SAM GUAIANA & AARON MARSHALL: Producing *Circadian*, Treating Guitar as Vocals, Imposter Syndrome

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 Levy 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. First podcast of 2021, and my guests today are producer mixer, Sam Guana, and Aaron Marshall of intervals. I figured why not do another one of these joint podcasts, producer artist, podcasts. They're always some of my favorite episodes to do. And this month I'll nail the mix. We've got Sam mixing both Silverstein and the new intervals. So if you want to check that out, go to nail the mix.com/signup. But without further ado, I'm going to stop talking. I introduce you, Sam Guana and Aaron Marshall. Sam and Aaron, welcome to the URM podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02:10):

What's up? What's up? How's it going?

Speaker 1 (00:02:12):

What's up? What's up? How are you guys?

Speaker 2 (00:02:14):

Good. Pretty boring over up here on this side of things, but we're doing good. It's just cold, I imagine.

Speaker 3 (00:02:20):

Yeah, it's pretty cold actually. Today's kind of nice, I dunno if you've been outside yet, Aaron.

Speaker 2 (00:02:23):

I haven't been outside in my apartment. No,

Speaker 3 (00:02:25):

It's fresh in the sun's out. Maybe

Speaker 2 (00:02:27):

I should go outside. Maybe we can hang out or no, we're not allowed to, but we're not allowed. It's illegal.

Speaker 1 (00:02:34):

Are you guys not allowed to? Is that your current? I mean,

Speaker 3 (00:02:38):

Yeah, you could do distance stuff, obviously, but you're not supposed to do.

Speaker 2 (00:02:43):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Our households aren't supposed to mingle. Essentially. We can drink coffee in the park and feed pigeons or something. That's about it.

Speaker 1 (00:02:53):

So not supposed to or we'll get in trouble.

Speaker 3 (00:02:56):

It should be We'll get in trouble, but I don't think anybody's really, really getting in trouble for it. They're just threatening it.

Speaker 2 (00:03:01):

I think people did around New Year's.

Speaker 3 (00:03:03):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:03:03):

The current provisions didn't come into effect until midnight at the end of Christmas, so it'd be the top of Boxing Day.

Speaker 4 (00:03:10):

And

Speaker 2 (00:03:10):

That was where they were recommending that your households don't mingle AKA. We just, they were scared shitless of New Year's.

Speaker 3 (00:03:16):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:03:18):

Did you hear about those massive parties? There was this rave in Paris and some underground parties in New York City that had a thousand or 2000 people.

Speaker 2 (00:03:31):

I was waiting to hear about some shit like that. No, I didn't hear about it. I mean, I know maybe six weeks ago, maybe eight weeks ago, my girlfriend's sister works for one of the regions, the government's, what do you call it? Contact tracing infrastructure. And she records data and sometimes she'll tell us about little things that she's noticed going on or whatever she can talk about. But this was in the news, of course, so it's not like it's secretive, but we get to hear it first. But a couple weeks ago, Sam probably remember they busted people having a private party in a storage unit.

Speaker 3 (00:03:59):

Yeah, yeah, I remember that.

Speaker 2 (00:04:00):

So not as glorious as whatever was going on. New Year's Eve with Paris and New York City,

Speaker 1 (00:04:06):

Probably not 2000 people.

Speaker 2 (00:04:09):

They got

Speaker 1 (00:04:09):

Busted. Of course

Speaker 2 (00:04:10):

They did.

Speaker 1 (00:04:11):

And that's so dangerous. It's very, very dangerous. You know what I've noticed? I guess at this point, I don't mind saying that I had it recently. One thing that I learned from having it is that there are a lot of people out there, and this blew my mind because look, we've seen people who don't think it's real, and I've accepted that those idiots exist. We have people who think it's real, but it's just a flu. We have people who are very scared of it. There's this whole spectrum of weird and not weird opinions on it. So a lot of the people who don't think it's real or whatever, have just been going about their lives. And that's one thing I've accepted that that's out there. But the one thing that blew my mind is that there's people who have gotten it tested positive, have symptoms that are not flu symptoms like loss of smell and taste. Most definitely COVID and are going out into the world given no fucks just going to the store, going to work. Like what?

Speaker 2 (00:05:24):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:05:24):

It's nuts.

Speaker 2 (00:05:25):

Yeah, it's reckless. I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. Very immoral. I'm so burnt out on thinking about it, to be honest. Now that we're,

Speaker 1 (00:05:33):

Well, we don't have to talk about it.

Speaker 2 (00:05:34):

No, I mean it is whatever it seems to rear its head in every conversation these days, but now that we're moving towards the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, it feels different now. So I don't know. I mean, I've got emails about routings and bus deposits.

Speaker 1 (00:05:53):

My parents just got vaccinated, so that's cool.

Speaker 2 (00:05:56):

Oh,

Speaker 3 (00:05:56):

Nice.

Speaker 2 (00:05:56):

Okay. Yeah, so it's happening here. They're saying that every resident of a retirement home will be done by the end of this month. And of course, all the healthcare workers already got their first dose and stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:06:07):

Yeah, it's happening. I mean, my parents aren't in a retirement home, but at least in Georgia, the law is 65 and older.

Speaker 2 (00:06:13):

Wow. I mean, that's great that they're getting it rolled out like that and they're prioritizing those individuals. I mean, that's awesome. Yeah. I think they're say in May or June for us, Sam.

Speaker 3 (00:06:23):

I think so. Yeah. I hope so. I just want to go places and not me freaked out. Me fuck

Speaker 1 (00:06:28):

Up.

Speaker 3 (00:06:28):

Yeah, for real.

Speaker 1 (00:06:29):

You're ready for it.

Speaker 2 (00:06:31):

I got it, man. I got a crazy, the other inbox you don't look at often, I made a mistake yesterday and whoops. Whoops. It's so funny. I showed my girl and it's like, this dude messaged me in 2018 and be like, man, new record's. So good. I remember you from high school and one of those, you know what I mean, on a left field, it's so crazy to see you're doing things with guitar and music and the new album's awesome and dah, dah, dah. And I didn't see it. I didn't respond, obviously. And then yesterday, the most recent message from this individual was two days ago, and he's just off the deep end on some anti-vaxxer stuff and calling me up for not using my platform to tell everybody that it's like a farce. And I was just like, that is textbook like Webster crazy. Oh man.

Speaker 1 (00:07:22):

Yeah. This has happened to me before where it's not just weirdos from my past. There's some people in our community

Speaker 3 (00:07:32):

Who have

Speaker 1 (00:07:33):

Hit me up and very condescendingly and self righteously got up my ass to use my platform, especially during the 2016 election. And it's happened. It's happened since to use my platform basically for their agenda,

Speaker 2 (00:07:51):

Whatever they think good is. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:07:52):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:07:52):

Because

Speaker 1 (00:07:53):

It's come to me from multiple different angles.

Speaker 2 (00:07:55):

This happens all the time. Or it's either that or we're not supposed to have an opinion at all.

Speaker 1 (00:08:00):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:08:01):

Yeah. It's like their side or nothing.

Speaker 3 (00:08:02):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:08:03):

You're either, yeah, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't, basically, which is, and right now who cares? Because if you choose to speak up and you're against things that are obviously not good for humanity right now, then kudos and if you want to lay back, that's also kind of fine right now, I think it's sometimes it's not okay, but things are so volatile on the internet right now and just in general that it's your prerogative man, whatever. Fuck.

Speaker 1 (00:08:31):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:08:32):

And it always has been, but what a while. I don't mean Sam and I are up here and we're slightly removed, apart from the fact that our media is just running it on loop. And if you just go to YouTube, obviously I get my news from, typically from independent media as far as American media goes, I am trying not to, I'll sort of compare things against what we're seeing on maybe A CNN or if you really want a dose of the wild stuff, you can take a look at what they're having to say on Fox. But man, oh man, what a time.

Speaker 1 (00:09:07):

Yeah, I think Robin Williams said that Canada is a nice loft above a college dorm, something along those lines or the nice loft above the kegger, but now it seems like it's the nice loft analogy above the domestic abuse couple in the bay downstairs.

Speaker 2 (00:09:26):

Yeah. Jesus. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:09:29):

It

Speaker 2 (00:09:29):

Kind of is like that analogy. Wow, that's a banger of an analogy. Yeah. Rest in peace.

Speaker 1 (00:09:36):

The other day, some lady, I kind of know that she's not an idiot or anything like that. She said something like, if you don't speak up, go fuck yourself, kind of thing. And I said, well, you know what? Maybe some of us don't believe in adding to the noise and this signal to noise ratio of social media. There

Speaker 2 (00:09:56):

You go. That's a of 'em for you.

Speaker 1 (00:09:59):

What if we just don't want to add to the noise?

Speaker 2 (00:10:01):

No, and that's fair right now because it is crazy and it's also extremely hard to discern what an individual's stance is right now because it's so cloudy. Just as an example, I saw a video of Lindsey Graham's at the airport, and people are screaming and TSA is protecting him. And the media individual that's giving the story is like, wait one second, lemme listen to this. Who is taking issue with? Is it his own people or is it other? No. Okay. They're screaming, traitor. Got it. Okay. So yeah, what the hell? You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (00:10:36):

It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:10:36):

It's very challenging to figure out who's mad at who over what, and none of it makes sense. The whole thing's wacky. There's no consistency because this is what happens when you go bonkers, rooted in nothing but falsities. There's no fact here. There's no truth.

