DANIEL BRAUNSTEIN: Writing Bonehead Riffs with Spiritbox, Pop Production for Metal, His Go-To Vocal Chain

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

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

(00:00:55):

Who knows, we might even respond. And number three, leave us reviews and five stars please anywhere you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, I want to thank you all for the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never, ever charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way possible. All I ask in return is a share post and a tag. Now, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM podcast. I've got another one of those awesome producer and artist episodes that we used to do back in the day. I really feel like I should do more of these anyways, my guests today are Michael Stringer, who's the guitar player and songwriter for the Band's Spirit Box. Used to be, and I wrestled a bear once. Spirit Box has a song that just came out called Holy Roller, that is just sick, is really, really good. You should check it out. And his producer, Daniel Braunstein, is a musician songwriter, producer, engineer, mixing engineer, mastering engineer out of la. He owns a DB Music Studios and he mainly works on Pop actually, but he's got a metal background. He helped found the band volumes and he's badass. I'll stop talking and introduce you guys. Mike Stringer and Daniel Braunstein. Daniel Braunstein and Mike Stringer. Welcome to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02:26):

Hey.

Speaker 1 (00:02:27):

Hi.

Speaker 2 (00:02:28):

Nice to be here. How's it

Speaker 1 (00:02:29):

Going? It's going pretty well. How are you guys holding up?

Speaker 2 (00:02:34):

Pretty good. We're a little bummed. We were supposed to be recording end of next month, but I think we're all doing pretty well.

Speaker 3 (00:02:44):

Yeah, it's weird for us because where I live, because it's kind of like a make believe land at the moment.

Speaker 1 (00:02:51):

Where do you live?

Speaker 3 (00:02:52):

Victoria, BC Canada. Vancouver Island. Oh, okay. That's make believe land. Anyways. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:02:57):

It really

Speaker 3 (00:02:57):

Is. There's that aspect of it, but there's just not many cases, so we're all going out to restaurants and going to the gym and stuff. Meanwhile, Dan and the world's burning down. Everyone is just living in a crazy, crazy situation in the moment, so just watching it on the news and stuff has just been insane. It's nuts.

Speaker 2 (00:03:19):

California is pretty bad right now as far as the number of cases and stuff, so yeah, everyone around here is just, everyone's masked up. Everyone's pretty freaked out about it. Well, a lot of people are. Some people aren't, but

Speaker 1 (00:03:32):

Yeah, it's probably the problem.

Speaker 2 (00:03:34):

Yeah. Yeah, it's been a trip. It's been interesting doing sessions too, because if I'm in here with more than one person, we're all wearing masks during our sessions because I share my studio with my business partner, Zach, so sometimes we'll have six to eight people and at the same time, and everyone's just wearing masks. We have air filters going constantly and sanitizing all the surfaces and yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:04:02):

What's it like recording people with masks on? It's interesting.

Speaker 2 (00:04:07):

They got to take it off if we're doing vocals. Really? That's surprise. No, it was funny. My buddy was over and he was laying down like a little scratch vocal thing and he had the mic up and I was tracking him and I was like, dude, you sound pretty muffled. And I looked back and he's got his mask on. I was like, dude, take it down.

Speaker 1 (00:04:27):

For some reason you sound like you're singing through a paper bag.

Speaker 2 (00:04:30):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:04:31):

What could it be?

Speaker 2 (00:04:31):

I was like, dude, where's all your siblings? Why are you DS right now?

Speaker 1 (00:04:36):

Yeah, why is my mic being all weird? It's so weird. I basically haven't left the house since March.

Speaker 2 (00:04:44):

Wow.

Speaker 1 (00:04:45):

I've gone to the pharmacy a few times and I had to get a scope in my stomach for gastritis in June, but besides that, I have been home since March.

Speaker 2 (00:04:57):

You're one of the good ones.

Speaker 1 (00:04:58):

Yeah. You're being responsible. Well,

Speaker 3 (00:05:00):

I'm one of the paranoid ones. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's better to be paranoid at this point than the other. Absolutely. Even where we live, people are getting way too comfortable and even though travel's not open back up, there are small clusters of cases that are appearing out of nowhere and everyone's just too comfortable. So I can definitely see us, even though we have gotten to the point where people are kind of somewhat back to normal, I can see it kind of reverting back pretty quick.

Speaker 1 (00:05:29):

I've got a personal reason for it because I got swine flu 10 years ago word when everybody thought it was a hoax and almost died from it. So my memory of this sort of thing is that it's real and you don't want it. So I've just been like, fuck it, I'm staying home until the world's normal.

Speaker 2 (00:05:50):

No, I know a lot of people that have had it. My great uncle, he's 70 and he was within just an inch of death pretty much from it, but he recovered,

Speaker 1 (00:06:01):

Thank God. Oh, he's in the high risk group.

Speaker 2 (00:06:03):

He was in the high risk group, but yeah, he was working on construction sites, so he basically, everyone on the site got sick. Most people didn't die from it. One other guy did that he was working with, so that's the only person I know that's actually perished from it. But I do know of a lot of people that have had it around me pretty much at this point in Cali, it's like everyone knows someone that's had it that's within their circle, so that's pretty scary when it starts closing in that you're like, damn, how much is this circle going to close in my next? You get a sniffle, you're like, oh shit, is this it? Allergies? I get allergies all the time, normal seasonal allergies. I'm freaked out.

Speaker 1 (00:06:43):

Are you a hypochondriac

Speaker 2 (00:06:44):

At all? Not really, man, but I think this whole thing's made everyone into a

Speaker 1 (00:06:49):

Hypochondriac. Yeah. So one of the side effects of gastritis is that your throat starts hurting from the acid that goes up, and I've never had allergies in my life and I didn't know I had gastritis at first, so all I knew was that suddenly my throat was hurting and I was coughing, and at first I was like, maybe I just did eight podcasts this week, but that's never really happened in the past. My voice doesn't get tired. I was sniffling and I definitely started to think, how the fuck did I get this first of all? And second of all, I hope I don't die. But then it turned out to not be that I know the mental thing.

Speaker 2 (00:07:34):

God, I mean, you've been so good.

Speaker 1 (00:07:36):

Yeah. I also wanted to stop traveling, so what can I say?

Speaker 2 (00:07:40):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:07:40):

There was a moment when we were on that last tour that we did that obviously got cut short where we had a day off and I think I had food poisoning and it was just the worst day and thankfully it was on a day off, but because it was so such early stages of all this and people were not fully knowledgeable on what it actually was, we had some people on the tour being like, does Mike have Corona? Does Mike have Corona? And I was just like, man, no, it's not. It doesn't cause you to puke excessively for a day. You know what I mean? It's a respiratory thing, don't worry about it.

Speaker 2 (00:08:12):

That's just a tour thing.

Speaker 3 (00:08:14):

Yeah, that's just a bad choice thing is what it is.

Speaker 2 (00:08:17):

You guys were on the Corona tour, you guys were hitting all the epicenters in your bus. Thank God no one got it. Right.

Speaker 3 (00:08:25):

It was crazy. It was like each city that we would go to next, the one before it would be like we're shutting down. And it just literally up until the last week, we all knew it was just a matter of time before this thing was like, yeah, this is totally done. Maybe you're why it spread? Yeah, I am the epicenter. How does that make you feel? I take full responsibility after eating that bad pizza for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:08:50):

Mike's about to get canceled.

Speaker 1 (00:08:53):

Did you hear about that thrash metal tour where 15 people got it? It was Exodus and Death Angel, like a bunch of those old thrash bands. They came back like everyone had it basically. Yeah, I heard about that.

Speaker 2 (00:09:10):

Those guys aren't young.

Speaker 1 (00:09:11):

No, no, no. One of them did almost die. The drummer from Death Angel ended up in the ICU for several weeks.

Speaker 3 (00:09:18):

Oh God, that's horrible. Hate

Speaker 1 (00:09:21):

That. But now he survived and had a religious experience or something, something crazy like that. I bet. Yeah. I've known I'd say about 50 people.

Speaker 2 (00:09:32):

You're on the east Coast, right? So you guys got hit?

Speaker 1 (00:09:36):

Yeah. Not here. I just mean all

Speaker 2 (00:09:40):

Over. Oh, I see.

Speaker 1 (00:09:41):

In general. Yeah. Interestingly enough, I actually don't know that many people in the town I live in. Everyone I know is outside, but in California a ton of people.

Speaker 2 (00:09:51):

Yeah. Yeah. It's

Speaker 1 (00:09:53):

Kind of nuts.

Speaker 2 (00:09:54):

Yeah, like I was saying, everyone knows at least a dozen people. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (00:10:00):

Yeah, that's wild. So Mike, your schedule obviously got fucked. Dan, what about yours? Sounds like you're still working.

Speaker 2 (00:10:07):

Yeah, still working. I was working throughout the whole pandemic pretty much. Obviously I have the luxury of being able to mix remotely and stuff like that and produce remotely, and we were for Holy Roller, that whole song was literally done besides the first version of it, every revision to it and all the writing after our demo was done just on Zoom during the heat of the pandemic. So I mean, it's not as great as working in person, but we got it done. I've still been able to do stuff remotely. So

Speaker 1 (00:10:42):

Which version was done in person? The initial tracks or something?

Speaker 3 (00:10:46):

We did the first writing session for that song in January, Dan, was that when it was,

Speaker 2 (00:10:51):

Was that January? Oh yeah, it was the middle of January when I came up. Right?

Speaker 3 (00:10:54):

Yeah, it was hilarious because it was one of those things where we had written so much other material and then when we looked back on it, we just were like, ah, we need a track that's just super straight to the point and just bonehead and just super heavy. And we just sat there and we wrote it in two hours and we were laughing while we were writing it. It was just so ridiculous. It's so fucking heavy. And it was just like, let's go lower, let's tune lower, let's tune lower. And we were laughing literally, this is so stupid. And then we played that version of it on the a TB tour and it was our first tour and we just saw the response from it and we're like, well, maybe there's something to it. You know what I mean? Maybe this could be a thing. And so yeah, that's when we started working on the revisions through Zoom and we got home.

Speaker 1 (00:11:40):

That main riff is just dumb in a good way in the best possible way. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's so catchy.

Speaker 2 (00:11:49):

That was a Mike Stringer special man. This dude is literally the, he's called Mike Stringer for a reason, man, the riff man.

Speaker 1 (00:11:56):

I kind of feel like typically, at least from what I've noticed, writing on my own or with other people or from everyone I know, with the exception of bands like an pec or something nuts like that, most of the time with these songs tend to be that do really well but are Simple. Usually you hear the story and it's like, we wrote it in an hour, we wrote it in two hours. It just popped up and we were laughing the whole time, not overthinking, just shit it out basically.

Speaker 2 (00:12:31):

Yeah. Yeah. I think there's definitely something to be said about that When you overthink a song too much, you can just overthink it to shit and you can kind of ruin it. Not to be said that there aren't great songs that were written by overthinking them, and that's for sure happen, but I feel like when you just have something come out and you just pop it out naturally and you're like, this is sick, I'm not going to stress too much over this. Great, let's move on. There's some beauty in that.

Speaker 3 (00:12:59):

You can kind of hear it even in early spirit box stuff because it's just like all that stuff was done without Dan in the room because mixed and mastered all of our stuff, and it's just like when it would just be up to me, I'd be so overly critical about everything and is this complex enough? Is this going to catch people's attention? And then the moment that we actually write with someone who knows what they're doing, it's like, don't overthink it. Just let's just write something good and let's just move on. And that's been the result of everything that we've released since the last Well Blessed Be Rule of Nines and now Holy Roller. So it's good. I feel like it's the right mindset to have is just to be able to let something be what it is as opposed to just being overly critical.

Speaker 2 (00:13:47):

Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:13:47):

Honestly, that's the main reason that I think that bands should hire producers

Speaker 2 (00:13:52):

For the filter.

