what I noticed when interns come in from those big schools is they typically don't know any of the hireable skills. They can tell you the history of Norman microphones annotated history much better than I could. And they know signal flow on some board that they'll never use in their entire life probably.

Speaker 3 (01:44:07):

Well, that's the irony also at the recording school, it's usually based, the signal flow is usually based around one type of console, and that's not how the real world works. You got to know how to navigate a eve, you got to know where the remix button is. You have to it. It's so micro specialized, and it's in areas that aren't really applicable once you're not in that place.

Speaker 2 (01:44:31):

Yeah, exactly. But the things that people really do want in interns, like the shit that really will get you to the next level up from intern to assistant, being able to edit really well, great session organization, being able to tune vocals, great, all that kind of stuff. I mean, those are the skills that as far as I know, and as far as I've seen, that's what helps interns graduate to higher levels is having those things down that producers have done a million times that they no longer want to do. They take so much time out of the session, they would love almost every producer. I know, not all, but almost there's something that they do that's repetitive and mechanical that they would love to have somebody else that they trust to do that stuff for them at this point in their career. And those are the things I think interns should come in knowing how to do really, really well.

Speaker 3 (01:45:30):

Yeah, those things, and I'll tell you the other thing that the interns that I've loved and that we have stayed on for a longer amount of time, have graduated into becoming an assistant. They stay late and work with the bands. I can't do that mix. I'm going to give that hand it over to. And so the thing that they do, and this is the thing that I tell them they need to do, is be a Jedi. Be invisible in that room energy wise until the second you're needed. And you're right there. And that's a hard thing to do. It's a hard thing to stay engaged with no phone on, stay engaged in what's going on, but not really participate. But that is the gig, and you have to earn your participation by being there and being patient and just observing. And the second you're needed, you're on it. But when you're not, you're not chiming in

Speaker 2 (01:46:28):

Your wallpaper.

Speaker 3 (01:46:29):

It's so hard to do. Think about spending 10 hours a day doing that, and I don't allow any assistant, I've done any interns. I don't allow any of them to have their phones on in here. I have them take notes on pen and paper. I don't want the phone out. I don't want, oh, I'm just taking notes on the phone. No, everyone just thinks you're on Facebook and it looks like you're checked out. No phone. You stay in here, stay engaged. That's it. And it's hard. It's a lot of focus, but that's the only way you actually get all of the processes. If you're kind of checked in loosely observing a session, you don't really know what's going on. You don't really know the signal flow or the dynamic or all the nuance and all of the things producer's asking for and seeing how the comp is coming together and why it works that way. You have to be really, really engaged to pick up on all that stuff. But you also have to not chime in. It's a hard thing to do. And the people that can do that, they're on the fast track because they've made themselves invaluable to me,

Speaker 2 (01:47:26):

Man, your ego has to be in check. And so that's another thing I've noticed with the recording schools is a lot of people come in with oversized egos, so they can't shut up. So I used to live in Florida, had a studio in Florida, so full sail, I was,

Speaker 3 (01:47:42):

You're right there. I

Speaker 2 (01:47:43):

Was on their speed dial. And so I would always get sent interns, and this was the case every single time. The recording school kids were always the biggest. They always knew the least and they wouldn't shut up by and large. My experience

Speaker 3 (01:47:59):

Now, I mean there are different programs and I think a lot of that depends on who taught them. Of course, there are certainly recording programs that have some really talented professors who have tons of experience, who teach people the right kinds of things that actually prep them for real work. But those are very few and far between. There's a lot of them are just the full sale system, or even worse, the predatory audio school. Who takes GI Bill money, who takes federal grant money, who is going to put you in debt and they're going to charge whatever they want full on private college tuition, levels of tuition, and they're making tons of money on this, and you're graduating with very little experience and a boatload of debt. Rather than just going, I'm going to go learn and buy an Apollo and just try to just suck everything up on the, I can knowledge on the internet and intern and observe and just be there. I feel like the people that spend two, three years doing that have no debt be free. Because another big part of an intern is like, if I'm not paying you and I'm asking for you to be available on a regular basis, it means you have to have some kind of financial or living situation that is going to allow that to happen.

Speaker 2 (01:49:21):

Correct.