Speaker 1 (00:10:52):

This is the culmination of what happens when you and I consider everybody in the media and lots of people I know online guilty of this. This is the culmination, this is the climax of what happens when you spend so long spreading misinformation.

Speaker 2 (00:11:11):

Yes.

Speaker 1 (00:11:12):

I can't tell you how many times people who I know personally would post something of some atrocity or whatever and say that it's really terrible that this thing is happening, but the picture they would post wouldn't be like, say that they're talking about a war atrocity. So they would post a picture, but the picture would be from a completely different conflict in a different part of the world.

Speaker 2 (00:11:38):

Exactly. I've seen it.

Speaker 1 (00:11:40):

So it'd be like, Hey, this isn't even the same conflict and the answer, and several people have said this to me, but things like that do happen. It's the thought that counts.

Speaker 2 (00:11:52):

It's like, where's the frame of reference? You're just grabbing a pair out of the produce section in the grocery store and being like, it's kind of like an apple near one. And if you close your eyes and I tell you it's an apple, you might believe me, but a fruit, yeah. Here's a URM analogy for you. This whole situation is opening up the piano roll laying down on your mid controller pressing playback and asking yourself why it sounds the way it does.

Speaker 1 (00:12:21):

That's a very good way to put it. Yeah, I just had to think about that for a second.

Speaker 2 (00:12:27):

You're surprised. Tell me you're surprised about the madness. You just hit the space bar on and that's exactly what this whole thing was.

Speaker 1 (00:12:35):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:12:35):

Yeah. Don't act surprised when you brew coffee for four years and then it's the net worst thing you've ever drank.

Speaker 1 (00:12:45):

And when you look at individual incidents, you can of course say whoever did that is responsible for that, right?

Speaker 4 (00:12:53):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:12:54):

But as a whole, I think as a society, there's a cumulative responsibility for everybody engaging in this bullshit that's riled so many people up for so long.

Speaker 2 (00:13:06):

I just want to see it all calm down and the right things happen. Me, I mean, absolutely for the sake of numerous factors, people's safety, democracy as a whole life, it was being normal. Just life in general. I watched Justin Trudeau's statement, we have our own opinions about our own politics up here, and all of it sort of pales in comparison to what's happening south of us now. But I had to check myself listening to him talk about Canadian democracy, and I'm like, is this just an opportunity for other world leaders to just step up and be like, look what I have. But then I think about it and it's like, well, now more than ever is really the time. And he said some great stuff. He said, Canadian democracy and democracy in general is not automatic. This whole thing is not to be taken for granted.

(00:13:53):

It takes work to have what we have. And he threw some slights and some digs at Trump as I think in a pretty sophisticated way. It probably goes overheads. He praised Canadians for the pandemic response and for things for acting the way we act and why we've been able to do what we've been able to do. We have our own series of problems. Things aren't perfect here. We had control over as far as the pandemic's concerned, we had a really good handle on it for a while. And things have changed once the schools came back together and the weather got colder and everything, they lost control. We're in a not so nice position with things right now, but things are changing. But as far as the democracy as an entity, sanity has been maintained

Speaker 3 (00:14:37):

For the most part. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:14:39):

We don't really question whether or not to be taken away from us on a day-to-day basis.

Speaker 3 (00:14:43):

Yeah, that's the big one I've noticed is there's never been a day where I've been like, Canada's going to become the way the states is. There's no point where I've been like, we're headed to that.

Speaker 2 (00:14:53):

Yeah, absolutely. We have advantages, smaller population, different infrastructure, different ideals. Tim Hortons, Tim Hortons, everyone's just like got their double in a Boston cream and it's all going to be okay. No, I dunno, man. And I'm sure most people are tired of this, the preamble at any moment, we certainly can transition into the lighter stuff of course, but it's Have you done any podcasts since the Madness ensued the other day? Or is this your first one? No,

Speaker 1 (00:15:24):

This is the first one. Alright,

Speaker 2 (00:15:25):

So we got to talk it out because we have to

Speaker 1 (00:15:28):

Because that shit was insane.

Speaker 2 (00:15:29):

Insane. Yeah, it was nuts. I still can't believe it. My father's calling me in real time to be like, are you seeing this? And I'm like, and that's wild. We're in Canada granted what, 90 minutes, two hours from the border? But

Speaker 3 (00:15:44):

That's such a huge difference.

Speaker 1 (00:15:48):

But I think Canadian culture is a much more laid back culture, and so you wouldn't expect something like that to happen there, but at the same time, you wouldn't have expected it here. No matter how uppity Americans are, you wouldn't have expected it here. And I think it just goes to show that, I guess, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I guess Trudeau is right. Democracy does take work, and I think if there's any lesson to be learned for the rest of the world is that that can happen anywhere

Speaker 4 (00:16:20):

The

Speaker 1 (00:16:21):

Same way that a certainly can. Crime can happen anywhere and no matter how nice your neighborhood is, you can still get carjacked. You can still have your car broken into. If the conditions are right and we're seeing what those conditions are, it can happen anywhere and I'm positive that it'll recover. Maybe I'm just optimistic and delusional, but I am positive that things will recover

(00:16:49):

For various reasons. And the main one being that there's too many people with too much on the line who are far more powerful than us, who have too much to lose from it not recovering. So my faith in people's greed and lust for power tells me that they're going to make sure it recovers for their own good. So I have faith in it recovering, but what I do hope is that, and this might be naive, but I hope that there's some sort of a collective understanding. This is what happens when you go this hard against people and turn people who disagree with you into the enemy, which happens on all sides. Now. This is what happens when you go to fight, people fight back, then the other side fights back harder than the other side fights back harder. And before you know it, you're in a scenario like this. So I do hope that the lesson learned is we got to talk things out.

Speaker 2 (00:17:57):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:17:57):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:17:57):

Social media is to blame though.

Speaker 1 (00:18:00):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:18:01):

The fact that everyone's freaking out over the implications of banning this individual, other individuals, whatever, the censorship or whatever. And you can have your opinions about that too little too late. This has been roiling for an extremely long time. You want to act like you're just surprised and you need to pull the plug on it. Now, where is your just moral compass in all of this leading into this? It really takes insurrection.

Speaker 1 (00:18:28):

Well, okay, so here's the thing, and I could be wrong. I think that as serious as this is, I just think that people didn't expect it to go this far. I think a lot of people were not, obviously a lot of people strongly disagree with the kinds of things that were being said, inflammatory speech and all that stuff, but I don't think that too many people actually expected it to go this far. And so there were caught off guard even though that there were lots of indicators to show that it was going to go this far. And I'm sure there's multiple reasons. There's never just one reason for things like this. It's weird because we can say, how did you not see it coming? It was obviously coming. They said it was coming. Something about it made people just not take it seriously enough.

Speaker 2 (00:19:23):

Everything they believe in is cuckoo bananas. And you think that's like, oh, you never act on that. That doesn't even add up. Makes sense. But we've seen URL become IRL before it does happen.

Speaker 1 (00:19:35):

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. The amount of people who are capable and willing to go that far is always going to be a minority.

Speaker 2 (00:19:46):

Of course. Of course.

Speaker 1 (00:19:47):

The extremists in any wing of anything, they're always going to be the minority.

Speaker 2 (00:19:53):

I think a poll showed that only 45% of people who voted for Donald Trump in the election actually agree with the actions from the other day. That's 45%. I mean, it's still a lot. 75 million people. That's

Speaker 1 (00:20:05):

A lot.

Speaker 2 (00:20:05):

That's a lot. But it's still a cross section. It's still not the whole kit and caboodle is like, yeah, that's the one.

Speaker 1 (00:20:12):

And then out of the people who agree with it, then there's an even smaller percentage of people who would actually

Speaker 2 (00:20:18):

Act on it,

Speaker 1 (00:20:19):

On

Speaker 2 (00:20:20):

It.

Speaker 1 (00:20:20):

We're not in the business of punishing people for how they believe here.

Speaker 2 (00:20:26):

No, but that's the antithesis of everything everyone's fighting for.

Speaker 1 (00:20:29):

Exactly. So 45% of people who voted for him believe that that was okay. That in and of itself isn't enough to do anything. It's whatever percentage of them would actually act

Speaker 2 (00:20:42):

Turn up in DC and do some heinous shit.

Speaker 1 (00:20:45):

And I think that that's the part that was miscalculated, and I could be wrong. It's just because even though they've shown up to places, and maybe there was one voting station in I think Arizona or something where they siege it, they really haven't done that much stuff. They've shown up and yelled. But so far the violence has been like certain individuals have done fucked up things. And I could be wrong, but I just don't think that there's been something like this. I think that if there now going forward, it's going to be very different in how that gets treated. Security at the capitols going to be

Speaker 2 (00:21:28):

Completely different. That's a,

Speaker 1 (00:21:30):

Yeah, that's a given. But I think that now people understand where this could go. There was no precedent set for how far they were willing to go.

Speaker 2 (00:21:40):

No, it's new territory. Certainly unprecedented is the word of last year and still persists to be the word of this year as well. But wild times, it just,

Speaker 1 (00:21:52):

Yeah, because look, there's been white supremacist terrorists forever in recent years. There's Dylan Roof, there's the dude who shot up synagogue. Those guys were individuals. This was not like a group action. I'm saying this being someone that would be on a white supremacist kill list. So I know that the FBI has been warning about them, but I just don't think that people foresaw them being organized enough to put something like this together. I think they saw them more as individual cells

Speaker 4 (00:22:27):

Capable

Speaker 1 (00:22:28):

Of doing fucked up things like lone wolf style,

Speaker 2 (00:22:32):

I guess. Yeah, lone wolf style. And this has been getting discussed a lot when you look at what they represent. You'd be impressed if they could wrangle a bingo meeting, but you see this come together and it's like, oh, it is more dangerous than you think it is. And they better do their parts to ensure that there's some pretty important days coming up here. One in particular, hopefully we don't see anything crazy go on there.