Speaker 1 (00:13:53):

Yeah, the engineering part. Yeah, of course that matters, but that part I think is a lot easier to learn than the creative side or having someone to be like, no, just stop. It's good. Yeah, big

Speaker 2 (00:14:08):

Time. Sure. Yeah, just having someone to bounce ideas off of and just to be that filter. I mean, I've been in a million bands too. I know what it's like to sit there and you're writing stuff by yourself and you're like, oh man, is this good? Is this too simple? Oh, is it too technical? And without someone there that you trust that you have a good relationship with to be like, no, I think it's good. Not like, oh, you have to do it this way, but just to urge, I'll never say no. Oh, you guys have to do it this way. You have to do it my way. It's just more like, yo, I think I strongly urge you to do it this way because I feel like that riffs sick and we should just keep hammering in that riff and just focus in on the one good part because my thing is, especially coming from metal, but also doing pop and a good amount of that is there's something to be said about having a song that only has three or four parts in it, because those three or four parts you're going to remember.

(00:15:11):

If you keep hammering 'em in, you make sure those three parts are really good. Instead of having 15 parts, first of all, you're making less work for yourself so you can go write more songs, but also it is just you're going to remember things more, and I've always just been a fan of things that are simple and that are just effective on their own. A riff should be good enough to be repeated a few times. That was where we focused in on with all the new writing that we've been doing.

Speaker 1 (00:15:36):

I actually think that's where a lot of metal goes wrong is trying to cram too many different ideas into one song of Analyze any great pop songs or great songs throughout history. Usually they only do have three or four ideas that are then just varied up or repeated

Speaker 2 (00:15:54):

Totally,

Speaker 1 (00:15:54):

But it's usually not going to be 15, 20 ideas. That's like a thing that's unique to the kind of metal that doesn't tend to do very well with larger audiences for some weird reason. I wonder

Speaker 3 (00:16:09):

Why that is. Yeah, definitely. That's been a huge learning curve for me, and that's something that Dan's definitely taught me in the last little while is just something can be simple, something can be catchy, it can repeat. You know what I mean? As with before, I'm like, I got to cram all this stuff. I got more notes, and it's a different mindset and I'm so glad that we're there now because growing pains are one thing, but being able to actually learn what makes something catchy and being able to actually come up with a song together is just such a huge accomplishment. So that's good,

Speaker 2 (00:16:44):

But you got to do the technical to get there. I feel like a big part of the reason that Mike, for instance, is he's such a great guitar player. He's such a great writer, Mike, you have a lot to say in your riffs. You have a lot. You're not just going to sit there and feel stoked on writing four chords when you know that you can do so much more. I feel like that's where it starts out, right? It's like, okay, I have the ability to do so much. Why don't I do that? Why don't I put that into the song? I feel like that happens a lot in metal, right? Because it's a genre that's so focused on technicality, technical mastery of your instrument. You're like, okay, if I'm really good, why am I going to play four chords? That makes no sense. That's not why I'm doing this. But I think you have to naturally reach that point where you want to be like, okay, I'm done playing all this shit. Let's dumb this shit down. Let's get this shit to people that don't even listen to metal and get them to be into our music. How do we do that?

Speaker 1 (00:17:39):

Maybe it's like you get to a point with your technicality where you've gotten so far with it that it's not that you're over it, but you are kind of over. It doesn't seem as important as it did before. It's no longer taking up the same amount of brain ram. I think

Speaker 3 (00:17:56):

It's just burning out really. You know what I mean? And I mean, as guitar players in the genre we're so conditioned and trained to be something that really we're not. You go on Instagram, you go on Facebook, you look at all these clips of just these random kids that are just shredding. You don't think about, oh, that must've taken 90 takes before they put up that one clip that was perfect. You see the immediate thing of the video and you go, well, shit, I need to get my chops up.

Speaker 4 (00:18:24):

And then

Speaker 3 (00:18:25):

That translates to your writing where you're like, well, I need to be better. When in reality it's like, well, no, don't compare yourself. Just write what you think is catchy. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (00:18:33):

So I think that modern technology and social media is both the best and the worst thing to happen to music. It's like the best for so many reasons, ability to get out there. The bar has been raised significantly, but one thing that I noticed, and this is a total double-edged sword, was when my band was starting to tour at the end of, well, mid to end two thousands, or starting to see more and more local bands that had a drummer, that was insane. Whereas when we first started, everybody sucked. No one could play to a click. Everyone was just shitty. And over the course of five years, it changed to where everybody could suddenly play and everyone was recording themselves. And the thing that I noticed from talking to a bunch of these drummers who were insane was that they had listened to a bunch of records that were kind of fake, but they didn't know that they were fake. They just figured that's how people do it. So they learned how to play. That is a combination of that. And then watching fake videos on YouTube where they don't even know that the guitar's not plugged in or something.

Speaker 2 (00:19:46):

Right. That's a good point.

Speaker 1 (00:19:47):

People thinking that fake shit is real and then trying to emulate it has raised the bar, but also I think it causes people to misprioritized

Speaker 3 (00:19:59):

Big time. I agree with that a hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (00:20:01):

And to master their shit. I remember, yeah, there was that era where people were really messing with kick drums a lot. I remember as Blood Runs Black came out with that album, I don't remember what it was called. Damn. It's like Divergence or something. I don't remember what it's called. Anyway, it was one of those albums. Every song was super fast. The drums were super technical, and I just remember the kicks were so fast. Literally, that was the first album that I remember hearing Maybe Job For A Cowboy did some of that, but their shit was more alive. I specifically remember as Blood Runs Black being that album that had the first, I was in my band at the time in high school, and we looked at each other, we're like, dude, we got to step it up. This is crazy. How'd the guy do it? Dude, I'm sure

Speaker 1 (00:20:47):

He didn't do it.

Speaker 2 (00:20:48):

Yeah, of course. And then we kind of discovered too, I was into recording at the time. That was why I got into recording. I was in bands and I would always do our demos and stuff. I was like, oh, I can just take this kick drum and just copy and paste it a million times and we can do exactly what they do. It was like the magic was over. We were like, all right, so whatever. We don't have to learn to be good. We can just fake it like them. We caught onto it early.

Speaker 1 (00:21:14):

What's so weird about that is that I think that's also a double-edged sword

(00:21:19):

Because on the one hand, you get people who are cool to just fake things and you can't actually do it. But then on the other hand, been in situations with drummers who are incredible, and it's more that the parts just not totally written. So it doesn't make sense to have in play some super intricate thing and learn it if it's just going to change or they're still human after all. So maybe want them to really, really focus on the hands, and so it just makes sense for them to not focus as much on the feet and been in that situation with dudes that are phenomenal drummers. So it's one of those things where I feel like if it's used the right way, it can really enhance, but at first, people just went wild with it and just made so much unrealistic bullshit.

Speaker 2 (00:22:15):

Funny Beneath The Massacre, I remember Beneath the Massacre, you guys remember that band?

Speaker 3 (00:22:19):

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:22:19):

Yep. That was a bad one With the Speed

Speaker 3 (00:22:22):

Just by his icon. Remember those guys?

Speaker 2 (00:22:24):

Yo, that fool could actually do it though.

Speaker 3 (00:22:26):

They could do it. Yeah. Yeah. I remember the first time I heard that though, I was just like, this can't be a real thing, this guy. And then you see the guy and he's like This jacked dude that's just like gravity blasting the whole time.

Speaker 2 (00:22:37):

You're like, oh my God. It's so much easier now to make music, right? It's so easy to throw up Superior drummer. Anyone can throw up Superior Drummer and make whatever pattern they want. And it sounds so close that you just can't tell. So many producers are making full records with it, myself included. Guilty as charged, no shame. And I feel like I like music. That's impressive. It's so hard for me to be impressed by something nowadays. I'm just super jaded. I understand. And we live in this era where, and especially with hip hop and pop and stuff like that, I mean, yo whole albums are just loops. They're just splice loops. No one's even creating the key parts. No one's creating the drum parts. No one's creating the bass parts. The vocalist is Auto-Tune and melaine to shit. I can't even tell the difference between a lot of vocalists s now because of the amount of tuning.

(00:23:34):

Once again, guilty is charged, but I'm just saying it's the time we lived in. It's tricky. We used to have that kind of barrier to entry where it's like, yo, if you can't play this song, you can't record it. And bands had that. They'd be like, yo, dude, how are we going to go into the studio unless we can get a drummer that's good enough to nail this. But now anyone, any crappy band with a dude that just started whatever, playing drums, they don't even have to record him. They just program it and then edit the guitars to shit and edit everything to shit, and you don't have to be good to sound good. So that's my rant about that. Obviously I know you guys agree. That's what I'm just saying. I'm just ranting.

Speaker 1 (00:24:20):

Well, there's a flip side though, I think, and I completely agree, but the flip side is that at least I feel like in some ways it's easier to identify when someone's amazing in some ways just because in order to stand out, they have to be so amazing. Basically, it's like you said, it's so easy to basically make something that's mediocre or pretty good. It doesn't even take that much talent. It just takes a little bit of skill. You can't have inverse talent, but barrier to entry is low, so in order to stand out, you have to be fucking exceptional.

Speaker 2 (00:24:57):

True.

Speaker 1 (00:24:58):

Like an Alex Inger, and that's the thing that I think can't be faked. People on that level. You cannot fake that shit. And so I've seen a level of musicianship now that I've never seen before.

Speaker 2 (00:25:14):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:25:15):

Definitely.

Speaker 2 (00:25:15):

The bar's been raised for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:25:17):

Yeah, so I feel both ways about it. The only thing I don't like is getting inundated with garbage. That's the thing I don't like.

Speaker 2 (00:25:25):

It's too much.

Speaker 3 (00:25:26):

Yeah, I mean, even from a guitar player standpoint, you definitely can point the guys that are quantizing and copying and editing and blatantly just using the same pick attack note for each section of that thing. You know what I mean? And it's just, I don't know. I just find it so much more impressive when you find someone who's actually doing that shit live and there are mess ups and it's human. You know what I mean?

(00:25:51):

I don't know. And I think in the metal genre, we're so conditioned to everything having to be perfect. Every take has to be perfect. There can't be this natural slide of the hand up the fretboard where you hear a little bit of a scrape or something. You know what I mean? No, no, no, no. Got to take that out. That's too human. You know what I mean? And I don't like that. I like hearing at least a bit of natural playing, and same with drummers and stuff. I feel like that kind of separates a lot as the guys that are still into that because there's too much of the other. There's too much of the, oh, just play. Play that section. We'll cut that and then we'll just quantize and then we'll copy and paste. And I don't know. I think that's what makes shit stale nowadays is just hearing that robot quantize shit.

Speaker 2 (00:26:41):

Yeah, dude, slipknots album.

Speaker 3 (00:26:43):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:26:43):

Dude, so good.

Speaker 3 (00:26:45):

Phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (00:26:46):

Jay Weinberg so good.

Speaker 3 (00:26:48):

Yeah, that's

Speaker 1 (00:26:48):

Great

Speaker 2 (00:26:49):

At doing exactly what you're saying with keeping it loose, but just it's got so much personality. Just listening to that album and watching him play makes you realize how much a drummer's loose energy can add to the aggression of a song. I mean, that dude, obviously he studied Joey because Joey was the king of that being so just angry and almost sloppy, but not, but think about what Slip Knot would've been if the drums are just perfect. That's not Slip Knot.

Speaker 3 (00:27:17):

Definitely. I mean, and when you go see them live it like you're getting anything different, you're getting what's on the record. As with so many other guys, it's like because they do all of that pre-work where they're quantizing and copying and pasting. People go and expect a perfect performance and then they don't hear it and they go, well, that guy sucks. So it's almost like shooting yourself in the foot where you're like, see, I can do it perfectly, and then you go and be a human for a minute,

Speaker 2 (00:27:39):

Dude.

(00:27:39):

That's why I hate vocal overlaps. My whole thing is like, dude, if you have to write a vocal overlap into your chorus, first of all, how are you going to perform that live? Because that's impossible. Obviously you can have the guy your guitarist go and sing in and punch in over him, but also I think it makes songs less catchy when things aren't performable just all in one. Because if the crowd's going to sing along to your chorus and you have a line overlapping with another line and another thing, and then there's a left and that comes out of nowhere that's filtered and then it's like back here, it's hard to sing that back. So I'm just not a fan of that shit.