Speaker 3 (01:49:22):

And a kid graduating with $30,000 of debt right out of the gates and high expectations getting paid right away, it's like, man, you've really painted yourself into a corner on this. You could have taken a loan out and lived off of whatever, eaten ramen for two years off of 20 grand and made yourself available and indispensable to someone and grown and had a career. It's just a matter of, it's easy to see that you and I, we've done it enough. You can look back and see these things, but man, it's a weird industry before the audio education industry. It's a weird thing and it's sort of like prepping kids way more kids. I mean, how many kids unquote graduate from full sail every year or all these programs conservatory, all these things, way more engineers, producers than the world. I mean, we just don't have an industry that can support that many people. We just don't. And the reality is, of all of those people in those classes, maybe a few of 'em out of each class will end up doing it,

Speaker 2 (01:50:31):

Which is crazy considering how much it costs.

Speaker 3 (01:50:34):

It's crazy considering what you're paying for. And if you just want to look at bang for your buck and education, you could just live cheap and make all your time available and get an interface and just teach yourself and learn. And I feel like you'd be a lot further along than the kid that can tell you the history of Neuman microphones and exactly how to work on one specific type of SSL and no clue how to work on any other console ever.

Speaker 2 (01:50:58):

I know I'm super biased here, but I think if someone just took URM for three years, tried to get an internship, bought the Apollo and just made it their entire life, and then they sucked in everything that we gave them online, and they went into an internship with the exact attitude that you said, and then when they weren't the internship, they were just learning and getting better and getting better and making connections, they'd move way faster than the traditional route.

Speaker 3 (01:51:26):

100%

Speaker 2 (01:51:27):

Guaranteed.

Speaker 3 (01:51:27):

I get some young kids, people go, Hey, my kid's in high school, he wants to get into music. What do you think I should do? Last thing I'm going to do is tell 'em to go bite off a giant amount of debt to go to some big recording program. The industry is not there and you're hedging your bets against yourself. Just learn. Just make learning on your own. And we have resources like you RM Now that didn't exist when I was a kid. Oh my God, man. Can you, I can't imagine having the resources we have, the forums we have now when I was a kid. Crazy. Crazy what you could learn just by being dedicated and spending some time with some people that know what's up.

Speaker 2 (01:52:06):

So speaking of moving up and graduating from being an intern, can you tell me a little bit about your journey from Summit to basically now your second iteration of Good Danny Studios?

Speaker 3 (01:52:20):

Yeah, well that's a lot of, let me think. That's 20 years, so that's

Speaker 2 (01:52:25):

Okay. Yeah. So two sentences.

Speaker 3 (01:52:27):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:52:28):

No. How did you go from getting to the point where you're like, alright, I'm going to start my own place. That's more what I'm curious about.

Speaker 3 (01:52:37):

Yeah. Well, my place, unquote was always sort of born out of me being in bands and wanting to record my own bands and friends' bands. My journey is more organic because I come from it from being a band guy. I lived in a house with my band mates. We recorded all the time. Other bands that we would tour with and play with, they would come there and record. And I worked out of a number of different studios around Austin in order to, I didn't have a setup to be able to properly track drums or record bands to two inch, or I used to mix out at this mix room in West Austin called Lakeside. I didn't have the infrastructure to be able to do it, but we would just pay for whatever studio time we needed and we would do whatever else we could back at my place.

(01:53:22):

And my place was never intended to be more, I wasn't setting out to open a studio. It just built pedal by pedal drum machine by drum machine. There's stuff I have here at the studio that I bought with allowance money when I was 10, 11 years old, just pedals and guitars. It's just been one little piece at a time to help me make the records that I want to make for my bands and my friends' bands. And the studio grew out of that and other people liked some of the stuff I did asked me to do this, oh, that record blew up. It's on the B, B, C. Things just kind of open up. And so my journey was pretty organic in those terms. I didn't set out to go, I'm going to have a business plan and get a small business loan and open a recording studio.

(01:54:08):

It's nothing formal like that. It's just doing it. But I've had a lot along the way. I've had a lot of other weird audio related jobs that have all shaped and informed and contributed to making me who I am today. So it is been a long journey. I've done post-production, I've mixed scores. I've worked on, I've made samples for hip hop artists. I've done every part of it, ad agency work, all kinds of stuff, all audio related, but trying to make it work to stay in this field. I feel like when I was young, I had the thing that I don't know that as many young people have today, which is that I'll do anything. If I can make some money doing the thing I love, I'm just going to hustle and it's not quite my thing. I'm going to take it because I want to be in this industry and I want to get better.