Speaker 1 (00:22:54):

Well, I guarantee you that come January 17th or whatever the date was.

Speaker 2 (00:23:00):

20th, yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:23:01):

No, well, 20th inauguration. I thought that the 17th, they said they were coming back.

Speaker 2 (00:23:05):

Oh really?

Speaker 1 (00:23:06):

I think that's what I saw.

Speaker 2 (00:23:07):

Cool. Why don't you just advertise that?

Speaker 1 (00:23:09):

Well, they advertised January 6th.

Speaker 2 (00:23:12):

I know, I know. Then it's wild. My head is just oozing with this stuff. It's been days of trying to shut my brain off from it, and it's like whether or not you cared about politics in the year 2020, you were made to begin the caring and now you can't look away. So it's like what a time.

Speaker 1 (00:23:31):

Well, I still believe back to what we were saying before with people telling us to use our platforms for whatever, I still firmly believe that if everybody focused on making their own lives better and the lives of people around them better, the world would be a better place. And so regardless of the bullshit going on, I see it kind of the way I saw COVID all of last year. The best thing I can do is to continue doing what I'm doing. I have employees to worry about. I have family members to worry about. I have myself to worry about me continuing what I'm doing helps that circle circle of people then can help their own circle of people. And it might not be a huge swath of society, but you can only do what you can do.

Speaker 2 (00:24:24):

Oh, it makes a difference. And that's the wholesome positive content I came here for. So that's good stuff. No, I mean crazy time. But I think, I can't remember what month it was that you and I and Brown did the Riff hard podcast, but I hadn't made the record or I did make the record. I can't remember if we had done that yet. But regardless, the whole focus for 2020 was just to do exactly that. Okay, the world's gone bonkers. Let's just, I'm going to put my head in the sand. And really my ultimate goal was to advance the music and the brand and everything. But all I can think about is my whole crew and everybody that works for the team that we haven't seen each other since the House of Blues in Anaheim days before Christmas of 2019. I just want that back. I just want to do well so that when we do get back that there's a really strong jump off point and it's not the one we left. It's bigger and better and taller and further from wherever it was that we came from.

Speaker 1 (00:25:27):

Do you feel that responsibility for them?

Speaker 2 (00:25:30):

No, because there's no pressure in the way that I think we run things like it's not an obligation, but I do from, I love my friends and the people that care to have helped me in the music and stuff. So it makes me want to, I don't necessarily feel

(00:25:46):

Pressure from it. Yeah, it's more of a motivating factor. It's more if I kill it, we all kill it and that's awesome. And he sort of does live and die by me, so a little bit of pressure sometimes. I had enough time to execute. And I mean, this is great segue into talking about why we're here. Seriously, couldn't have done that without Sam. He fully allowed me to realize the music in a way that I think is the closest to how I've ever heard my nonsense in my head on record. And that's one of the biggest, I think most consistent pieces of accolades, I should say from fans press, is that it sounds the most intervals yet. And I think that that just comes down to working with somebody who totally gets what you're trying to do. And when you really have that chemistry, you can bring that to life.

(00:26:39):

So I spent the year making the tunes, but the record would just be, it wouldn't even be close to what it is without being able to have, we took a leap of faith, we changed producer, engineer, everything. That's always a big move. Did it with somebody local and found a really great fit. And it's been amazing for this side of things. The company's grown and we've had so many amazing things come from it. There's still so many cool things coming up in the year, and we're still reeling from the drop in November. It's just mounting. So

Speaker 1 (00:27:17):

Definitely created some waves. So a question for you, and I also want to hear Sam's perspective on this being that you took a leap of faith and Sam, I remember talking to you before you did this, we had a conversation about you doing this, an instrumental record in

Speaker 3 (00:27:35):

Genre

Speaker 1 (00:27:35):

That you don't normally work in.

Speaker 3 (00:27:38):

Oh, almost never. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:27:39):

Yeah. This is not your typical thing. It sounds amazing, but it's not your typical thing, Aaron, as far as choosing a producer goes, typically artists will listen to their favorite records in similar genres and go to the person that is known for that sort of thing. This is kind of a bold choice. So what gave you the confidence in Sam? I want to hear, because we're talking to mostly producers now, so of course I want to hear what is it that producers can do? That's the question I'm trying to answer is what can a producer do to give confidence to an artist who's outside of their comfort zone? So first of all, I want to talk about what it is that one you over Aaron, and then with Sam, I want to hear from you how you wrapped your head around doing something outside the norm and how you felt that you could do a great job with it. Because I know that oftentimes producers will turn things down if they feel like it's not the guy or girl.

Speaker 2 (00:28:53):

Well, honestly, I've always wanted to do things different. I think that I kind of felt that I made that choice early on when I had actually worked with Jordan because my first ep, I engineered myself with Lucas who was playing guitar with me at the time, and it was something that we worked on and there's no only budget to have somebody like Mix and so early on, and it was actually attainable even at our size then to have Nali mix. So we did that and then very quickly, that was no longer an option. So we decided we did want to work with somebody local. And working with Jordan who hadn't done anything like that at the time, it made sense because his style was somewhat ballpark, but I dunno, it came highly recommended from a lot of friends, a lot of the more active and popular and serious acts from our area.

(00:29:47):

We're going to Jordan. So it's a move that you would make. It's just that we just didn't have vocals at the time. So that's what made it different. But he, Jordan wholeheartedly embraced that. So for me it was like, okay, you can do this. You just have to have, there's some dialogue that needs to happen and just make sure everyone's on the same page. So going from working with Jordan to then working with Cameron McClellan who co-writes material with Protest the Hero or did a while back and played in the band on base, mixed them and everything, he's really embedded in the more Prague world. So it was like, okay, we're going to engineer with Cam and then we'll have others mix. One of them being Anthony who's done protest, and I don't know that Anthony had done instrumental stuff, but he had done protest stuff just again, similar but with vocals.

(00:30:38):

And then we had Simon Mix. So the reason I'm prefacing it with all this is I've bounced between kind of taking risks, but also working with individuals that you would totally associate with the style being Nly and Simon. But with Sam, the whole thing was like I'm becoming more comfortable. Every time I record a record, I learn more and more about the process and I sort of explore the edges on how you can sort of push things. And I feel less and less a drastic jump. Working with a producer like Sam actually didn't feel like a risk to me at all. I can listen to his productions and I'm like, I know where the potential lies for us to build on that and then further, and if he understands what it is that I want to do, it's only going to be amazing. I had no doubt in my mind.

(00:31:24):

So his latest work with Silverstein at the time, and I actually contributed to Guess Solo to that record, so I was kind of familiar with the work and everything, but the mix on that record, the way the guitars feel, the overall feeling of that album and the attitude, I was like, this works for what it is that I'm trying to do. I think that just by combining my music with that is going to yield a quality result regardless. And then it only gets better from their, based on how much he's liking the material, how many risks he's willing to take, trying different things.

Speaker 1 (00:31:56):

Sonics aside, how did he win you over in the fact that he understood what you were going for?

Speaker 2 (00:32:03):

So we tested a track mean, so Sam is a friend of my manager, Rich's and Rich works with Silverstein and others that Sam has worked with before. So it was like, let's do a test track and see if we're a good fit, if our chemistry is there in the control room and how fast we can work mean. And he's wielding pro tools probably faster than anybody I've ever seen. And I thought Jordan was fast and Cam's really fast too. So his speed and efficiency also, I don't think I've ever been told no to try an idea, even if it doesn't work, we try it, we have a discussion, we try it, and then I've seen Sam fight with things and massage and wrestle with things more than some people who would just tell you no and give up.

Speaker 1 (00:32:47):

So he'll fight for your idea until it doesn't work or does

Speaker 2 (00:32:52):

Until it doesn't work. Or he's morphed into something in his wheelhouse and then I get my mind blown. I would've never seen it like that. And then X and Y yield Z. So chemistry was there really easygoing guy, super professional, really fun to hang out with, great workflow. And we banged out a track. We gave ourselves three days, did it in two, and we used takes on the record.

Speaker 3 (00:33:15):

Great. We didn't redo any of that or we didn't redo any of the rhythms. Two pieces or something. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:33:19):

Yeah. I'm going to let Sam go from here, but that's pretty much from my perspective. I think.

Speaker 1 (00:33:24):

Let me just recap and make sure I understand correctly. So basically, obviously the sonics, it's almost like if the sonics weren't there, you wouldn't even be having the conversation, right? So that's the assumed part is the dude knows how to produce and mix. It's going to be high tier stuff that's given. You wouldn't even be having the conversation if that wasn't there.

Speaker 2 (00:33:45):

Of course.

Speaker 1 (00:33:46):

So that's assumed or should be assumed, but the fact he was willing to go the distance with you,

Speaker 2 (00:33:54):

Even after expressing apprehension because you style new genre, a little worried about this, dah, dah, dah, but still going hard, really hard. He's in his comfort zone. That's like a plus, plus, plus, plus plus

Speaker 1 (00:34:06):

Because you strike me as someone that goes hard just from our conversations on podcasts and listening to your music, you strike me as someone who will go hard. And so it seems to me in order to work with you properly, you need someone that's like, you don't need to. I would imagine that it's very frustrating if you feel like an idea is not there yet and it needs more work and you're down and then the person just wants to sign off.