Speaker 1 (00:28:17):

When you're producing, are you thinking about the band's live show? Reason I'm asking is because I've worked with and known some producers who are also good producers, but their philosophy is not my fucking problem if they can't do it. I know this one guy that was good at producing solos, but the stuff that he would have people do is completely unrealistic, like huge jumps, for instance, with no gap between them. They're on the first fret and they're on the 18th fret, and there was no time to get up there. It's just, and something that anyone who's played live would know that you had fucked that up. It's not going to happen. That producer's whole thing was like I said, not my problem.

Speaker 2 (00:29:02):

Well, listen, I'm not like a purist where I'm like, oh, you have to record perfectly play from start to end perfect to be not do the take. No, it has to be done tastefully. I think there's always times in a song where you want to kind of do something that's impossible for the good of the song, but I think that with vocals, I have a harder time be okay with that just because I think that takes away from the sing along value of it guitars and bass or whatever the things, to me, the vocals are the center point of the song, and I always want that to be as single lable as possible, whatever you call it, you can sing it back without having to worry about doing something that's impossible.

Speaker 3 (00:29:53):

Dan cares a lot. We'll be working on stuff and we'll go through 10, 15 minutes of questions of, now would this be better if it was like this? Think about if you're playing at this venue and there's this many people here. He just said, are there going to be this many people singing along if we do that or should we? You know what I mean? And it's like he cares so much about the whole picture, not just, oh, this sounds cool. Let's just throw it on there. You know what I mean? It's a whole thing. It's not just like, oh, this sounds great. Honestly, from playing it live to even we'll be writing a song. He's like, oh, I can already see the music video, dude. It's going to be like this. You know what I mean? So he's a whole picture type of guy. He's not just like, oh, let's just piece this together and whatever. You deal with it. Thanks, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:30:43):

I was doing a podcast with Mark from Suicide Silence, and he was telling me that their approach to writing has always been a how will this translate live?

Speaker 4 (00:30:56):

And

Speaker 1 (00:30:57):

So knowing that you can really actually hear it in all their riffs, they won't let riffs into their songs unless they know that they're going to go over live like crazy good. And I guess it's no surprise that they became the biggest Death Corps band because those riffs really do translate live, but they think about that. It's a conscious move,

Speaker 2 (00:31:20):

Dude. They're so good

Speaker 1 (00:31:21):

To do that.

Speaker 2 (00:31:22):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:31:22):

Smart.

Speaker 2 (00:31:23):

It's super smart. Yeah, it really is. I just think it's just so much more exciting to write music, especially heavy music when you're imagining the show. Whenever I write riffs or produce a band or something, I'm always imagining how is this going to feel live? What gets me excited? I mean, I think that's the most exciting part. I think up until 2020, music was a live performance art, and I think that that's what it should be catered to for the most part. Dude, especially metals. So fun when you write a part, when we were writing the holy roller breakdown, we're like, oh, dude, imagine. Oh, I don't have my keys on me, but we have this joke. We have this joke. I'm from Southern California, so the kids around here all wear carabiners at shows with their keys on them. When I grew up going to shows, when there's a breakdown, it's like Done, done, done. And there's that big silence in it. You always hear the mosh pit and you hear all the keys jangling of in between the notes. And so when we were doing that breakdown, we were all busting out our keys. It's going to be like done.

(00:32:38):

We're like, oh, dude, that's going to be so sick.

Speaker 1 (00:32:40):

Is that what that is?

Speaker 2 (00:32:41):

What

Speaker 1 (00:32:42):

I mean is some of the sound design in that song, like actual stuff that you keys and that you recorded, or are they

Speaker 2 (00:32:50):

No, we definitely, we should definitely had 'em out when we were recording it.

Speaker 3 (00:32:53):

Yeah, we definitely should have left it in. The other one that Dan always does too, is the Woo. And basically all you hear is you'll hear this empty space, you'll hear the keys, and then guaranteed someone in the audience just goes, woo. To the point where when we were recording in la, north Lane had a show and Dan couldn't come, and we went, me and Courtney, we went and watched the show and I was filming a part, and I think actually Arrow was playing and there was just this crazy heavy breakdown that started. I started filming. Then we went back to the studio and I showed Dan. I was like, dude, yeah, they were so good live. Watch this. I hit play in the video and instantly I hit play. And there's this huge gap in between the breakdown and all you hear in the background is just literally two people going woo woo at different times. It was just so funny because it was like, yeah, it's exactly what you say every single time.

Speaker 2 (00:33:46):

Yeah, so funny. So we were doing a lot of that. It is a big inside joke we got around here.

Speaker 1 (00:33:55):

Well, I'm wondering, Mike, is how did you manage to get yourself out of the two technical headspace, or was it through working with Dan, did you have to do anything mentally to just get that voice to shut the hell up?

Speaker 3 (00:34:11):

I think it's just getting older and also working with Dan at the same time. We've been working with Dan since the beginning, but like I said before, it's always just been send him the files and then he'll mix it, master boring. And I mean, I think after doing it myself for so long and working with an engineer and just sending it off the moment that we were actually able to get into a room and start recording and writing, it had been a couple of years and I just got burnt out. I had been burnt out from my previous, I used to play in a band called I Wrestled a Bear once

Speaker 4 (00:34:44):

And

Speaker 3 (00:34:45):

Playing with that band and moving into Spirit box, I was already burnt out of just playing too many notes and just trying to be dissonant for the sake of it and going crazy and flashy. So that jump into spirit box was a whole thing for me of trying to team all that. And then as we progressed with that, it's like things just kind of got dumbed down more and more and more. And yeah, I think it just got to a point where we all were just like, you know what? Let's just try to write pop structure songs. And that's been a huge influence from Dan is him just holding our hand along the way and basically just being like, this is okay that this riff comes back twice. This is okay that this chorus is kind of bone heady. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (00:35:29):

Sorry to cut you off. I was going to say you always, I feel like with the start of spirit box, that was your goal too. I could tell going from Fallen and I wrestled the bear once to that, I could tell right off the bat the songs were so much simpler. So it was like you really set out to do that, but like you said, it took you doing it a bunch of times to be like, all right, let's dumb it down. And it took me coming into reinforce that with you

Speaker 3 (00:35:54):

Big time.

Speaker 2 (00:35:56):

I think it was going to happen anyway, but I'm happy to be the catalyst that helped to facilitate it.

Speaker 3 (00:36:03):

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 (00:36:04):

Yeah. And then what you were saying about making riffs to bonehead and stuff is a big part that I was super happy to come in and help with was leaving space for the vocal more than anything. And that's been such a big thing that that's been our mantra since we started writing. It was like, yo, Courtney's so fucking amazing. She's really the centerpiece of the band, and we got to leave space for her. Yeah, I think that's kind of where we're at now. I think we have a pretty clear idea of what we want arrangement wise and how much space we want moving forward, which is cool too.

Speaker 3 (00:36:44):

Yeah, I think a big part of Dan coming into play too, and actually working with him is that before when it was just on my shoulders, I wasn't considering Courtney in the writing process. I would just present a full song

Speaker 1 (00:36:56):

And then she would just do her thing.

Speaker 3 (00:36:58):

Yeah, she would just write to that song. But when Dan working with him, it's like, no, no, no. We're going to write the parts. And then immediately, once we're done writing the parts, Courtney's going to get on the mic and she's going to just mumble or just say random words to a melody. And he's right 99% of the time, the first thing that comes to her head roughly is what sticks the melody. Her first choice is always there. So giving her that time to actually do that while the riffs are being made as opposed to it being presented to her has made a huge difference. And that's been Dan's thing this whole time. It's just like, we have to work together. You can't just throw her on top. She's the most crucial element of this. So that's been huge.

Speaker 2 (00:37:41):

Mike's dreading me doing the bathtub analogy.

Speaker 1 (00:37:45):

What's the bathtub analogy? Why do you say it a lot?

Speaker 2 (00:37:50):

No, I've said it to them like a billion times, but it's not even my

Speaker 1 (00:37:53):

Analogy. It's a great analogy.

Speaker 2 (00:37:54):

I thought it just stuck with me. It stuck with me so much.

Speaker 1 (00:37:57):

1,000,000,001 won't hurt.

Speaker 2 (00:37:59):

Yeah. Alright, go for it. Yeah, 1,000,001. Yeah. So do you know who Lewis Bell

Speaker 1 (00:38:03):

Is? No.

Speaker 2 (00:38:04):

He produces Post Malone.

Speaker 1 (00:38:06):

Okay, so he is good.

Speaker 2 (00:38:07):

Yeah, he's awesome. He's awesome. He was on a podcast and I was listening to him and he was just talking about vocal production and how vocals fit into a song, and he was like, the problem with a lot of artists and producers is they'll produce a track, and then once the track's fully done being produced and it's full, then it's like, okay, cool. Let's put vocals on it. And he was saying, the analogy is if you had a, and you filled it up all the way with water to the top, that's your production. You're like, cool, my production's done. It's all full. It's completed. And then it's like, okay, cool. Time to put the vocals in. Then the person has to get into that bathtub, and then the bathtub's going to overflow, so you didn't leave room for the vocalist. So it's like you want to have the bathtub full just a little bit halfway, then have the person get in and then fill it up the rest of the way with whatever's needed to fill the bathtub to the right level. And that shit stuck with me, I thought was a great analogy.

Speaker 1 (00:39:10):

I've heard that analogy for EQ also. Basically, the idea being you only have a hundred percent that you can fill something up with, and not everything can be at a hundred percent. It'll just overload and

Speaker 2 (00:39:23):

Suck. That brings me to my next little thing that I've been big on lately is mixing without soloing things I think is really important and not as across the board rule. Mike, you and me were just talking about this,

(00:39:38):

So I sent Mike the stems for Holy Roller for him to do a guitar play through too, and he hit me up. He's like, dude, if you listen to the bass on this, I was like, no, what's this sound like? He's like, dude, it's all fucked up. It's ducking. He was like, it's ducking at every kick hit or every pick hit, you can't even hear the attack. It's super fucking gnarly sounding. Not even saying it sounded like shit. He was just kind of like, have you listened to this? And I was like, honestly, dude, I don't think I've soloed it.

Speaker 1 (00:40:14):

I'm not surprised, man, when old records had their stems released back 10 years ago, Bohemian Rhapsody, and I heard a muse record, like a muse song and Metallica stuff, massive bands from multiple eras, and people were spreading, were sending the tracks around, and it was just like a thing, listen to how fucking awesome this is. But there were problems everywhere in those recordings. You just never noticed it when they were

Speaker 2 (00:40:51):

Mixed. Yeah, it's about making the whole picture. It's all context. So everything can sound great on its own, but you put it all in together and it sounds bad then it's the point.

Speaker 3 (00:41:01):

Oh, yeah, I feel bad sometimes when we're doing mixture visions and I'm like, yeah, but this park, we're just one of those clients that are a nightmare sometimes to deal with. We'll get up to version eight or nine or 10, and it was just funny with the holy roller thing, we got to version, what was it, seven or something, and we're like, this is it. And we were so stoked on it. And then, yeah, when I got the stems and I sold the base, I was like, huh, that's crazy. But it's just funny to me because I feel I am so critical about my own shit, you know what I mean? And it's not that, obviously I don't trust Dan. He fucking kills it. It's insane, but it's just funny that hearing the whole picture, I didn't even think about that. I was just like, wow, this sounds so thick and huge. You know what I mean? And then listening to the stem of it, it's just a whole picture thing. Would've never been able to pinpoint that, and it doesn't matter because the whole thing just sounds insane, so I'm not like, what the hell? You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (00:42:02):

It's not meant to be heard as a stem.

Speaker 3 (00:42:04):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:42:05):

So do you think on that topic that Dan, if you had soloed it and noticed all that stuff, that maybe it would've distracted you from the bigger picture and maybe you would've gotten the base sounding perfect by itself, but at the detriment of the mix?