Speaker 2 (01:55:06):

You better going to say yes.

Speaker 3 (01:55:07):

I'm going to say yes. And that means you got to wear a lot of hats. It means sometimes you're doing live sound or I'm not a front of house guy. I don't tour as a sound guy or anything, but done tons of live sound. You just kind of

Speaker 2 (01:55:20):

Have to, I hate live sound.

Speaker 3 (01:55:21):

It's not my thing. No, but I did that when I was young to go like, Hey, you're into music and sound right? We have this thing. Okay. You just say yes to enough of those things and if you stay, basically my belief is this is if you work harder than anyone else and you're good to people and you find the thing that you're good at and you really work hard at that and you're good to people that you will succeed. I truly believe that. But that doesn't mean it's easy. But I do think you have to, a lot of times you're trying to break into it. You may not be starting exactly at the thing that you wanted, but you got to earn it. You got to earn your place to get there.

Speaker 2 (01:56:04):

I think getting to work on just what you're into is a luxury.

Speaker 3 (01:56:08):

Yeah, yeah. It's taken me 20 years to do that and that's evolving and changing for me too. As I grow older and I do more things and I'm like, I always wanted to do this, but I've done that for a while and I think I'd like to try these other things that allows you to grow and expand and draw on those experiences. But I think the more experience you have in different departments, go hold a boom for a commercial, get paid, be a sound guy. I don't know, do whatever. Hook up microphones, get paid. If you're young and hungry, do whatever you can to learn. You may be stuck doing some live sound at a convention center for some talking head thing, but you're making a little bit of money so you can afford to give your next three days at the studio to be an intern. And maybe you learn a little bit about frequency and about dynamic mikes. It's all shaping and contributing.

Speaker 2 (01:56:59):

I think one of the mistakes that I see a lot of people coming up make now is that they predecide what genre or thing they want to work on and will close themselves off from opportunities before they even really know what they're good at.

Speaker 3 (01:57:15):

Right. Yeah. And I guess I was starting to touch on that and I kind of went off on the hustle thing, but I think that is a thing that I see now more so because I don't know that there's as much reverence or patience for the process of really taking your time with honing your craft. People kind want to have, they just want to do the big record now, and it's like you just haven't gotten there. And it's no different than the young band that has expectations that far exceed their ability or budget. There's a little bit of delusion in it, and maybe a little delusion is good because it keeps you following your dreams, but there's a point where you're like, yo, you're going to have to earn that. You got to get there. You're going to have to earn it. I remember being, I mean, I was up for a record really early on in my career, maybe 15 or 18 years ago, something.

(01:58:11):

And I just wanted it so bad, and I was talking to this band, they're one of my favorite bands. I was like, God, it sounds like there's a chance that I might get to do this record and I didn't get it. And they ended up working with someone who's way more established, a total name guy. And I was so bummed out. But I look back on it now, I'm like, I wouldn't have known the first thing to do. If that had landed in my lap back then, it would've actually probably hurt me. But I remember being so disappointed about it, and it's interesting how those things shape you and they just teach you a little bit about your place and kind of earning it and being okay with yourself, having some patience with the process of getting to where you want to be. There's a thing that happened that we have now in our culture where people want, they want the end prize, they want the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but they don't understand that the journey is actually the reward, the day-to-day stuff of getting there, of achieving that is the reward.

(01:59:10):

The process is the reward. And I don't know that young people have that I've come in touch with and the intern, I don't know if I see that kind of patience and understanding with the process.

Speaker 2 (01:59:24):

Man, it's taken me a long time to honestly be able to say that I agree with that. I mean, I always knew that concept, but only recently have I really do. I really feel that. I think it takes patience and maturity, and it's a practical thing too, because if you're only in love with the reward itself, you're going to have a pretty miserable life because the reward is so short lived. You get, oh,

Speaker 3 (01:59:53):

It's so free. If

Speaker 2 (01:59:54):

You say you win something or you get the big check or some shit like that. It's just one small fraction of the entire process. And so if your entire process is based on that one moment, then what are you doing? You're going to have a miserable fucking time.

Speaker 3 (02:00:14):

And what are you doing in between those?

Speaker 2 (02:00:16):

Yeah. Hating life.