Speaker 2 (00:34:34):

Yes.

Speaker 1 (00:34:35):

I can imagine that driving you nuts would break my heart.

Speaker 2 (00:34:37):

Yeah, but it would also infu Amy.

Speaker 1 (00:34:40):

Yeah, I can imagine that it would not go over well. That's my impression

Speaker 2 (00:34:47):

Depending on the dynamic in the relationship and what our expectations are, and we do try to communicate. I do try to, I think before we even got to work, I think we talked a lot and Rich came in and we talked and we made some music and we laid out the parameters.

Speaker 1 (00:35:04):

So what about you, Sam?

Speaker 3 (00:35:05):

I remember we had a meeting at the studio and then we went out for lunch.

Speaker 2 (00:35:08):

Oh yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (00:35:09):

And yeah, I had no problem saying, it's funny you mentioned the apprehension thing. I had no problem saying if I'm not the right guy for this, that's totally fine.

Speaker 2 (00:35:18):

And that's true. He did.

Speaker 3 (00:35:19):

Yeah, exactly. I'd never done anything like that. So I was like, if I'm not the right guy, it's totally fine. But if we vibe this year especially, I'm going to be the guy who's going to put my all into it. There's no point in not because it's not going to benefit anybody in any record I've done if I don't just literally envelop myself into that record as much as possible.

Speaker 1 (00:35:39):

For sure. Well, you started doing research on instrumental albums. I remember that.

Speaker 3 (00:35:44):

I did. Yeah, we talked about it. Yeah. And you sent me your record.

Speaker 1 (00:35:47):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:35:48):

Give me the sauce. Tell me what to listen to.

Speaker 3 (00:35:50):

Pretty much. I mean, I don't know. I had recommendations and stuff, but when we talked about it, I also remembered one of the things you said to me and one of the things, it's not like I knew this wasn't the case beforehand. I totally get that. Nobody would probably want to hear that, but I remember you saying to me or being told, I think by both of you guys at some point where it's just like you're not just playing solos the whole time. That's not what an instrumental record is.

Speaker 2 (00:36:15):

It's what some instrumental records are. It's not what this thing is. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:36:19):

Well that's the

Speaker 3 (00:36:19):

Boring

Speaker 1 (00:36:20):

Ones are

Speaker 3 (00:36:21):

Exactly. That's what I was going to say. A good instrumental record. That's all it kind of took for me after we had our meeting, it was one thing, but after we did the first track, it was so easy to rewire my brain and go, the leads you're writing are vocals, basically. They're your vocals. Yes,

Speaker 1 (00:36:35):

They're the vocals

Speaker 3 (00:36:36):

And the care you put in. I remember how many times you would do the same little thing until it was the perfect, you know what I mean? That exact sound you needed for that spot, and that's just recording any vocal inflection or anything. So the second I was able to wire my brain into that, his guitar is a vocal, not a solo. It became just like any record I was enjoying being a part of. It was very much easy to make a call. Do we double this guitar part? Do we do some crazy effect on it just for a second?

Speaker 4 (00:37:05):

Do

Speaker 3 (00:37:05):

We make it into the vocal point for this part or is this kind of like a backgroundy thing? It was really easy to start mapping the songs out production wise. The second I flicked that switch in my brain and then it just became a fun record, like something I was excited to do.

Speaker 1 (00:37:20):

I'm convinced, absolutely convinced. And just from my own experience, the band I was in, we focused a lot on having catchy vocals, even though it was death metal vocals, we always focused on having a hook always. And so then when Amal and I went to do the instrumental album, we went from something where the vocals are a big part of it to zero. But the thing is, I come from the classical background and love instrumental music, but the goal, and this is why I think it did well, because at that time period was like 2009 when we wrote it, and it came out in 2010. In that time period, the instrumental genty thing had not happened yet. So there wasn't like Animals as Leaders being big. There wasn't all that stuff. This was before that when the idea of instrumental albums was just some dude soloing over a programmed shitty drumbeat for a long time drum

Speaker 4 (00:38:20):

Machine, even

Speaker 1 (00:38:21):

For hitting play on the Casio, and then it does the drumbeat and some dude just rips for 45.

Speaker 2 (00:38:28):

It's so funny though that you say that. That's a vibe to me now though.

Speaker 1 (00:38:32):

You know what I'm talking

Speaker 2 (00:38:33):

About. I got the rolling Cloud and I'm messing with three oh threes and six oh sixes and eight oh eights and having a time with it. So it's funny that you say that, but that's obviously it's like a ironic, non-ironic kind of thing, but you're talking about No, for real, that was the sound.

Speaker 1 (00:38:47):

That was the sound that was the genre, and that's why I think that maybe it did okay in the eighties, but by 2010, nobody listened to instrumental guitar music anymore because it was fucking boring as hell. And so we made this decision that yes, there's going to be ridiculous solos. Of course. That's almost, to me, that's like that assumption that we were talking about before that of course, you wouldn't be talking to Sam in the first place if the sonics weren't there. So yeah, we're not going to be doing something for Shrapnel Magna Carta without amazing solos in there, but that's not what it's all about. It's about catchy ass music and really good melodies, and then solos happen when the solos happen. And then for what it was, it was very successful. And so that made me super fucking convinced that if you're going to do instrumental music, pretend like it's not instrumental. It still has to be good music. Exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:39:45):

Which is why Sam was such a good candidate, because I've been trying to have these conversations. Not to say that anything got sold short in the past. I'm extremely proud of every release, but it was really getting somebody on side that doesn't just smile and nod when you say those things, they're intrigued by it and then they get it, and then they want to do it their way. So when you listen to how Sam mixes a vocal, but then you also listen to the rest of his production, you go, duh. Yeah, he's the guy. And so I already knew, didn't feel like a leap of faith to me, had all the sort of confidence in the world that this would yield a quality result. It was just like if he has to get comfy with it and then get his head in the game, and then it totally happened because the record just is right to the point. It feels so good, such a bang and mix. Thank you. Unbelievable guitar tones and textures, and I've learned so many tricks off Sam that I'm implementing now. I ran back to the lab and I'm doing pre-pro and I'm like, oh, yep, that's that thing we do here and we do this thing here and stealing ideas and trying to make them work my way. I've got the wheels turned in about things that I can bring to the table next time to make him think more and see what we can get.

Speaker 1 (00:40:55):

That sounds like a great working relationship. So Sam, can you explain to me when you're working on, I guess what we would consider the lead or the non-vocal vocal, how do you just technically get it to stand out from the rest of the guitars? Is it something that is already there in the arrangement or is it having Aaron play it on a different guitar with a different cab? Or what is it that helps you as a mixer producer make sure that that part is the vocal

Speaker 3 (00:41:33):

On Aaron's record, especially? A lot of it came down to just tailoring tones per parts, which wasn't something, not that I wasn't expecting to do, but definitely when we started diving into that, it became kind of like a purposeful thing. Whereas initially it didn't feel like we'd be doing a lot of that. So a good example is certain verses, it might be something as simple as I just, it's the exact same. We did the whole record with Amp Sims. We did the whole thing with neural stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:41:57):

Shout out neural. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:41:59):

Yeah. Oh, it was super fun too.

Speaker 1 (00:42:01):

It was great stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:42:02):

It was something as simple as maybe the gain in the verses. It was the exact same amp, let's say for the rhythms, but I pulled the game back just to hair and the lead tone in the verse is something different than the lead tone in the hook part. So it was a matter of kind of every part finding its own voice. If stuff was on the sides, it almost always stayed within the same realm of amp, and if stuff was down the middle, it was always a different amp. We didn't really switch guitars much a, we kind of just kind of stuck with the two. I think it was like two guitars, the whole record. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:42:30):

That's impressive.

Speaker 2 (00:42:31):

It is. The heavy lifting came from the neural stuff. But the funny thing as well is we didn't go bonkers on changing out stuff like crazy. We weren't going nuts with IRSs. Bunch of different amps. There are four amps max on the whole record. I

Speaker 3 (00:42:44):

Think so, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:42:45):

Fort and Kelly suite on rhythms three from ly on leads amp two from LY on Split Co and twangy stuff, and a bossy on cleans for that blended piezo kind of vibe and amp two on Plin for some stuff. So five total. That's it,

Speaker 3 (00:43:03):

And

Speaker 2 (00:43:03):

That's enough of a palette to give you a lot of differentiation, but aren't always necessarily happening at the same time to give you that separation that you think I'm talking about. It's like a lot of these things are all happening together. It's little moves with even, again, same guitar happening, little moves on things like gain shifting the mid voice or just moving the microphones, the virtual microphones on the cabinet. So just kind of getting a little bit of a different take, a little more 57 closer here and a little less 1 21 a little further back there. Tiny moves like that. But then when you start to mess with things like modulation, just even in subtle ways or real stylized ways, some nasty things like the sound of clipping an analog console and some fuzzy things and some octave formin types. You can play with harmonic content and make shit jump without having to grab a different guitar or completely change the plugin. There's so many tiny moves that just add up to something that has dimension.

Speaker 1 (00:44:07):

God, that's so interesting hearing you guys say this. Say what you were going to say then I'll tell you why I said that. It's interesting hearing you say this.