Speaker 2 (00:42:22):

For sure, and I think I've done that dozens, if not hundreds of times in various situations. I mean, it's not like I won't solo anything. Obviously, if I'm hearing something wrong in the context of the whole mix, then I'll be like, okay, let me go in and see what's wrong. Oh, okay. That's why the bass is completely blown out. But yeah, in this case, it sounded dope in the context of the mix, so I didn't touch it. Yeah, I think if I opened it up, I probably would've been like, Ugh. Oh man, my fab filters pinned red. I don't know. Look, I'm not one of those guys that freaks out too much over gain staging. Maybe I should be.

Speaker 1 (00:43:08):

Why should you be?

Speaker 2 (00:43:09):

I don't know. I just was trying to cover my ass by saying maybe I

Speaker 1 (00:43:11):

Should be okay.

Speaker 2 (00:43:13):

But I think when everyone's like, well, actually it's very important for you to gain stage. I mean, look, I think it's cool to do unconventional stuff. I think when it ends up sounding cool and heavy and imperfect, I feel like that's the goal. So why fuck with it?

Speaker 3 (00:43:29):

Well, you were even saying, you were like, oh, that was just a trick that I did to let the kick come out. It was a parallel compression. Yeah. Yeah. So as El just said, it's not supposed to be heard soloed. And on top of that, it's not like we didn't challenge you enough by taking a song that was already an F sharp, then going to FE, and then D Sharp for the main breakdown. That's just stupid. So the fact that you were able to even make it punch and make it so those low notes were clear is just beyond anything I could even think of and it would just be such a challenge. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:44:05):

It was a challenge. Well, I could talk about the trick for the base. Obviously it was so low when you get down to, I think the breakdown was C, right?

Speaker 3 (00:44:13):

Yeah. I think it was D Sharp actually, but D, it was one of those, it doesn't matter at this point. D, so

Speaker 2 (00:44:18):

Low, an extra octave. So literally, Mike tracked it on literally the best base you could track on for that kind of music. He did a ding wall, and that thing handles pretty much down to F pretty perfectly. Your low fundamental, obviously you're limited by science to where your low fundamental can actually be heard. I feel like when you're down at F, you're probably somewhere in the 50 hertz range. I want to say maybe 40 hertz to 50, I don't know. But I think when we got down to the E and then the B and then the C and whatever, all those low notes, it was literally just string rattling. The string was just rattling. So I took a sine wave in serum and I just played the note, like the whatever, and then I used a bunch of distortion to create some upper harmonics in it. So we're getting the next harmonic and the next, the next. So it kind of goes, you get the next octave of the note and then low past that. So there's under the base, it kind of filled in the harmonics for what it was missing on those low notes. So that was a cool little trick. I hadn't done that before, but also I'd never had to mix a base that was too octaves lower than it,

Speaker 3 (00:45:43):

Yeah, sorry,

Speaker 2 (00:45:44):

Should have been or whatever. But I think it came out dope. I love the bass in that song. I feel like it's really heavy.

Speaker 1 (00:45:51):

Did you change tunings in the middle of the song? Am I understanding that correctly?

Speaker 3 (00:45:55):

Yeah, so we have a few songs actually that will go from F Sharp to we have a song Blessed B, where it's, it's F sharp the whole time, and then there's a breakdown that hits a low C, which obviously when we record it, we just tune the guitar down, but live, we just let the Kemper change the tunings for us on the fly through midi.

Speaker 1 (00:46:16):

Back when I tried that a long time ago, it sounded like shit. But I've heard people doing that in the past few years where it doesn't sound like shit. So I guess the technology got

Speaker 3 (00:46:27):

Better with the ke. I had a fractal before, and I did notice that once you got down to the ridiculous levels of going two steps or three steps lower, quite a bit of compensation needed for the right hand. With the Kemper though, I'm pretty blown away by it. It's pretty bang on, I'll

Speaker 2 (00:46:47):

Admit that. Are you talking about the delay, the latency?

Speaker 3 (00:46:49):

Yeah, the latency between the right hand hitting versus when it comes out. I will admit that I have to up the gain if I'm going from in that song, particularly F Sharp to C Sharp, just to kind of get that attack back. But other than that, it's pretty bang on. It's pretty incredible.

Speaker 1 (00:47:07):

So I have a question for both of you. So Mike, being that you have recorded yourself basically up till up until now, what made you be able to be trusting enough to let somebody else take charge? And Dan, how do you go about establishing trust with musicians? So they do let you take charge?

Speaker 2 (00:47:31):

Yeah, that's a good question.

Speaker 3 (00:47:33):

Definitely. I mean, I will be clear as well that beforehand, in the other situation, we would hire an engineer to record my guitars, and I would record bass as well, and then I would record Courtney's vocal. So I wasn't full on doing all of it as far as letting Dan do his thing and kind of take his own liberties and everything. That's been since Day one, man, because I've worked with Dan before. I first worked with Dan in 2013 on my old bands before I Wa i's Last Record and Fallen

Speaker 2 (00:48:05):

ArcHa shout

Speaker 3 (00:48:06):

Out. And when we did that, it was just like, man, this guy just totally gets everything that I'm trying to do. We have the same melodic sense. Basically. I found my producer soulmate in a sense. You know what I mean? And since then it was just

Speaker 2 (00:48:21):

So the trust was there.

Speaker 3 (00:48:22):

Yeah, immediately

Speaker 2 (00:48:24):

Trust on that album. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:48:26):

A hundred percent. That album is just nuts. It's just crazy. And he killed it. It was amazing. So when it came to Spirit box stuff, as soon as we got the recording finished, it's like, okay, let's pitch this to Dan and let's hope to God that he can, he'll throw us a bone and do this. I know he's a busy guy. And then when he was like, yeah, let's do it. Ever since then, it's been him and I wouldn't want it any other way at this point, to be honest.

Speaker 1 (00:48:54):

Something I hear all the time from URM students who are first starting is that they have a serious problem getting bands to take their ideas seriously or even accept them in the first place. And my answer is always, they don't trust you. That's exactly what it is, because if they did trust you, they would hear you out, but obviously you just haven't earned it yet and you just got to do more work until you learn how to earn it, basically.

Speaker 2 (00:49:22):

Well, look, I mean, it's something that just you have to gain over time, either way. And I mean, I'm not going to lie, the first time that we actually worked together on writing the Spear Box stuff was when I went up to Canada to Victoria and I stayed with them, and we basically set up a little studio in the house and we just went in, right? Just like, let's go. Let's just try this and see what happens. We had no material, right?

Speaker 4 (00:49:48):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:49:48):

You know what, Mike? No. Mike had songs that he had written, but it was mostly just riffs and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (00:49:54):

They weren't put together whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (00:49:56):

We went in pretty cold. And look, I knew that I, obviously I'd gained your trust with Fallen RK for that, but I had to regain the trust for this project. So I feel like until the songs are getting done and you can start to hear it come together, it's hard to gain trust. I think once we got a song where we were like, oh, okay, cool. This is starting to feel like something real. That's when I gained your guys trust. I think. I feel like I wanted to go pretty aggressive and then dial it back when it came to, let's just go all simple. And I know that was scary, but I also, I know that you guys wanted that. You asked for it. You were like, Dan, dude, come up. Let's simplify these songs. Let's make this more accessible. This is what we want.

(00:50:49):

So I was like, okay, I'm going to do my job. I'm going to try to come up and we're going to make this something that it wasn't before. We're going to go into a whole new realm. We're going to try all these new things. I was like, guys, just, you don't have to trust me right away, but just follow me down the rabbit hole. That was what it was. Just like, let's just go down this hole. Let's see what happens. And if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And I still do that. We do that shit all the time. We, it's like, if you don't try something, how? Take

Speaker 3 (00:51:21):

My hand.

Speaker 2 (00:51:22):

Take my hand. Follow me.

Speaker 3 (00:51:24):

Yeah. Well, that's the thing, man. Even we've done that twice, and like Dan said, the first time when we were just kind of approaching it and starting it in a whole new way and going about it this way, we had nothing. And he was here for a week and a half, and when he left, we had seven songs. Cranked Crush. That's Productive. We were doing a song a day at one point, and then he came the second time, and same thing, we did another six. It was just crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:51:51):

Well, it's fun doing it like pop style. It's fun writing metal pop style because in pop writing sessions, the goal is usually you get in the room with a couple producers, a writer or two, and the artist, and you guys want to at least get one song in the pop world. Sometimes you get two songs, three songs in a day, and more often than not, those songs end up being more or less what the final version ends up kind of being. Anyway, it's just, it's so quick and going back to what we were talking about before without where you're not overthinking songs and how that kind of makes them come out better, I think we did that across the board, and that was new. Mike was like, dude, I'm so used to just spending so much time on a song. I remember Mike was uncomfortable with the idea of doing a song quickly.

(00:52:41):

You're like, shit, but aren't we looking over stuff? Aren't we going too quick? Aren't we missing out on some stuff we could put in there? I'm like, no. I mean, let's just get at least the lay of the land. Let's get a sketch, because I'd rather have a crappy sketch of the whole song than a perfect verse and then be like, okay, let's get the rest. Because when you have a sketch of the song, you can at least leave the studio, go sit outside, put it on your phone, put it up to your ear, listen to it, and be like, oh, you could hear it in a different place. You could listen to it in your car and you can drive and experience it, and then when you're doing that, you can be like, oh, it would be really cool. What if we put this and did this and did that? I feel like it's so important to listen to music outside of the studio. That's such an important thing to do in the writing process. Your brain is actually perceiving it differently. Just literally, it's like science. When you're in a different place, you're seeing different things. You're not looking at the same walls that you were playing the guitar in to write the riffs. Your brain is hearing it completely differently. Same thing when you play it for someone. I feel like when I play someone a song for the first time, I hear it differently.

Speaker 1 (00:53:54):

Definitely. You hear things that you never noticed before.

Speaker 2 (00:53:57):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:53:58):

You're critical in a whole new way.

Speaker 2 (00:54:00):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:54:00):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:54:01):

Come say, hi, Zach.

Speaker 1 (00:54:02):

Yeah. Come say hi. Come say hi.

Speaker 2 (00:54:05):

Come say, what's up. This is my business partner Zach. Zach co-owns the studio with me.

Speaker 4 (00:54:10):

Whoa.

Speaker 2 (00:54:10):

Zach. What's up, Mike? I can't hear anyone, but hey. Oh

Speaker 1 (00:54:16):

God. See you later. You know what you were saying about getting songs done quickly fucked with your head. I think that it's because people have this idea that if things happen too fast, they didn't work hard enough and they didn't work hard enough, then something's wrong.

Speaker 3 (00:54:39):

Yeah, big time.

Speaker 1 (00:54:41):

But that's a fallacy.

Speaker 3 (00:54:42):

Yeah. And I've learned that because when it was all up to me and I was writing everything, I would get to that point where I would be, maybe I'd make a song in a day or something, but it would take me two months of solid writing to get on that role. You know what I mean? Where I'm like, damn, here we go, killing it. Right. But going into a situation where you have nothing written, especially for metal, was such a daunting thing in my mind where I was like, man, it'd be so cool in this week and a half if we could get two songs done. And then literally first day, literally first day, we have three song skeletons done within an eight hour session of even taking breaks and stuff. And I was like, damn, it's so cool just to be able to just relax and just be like, this is what it is and let's just leave it and let's move on to something else and revisit it tomorrow. And I think the biggest thing with that is just being kind to yourself and not being such a hard ass when it comes to creating and everything. Because I think mentality and everything, and having that moment of being able to create something and letting it be and being accepting of that is so huge because if you have that mental roadblock where it's like, oh, well, I can't get past the verse, therefore this song is not like, let's just scrap it. You're not going to get anywhere. So definitely a huge learning curve with that.

Speaker 1 (00:56:09):

Dan, how do you help musicians get over that? I'm just thinking back to scenarios where, say for instance, recording a drummer who's phenomenal and we get four songs done in a day or something, which I think is pretty fast, but they're great. We didn't need to do one song a day or two songs a day. You fucking killed it. Sometimes I've noticed that even if it's awesome, they will feel like we did something wrong, we got done early, or it moved too fast. There's no way that it could possibly be good. And so they start second guessing themselves, and I feel like I have to play this weird psychological game to get them to get out of their own way.