Speaker 3 (02:00:18):

Yeah. We are not in a phase of as, I mean, not to be too dark, but we're not in a phase that the odds aren't great. Okay. Basically, if you're trying to be the biggest mixer in the world, you're trying to be the biggest band in the world. It's just a hard time. And we've got a lot of music venues, independent music venues, bookers club owners. We're in a really hard time right now with the pandemic, knowing where things are going to shake out. So I'm inclined to say that more than ever, we need people who are kind of passionate and in it for the right reasons. And I think this industry will reward you if you are good to people and you are, and your heart is in it, I think it will reward you if you can stay in it. It's a hard business, and there's a lot of really talented people who, there's just a point you got to tap out and go, I need a more stable lifestyle, or I need want to start a family.

(02:01:08):

I want to buy a house, want to do other things, and this is not going to support that. But if you're a lifer and you're into it and you want to educate yourself and work hard, you absolutely can make it in this world. But you got to be long-term focused, which is hard to do. It's hard to do when you're young. Everyone's eager and they see things they want and they just want to be at the top of the mountain already. And it's like, man, if you could just teleport to the top of Mount Everest, would that view even be that sweet?

Speaker 2 (02:01:39):

Hell no.

Speaker 3 (02:01:40):

Nah,

Speaker 2 (02:01:41):

No, of course not. You've got to always be playing the long game and, alright, so one thing that I've noticed that about producers who have played the long game successfully and have stuck it out is that they get a lot of repeat clientele. That's one of the, if you're about, if you were to find what a lot of successful producers and mixers have in common, I think repeat clientele is one of them. Typically the ones who do nothing but one-offs tend to not last very long. There's a reason for why people don't go back to them. My question is, even though that decision is not the producers to make, it's a hundred percent the label and the artist's decision to make, do you think that there's things that we can do as engineers to help drive repeat clientele?

Speaker 3 (02:02:33):

I'll tell you one thing that makes sure that it doesn't repeat is if you don't see the project all the way through the very, very end, the very end when it's the most tedious, last, final annoying mixed tweaks and just triple checking to make sure you have an instrumental on that thing. If you're not good with people and you don't keep your attitude in a healthy work, in a good spot with people, if you give into that thing that I see happen with other producers and engineers where by the end of the project they're worn out from maybe some passive, some whatever, communication or the working relationship, they're ready to be done. They're ready to say, fuck it, I'm over it. I've already got it there. You have

Speaker 2 (02:03:21):

Stepped off the gas.

Speaker 3 (02:03:23):

Yeah. You lose it a little bit at the end. And those things where you're like, ah, I wouldn't get defensive with someone when we got three more weeks, but this is the end. And I'm like, you know what? Fuck this thing and you can really trash. The last taste that people get to you is that last moment down to the invoicing on the last session and how you even sort of communicate with the band once the record's done that stuff. It's all that is the last taste that anyone gets of the working experience with you. And they will remember that. And there are a lot of people that I know, they get fed up, they're over it and people don't go back to them because they will let the little defensive things out or they'll be a little shitty about a mix revision or do a little dig, or they're kind of over it and it's like, man, you just threw away all of the hard work of getting it all the way here just to get that one little moment and it's not worth it. It's just not So, I dunno. I think a big thing is just that just keeping stand pro all the way to the very, very, very, very end, very last end.

Speaker 2 (02:04:32):

It's like letting your guard down at the very end basically letting the crazy out.

Speaker 3 (02:04:37):

Totally. One stop gap against that is trying to make sure that you have good communication, the whole project, so it never even comes to that. So there's never even that moment where you're like, you get to that point. I mean, that's a theoretical ideal, but that is one thing that I see I see with some, I've friends, colleagues, other engineers, other producers, other mixers I know that will veer there and people just don't go back. They don't don't. Here's another thing. There are people who engineer, produce, mix and aren't able to share any real enthusiasm or positivity or whatever about the record. And man, it just takes the tiniest bit of that to make the band feel validated. They feel good about what they made and go, you know what? This is a little scary to put this out out there. It's like our art.

(02:05:31):

It's my words, it's all the stuff we put together. It's a big thing. Can you just lift them up a little bit and make 'em feel good about the thing they made and go, Hey, I love this element of this song. I love that you guys do this thing. Anything, just make people feel good about the thing they're making. Some people will be sort of removed on an emotional level, and I'm not saying you have to get super invested and gushy here, but something just to let people know that you care about what you're working on and that you care about their project and them and that you're enjoying it and you're happy to be along for the ride, that you're honored to be there. There's a lot of that. I think some people just, they think if I say nothing, well then it doesn't count against me, and I think it actually does.