Speaker 3 (00:44:14):

Well, it was nice too. You had really versatile guitars at the end of the day too. If we wanted a single coil thing, we weren't even bothering to swap out a guitar. We were just changing a pickup selection or something like that. So we could audition every idea for every riff the second before we recorded it, and then we're just like, oh, you know what? That's sick. Let's roll with that. Let's keep going. I've got ideas to double this when we get to it or triple it, because when I say double, I mean we did a lot of the analog console blowing out the sides kind of thing for riffs and stuff. I think that's where we connected the most because just like ail, you were saying before Aaron's energy, it's like if you had an idea, I had an idea. If we had an idea, it's done. No, we wouldn't fuck around too much with like, eh, we'd just be vibing a thing. That's also why I never said no. Everything was a vibe at the same time where it was just like, you feeling this because I'm kind of feeling this, and then we would just hit record and it would be the thing we needed to kind of get done. In that moment,

Speaker 2 (00:45:06):

There are pillars to I'm going to prioritize tuning stability over grabbing five guitars.

Speaker 4 (00:45:13):

That

Speaker 2 (00:45:13):

Was a big, big one. Intonation and stuff. So it's like if this thing is working, there's so many other tools for us to be able to manipulate stuff. The foundation comes from this thing being intonated and intune and reliable and

Speaker 3 (00:45:23):

Just ready to go, ready to be creative all the time with it. And

Speaker 2 (00:45:26):

We only use four guitars on the whole album. So

Speaker 1 (00:45:29):

This is very interesting to me. I guess also, it has to be in the arrangement. It has to be arranged properly to where you can just use four guitars.

Speaker 2 (00:45:39):

Oh, I see what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (00:45:40):

I feel like the music had to be constructed in a way to allow for that to take place in the first place. However, it's interesting to me that you said that you prioritize tuning stability because when I think back to Avalanche Worms, my instrumental album, I hear it now. The tuning's not perfect. That would not fly nowadays back then it would, but we used a different guitar for every single solo. We used a different amp for every single solo,

Speaker 4 (00:46:12):

Different

Speaker 1 (00:46:13):

Cabs. Literally, we'd have parts that had I think 15 different guitar lines going on other than the two rhythms, or four depending, or six is a different guitar for every single part, a different amp, different cab for every single fucking part.

Speaker 2 (00:46:33):

I'm scared thinking of it

Speaker 1 (00:46:35):

And written No amp sims either.

Speaker 2 (00:46:37):

No, I know. Wow. Shout it to you guys. That's a lot of hustle. That's a crazy work ethic, but

Speaker 1 (00:46:42):

It's not like you guys have less work ethic. It's just a different era.

Speaker 2 (00:46:45):

That's the thing I was going to say is we did this in an environment where it probably is easier for us to change the ssim and the ir like crazy, or I have a pretty substantial collection of guitars we could reach for a lot of stuff. But just efficiency, workflow, ease of use, reliability. These are the things that actually yield the ability to reserve executive function for ideas.

Speaker 1 (00:47:09):

I think that's great. So when I think back to doing it that way, it's cool. It's a cool story. But in reality, if the technology that existed now existed, then I would've been able to sleep a lot more on the project. Maybe I wouldn't have injured my back because I hurt my back during the recording of that one. I feel like it's not like it would've sounded worse by doing it. It would've probably sounded better with the kind of tools that you guys have been able to use because of this era. And so

Speaker 2 (00:47:42):

For sure,

Speaker 1 (00:47:43):

When I think back, I'm like, man, so yeah, that is cool that all that happened. But the tools now, the amp sims now, the tools for tuning stability now are so amazing. They've come so far that you don't have to have 16 amp heads in the fucking room and 20 different guitars to be able, literally

Speaker 2 (00:48:06):

16

Speaker 1 (00:48:07):

Amp headss and 20 guitars to be able to do this thing. You could do it with four guitars and the right sims

Speaker 2 (00:48:13):

And a patch cable and an audio interface.

Speaker 1 (00:48:15):

Yeah, you can't, and not have it be like a corner cut or anything like that actually sounds better.

Speaker 2 (00:48:21):

No, and in fact, I could tell you where the time was made up for. If you compare it to the production that we did previously, when it came down to, okay, everything's wrapped and it's time to get ready for mixing, we booked three 10 hour days to Reamp guitars consecutively. I brought Giant Pedalboard and a bunch Amps and cabs, and for 30 hours across three days, I was on my hands and knees in front of a pedal board. I'm running around to the other room swapping out speaker cabinets, and we got all the heads there and everything. Cam and I are pulling up notes that we took because we tracked DI's alongside sort of like a mocked up version of every signal chain. I thought I was going to reamp through. The thought of it makes me so tired and we got to mix and it was like,

Speaker 1 (00:49:08):

It's raising my blood pressure a little.

Speaker 2 (00:49:10):

Yes, mine too. And the tracking tones are the album tones. We didn't even change them and go like, oh, now's the time to really get in there with a fine tooth comb. Like, no, it's done.

Speaker 3 (00:49:22):

Yeah, I think that was a big one that we talked about, and I also think that was a big good thing about having me mix it as well as produce. It was

Speaker 2 (00:49:30):

Yes. You don't get that when you farm it out.

Speaker 3 (00:49:32):

Yeah, you need to have everything exactly how you want it. Whereas if I'm halfway through mixing a song and I'm like, you know what? I just need to tweak this one thing real quick. I just do it and not really think about it or worry about it. I just treat it like a mixed move. Even if I'm moving a microphone on a simulated cab or something,

Speaker 2 (00:49:48):

There are things that changed for sure that I don't know about, and I'm none the wiser because I do not care. We did 98% of the work together. That's

Speaker 3 (00:49:55):

Just any record. I get notes back right away and you're like, cool. The tones are where I want them. And I'm like, cool. I don't remember if I changed anything, but that's good to know because they're sounding sick and I'm stoked on these.

Speaker 2 (00:50:06):

And I came with the notepad. I sat with everything, and we had the luxury of being able to do revisions in person, which is huge. Again, not having to leave a note under a stone and then wait for time zones and emails and craziness. I just sat with it. I did my home monitors test. I did the AirPods test, the car test, took her for walks around the block, made all the notes, DoubleCheck the notes, triple check the notes. Then we came in, we started stepping through all the moves, and they're like, delay throws and rever tails. They're not, the tone is whack here.

(00:50:40):

Can we do the Cali instead of the 51 50? Can we try? Oh, the cabs not working. None of that was the thing. It was all more refined, stylized move production moves. Like, oh, can we play with the pan on the phrase here? Can we divide it and go left, right, left, right. It's just creative moves. You know what I mean? So yeah, drums were banging. My favorite drum mix we've ever had, so easy. Dean Haja, Christo's, a legend ing incredible drums. Nathan played his heart out. Sam sent us away with the gnarliest snare drum, I think we've ever recorded on an intervals release, and that's Sam's drum. We took that to Ottawa with us, tracked that, did a bunch of crazy things, like I programmed a bunch of rim click grooves and we're like, oh, how are we going to track that? He's going to be smacking the shit out of Tom two or Tom one Detuning the rack, Tom, as we try to get, we're on take 15 and everything's falling apart. How did we do it again? We did a piccolo snare or an additional snare Tom floating over.

Speaker 3 (00:51:37):

Yeah, it was something really shallow that, I don't know if it was a tiny Tom or a small snare that

Speaker 2 (00:51:42):

You just had side snare or something, and it was like we rigged it up. So it's simply for the use. It was just for Plex Rim only, and it was the same mic that was getting the splash over the rack. Toms was getting this thing, and then, yeah, it was like an auxiliary rim. We had some just cool ideas that we were able to execute on because there was no pressure. I finally felt like we could explore the edges of certain things, and I still don't even think we're all the way. I've got so many ideas for what I want to do next time. I immediately went down the rabbit hole with synths and stuff. It was something we took a lot more seriously this time, and I felt like I could have been stronger in my input and my ability to manipulate some of those things in the production. And Mullen did a great job. Shout out to Mullen. He is a friend of ours that also, he did all of the scoring and orchestral stuff for the latest protesting hero record, and he's a good pal. So he did a lot of the heavy lifting with transcribing the majority of things. I played on guitar into midi. Yeah, he did

Speaker 3 (00:52:42):

A great job

Speaker 2 (00:52:43):

And then did all of the arrangements and stuff like that and brought us sounds and everything, but

Speaker 1 (00:52:47):

That's some hustle.

Speaker 2 (00:52:48):

That's some hustle. He's really good, man. Yeah, he was so sick. So I felt like I wanted to have a little bit more input, and the synth stuff is starting to, it's becoming part of my voice alongside the guitar, so right away I'm like, no, this needs to be stronger next time. So I got a Moog subsequent 37 right after we wrapped the, once we got the album out, and I felt like I wanted to treat myself, and I got the bugs so bad because that thing is so powerful and so strong that it was swallowing my other synth. So then shout out to Sequential. They blessed me with a prophet six, so got that in the mix, and then somehow in 1984, Juneau 1 0 6 turned up here. I don't know where that came from, and I am okay to admit that I have a problem, but it's a good problem and I'm having so much fun with it, and there's definitely going to be a whole other dimension next time around. So

Speaker 3 (00:53:37):

Yeah, I'm excited about, should we party again on another record? I'm excited about the idea of you helming the synths a little bit more. Even when you were getting them, you were sending me videos of just sounds that I was like, man, I wish we kind of had that

Speaker 1 (00:53:51):

Somewhere

Speaker 3 (00:53:52):

On the record.