Speaker 2 (00:56:59):

Yeah, that's a tough one. It's all psychological, right? It's hard to convince someone otherwise when they have that idea in their head that for something to be great, it has to take a long time. Like I said before, I think the proof just has to be in the product. It's about once you can prove to them that it's coming out good with it being done in a short amount of time, then they'll just trust me. I think other than that, I just have to be like, yo, trust me, it's going to be good. Trust me, it's going to be good. You just have to keep saying that,

Speaker 1 (00:57:31):

And eventually they might

Speaker 2 (00:57:33):

Eventually, well, like I said, yeah, then when it comes out or when you send 'em the first mix, they're like, oh, holy shit. And that happens a lot with vocals too, which is why I started tracking with autotune on for vocalists, which I know a lot of people don't like to do that, but I think you have to do things along the way that give the artist confidence. And I think that, for instance, with vocalists, when you're tracking a vocalist singing and they're hearing back their takes without tune, without reverb, without delay, it's uninspiring and they're going to be like, oh man, I'm really shitting the bed. This sounds like crap. And I know a lot of producers that do that. They'll just record bone dry and the artist is always bummed. But I like to go the other direction and I like to do autotune welder, tracking, reverb, everything, compression and my full vocal chain, that's going to be basically the final mix, vocal chain I like the vocalist to track into because then they can go and do their take and they can come in and listen to it and be like, whoa, I sound awesome.

(00:58:38):

I think that also helps in choosing takes too. Not to go ramble too much now about vocal shit, but

Speaker 1 (00:58:45):

No, that's okay.

Speaker 2 (00:58:46):

Yeah, I got there. So I'll go there.

Speaker 1 (00:58:48):

Yeah, for ramble.

Speaker 2 (00:58:49):

Yeah. I think when it comes down to choosing vocal takes, it's another thing where I don't want to stress too much about it has to be perfect. I'm going to put Autotune on, I'm going to audition the take with Autotune on, I'm going to track the take with Autotune on, and we'll listen to it, and if it sounds good, it's good. And then I'll use Melaine to guide the vocal into the autotune for it to hit properly if there's a note that's off. But I think with vocalists, especially when you have someone do something like a hundred times, eventually you're going to get diminishing returns. You are going to hit that certain point where they're not really feeling it anymore and the vibe's not right, and they're frustrated and tired and hungry and thirsty, and it's like with certain things like vocals, I think it's important to get the performer stoked and that creates trust. And then when they hear it fully done, then they go, cool. Wow. Oh my God, I did that in two takes and it sounds great. So you're right, we can do something quickly and it'd be awesome.

Speaker 3 (00:59:52):

I think that's the large part of Dan's process with us is that even when we're writing, we're not writing with shitty tones and just horrible basic drum presets or whatever. It's basically a 90% finished mix, so that way our choices that we're doing on the way in, whether it's choosing a guitar tone or something like that, we're basically making that decision in the room or in my mind where I'm like, yeah, it's going to be pretty much this and I'm excited about it. I'm going to track better. You know what I mean? And then when we get the mix back, it's not like this whole, whoa, everything's changed. It's basically what we've been tracking to. It's what we wrote with. So I feel like that's a huge mental, a positive thing mentally when you're doing that, is that it sounds sick, so the song's going to get written way faster,

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):

Create trust by sounding sick right off the bat,

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):

Big time. I think that that's one of the biggest problems with modern recording is tracking in a way that sounds mediocre

(01:01:00):

With the idea of making it good later. I think that that's one of the, I'm all about technology, but I do think that that's one of the elements that got kind of lost a little bit when new technology came around that I do think people are starting to get back now, but there was a time period where I remember producers didn't even give a fuck about making things sound good on the way, and they were afraid to. They're actually afraid to, which I think is really weird because committing might be the best thing you can learn how to do.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):

Oh, for real, man. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):

Yeah, dude. People perform differently when it sounds great. It's so inaccurate to get a mediocre sound and then try to get great performances. It's so hard to judge

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):

So hard, and it's like you said, you have the ability nowadays to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):

Yeah, so why not?

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):

It's so old school to be like, well, we got to record your vocal dries as a bone. We are going to take up too much resources in the computer. CPU, bro, you seen the New Mac Pros. Get yourself one of those. You're good. You can literally record into a full mix, and that's where templates come in handy too. Sometimes for me, I have a vocal template that I keep on hand that I can pull up with one click and Pro Tools. It's got my record tracks, it's got my lead tracks, my backups, my harmonies, my pads, everything's ready. So it's another one of those things where when someone's inspired to do something, if we're sitting there and Courtney's like, oh, I did have a vocal idea for this song. I'll be like, okay, let's go do it. The vocal chain's up go strike while the iron's

Speaker 4 (01:02:44):

Hot. You

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):

Might never have this idea again. You could record it into your phone, but while you have the idea and while you're psyched on the idea, record it, who knows? It might even be the final take. Let's just try it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):

Yeah. How long did it take you to put together that template?

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):

A long time. I've gone through a lot of tweaks and revisions over the years. I honestly don't even think it's perfect. I'm always tweaking it. I'm always adding stuff. I could tell you what it is, if you want to know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):

Sure, why not?

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):

Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):

It'll still never sound the way it does when you use it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):

I'm fine if it does too. I don't care. So my main mic that I use, oh, I use one of two. I either use a Perlman TM one, which is, it's like a U 47 clone and this dude over here in la, his name's Dave Perlman, he makes custom clones. I went and saw him and he hand wired it for me. It's an awesome mic. Not that expensive either. I'll either use that or I'll use the Bach U 1 95. Also the sound deluxe U 1 95, either one of those or seven B, if it's screaming, I'll use that. But that always goes into my Aus MA five, which I love. It's got the 28 K boost button, which gives you this cool brightness. Have you ever used the MA five?

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):

No,

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):

It's dope. It's like a Neve circuit, so I'll go into that and I hit the distress of course, which I love. It's beautiful. Oh, it's the best. And then once it hits Pro Tools, I've got, first thing is actually the waves NS one, the noise suppressor, which I love because it just helps smooth out all the white noise and little shuffling in stuff in between words. It's like a post-production tool. They use it for cleaning up dialogue and it's like a one fader if you ever use it. It's one fader and there's no latency. So I track with it on, which is dope, and then I'll hit autotune, like E, F, X usually, and then I hit a waves RRE Q six where I'm taking off lows, probably up to like a hundred. Then I'm boosting highs probably at like 10, 8, 6, just high end. And then I'm hitting good old gain reduction by JST, which I think is the coolest focal plugin.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):

It's a good one.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):

Yeah, I love it. You have to use it in very small amounts because it's so intense.

Speaker 3 (01:05:19):

Very aggressive.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):

Dude, that thing is that thing. Oh man, you could go really wrong with that thing, but you can also go super right with it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):

So a high powered weapon,

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):

Dude, it's so high powered. If you just leave it, the priest said it comes on is gnarly. I turn that slay almost all the way down. It's just so intense. So I usually turn that down. I even do parallel on it. I do a 50 to 80% mix, so intense. Usually on the distress I'm usually hitting anywhere between six and 12 DB of gain reduction, but if I'm doing screaming, I'll just go all the way to the red just because I think it sounds cool and use the distortion mode and stuff. So I feel like most of the compression work is done on the stressor anyway, so the gain reduction is just that little kind of sparkle and edge to it. After that, it's going to go either fab filter, deser, or waves deser, one of the two,

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):

Depending on what

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):

If I need to go in surgically. If it's someone that has, certain people have very specific S ranges where it's like a whistle.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):

Yeah, I'll use the fab filter for that. I feel like it's good at just going into that narrow band, but I like the waves one. To me, it's almost more of just a high-end compressor and I think it's got a cool sound. So sometimes I'll use both in a row, just the fab one to get a little bit out and then the waves one to kind of get that active compression going. Then I'll hit my vocal bus. That's pretty much it on the channel. Hit the vocal bus and we'll do you make fun of me, but we'll do a CLA vocals.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):

Dude, that's such a good one.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):

Okay, you like it? Good. I get made fun of for using,

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):

So CLA vocals and CLA effects. That's a plugin that people make fun of, but it's been on like 95% of nail the mixes.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):

Dude, it's so good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):

Yeah, everyone uses it. It's so widely used and everybody feels kind of weird about using it, but they use it anyways. It sounds

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):

Awesome. Yeah. Did you hear my reaction? You heard how I brought it up. I was like, well, I use this one thing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):

Yeah, that's how everybody is about it. There's some weird stigma about it, but I don't get it. It sounds incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):

It has a sound. I like plugins that have a sound to it. I feel like I use it just for little touches of stuff. I love the compressor on it. It's great. Just for the vocal bus, I use the push setting on it. I'll usually turn off the EQs on it. I want to do that elsewhere, but I'll do the push setting and then I turn it to quarter delay. I keep that all the way down just to have a little delay going. And also I don't use sends, so I do everything on my vocal bus. I just have different stacks of buses where I do my processing on, so that way when I print stems, I'm not screwing myself by having to go and solo all my effect returns with each bus. I'll do a little bit of the delay on there. I'll do the tight reverb, turn off the stereo shit, call a day on that.

(01:08:27):

Oh, you know what, before that actually I'll do, what's it called? The UAD Pole Tech. I love a lot for vocals. I'll do a 12 or 16 K boost on that, which that's a big one. I think it's a really good sounding eq. Really sweet and natural. Yeah. So that'll hit there. And then the CLA and then use, I've been incorporating another embarrassing plugin in just for a little, and this is my pop vocal chain. This is for singing pop vocals, which obviously you just take off the reverbs and delays and stuff and you're good for screaming with it too, but for singing pop vocal. So yeah, after the CLAI will hit a HA and I'll throw it in ping pong mode and I'll do a low pass high pass filter delay. That's usually doing a half or a quarter note, so you're getting a little bit of bounce back on the vocal. And I've got the mix of 3%, just barely anything because H delay, it's another pretty intense plugin.

Speaker 3 (01:09:31):

You can't get out of hand

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):

With that feedback too. I mean, you'll get to the end of your song and you'll still hear an HA feeding back.

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):

Yeah, it's nonstop.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):

It's crazy. I don't know. It's funny. When plugins are that overpowered, that feedback goes to 200%. I think it starts at like 50%. So yeah, I'll turn that down to the feedback. Okay. So after that, I mean, oh, after that Val Valhalla room.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):

Oh, that's great.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):

Default preset. I don't touch it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):

What's interesting about presets and templates, I know they get a bad rap, but everyone I know who is good who uses them has said the same thing that it took years to develop. It's not just some template they downloaded off of something and just use it. It took meticulous tweaking for a really, really long time. And it's never ever actually done.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):

No, no. I'm always adding stuff to it and finding new things to try in there. I did try something cool lately. Have you guys messed with the golf floss eq?

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):

Yes. No,

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):

That thing's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:10:40):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):

Really interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):

What do you like about it?

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):

I feel like it's cool. Well, it almost reminds me of a reverse version of Soothe.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):

That's a good way to put it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):

Soothe is kind of finding the problems and ducking them where Goal Floss is, finding the cool stuff and boosting it. Yeah, I found it helpful for working on stuff with vocalists that I couldn't quite nail the tone or maybe the mic was recorded in a closet and there's some comb filtering on it or something where it can kind of find the areas where it got phased out and kind of boost those. I like that. So I've been using that a little bit on the vocal chin and sometimes Soothe too. Soothe is awesome in small amounts if there's some weird resonances or like I said, if someone recorded in a closet and you can notch out the comb filtering, it helps with that too.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):

Soothe is a bit of a game changing plugin, I think. Everyone goes crazy for it. Everyone loves it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):

Yeah. Oh, I left out one thing I forgot. That is actually one of my favorite plugins too, is the UAD LA two A. That thing's a shit. That thing will go, I like that. On the end of every vocal chain, it's smooth and it's buttery and slow and it's a good finisher to me.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):

One thing that I think is super challenging about what you're talking about is to find something that works like 85% of the time is actually a lot harder than people realize.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):

Yeah, it really is. It takes a lot of, because you have to actually do mixes with it a bunch of times, and then you have to listen to your mix a year later and go, oh dude, I do that. Alright, next time I should probably take that off. And then you have to keep doing that. So that's why it takes years. I feel like you don't really realize the mistakes you made until you listen to something you did years back and you're like, Ugh,

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):

That's a good sign though. That's a really good sign.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):

I hope so. I always tell Mike that the fall in RK album we did. Sounds like my mix sucks on it. He tells me it. But it's one of those things where you got to be your worst critic and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):

If you don't feel that way about your old stuff, then you're probably not improving.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):

Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):

Just you should feel weird about your old stuff, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:13:00):

Totally. I think even at that time, 2013, Dan was very ahead of his time doing a lot of stuff with guitar plugins and stuff, even the early volume stuff and everything. It was very innovative. It was definitely something that not a lot of people were taking advantage of. And back then when I got that file mix for that record, and we'd even done the opposite way, we used Rail Amps for that and we quad tracked. We went crazy on it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):

Yeah, we went Buck Wild.