Speaker 2 (02:06:13):

Yeah. I think you're right, man. Another thing that I've noticed that I don't want to say guarantees that people won't come back, but it definitely pushes things in that direction, is to focus on getting them to come back while you're still working on that current record, which as an artist, I've experienced producers doing that to me, trying to already sell me on the next record before we even finish. This one

Speaker 3 (02:06:39):

Feels bad.

Speaker 2 (02:06:39):

And just pressure.

Speaker 3 (02:06:40):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:06:40):

Yeah, pressure. Pressure. It's kind of thinking to dating when there's too much pressure coming from one party way too early, trying to push things to be way too serious before it's ready for that. As an artist, when a producer did that to me earlier in my career, it reminded me a lot. I've had a criminal stalker before.

Speaker 3 (02:07:02):

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 (02:07:03):

Yeah, and I'm not going to say that they were the exact same kind of person, but I'm going to say that. So this stalker basically fell in love with me after knowing me for a day, and it was nuts for years. Wow. I got rid of her. She, where's

Speaker 3 (02:07:21):

That podcast? I want to hear this one.

Speaker 2 (02:07:23):

Yeah, I think I've talked about her before. She sucks, but an actual criminal stalker. My take on the producer that does that to you is it's a branch off the same tree of just trying to pressure someone and pressure someone and pressure someone into something they haven't even agreed to, or you haven't really passed stage one and you're already trying to get to stage three basically.

Speaker 3 (02:07:49):

Yeah. The thing that gets you the next record is by making this one a great experience and I feel proud of, that's it. You don't even have to spell cast, you don't even have to use car sales. You don't have to use these cheap tactics. People feel it feels bad when someone wants something really badly from me, it feels bad. I'm immediately backing. Backing away. Someone's hard selling me. It feels bad.

Speaker 2 (02:08:13):

Yeah, it's repulsive.

Speaker 3 (02:08:14):

No, yeah, it's not good. The way you do it is just by delivering quality work and making the experience every day, the entire journey, getting there good, enjoyable, as much as you can. I mean, it's hard work and tensions flare up and there's disagreements, all that stuff, and navigating that in an elegant, sophisticated way that sort of just lets all of the weird negativity stuff fly out the door and encourages the process to be enjoyable. I mean, that's how you get the next record. That's how you get people to come back.

Speaker 2 (02:08:44):

So switching gears a little bit, I don't want to spend too long on this, but I feel like we should just talk about it a little bit. A lot of times genre music will dictate the gear used in the metal world. It's kind of easy to get away with doing everything digitally because the instrumentation and arrangements are made to be so precise.

Speaker 3 (02:09:07):

The tightness is the thing, it's essential.

Speaker 2 (02:09:09):

It is the thing. And so this is not a 100% rule. There's not a method or a piece of gear that works a hundred percent of the time, but a lot to see a bunch of ampt modelers and replace drums and things like that, that's pretty commonplace in metal because the sound you're going for lends itself to that kind of gear. So for things like indie though and folk that warmth or I don't want to call it tonal sloppiness, but it's like way

Speaker 3 (02:09:42):

A hazier more prevalent mid range and some hate.

Speaker 2 (02:09:47):

It's like looser in a way.

Speaker 3 (02:09:48):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:09:49):

So that said that sometimes genre dictates the tools. When you're getting started with a new client, what are some of the ways that you decide on which direction you're going to go?

Speaker 3 (02:10:02):

Well, the thing that guides me regardless, I work on all kinds of stuff. I mean, I'll go from, I've mixed scores in five one, and then I'm on some Doomy record, and then I'm working on an eight track cassette lo-fi thing, and then we're moving to an electronic. I'm all over. The thing that I start with is references immediately from the first conversation. We have references, what are the sounds? What are the sounds that appeal to you guys? Send me some of the stuff that you love. Let's put a shared Spotify playlist together or something that's shared that we can go, this is a great reference for that. Let's throw this on this list to help get everyone kind of calibrated on what we're going to make. Because some of those things aren't as clear and certain genres, you're talking about metal. It's like, okay, I've got my kick samples.