Speaker 1 (00:53:53):

Sam, what do you mean?

Speaker 3 (00:53:54):

I just mean, first of all, I feel kind of naive, not knowing that you played keys really well.

Speaker 2 (00:53:59):

I play a little, I'm taking lessons now. I'm taking it lot more seriously. I got a couple moves, but no, the heavy lifting is all midy, of course.

Speaker 3 (00:54:07):

No, but what's nice is obviously you're a guitar player and you have an ear for tone, and that tone that ear extends to synth. Not that I didn't expect it to, but to a degree it's like there's sounds that you're already getting with synth stuff when you were sending me little ideas that I'm just really excited to explore in the future because there's a bit of an attachment to when you design the part from scratch on another instrument. And that's the thing that I'm super excited to explore regardless of whether we totally redo it in MIDI and feed it out back to the synth or whatever. That doesn't matter to me nearly as much as the idea of just the fact that you'll put your fingers on a real thing. You'll sort of decide that sound then and there, and that'll shape the thing that you do with that song, and then we just get to full circle it and bring it to life again, which will be really fun.

Speaker 2 (00:54:59):

Big time. And I feel like we left. That's why I'm so excited. Every time I finish a record and I know that there's still room, I'm like, yes, okay, we're not done yet. You know what I mean? Exactly. And you leave that room for growth and there's so much, I've been taking courses on synthesis, and I've always been really inspired by guys like Tyco and COMT Trues and dudes who can just get in front of a couple pieces of equipment and just go and it's like a living, breathing organism that they're interacting with.

Speaker 3 (00:55:29):

And

Speaker 2 (00:55:29):

If you just understand what to reach for and how to influence it, that it gives you what it gives you back is so magical. And there's something about it that I love, analog synthesizers respond like guitars, but they behave in a way so different. So this morning before we got on the podcast, before I even made breakfast, I got up and I turned on the prophet six and just like our peg data on set a couple parameters, grab a cutoff, grab an LFO and just do some stuff, stand back and listen in headphones and then think, what's the move I want to make? And then reach out and do it and see, okay, that's not the one, but okay, that's what you get when you do this and it's just, it's so fascinating. But then also then there's the complete other side where you take out the sequencing nature and you put your hands on it and you play the melody that's in your head, or you learn the thing you just wrote on guitar and then it influences and there's push and pull back and forth.

(00:56:21):

We haven't even come close to scratching the surface on that. There's a whole other world to the point where we're talking about, we have a, can I say this? We're going to do a livestream show. We got awarded some funding. Oh, cool. Yeah. Okay. I don't know that I was supposed to, but we're going to do a thing. We're planning to, obviously the border thing makes things complicated and you can expect something from intervals that involves humans in a room making music. Fuck. Yeah. For the first time since 2019, we have calls coming up to discuss exactly how we want to execute. Of course, Sam's going to be part of it and if he's available, of course, because he's a busy boy,

Speaker 4 (00:56:58):

But

Speaker 2 (00:57:00):

We are talking about ways that we can make it special and don't be surprised if you see a synth or two next to a guy. Maybe he's me, maybe he's somebody else. Maybe it's all of us. We're going to do some weird stuff, and I think it's safe to say that we're teaming up with neural for that, and my quad cortex shows up on Monday and I'm so excited. Yeah, we're going to power everything through that. And the idea in my head, in a perfect world, guitars and synths are all going to quad cortex. We've all got control over the ability to make sounds you wouldn't expect from us, Jacob on a bass through two and maybe some of my treats out with me and do the music, but also veer off on some tangents, or maybe I'll play some of my leads with my right hand on a keyboard. I'm playing with some ideas. So it's cool. It's a fun time right now. I think there's no rules. I'm loopy from being in my apartment for days on end, so I just want to do everything different and flip it on its head.

Speaker 1 (00:57:59):

Aaron, we should make a synth fast track. I'm just throwing that out there, so let that marinate. I want to do a synth fast track. Reason being is that you're now learning synth in a way that's coming from a non synth background, and that's very, very interesting because a lot of people who are learning how to mix metal, record metal, make metal, they want to know how to do synth, but they don't even know where to begin.

Speaker 2 (00:58:26):

That's been me for the last decade though, man. And I got some work to do before we could approach that. I'd love to do it though. I got to get my shit together.

Speaker 1 (00:58:33):

I don't mean now, but I just wanted to plant that seed and let it grow into a tree. But let me, okay. I want to talk to both of you guys about some synth stuff because on this topic, so hearing you speak about this, you kind of basically outlined exactly what I think people should do when they want to make something work. For instance, people hit me up a lot to ask about how to do certain things. Obviously that's my role, but it's about how to lose weight. How do I get better at mixing? How do I get a business off the ground? How do I get better at synth? Just how do I get better at X? That's something that I get asked about that type of question across the board from everything from peers of ours to total beginners. And the thing is that what I really think the answer is, is you got to get obsessed.

(00:59:33):

So if you want to lose weight, for instance, you got to make that your life. If you want to get good at mixing, you have to make that your life and what that looks like is going to be different for everybody. But the way that you're talking right now about getting good at something that's not your primary instrument is I want everyone who's trying to learn something new to rewind and listen to that again, to the fact that you are waking up and before breakfast, you're fucking with it. That's what I'm talking about. It's not so much somebody can give you a do this and this and this and this tactical guide to becoming awesome at synth or at whatever it is you're trying to do. You have to become obsessed with it to where you want to get up in the morning and do it before breakfast where you want to take courses on it or you want to figure out how to incorporate it into what you're doing.

(01:00:32):

You have to want that enough to actually do it. And I was listening to a podcast yesterday about it was an entrepreneurship podcast. And see, I don't know anything about coding. I'm not on that end of these companies. I work with people who know how to code, but they were talking about learning how to code in order to build apps or build companies. They said that with some exception, like guys that grew up coding, there's a ton of entrepreneurs out there who have done super successful things who didn't know any code, but they had an idea. And so they learned because they had to learn how to do this idea or they knew how to do 10% of what they needed to for this idea. So they learned out of necessity to implement the idea, and they got obsessed with it. It wasn't that somebody else became obsessed for them, they became obsessed because they had their own personal reason for doing it. And then once their brain got on board with, yeah, we got to do this in order to achieve this goal, then their life started pointing itself in that direction. Much like you said, I think that you waking up this morning and doing that is such a perfect example of what I'm talking about when I tell people, just get obsessed with it and then you'll figure it out.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):

A hundred percent. I love that too. I mean, it's just my personality. So when I go down the rabbit hole on something like that, there's a reason I'm becoming drawn to something. I can't help it. I'm being, it's like if it's like there's something magnetic about certain things, perhaps it's because I have done it for about a decade under the guise of intervals. And then beyond that, I've been playing guitar for the majority over half of my life at some point though, and I think that I have my reasons for it. One of them being I always wished that I took piano or that my foundation was rooted in that approach to seeing music because I desire to enhance my harmony and understanding of music from the perspective of the guitar, but I wish I had a different look at it because when I watch a piano player, when you watch a Corey Henry or a Robert Glasper or Jacob Collier sit and play music, man, it's like there's, it's so much beauty and I have so much envy for that freedom and I love the instrument.

(01:03:04):

And then I also love, there's something so cool to me that something so innocuous white and black keys laid out in this, just predictable cyclical nature can be such a chameleon. It can be a piano or aeros, but it can also be a freaking synthesizer, which is like a universe since there's such a universe. I've taken it for granted for a really long time just opening up a plugin and finding a cool bleepy blooey sound and drawing mid and then tucking that under my guitar and be like, cool. I know how No, you don't. Don't know the first thing about it. That's a preset and the piano role, get over yourself. You know what I mean? So really sitting down, and I was enamored when I played. I told myself I wanted to get something analog because we were shout out to Roland. They hooked me up with a system eight when I started a relationship with Roland and Boss in 2018 or 2019.

(01:04:03):

And that was the beginning of it, and a great way to actually dip a toe because for guys that aren't synth guys, the system aid is based on their modeling, their legacy modeling. So I had the sounds of a Juno or a Jupiter and stuff like that. Granted, they don't hold a candle to the actual thing, but they are very close and they're enough for you to fall in love with. And there was things that I was discovering on there. For example, the identity of track three on the new record lunatic is this amazing since preset and not too proud to admit is a preset that I found. And then I tweaked. I was like, wow, there is a whole world here that I'm not even acknowledging in terms of flexibility for creativity. And it sucked me in. Meen did to expedite the process, drew the midi curated sounds, and then Sam blew me away with how much he knows about synthesis.