Speaker 3 (01:13:29):

Yeah, it was crazy. I heard it and I was like, man, this is just the biggest sounding thing ever. You know what I mean? And then you fast forward seven years and just the progress of how everything's changed and that's why to me, I still listen to the album. I'm still blown away by it to Dan. You know what I

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):

Mean? No, I still love the album. I'm just critical of a couple mixed choices. I'm like, why is my snare being eaten up by my limiter and all this crap?

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):

Sure, sure. It's just funny to me thinking about if you were to take those songs and do it now, and that's kind of what we've obviously been doing with Spirit Box, but it's a whole nother thing. It was just so technical and so crazy. But yeah, even within five years, the game has completely changed where everyone, as Dan was saying before, everyone with a MacBook Pro can just run full sessions and do the whole entire production on a laptop. It's mental so crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):

And what's important about that too is it's important to not be an elitist about it and go, oh, I'm not using that new shit. It's too easy. I'm old school baby. I grinded for this. I've got my super complicated template and I'm not going to get these new plugins because I've got too much pride and I'm guilty of that because Mike,

Speaker 1 (01:14:48):

That's how you know not to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):

Yeah, well I know because I learned that by just opening yourself up to those things, you can be so much better. It just gives you a leg up. It's like you said, people can use the same things that you have, but it's not going to sound the same because you know how to use them. So it was like when we were working on the stuff for Spirit Box, Mike was like, you should get this plugin called Parallax for bass. I was like, Aw man, I don't know, man, that seems too easy. It is just one sound and I feel like that's cheating. And he's like, dude, just trust me. Just download it. I downloaded it and I literally, it's indispensable for me. I can't use anything else. Same thing with Archetype Ali. He was like, bro, you got to download this thing. I was like, oh, I don't know, man. I like guitar rig.

(01:15:42):

I literally fought him on it. I was like, dude, no. I love the tones I get with Q Guitar rig. That's just my thing, man. And he's like, Dan, just please just do it. I'm like, fine, I'll demo it, dude. I used it in every mix. It's the best. It's just the best Amps sim I think I've ever used, and I'm blissfully with using that in Parallax. I think that's the shit. And that's an example of I know that what I do to that, I know how I treat those plugins is different than other people are going to treat them. So I don't feel guilty for using the Quick Fix plugins.

Speaker 1 (01:16:19):

Why do you think that producers are weird about new gear? I've felt that way too. I don't want to fuck trying this new thing. I use this and it's something I tried to break myself of, but I've seen it a lot,

Speaker 4 (01:16:36):

A

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):

Lot. It's a very natural way to feel for some reason.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):

Yeah. I wonder why that is, man. I don't know. I don't know if it's jealousy,

Speaker 1 (01:16:45):

Comfort zone.

Speaker 3 (01:16:46):

I think it's a comfort thing. Honestly. I think you work so hard, I'm not a mixer. You know what I mean? So it's like for you guys, you work so hard to get to a point where you're so familiar and you have these templates or you have this whole way of doing things and then you get a random client who's like, Hey, have you heard that new ly plugin? And you're like, why would I even think about that when we have the best thing here? So

Speaker 1 (01:17:08):

Guitar players get that way too though about their amps and stuff and the kind of pick they use all kinds of stuff like that. Guitar players get super precious about dumb shit. It's true. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):

I think a lot of it is for me, looking back to how I feel and I see something that's a quick fix plugin or a plugin that someone's like, oh dude, you got to get this. It's so much easier. I feel like it's almost like an ego thing. I think it comes down to ego. I feel like my ego is like, oh dude, I've worked so hard to not use Quick Fix plugins. I've got my way of doing it. There's no way I'm going to do that because I'm not like those kids that just pull up templates. I'm better than that. And then I think a part of it is also jealousy. That's not fair that these kids get to go and have something. I grew up recording on a task am for Track tape recorder. I was 12 years old. That was where I made my first demo with my band and it sounded like shit.

(01:18:11):

And I made a thousand shitty demos after that, and it was only in the last whatever, five, 10 years, I started making things that I was like, okay, this sounds really good. It took me that long to do it. I'm 30 now. So I think that it's just being salty like, oh man, it's not fair. These kids get to pull up a template they downloaded online and sound amazing, and I had to work so hard for it. That's what it is to me. So I try to not be like that. You were saying it's hard. You have to force yourself to not be like that. Then that's stopping yourself from getting better and progressing and changing and evolving with the technology and the times and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):

Sometimes I get that way about Nail the Mix students because it's so crazy to be able to start learning off of Miss Sugar tracks or something. It's so unrealistic and it kind of gives people the wrong impression. Let me just say I totally back what we're doing, but I've definitely thought about it from all angles and there is this one angle where it's like none of these people are going to ever work with them as sugar except for one. Maybe

(01:19:24):

This is completely unrealistic. You don't get to work with bands this good starting out. That part of paying your dues is working with shitty bands for a long time, making shitty bands sound better than making less shitty bands sound better than that. Eventually, hopefully working with great bands, but you don't start with OPEC and Shuga Tracks or Gaje Tracks. It's just not reality. And I feel like that kind of gives people the wrong idea. And then sometimes I get that feeling of like, fuck you for starting with Shuga when I had to work with 500 of the worst bands ever.

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):

I got a solution for you, man. You should just pull up some of the shittiest tracks you've ever worked on and then have your students work on those.

Speaker 1 (01:20:11):

We do that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:12):

Okay, good.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):

We have a program called Mixed Rescue where we take students submitted tracks and we give those out too.

Speaker 4 (01:20:22):

Good.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):

And that one's way more realistic. It's all shitty local bands. That's the whole idea.

Speaker 3 (01:20:30):

Sure.

(01:20:31):

I think a lot of that has to do with even with guitar players or other musicians, when the fractal first came out, for instance, everybody was buying them because you'd have the top guys playing them and they would get these things and they'd sit there and be like, well, doesn't sound good. It doesn't sound good. I can't get it to sound good. And it's like, well, for one you don't have their hands, but for two it's because you're going to have to spend a long time. So in my opinion, it's like even when those students or whatever get those type of tracks or whatever, they're still such a huge learning curve.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):

Oh yeah, Mike, absolutely. You should talk about the hands thing. I love when you talk about hands,

Speaker 3 (01:21:09):

Dude, the

Speaker 1 (01:21:09):

Hands thing is real.

Speaker 3 (01:21:10):

It's all about the hands. It's all about not having bitch picking and it's all about playing your shit tight. And the best analogy that I heard, and this was years ago, it was like when Misha was hanging out with Steph Carpenter from Deftones and Steph just randomly was like, oh, yeah, I threw up all my patches on the exchange. And back then Misha hadn't. And he was like, what? You're giving away all your secrets or whatever. And he was just like, even if so-and-so takes that patch, they're not going to sound like me. They're not going to play like me. I don't think there's anyone that plays like Steph. That's why they sound the way that they sound. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):

Totally.

Speaker 3 (01:21:53):

So I think the hands thing is real. I think a hundred percent real.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):

And the song and the riffs, and going off of that too, there's always the syndrome where people think that a mix is good because the song's good. And to use a really kind of basic example is bands that say they want their mix to sound like Nirvana. They want their mix to sound like smells like Teen Spirit.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):

Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:22:20):

But they don't sound that way.

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):

Well hold. It's like, okay, take the song away. Listen to the mix. It's an amazing song. It influenced a generation. It's said so much. It stands for so much. The mix is not good. The mix isn't good. If you're going to critique the mix on that song, it's not good.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):

I don't think anyone even noticed or cared,

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):

Right? They just said, wow, this is cool. But people get confused and then it's like, that goes for any genre obviously that goes for, that was just a stupid example I thought of. But yeah, I think it comes down to the song, and I always say, and I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but it's hard to ruin a good song with a bad mix, but you can't make a bad song, a good song with a great mix.

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):

I totally agree with that. I'm thinking of a situation I was in once where it just so happened to work this way because of a scheduling issue that couldn't be avoided. There was one band at my studio who had to record drums, and then another band had to come in for five days to record drums in the middle of their session. So band A was generous and just got lost for five days, let band B use their stuff. But the agreement was nothing's getting moved. So exact same drums, exact same mics, exact same everything, literally just drummer A left and drummer B arrived and played on the kit and it couldn't sound more different.

Speaker 4 (01:24:03):

Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):

Sounded radically different. Not the same drums at all, but literally everything was the same.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):

Yep. Yeah, mixed templates too. You can put the same mixed template on two different songs and the mix will sound nothing alike, and that's why templates are important too. People get it confused, right? They're like, oh man, I don't use templates. I go from scratch. And it's actually, you're not to knock anyone that does that. I respect that. And obviously it depends if you're switching from metal to indie, you Sure. Okay. But to have a template that you just start with is super important because, and I was just talking to Zach about this. I think most of the effective work in a mix gets done within the first 30 to 45 minutes. Would you agree with that?

Speaker 1 (01:24:53):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):

I think that the first, let's say hour that you're listening to a song, the moves you're making, then if you have everything in, as long as you're not just starting listening to just the kick in the scenario, so you have everything in and you have a bit of a template on everything, and you can just listen to the song and make moves. That hour is, that's crucial. I feel like you can get the mix to 90% in that hour. So I think that's where templates help a lot. Then you can get to the point where you spend 10 minutes prepping it with your templates, most importantly, like a drum template and a guitar, somewhat of a guitar chain and somewhat of a vocal chain. Then you get that 40 minutes in.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):

I totally agree.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):

If you know what you're doing or if you have the right starting point, you're going to be in a good position by the time that hour's up.

Speaker 1 (01:25:45):

So the fastest mixers I know that are also the best, fastest mixers I know have this thing in common. They all have this thing in common, which is that their prep is always a hundred percent out of the way and streamlined as fuck. There's almost always going to be some sort of a template involved, and their whole philosophy is to not reinvent the wheel where they don't need to, and they kind of live and die by that, and it allows them to get mixes done in an hour or an hour and a half, and they're in no way inferior to those mixes that take 12 hours. Sometimes they're even better,

Speaker 2 (01:26:26):

Of course. Well, I always say that when you're paying someone like an artist to do something, I do consider a mixer, an artist. When you're paying an artist to do something, you're not paying for the time they're spending working on it. You're paying for the time that they've spent all the years they've spent honing in on their craft to get to that point where they then work on that song for you. You're not paying for that actual physical time. You're paying for what it took to get to that time and then give that to you.

Speaker 3 (01:26:54):

It's like tattoo artists that charge by the hour versus by the piece. You know what I mean? You can't be shocked when the guy spends 45 minutes and he's completely done, and he's like, that'll be 500 bucks. You're like, well, it only took you 45 minutes. It's like, yeah, but it took me 10 fucking years to get to the point where I could do that in 45

Speaker 2 (01:27:10):

Minutes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's art, man. That's the value of art.

Speaker 1 (01:27:16):

I worked with a mixer once who he mixed super fast, like 45 minutes till done, and his mixes were great. There's nothing wrong with them. They're actually really fucking great. But if he sent the first or second, third mix back the same day, the bands would feel like he was just fucking around. So what he would do is finish the first mix than wait a week and send it just so that they would feel like he spent more time on it than they'd never complained, and they never found out that he actually got it done the first day in 45 minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:27:52):

Yeah, I for sure done that before.