(02:10:59):

I love, I've got my setup. We love for tracking drums. We've got the ke, you're just dialed in and you just do it. If you're working on, or they're going for some kind of soul sixties vibe or something like that. You really need to know the music that they're touching on and referencing so you can educate yourself on what works in it and have something to aim for. And then beyond that, it's knowing your tools and knowing the gear, and that may be researching a ton on how was that record made? Why does it sound like that? This thing that we keep referencing, what is it that makes it sound like that or what makes these songs work? And understanding what makes the music the arrangement actually work in those references. That guides everything for me down to instrument choice, down to arrangement discussions, vocal treatments. If everything we're referencing has a more mid rangey, upper mid-range bass tone, so the drums can be massive and subby great. That tells me how we need to track. If we're looking for giant bottom in from low pianos, fuzzy organs, giant crunchy guitars, then I have to know that, and we have to be thinking about that when we're miking drums because they're all working together and getting a picture of what it is that appeals to that group of individuals, the band you're working with.

(02:12:27):

That's the way I get calibrated. That starts the combo anyway,

Speaker 2 (02:12:32):

So the vision dictates the tools

Speaker 3 (02:12:34):

For me. It does. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it dictates the workflow in some cases.

Speaker 2 (02:12:39):

I don't understand why there are some producers who just choose the tools before the vision's even defined. I feel like that's such a lazy, a mentally lazy way to approach things,

Speaker 3 (02:12:50):

Or they're like, I'm safe doing this and I know this works and it may be wrong for this band, but it's comfortable for me, so I'm just going to do that. Well, they're not going to come back and work with you again.

Speaker 2 (02:12:59):

Bands don't appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (02:13:01):

No. It's like, oh, this is the way we do it. Just get in there and do it the way we do it. That doesn't feel good unless they're coming to you and going, we love that record you made with this band. We would love for it to sound just like that. I'm like, well, we can do it the same way. And then inevitably, it doesn't sound like that band anyways. Of course

Speaker 2 (02:13:16):

Not

Speaker 3 (02:13:17):

Those conversations that dictates whether we, are we working on tape? I mean, it's budget and references. Are we tracking this a certain, are we tracking live in the room? Are we building drums? Are we just tracking drums to the demo, getting those dialed in, going to work on bass? How layered versus how live is this? All of those things stem out of the reference, and it's about just being a music lover, being a fan of music and understanding music and going, I know why this music works. I know what's great about this and I know what it is that we can lift out of this without having to go, I listened to that song. Could you tell me what about it? I mean, maybe listen and see if you can figure it out. And I feel like that's a chance to show the band how invested you are in their project and win them over early on. Because for me, it's essential to earn trust as early as possible. I don't want to be fighting for it midway through the project. I want everyone to feel like they can trust me when they come in day one. The best way to do that is to give a shit and show 'em that you give a shit.

Speaker 2 (02:14:21):

That's one of the hardest things to do. It's

Speaker 3 (02:14:23):

Hard. It's hard, especially when you have a busy schedule. I mean, we've, I've got stuff on the books in September now, and I'm trying to be thoughtful about this record that's three months away, but I'm also trying to approve masters from a record that we finished last month, and I've got to hit that label back. It's a lot a to care from the beginning all the way to the end, but it is the thing that it makes people feel validated. It makes 'em want to keep coming back to you. And even the labels appreciate it when I'm the only one going, Hey, I got the second test pressing. It's still not right. Let me digitize this for you and send it to you. We can't approve this one. People are appreciative when you're in the process and helping them make the whole product, the whole thing, start to finish as great as possible. That's why people come back to you, and it's the thing I said, it's just earning their trust and showing you care early on to even talk about making the entire process built around their references and what they want to do, your whole process in a way that is going to serve their music. It means a lot to people. Those things, they're all tied together really.

Speaker 2 (02:15:37):

I do know. I absolutely agree with you. I wish more people thought that way.

Speaker 3 (02:15:42):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the other thing is this is a lot of people don't, and a lot of people come to me and they are damaged.

Speaker 2 (02:15:49):

Oh yeah, man. Okay. So on the topic of trust, that's a tough one because yeah, earning trust, especially when you're earlier in your career, is really, really hard to do. But even if you're not really early in your career, if you get a band that has some sort of trauma from a previous studio experience, they're bringing that with them. They've got baggage, and sometimes the walls are up. It's not even that they don't trust you, you, it's got nothing to do with you. How do you get past that?