(01:04:57):

When I watched on Synth Day when Meen came in and we were amping stuff through my synth or we are amping, we're sending MIDI to it sequencing and we're grabbing plugins. His ears so good. He's manipulating things. There is a pulsing bass sound that we needed this eighties pulsing bass sound. And it's like I watched him do a bunch of things to try to manipulate it and make him move. And the whole time I'm sitting there going, I have to learn this. I have to learn how to make these sounds and understand the moves to make. So when I walked into a long quas, when we were allowed to do so, and Long Quas is our guitar center, by the way, Canadian Guitar Center. I

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):

Love that name

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):

Long and yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):

It's just so not Guitar Center.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):

No, it's not. But they wear suits, so they very much are those guys.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):

It's just the name is just like, you guys are just so much classier with certain things.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):

True. I guess I used to work at their competitor, so it's fine. So I step up to a sub 37 and I'm just like, oh yeah, that's mine. Now it has to

Speaker 4 (01:06:06):

Be.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):

And then you get home and you're like, okay, so what do you do with all of this? And then the first thing you do is you grab the filter cutoff and you're like, whoa, hold on a second. What is even happening when you turn this big knob? And then you understand resonance and then you're thinking, okay, wait, what does that look like inside the things I already know? So if I make a resonant peak inside Pro Q3 or inside the Stock Logic EQ, and then I sweep that, is that what's going on here? Then I went and tried it on some tracks and I'm like, okay, I think I understand what's going on here. And then it's understanding the function of oscillators and the different wave shapes. And then I'm still trying to understand LFO and how to route things and very much rudimentary with this stuff, but it's just mystifying that you can just latch a sequence and put your hands on some dials and think about how you want to make sound behave. It's so different than everything I'm used to, and it's empowering because I'm like the palette of sounds that I can back my comfort zone up with the guitar. It has me seeing all of the potential for how I can layer those types of performances. But also the more I do this, the more I'm like, I just want to play that sound. Screw a guitar.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):

Sam, I have a question for you, but real quick, Aaron, it sounds to me like you're approaching this the same way with the same kind of passion as anything else that you're doing. I remember in the last podcast we talked a lot about health stuff, but I imagine that anything that you've done, you go for it like this. But Sam, on your end, what's your primary instrument? Just out of curiosity?

Speaker 3 (01:07:49):

I'm a drummer mainly.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):

You're a drummer, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:07:51):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):

So being that you're a drummer, there's even more of a disconnect, I think, from moving from drums to being good at synth because it's not a melodic instrument or a harmonic instrument. But I believe every word Aaron said about you knowing what the fuck you're doing with it,

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):

And he does. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):

How did you go about helping yourself understand how to work with synth and wrapping your head around it? So we know Aaron's is get fucking obsessed and passionate and just try to learn everything you can about it and just immerse what's your method?

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):

I think a big one for me, it was just even when I was coming up and I never really went to school for recording or anything like that, it was just like, what is this new thing? And in that moment, getting obsessed with it, it's like I hear the sound in my head, I want to get it down. And normally when I'm working with synths, I don't do a lot of very synth focused things. So my goal with designing a synth sound is having it sit in a mix with something or just popping in when it needs to pop in way more than listen to me. I'm a synthesizer going nuts. And that has its own set of challenges. So when it comes to working on synth stuff, it's like I need to understand the basics of what that does to solve a problem, even though it's not a focal point of something, it's like bedroom tone versus a regular tone.

(01:09:14):

You know what I mean? You could play a cool synth sound and you think that'll drop right in, but realistically, there's so much more to crafting something that needs to do a reinforcement job. And also, I think, funny enough, even though synth and drums are so far apart, that's how I tend to use synth the most is a backing reinforcement kind of thing. And drums and bass are the rhythm of a song at the end of the day reinforcing the main stuff on top. So I think it went a little hand in hand. I'm not a good synth player by any stretch of the imagination, but when I pull up a sound, I will just fiddle and fiddle and fiddle and get obsessed in that moment with that sound until it delivers exactly what I want it to do. And I think what's funny is I work a lot with soft sense.

(01:09:55):

You have so much more of a palette because you can pull up different plugins to start rearranging the sound instead of just what's built into a contact synth or a synth like that. I'm pulling up things like decapitate or moves I'd make on guitars or vocals, applying them to the synth and seeing, oh, this works. Oh, this doesn't work. And just constantly cycling through and literally getting obsessed to the point where I'll get frustrated, I'll go home miserable, I'll wake up in the morning and I'll just have a light bulb like, oh, that's the thing I needed to do. And kind of solve it in that moment.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):

And I was doing the same thing a lot of the time. This stuff was just like, oh, this section needs something ethereal, or I feel like I need ambience and I've already exhausted all the moves that in the past I've been sort of guilty of and maybe not guilty, I don't know. But I try to simplify what the band is doing to what I could imagine us playing on stage. And I kind of don't go beyond that. There might be a third guitar layer or something that I'm willing to put into tracks, but a lot of the time, once I cap out what we have hands for physically on the stage, then I start looking at things like effect guitars, stylized guitars, and then synth and stuff like that. That's been sort of my mo, whereas now I'm seeing its role completely differently, like the synergy of having a unison performance or harmonies or something from the synthesizer that are right up front with the main guitar now getting more comfortable with our pation and textural things and things like that.

(01:11:24):

I'm seeing there's just so much more. I was talking to Tosin about this actually. We were talking about how it's something he's wanted to do for a long time and that some little clips and things that I was sending him and just my excitement for it was making him think like, oh, maybe I should go buy a synth and get into it. The way he sequences arpeggios and the way he plays a lot of the time is what an arpeggiator can produce actually. And it's funny because when you hear ARP guitar, you think, are you trying to mimic that? But the cool thing is as a learning tool, and I've been doing this, set the parameters on an arpeggiator, get the BPM or the division slow, really think about it. Is it up only down only up or down? Is it inverted? Whatever set those parameters, how many octaves it's ranging through and then listen to it and learned it on guitar. Oh, cool. And then it's the teacher. And then as you jack the BPM up and come up with it, you can explore this sort of ceiling with this thing and then you can find a sweet spot for it. Or you can try to get guns blazing with it and then it's like it taught you something, but now you can work hand in a glove with that thing and you've created something that's going to be so money when you get that recorded together

Speaker 4 (01:12:33):

Or

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):

You just use it to bubble around and bounce and spill delays and reverbs off into the background or there's so many, it's endless. So for me, it's empowering and my production and allows me to feel like because guitar is really only capable of so much, the limitation actually for guitar now lies within my playing and how much I'm willing to explore my physical technique and what it is that I'm trying to say, but it's the maestro I want to be able to add to the production. I want to be able to conduct other things. So that's where this whole thing is coming into play. But also just tiny little segue, and this is why something like this is a shameless plug for URMI was in all of this and working with Al, and funny enough, Finn was actually the one that I think put it together for me for the first time. Shout

Speaker 1 (01:13:21):

Out

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):

Finn McKenty. Shout out Finn. Yeah, who also works with us both. And a great guy. I watch a guy like Sam just fricking rip through pro tools and I'm like, all the time I'm spending doing pre-production, and obviously I've taken this a lot more serious. I moved into a new studio space and this, like I said before we jumped on this whole thing is getting treated in about a week, it's going to be a completely different thing. I really want to take it seriously and sharpen my pencil. I've got a lot of time to make up for, because I've spent so much time touring, but I've been using URM as a resource for sharpening my pencil in logic.

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):

Good.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):

Yes, absolutely. And shadow to Julian, because that course is great and it's so purpose built and I love what he did there from machine shop and just the way you guys make content is so awesome. So for me, thank you. Yeah, it's so

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):

Glad to hear that it's helping.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):

Very empowering. Yeah, no, and also I'm just watching lots of nail the mix and just listening to guys chat about stuff. And I went on a little George Lever kick recently, and he and I have been chatting great and he's great and love that lo of record and other things he's done. We have very similar taste in gear, so we're texting about gear all the time and nerding out, and that's all literally off the back of URM and nail the mix and everything. So even myself, I'm getting the benefit of it doesn't matter what level you're at, you'll appreciate this. I'm doing a online workshop and performance in clinic with music masters camps next Saturday. I posted a part of the schedule is they propose we do a song critique so people who are attending can submit their own mix or a song or something for some constructive input from me and I'll listen to it in real time and then if they want, they can jump on and we can chop it up in front of everybody.

(01:15:02):

And I think that that's really great. It's worth a lot more than the cost of admission for this thing. So I posted that and a guy wrote, one of the first comments on my Instagram was because I said something to the effect of, we're going to do this so we can level up together in 20 20, 1 guy wrote, I don't need to Level Up. And I wrote, how's the weather up there? And then he comes back to me with the backpedal. But I explained to him how dangerous that mentality is. All of my heroes and everybody I respect from Tosen and beyond to guys maybe a little bit earlier in the timeline of the journey than a guy like anybody that I look up to, everybody's taking lessons. Everybody still takes lessons and consumes this kind of content, so don't ever get stuck in that. The fact that he was blatant enough to say, I don't need to level up regardless of trolling or not. I had to make an example of it. That's why I said, how's the weather up there? That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):

I was talking to Zach Sini. Are you guys familiar with him?

Speaker 3 (01:16:04):

Yeah, I'm just the name big fan of his stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):

He's a producer mixer, super young. I think he's 25 or something.

Speaker 3 (01:16:10):

Yeah, he's like,

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):

But he's fucking killing it right now. But in my opinion, he's been a shooting star since I met him when he was 19 or 18. He just did the new bring me the horizon mix and the architects mix and stuff. Oh wow. He's great. He used to work for Putney, then he worked for John Feldman. No, he's on his own.

Speaker 2 (01:16:34):

Huge.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a shooting star. Anyways, we were talking and we were just talking about URM and now the mix, and I kind of said something along the lines of, I wouldn't want you to get bored or something. Maybe it's too basic for you or something. And he was like, no, I've watched every single one.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):

There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:16:53):

And I'll keep doing that. I was like, that's awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):

How did you learn, Sam? I know that you said that you, so recording for you was something that came out of necessity. You were the guy who had some gear and you wanted to record your band or a local band or whatever. What resources were you using at that time? Other than the obsession and the trial and error and stuff that we're talking, but here, obviously I think that that has to be built in for anyone who's achieving things at a particular level. That is a given, I think.