Speaker 1 (01:27:55):

Dude, you have to sometimes because people don't get it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:27:59):

I mean, you don't want to think that the person you're working with is fucking around, I guess, or not taking it seriously.

Speaker 3 (01:28:05):

Yeah. I think some artists view mixing to be such a, and of course it is, but some artists, they view it as such a crazy intense process where you're locking yourself in the room and it's going to take 20 hours just to get a guitar tone or whatever. But in reality, we've been saying the ones that are prepared and have the sounds ready to go, yeah, they can probably do it within an hour. And I think it's cool now that that's an actual thing, and we're at the point where someone could do a full mix in 45 minutes or an hour. But again, I think for the artists and the ones that are unaware of the process and stuff, they would get that back in 45 minutes and be like, they is everything okay? It could be the best mix in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):

And to the artist's credit or defense, I think usually what happened is that they previously worked with somebody who was full of shit. Sure. So they had, I call it Studio, PTSD,

Speaker 4 (01:29:06):

So

Speaker 1 (01:29:07):

They had a bad experience with a mixer that either fucked them over or did just throw shit together quickly and didn't care. And so it's kind of like baggage in a relationship. They're walking into their next studio relationship with that previous baggage, and sometimes you kind of got to break 'em of that. Sometimes just there's no way around it, so you just got to be crafty.

Speaker 2 (01:29:34):

I get that a lot. I actually, I love that when you're working with a band and they'll be like, oh man, that's awesome. Our old producer didn't make us do that, or our old producer would've done this, or our old producer recorded us try. I'll be like,

Speaker 4 (01:29:49):

Yes, that's right. Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):

Once again, ego, ego, everyone's got an ego, man. That's how it is. Big or small, we all have it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:03):

We can either work for you or against you basically, but it's there.

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):

It's just important to be aware of it and how to manage it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:09):

So Dan, out of curiosity, I know a lot of metal producers and mixers often talk about wanting to get out of metal. That's a common conversation in metal, but most people don't ever manage it for whatever reason. I think they work so hard at Metal and then they work a tent as hard at the other genre, and so they're not usually good enough at the other genre to leave. They just don't want to start over in another genre. But how did you make it happen?

Speaker 2 (01:30:45):

Oh man, that's like a whole story. I mean,

Speaker 1 (01:30:47):

Yeah, I want to hear it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:49):

I think it was kind of like I grew up playing in only metal bands, only heavy bands. And I think as a musician, I was very closed-minded throughout high school and throughout all those years, I really didn't listen to too much of the stuff that was on the radio, and I didn't really listen to other genres. I was like, just hardcore. I'm a metal dude. I'm going to be a metal producer, engineer, touring guitarist, whatever. And then I just met people along the way. That kind of helped me see that there's other genres out there, namely me and Mike's good friend, my buddy dj, our buddy dj, he was in volumes with me. And even starting in 2010, he was producing hip hop and pop stuff, and I was always like, damn, that's so cool. I don't know anything about that world. I love to get into it. And he's the one that kind of was like, bro, listen, this metal shit's cool, but you have to start working on, he call it real, real music. You can imagine how he'd say that, Mike, dude, you got to do some real shit,

Speaker 3 (01:32:05):

You guys, some real stuff, man,

Speaker 2 (01:32:07):

Real stuff. And I was like, okay. And he kind of brought me in on these pop sessions he was doing, and we'd work on artists together. And then I built my studio here in Woodland Hills, California in 2012, and having a studio definitely helped with the pop artist thing because they want a place to come to where they're like, oh, yeah, I'm going to the studio. It's more legit than coming to my bedroom. I think bands are a little more lenient with that kind of thing. So I think that helped me be able to have more clients for mixing and producing and vocal production that were in the pop world. So yeah, I think I just kind of fell into it through that and built a network through that. And it turned into a thing where I was working with a handful of pop artists a year, and then I do one metal band. And that kind of went on for a while. And it was funny. I actually noticed that working on mostly Pop made me a lot worse at working on Metal.

Speaker 1 (01:33:07):

They're completely different.

Speaker 2 (01:33:08):

Yeah. And it was kind of having a balance where it was a five to one ratio, I noticed. I was like, okay, cool. I'm crushing it with vocal production, vocal editing, I can mix a beat, fine. That's easy. There's not too much mixing in the pop instrumental world. But when it came to doing metal, I found myself being more timid because working on Pop, just you're not using as aggressive processing and everything's a lot more, I don't know, everything's just, it's less work, I guess is a good way to put it. It's not as hard. So yeah, I feel like I kind of circled back eventually to now where I try to do a pretty even amount of both, and I'm still able to have all my relationships I've made in that world, and I still do a lot of stuff in that world, and it helps pay the bills. I enjoy it a lot. And it's like I have that yin and yang, which is awesome, but I had to fin myself. I had to reinvent myself because somewhere along the line, you keep chasing the pop thing, and then you're like, but hold on one second. I get into this, why'd I get into doing music? Because I like heavy music.

(01:34:31):

So it was like that part of me is missing. So now I have a good balance or I'm working toward having a good balance at least. I mean, working with Spirit Box. And this last year, my main things I did, I do a lot of work for a pop duo, r and b alt pop duo called Emotional Oranges, and I've been working with them a lot. I do vocal production and mixing for them, and we've made three albums in the last maybe, well, we're finishing the third album now, but in the last 18 months. And then I did a record with Day Seeker and Spirit Box, and then I've been writing and mixing for volumes. So it's like I have kind of a cool balance going where I feel like it's nice to have both of those things going on.

Speaker 3 (01:35:12):

Well, like I was saying before, when Spirit Box first started and we were like, oh, man, it'd be great to have Dan on board. I feel like at that point, Dan, it was because you were so far into the pop world, and I was like, I don't even know if he mixes metal anymore. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:35:26):

I didn't know if I did.

Speaker 3 (01:35:27):

Yeah, I know. I remember you being like, you brought me right back in. You know what I mean? So yeah, at that time you were completely removed from it.

Speaker 2 (01:35:35):

Yeah. There's been years where I maybe did one metal thing and 12 alternative or pop things, but it's for the better. It's comfort zone shit, and it's personalities. Both worlds involve such different types of personalities, and I've seen every type of personality imaginable, and it's very different. It's very, very different world. There's more money involved in pop music naturally. So you meet different types of people in that world, and the metal world is like, man, I don't know. It's just so different. It's so hard to describe.

Speaker 1 (01:36:17):

It's its own beast for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:36:19):

Jumping back and forth. It's just so interesting. There's so much to learn from both. But I think just the main thing I took back from working in the pop world was the vocal thing and how important a simple song and a simple vocal melody and how far that can take you. So I took that back and I think it helps. I hope it helps with Spirit Box. I'm trying to just take, when it comes to writing vocals with Courtney, I'm trying to take what I learned from producing pop artists, and I'm trying to apply that to her without overthinking it. So I like to hope that that gives me a leg up and that the years that I worked in that benefit me and benefit the people that I work with.

Speaker 1 (01:37:01):

Mike, is that part of the reason that you wanted to work with him because of his skills in Pop?

Speaker 3 (01:37:07):

Dan's sense of melody is just out of this world. It's insane. He just knows how to make a part. He gets it. You know what I mean? And it's to the point where when we started Quarantining and stuff like that, and we were thinking about single options, holy Roller wasn't meant to be a single whatsoever. It was meant to be like, no, not at all. It was meant to be almost like a surprising Yeah, it was meant to be like a pallet cleanser On the record, the record is so far, it's very,

Speaker 2 (01:37:37):

It's fucking

Speaker 3 (01:37:38):

Rocket. It's such a single. You think so?

Speaker 2 (01:37:41):

Hell

Speaker 3 (01:37:42):

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Fuck yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:37:44):

Hell yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:37:45):

Well, it's meant to be just like a two minute 45 second, get in, get out. Isn't that what a single is? They're describing a single They maybe I'm, maybe I'm, but at the time, there was no other songs on the record that just had,

Speaker 1 (01:38:03):

You're just driving a single.

Speaker 3 (01:38:04):

Yeah, but there was no other song on the record that had just yelling, and I don't feel comfortable engineering singing, and the reason being is because,

Speaker 1 (01:38:11):

Fair enough.

Speaker 3 (01:38:12):

Because Dan just has such a high bar set for that, and we've been fortunate enough to work with him in the studio, and I've seen what he's done with songs like Rule of Nines and Blessed Be, which I feel like Blessed be when we put that out, really put us on the map. And I was like, well, I know the song's different, but what was another factor here that played into this? It's like, well, Dan recorded the vocals, so clearly there's something there, and I don't want to mess up the process here. We've set the bar here. This has done this much. This song has yelling, so I'll do it, but this is the only one that we can do because every other song has a heavy amount of singing, and I'm not prepared to make things go the other way because Dan wasn't there to record the vocals. I strongly believe that because it was him behind the board and it was because it was him doing everything and recording everything that those songs hit in that way. So

Speaker 2 (01:39:08):

Thanks. No, I'm very specific with vocal and vocal melodies. I think that's just what I try to provide the most. I think for you guys in this process, I want to give you guys the most effective part of me. That's what I want to offer up the most, and that's what I've been trying to do, is just bring that other side, bring what I've learned into this world. I think that gives us a leg up. I would

Speaker 1 (01:39:36):

Least, I think that that's something that's missing in Metal pretty much is for not a hundred percent, but vocal production tends to be an afterthought,

Speaker 4 (01:39:47):

Or

Speaker 1 (01:39:47):

Traditionally it's been an afterthought in metal. However, if you look at the biggest metal bands, they have great vocal production, great vocalists and great vocal production slipknot. It's not just that Joey was loose and had that meth energy. That's what it sounded like. Those vocals are loud as fuck and super intelligible,

Speaker 4 (01:40:13):

Dude and

Speaker 1 (01:40:14):

Incredible. And then, I mean, even Lamb of God, there's a reason for why they got as big as they got. If you listen to their mixes, vocals are a pop loud, basically. Yep. Dude, I don't think it's an accident.

Speaker 2 (01:40:28):

Yeah. Randy, you had Randy on the show, didn't you?

Speaker 1 (01:40:30):

No, I had Machine and Chris Adler.

Speaker 2 (01:40:33):

Chris Adler, that's right. Sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:40:35):

I don't want to not give Courtney the credit though too, because I also wanted, say Courtney makes it easy to go there because she listens to a lot of pop and a lot of r and b and a lot of weird stuff that isn't metal. I think she told me she doesn't even really listen to that much metal, right, Mike?

Speaker 1 (01:40:51):

She doesn't,

Speaker 2 (01:40:52):

I mean, she's really

Speaker 1 (01:40:53):

Not surprised,

Speaker 2 (01:40:54):

Dude. She's just so awesome to work with. She's just so open to everything. I can only do what I can do. I can only give what I can give. But she's so on the same page. She's so on board with trying new things, and she's so on board with taking the melodies to where we take them, and she's a great writer, and so I can only be as good as who I'm working with, so let's not leave that out. I just want to say that she's so talented, man, and it takes someone like that to see that there is something greater than the glass ceiling of metal to reach as a vocalist, she recognizes that, and she's very big on that.

Speaker 1 (01:41:37):

I guess it would be pretty difficult to hit a higher bar with a vocalist that isn't down.

Speaker 2 (01:41:43):

Oh man. Yeah, she's down. She's totally down, and I'm just there to push her to try new shit, and she's always bringing cool, she always plays me the coolest references too. She's always playing me. She sent me a playlist before I came up to Canada the first time for her references for songs. I think I have it on here, dude. She listens to some really cool eclectic shit, and I think that that's definitely represented in, here We go, daddy, Dan's Spirit Box Inspo. Dude, we got, first of all, a lot of these artists I haven't even heard of, but we got Phantogram, massive attack, FKA Twigs Death Cab for Cutie, James Blake, Tegan, and Sarah Broken Social Scene 10, naasha Active Child, the Midnight Division. Cool. Shit, Bjork. I mean, you can hear some of that in Courtney's vocals for sure. I mean, that's an obvious influence, Sabrina Claudio, like this shit is, these aren't metal references. So I think that just kind of that attitude toward we're not going to just kind of fall into the ether of every other metal band and what they do with their vocals. Corny really puts a lot of energy into striving to make sure that it's something that's different. So that's really fun to work with. For me.