Speaker 3 (02:16:24):

Yeah, it's tough, man. It depends on the type of trauma, but usually what happens is when someone comes in and they've been wronged in their mind in some way by someone else they've worked with, they're protective and they tend to want to over-correct in whatever area allows them to make sure that that same brand of abuse or wrongness or whatever doesn't happen again. But it's tough because there's walls up and sometimes that means you can't do just the basic things in the kind of simplest way possible. It can be really hard. I don't know, some bands, I think they just need therapy and they need to vent about it a little bit. I'm actually really interested to hear what those experiences are so I can be sensitive to it. It's just like being, let's say a family member has been in an abusive relationship. Well, knowing what that kind of abuse is or loved one, whatever, there's just areas that you stay so far away from understanding what that trauma and what those triggers may be associated with it. It just means you know what the do not fly zone is, and it means you never have to put your foot in your mouth because you overstepped. And usually bands are happy to share because they feel validated in that they were indeed wronged, and that was not a cool thing that producer, engineer mixer did or said or left them with. And then that allows you to make sure that you don't do the same thing.

Speaker 2 (02:17:54):

Yep. I completely agree.

Speaker 3 (02:17:56):

And it's also just insane. I mean, the stories that people come in here with telling me about people they've worked with, and in some cases I know them, I'm just like, wow, that is just so fucked up. That is such a crazy thing to say to people or a way to act. I just can't believe that. I'm like, tick. I'm like, that is crazy. What a weird thing.

Speaker 2 (02:18:16):

The thing that's weird though is when you hear that and then you talk to the producer, they're talking about because you're friends and they've got a completely different take

Speaker 3 (02:18:25):

Always

Speaker 2 (02:18:26):

On what happened. Typically, the band will come in and talk shit, be like, this guy wasn't invested, blah, blah, blah. And then I'll talk to him and he'll be like, man, those guys didn't have their shit together. It was like a fucking circus. They don't communicate. They couldn't play their songs. They only had one song written.

Speaker 3 (02:18:45):

There's always two sides to every story. It is interesting.

Speaker 2 (02:18:49):

Yeah. So the way I look at it is whether the trauma is real or perceived, doesn't matter. All that matters is that they don't feel that way about this experience.

Speaker 3 (02:18:59):

All that matters is that you go, I'm sorry, man, that sounds really hard. Let's make sure that it's not like that this time.

Speaker 2 (02:19:03):

Yep, that's

Speaker 3 (02:19:04):

It. Exactly. Moving on.

Speaker 2 (02:19:05):

Okay. Whether or not it actually went down that way doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (02:19:08):

Yeah. What people feel as being true is more true to most people than the actual truth. That's

Speaker 2 (02:19:13):

A good way to put it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:19:15):

Well,

Speaker 2 (02:19:15):

Danny, I think this is a good place to end it. I want to thank you for coming on. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Speaker 3 (02:19:22):

I've absolutely enjoyed it. I love getting into the people parts of what makes everyone tick and what makes everyone work in this world. I love, we got to spend some time talking about that. I'm sorry to everyone that wanted to just hear about snare drum miking techniques, but this is way more interesting than me

Speaker 2 (02:19:38):

If they want that. This is the wrong podcast.

Speaker 3 (02:19:41):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:19:42):

I mean, maybe go to the first a hundred episodes.

Speaker 3 (02:19:44):

We've covered that. Now we've gone meta

Speaker 2 (02:19:47):

Not just that, man, this was a very conscious decision I made. It was either I'm going to quit doing this podcast or I'm going to make it interesting to myself. And so there's that part of it. But there's also this other part of it that when this started nail the mix was not a thing yet. It was still in the works, but once we launched, now the mix and the rest of the URM platform discussing snare micing technique on a podcast is so inferior compared to our videos online.

Speaker 3 (02:20:18):

Oh, you can show so much. It's just there's so much more to illustrate the thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:20:22):

Yeah. So I feel like this is not the right medium to talk about that kind of stuff. This is the medium to find out, to get into the heads of the people who make those great sounds, but if you actually want to learn the techniques themselves, the stuff on URM, that's way better than its talking about on a podcast. So yeah, so it was a conscious decision to avoid that. Every once in a while I'll talk to somebody who their brain just doesn't go towards the human issues there,

Speaker 3 (02:20:50):

Just They're just gear, gear, gear, gear,

Speaker 2 (02:20:51):

Gear, yeah. Gear, gear, gear technique. And I'll ride that wave if I have to, but I prefer not to. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:20:57):

I'm with you, man. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on,

Speaker 2 (02:21:01):

Dude. Thank you. 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.

Speaker 1 (02:21:23):

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.