Speaker 1 (01:43:07):

I think that metal vocalists typically are not down to do that sort of thing.

Speaker 4 (01:43:13):

Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:43:13):

Question about incorporating those kinds of influences. Have you ever been in a scenario where a band, you were talking about bands wanting to sound like smells like Teen Spirit. Have you had bands want you to do something that totally doesn't sound anything like them at all? It's totally unrealistic and out of left field.

Speaker 2 (01:43:37):

Well, I don't know so much bands, but I can't really think of anything off the top of my head. But what I get a lot, or what I've gotten a lot in the past is as far as vocals go for treatment, people being like, yo, I want to sound like this person. What does he or she have on their voice? Or what's going on here? And I'll play it back. And it's often just dry vocal. It's just the person.

Speaker 1 (01:44:04):

That's what they sound like.

Speaker 2 (01:44:07):

But that kind of might be the only kind of situation like that. No, I haven't done that, but I have had a lot of situations where the band has made me do things that I really didn't want to do. Mike Stringer, the guy right here, happened to be in my studio and a band was doing that to me. And this band,

(01:44:31):

Oh my God, they're my really good friends. I love these guys and we're actually going to finish their second record soon, but it's My buddies in Black Sheep Wall, if you know of Black Sheep Wall. And they're like a really experimental kind of doom, doom metal band, I guess you could call them. And basically, this is a whole nother story, but essentially they made an album with me that was an hour long, and pretty much the whole album was on one note, you got to listen to it. If you haven't heard it, you should listen to this album. It's called I'm Going To Kill Myself. And the goal of the album,

Speaker 1 (01:45:07):

I like that title. The

Speaker 2 (01:45:08):

Goal of the album was to make the Listener by the end, by the time they get to the end of the album, they wanted the listener to want to end his or her life. That's why the album is called I'm Going To Kill Myself

Speaker 3 (01:45:24):

Mental.

Speaker 2 (01:45:24):

And the album's just all Drone Wrist for five minutes, 10 minutes songs. And then the last song on the album is called Metallica, and the song is 25, maybe 26 minutes long. And the way that the song was recorded was the drummer, my buddy Jackson, he's an absolute genius, and he decided to torture me, and he sent me a hundred pages of tempos and time signature changes and was like, Hey, dude, go down this rabbit hole with me. This is my idea for the song. There's going to be a different click track for the drums and a different click track for the guitars. We're going to record the whole song separately, and at the end, you got to trust me. We're going to put 'em together and it's going to line up. And he's like, also, the song is 25 minutes long. And I was like, alright, I'll do it. And it was for sure the worst time I've ever had working on anything. It took me two weeks to make the click tracks, and then it took us a week straight of recording to get the song right. It's pretty gnarly, dude. It's pretty gnarly. Mike was there for one of the recording sessions and he literally looked like he wanted to kill himself after about five hours

Speaker 3 (01:46:41):

Mission accomplished.

Speaker 2 (01:46:42):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:46:43):

I don't know how all of it came together. It literally, Dan's not even joking. It's the same notes, just the same whatever note he chose, and it's just that in different patterns and they drone for the same amount of time. And I was watching a track guitar and the whole time I'm just like, I'm just fucking, I've never seen anything. It, it was just insane. It was so grueling to sit there.

Speaker 2 (01:47:12):

That wasn't really your question, but for some reason, your question made me think about that. I just thought it was an extraordinary recording experience that I'm glad I did it now, but that was something a band did to me that really went against anything that I would ever want to do.

Speaker 1 (01:47:27):

Can you explain the two different clicks to me?

Speaker 2 (01:47:30):

No.

Speaker 3 (01:47:34):

No. I just don't understand.

Speaker 2 (01:47:36):

Me neither.

Speaker 3 (01:47:37):

Well, I remember when I was there and I was watching him track, he had all of these pieces of paper and weren't there different colors on the paper,

Speaker 2 (01:47:46):

Dude? Yeah. He had 18 or 20 pages next to him. Oh, are you talking about the guitar when they were doing guitars, right?

Speaker 3 (01:47:53):

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:47:54):

They used symbols to notate the different notes. The drummer wrote all the music, and he would present the rift to the band like, okay, a one is this shape a second fret? Is this shape a hold for this amount of time? Is this color, dude, it was like hieroglyphics. We had this sheet of paper that we had a section in the song that was seven minutes long that was called The Hieroglyphics Section, and he literally wrote out how to play the Why, dude, I don't know, but different head space, dunno how to play the part. That was the part you were there from, you were there for when we did the hieroglyphics part.

Speaker 3 (01:48:29):

Yeah. Yeah. He would be like, yeah, I'm on Triangle and now we're going to get to Square. It's mind blowing.

Speaker 2 (01:48:35):

And the guitarists Reddit.

Speaker 3 (01:48:37):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:48:38):

Because they're all down with it. We were all sitting there drinking shitty ass tequila at 12:00 PM and Coors Lights and just these guys were just hammered reading hieroglyphics, and we were all just laughing our asses off until it got so torturous that it wasn't funny anymore. Then we were all just kind of staring at each other like, yo, what

Speaker 1 (01:49:03):

Are we doing?

Speaker 2 (01:49:04):

This is crazy. I

Speaker 1 (01:49:05):

Remember. Are they sadistic?

Speaker 2 (01:49:07):

Yeah, dude, they're hardcore about it. You got to look 'em up. You got to check this album out, man.

Speaker 3 (01:49:12):

One of the best parts about that album is that the title is, yeah, you're going to see it in a second. The title is, I Want To Kill Myself, but then the Alvamar is like, what is it? Is it two cartoon Smiley Face Teletubbies, almost

Speaker 2 (01:49:25):

Black Sheep Wall? I'm going to Kill myself.

Speaker 3 (01:49:28):

Yeah, I like that cover.

Speaker 2 (01:49:30):

It's rad.

Speaker 3 (01:49:31):

It's insane. But yeah, the song's called Metallica. That's the one you want to listen to if you can get through it. This is a great album

Speaker 2 (01:49:38):

Cover.

Speaker 3 (01:49:39):

I know.

Speaker 2 (01:49:39):

It's fantastic.

Speaker 3 (01:49:40):

Who did this?

Speaker 2 (01:49:41):

They have a buddy that drew it for them. I don't know, but I'm actually, I'm finishing another album with them that we recorded four years ago. We're going to finish it I think next month. We took a pretty long break. There's something with some interpersonal stuff within the band.

Speaker 1 (01:50:01):

Do people actually listen to it?

Speaker 2 (01:50:03):

Yeah, they have some underground fans. They're one of those kind of culty bands.

Speaker 3 (01:50:09):

Dude, that's the thing about those drone bands and those noise bands, the people who love it love it. They love it. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:50:18):

But everyone that I've showed that song, that album too, I'm always like, yo, just give yourself the challenge. Take the challenge. Listen,

Speaker 1 (01:50:28):

I'll try to take the challenge. I can't guarantee that I've got the mental toughness for it.

Speaker 3 (01:50:33):

Yeah. Take the Metallica challenge. Give it a

Speaker 1 (01:50:35):

Shot. So I have a couple questions from listeners for you guys.

Speaker 4 (01:50:39):

Cool, cool.

Speaker 1 (01:50:40):

I'm going to ask, so one from Kenton Smith, which is the effects and post-processing on Holy Roller are so creative. Do you have a vision going to the effect stage or is it more or less just messing around till something sounds sick? Thank you for the insane music.

Speaker 3 (01:50:55):

Go ahead, Mike. The effects as far as like guitars go or anything, or just in general?

Speaker 1 (01:51:01):

I think they mean the programming.

Speaker 2 (01:51:03):

You know how we made it?

Speaker 3 (01:51:05):

Yeah. We were bunch Dick around.

Speaker 1 (01:51:06):

We

Speaker 2 (01:51:06):

Threw a bunch of shit around. Yeah, we just threw a bunch of shit into Pro Tools and I put Isotope trash and little Altar Boy all over the place and there was no rhyme made. Sound

Speaker 3 (01:51:16):

Cool. Yeah, I remember you were sitting there and you came up with that beginning noise and it was just that and immediately it was just like, it just started happening and then two hours.

Speaker 2 (01:51:24):

But you played it. That was a guitar.

Speaker 3 (01:51:26):

No, it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (01:51:27):

Oh really?

Speaker 3 (01:51:28):

No, that's you. That's all. You came up with some random noise in your I

Speaker 1 (01:51:33):

Don't, sounds like a guitar.

Speaker 3 (01:51:34):

Yeah, it does. It does. But in some library, I can't remember. Probably the one that you were just saying.

Speaker 2 (01:51:39):

Oh, weird.

Speaker 3 (01:51:40):

And then you manipulated it a bit, remember? Yeah, you manipulated a bit and then literally two hours went by and it was done.

Speaker 2 (01:51:45):

That's funny. I thought that was a guitar. I forgot.

Speaker 3 (01:51:49):

No.

Speaker 2 (01:51:49):

Shows how much I care. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:51:52):

Do you feel like when it comes to programming, people overthink that stuff?

Speaker 2 (01:51:57):

I don't know. I think programming is kind of the time to overthink, but I think in this situation it kind of served the song that it was unthought because of how just kind of nasty and crusty the programming

Speaker 1 (01:52:10):

Is.

Speaker 2 (01:52:11):

I tend to spend a lot of time with programming, like a lot, I'd say. Usually when we write, we'll usually start with one of Mike's riffs and then we will get that down and we'll get into the verse or whatever and then I'll start pulling up programming shit and we'll spend some time on that. But then after we finish that and I'll take it home and then that's when I'll finesse the programming stuff and that's when it's not like while we're writing, there's a shit load of time spent on it just to not interrupt the flow. It's usually later.

Speaker 3 (01:52:45):

Got it.

Speaker 2 (01:52:45):

Where the details get fussed over

Speaker 3 (01:52:48):

Like almost like a placeholder.

Speaker 2 (01:52:49):

Yeah. Holy Roller, the Breakbeat thing. That song actually, yeah, the Breakbeat was the only really Programmy thing besides the first sound. I guess there's some other stint stuff going over the top.

Speaker 1 (01:53:05):

There's a shaker too.

Speaker 2 (01:53:07):

There's a shaker that's really distorted. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:53:09):

All right. Calvin Hahn was wondering when mixing songs such as Holy Roller and Blessed Bee that involve changing tuning midway through, I'm really interested to know one, whether you pitch Shift the guitar and Bass di or pitch Shift the amplified tone and two were the guitar and bass di separated into different tracks dedicated to each pitch, assuming that they probably need to be mixed from scratch again to account for the new frequency regions they occupy after changing pitch in order to sit well with the drums and vocals, et cetera. Constantly. Thanks and looking forward to hearing more stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:53:46):

Mike sent me back DI's with all in one so he could tell you about that.

Speaker 3 (01:53:51):

Yeah, we just tracked and tuned the guitars down. I had to track guitars and bass for that song when we did it. And yeah, just like each part, just tuned down to the part, make sure it's clean, move to the next one, tune down for that part, and then after the fact I'll go in and then I'll make sure that we can actually replicate it when we go to play it live with the tuning changes. But yeah, no, I just sent Dan the left and right for guitar and the bass all in one file and we just tuned to each part

Speaker 2 (01:54:22):

And to answer the mixing portion of that question, I didn't change any processing depending on the note for the guitars, but like I was talking about before for the bass, when it did get to that low D Sharp, I did have to put in that harmonic sub thing under it because there was no low end

Speaker 1 (01:54:40):

Left

Speaker 2 (01:54:41):

In that tuning. But no, the guitars, the processing stayed the same.

Speaker 1 (01:54:44):

Cool. Alright guys, I think this is a good place to call it, but I want to thank you both for taking the time to hang out. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:54:53):

Same man. Thank you for having us.

Speaker 1 (01:54:54):

Yeah, that was awesome. I can't thank you enough, man. Anytime. 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 Eyal Levi URM audio, and of course please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.