Speaker 4 (01:17:21):

But

Speaker 2 (01:17:22):

What was the resources or how you did it early on or even now maybe

Speaker 3 (01:17:27):

Early on? It was really, it was honestly, yeah, it was sort of out of necessity in the sense of I just started a new band, went to a new school, it was an art school. I think at the same time I started a new band up because I just ended a band before that and I was feeling that creative kick in the moment. I can't stop now. I was only 15 at the time, and you're stoked on everything when you're 15. It's like, I just can't stop in this moment or else nothing will happen afterwards. And that led to recording. And it was always funny. I always had friends who were telling me, I know you're playing in bands and you're touring and you're doing whatever, but the recording things, you're like, end goal. I'm like, no, fuck you. I'm going to tour until I die kind of thing. And that never clearly didn't pan out.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):

Hopefully not.

Speaker 3 (01:18:09):

No, literally, yeah, this year I get a tour, or last year I tour till I die. But no, it was the learning of it came kind of later in life. It kind of started that around weird to say maybe 20 12, 20 13, where I started looking at actual videos of people doing things and what am I doing wrong? Breeding out certain habits or getting better at things I didn't feel I was confident at. I always felt like I had an ear to make decisions, but I wasn't super strong in engineering at the time, so I focused on learning how to do things like that a little bit better and then tailored what I do now or what I've done in the last, let's say I feel like I go through cycles. I'm sure every producer has this vibe where they do something for two, three years at a time and they change it up again. And it's funny because it always coincides with things. So when URM came out, I started watching a ton of those and taking tips and tricks from those and incorporating them. And then I'd realize I share a studio space with my partner with my friend Anton, and he is an amp guy and I'm not an amp guy. And seeing him and mic things up and seeing me take a similar approach to, I just don't do amps anymore. It's just not a part of my creative flow where I need to achieve that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:23):

You didn't sell your shit yet. Did you sell your shit?

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):

No, no, I didn't sell any of my shit yet. I don't know, I feel like I can't, you know what I mean? But maybe I should just fully let go and I'll become the tone, God, the second I stop having an amp in my possession.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):

Yeah, you're free of all mortal tethers to whatever this forsaken.

Speaker 3 (01:19:43):

Exactly.

(01:19:44):

It's always like that. It's like the last two years I felt, especially seeing how much information is available on the internet and combing through and seeing what pertains to me versus what this, you look up a reverb video and you're hoping they're going to use it on an aggressive rock kit. It's the most boring reverb video you've ever watched in your life. And I'm sitting here, this does nothing for me. Where's the next way? I learn how to do the thing in my head, and that comes from picking up little bits from everything I enjoy plus trying and failing and trying and failing. And it also goes back to the level up thing you said where it's like, I'm never satisfied. I do not ever think a mix of mine is finished. No matter I'm holding the vinyl in my hand and I'm about to listen to it. I'm like, this fucking mix is not done. Why is this like this? But that also gives you a sense of purpose, especially lately, I've got so much mixing on my plate. I have maybe three or four albums worth of mixing I have to do right now. I'm so excited to do it all. All of it is going to be constantly learning how to make these now my best things.

Speaker 2 (01:20:46):

That's excellent. I feel like it's time to worry when that feeling runs out or not time to worry, but maybe it's a sign because I always feel empty. You and I went, we lost our mind in that room. You're sitting there and you do you all the time,

(01:21:04):

But I will always reach a point in the making of a record. I'm like, how in the world am I doing this again? At some point? And I don't know if it's because I couldn't tour right away based on the circumstances or whatever, but I feel like as soon as we wrapped up, I was more, more, more, more, more, more. And that's such an empowering feeling, especially within proximity to have completing such a, it was absolutely effortless. This is the easiest record that we had made and the strongest one, which says a lot. But to have poured yourself out like that and then feel like it's go time again, awesome feeling. I'm addicted to that.

Speaker 3 (01:21:44):

It's good. It comes with its fears when you're making records. I think it always comes with its fears for me when I'm mixing. I have this bad habit that I broke out of for a little while and then it kind of crept up on me again where I was doing my best to not, I wanted to finish a project before I moved on, and COVID kind of made everybody cancel and then book real quick. And then I am not able to do that. So I'm sitting on three records, like I said, three records worth of stuff I have to mix. And the straight up fear that comes with me about to mix one of those records is insane because I haven't mixed in so long. I've been in production mode for three, four months straight at this point where I can't remember how to mix in that moment. And honestly, it's like muscle memory, boom, I start to make moves, but there's a straight up moment where I'm sitting in my, especially I got home from Australia and I'm sitting in quarantine. I don't know how to mix. I don't know how to do my job.

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):

So question for you about that fear. That's interesting. Tell me if it's like this again. I just want to see if I understand. Back when I was in the band, I always had this fear that I wouldn't be able to write another cool song. And then one of the fears would nail the mix

Speaker 2 (01:22:57):

Too. Real

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):

Is always like, how am I going to top what we just did?

Speaker 2 (01:23:01):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:23:01):

It's just always there. Am I going to be able to do this again? It's irrational because I've always been able to do it again.

Speaker 3 (01:23:09):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):

But that doesn't mean that the fear's not there. And is it kind of like that? How am I going to do this again? I don't even know how. And then you just do your thing and of course you know how,

Speaker 3 (01:23:23):

And it's exactly that. Yeah. It's like I literally will have crippling fear that I don't know how to mix or that it's crazy. I hate that my brain does this, but I literally sit in panic with SSL channel strip opened in my head wondering if I remember what those fucking knobs do in the moment. You know what I mean? Or thinking about parallel compression and what I'm looking for sound wise. My brain literally turns into this technical mess of I don't know how to do the things I'm doing. And I'm not a big template guy. I have a couple things here and there that I bring to every session, but when it comes to the nitty gritty, my templates are more like I have plugins. I'm comfortable with more than a starting point per se. And I think maybe that might be it too. It's like I don't have anything to go off of, but I also don't want to try to approach everything as fresh as possible. But on my own worst enemy with that where I'm just like, I don't think I know what I'm doing. I think everybody knows I don't know what I'm doing. It's straight up imposter syndrome for a minute where I'm just like, someone's going to catch me in this gigantic 15 year lie. I've pulled off of me just being a gigantic fraud.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):

I think that that's just a byproduct of the type A obsession or obsessive type it is. It's just like a nasty little artifact of that, the driven mind frame or personality type that does these types of things. I get it too.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):

Likewise.

Speaker 2 (01:24:43):

Oh yeah, I'm sure. And especially with entrepreneur types, I can only imagine you got a lot on the go, but it's crazy. It's, it always happens. Switching the mind frame over from me recording, coming off the road, writing and recording, and then going back into the touring mindframe, that's like stepping through a portal each time. They're so different. So I always get this anxiety of like, can I perform? Can I play the same way? Can I play with the same vigor I did at the last show of the last tour where I was so dialed and I knew I could just play my eyes closed and run around the stage and it's just coming out of me?

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):

Was that just a fluke?

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):

It was just a fluke. But that guy is worried that he can't write songs

(01:25:26):

And the guy who can write songs is now worried he can't play them. I'm a nut. I think it's normal. I had anxiety recently just because I had to gear up and get four or five songs in shape for this workshop I'm doing. And it's just a performance here live to a closed group of individuals who've cared enough to purchase four hours tuition to this course. Of course, it's low pressure and stress for me, and I've just shot all these play through videos with Wyatt and I just made the record and Red Light syndrome is infinitely more terrifying. So it's like, what am I worried about? And my girlfriend was making fun of me because I closed the door to the studio room and it's like, okay, I'm going to see if I can step through two of these songs. And then I use amazing Slow Downer if you know that app so I can play everything back.

(01:26:18):

Well, I'm not able to guy and it takes too long and logic to slow things down without mangling the pitch or I guess there's very speed, but he's learning so it's fine. So I open up this little plugin on my desktop and I throw it in and I knock the speed down by 10%, step through it so I can remember my parts. Then I put it at tempo and play it and then move to the next one and play it. And then it's like, okay, practice is done in 45 minutes or whatever, and it's pretty painless. I didn't have to redo much. And it's like, what were you worried about?

Speaker 1 (01:26:48):

Well, anxiety's not rational.

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):

Yeah, no, it's just, yeah, we're just fancy monkeys. So

Speaker 1 (01:26:55):

Where

Speaker 2 (01:26:55):

You still have that, you're just going to worry about something regardless because your brain can't tell the difference. There's no actual threat. You're just getting wound up about something you're passionate about. So it manifests in that way.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):

Yeah, it's trying to help you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:27:09):

It cares about you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:10):

But then procrastination brain is a whole other thing. So then you get stuck in this weird paralyzed thing where you're protecting yourself from the emotional trauma of coming through executive function, and then you're just paralyzed thinking. It's like, I know I can, but I can't. But what? And then you just cry in a cold shower.

Speaker 1 (01:27:32):

Well, I feel like if you don't have a little bit of an imposter syndrome, there's something wrong with you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:41):

Yeah, the ego. There's something to up with the ego in that individual. Yeah, I think so too. I think that you need to think you're a fraud.

Speaker 4 (01:27:49):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):

That's a weird way to frame that, but I think you need a dose of it every once in a while. And trust me, I feel like that when you said that, Sam, I'm like, yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:27:58):

Yeah. It's totally that. Sitting here right now in this exact moment, I feel no imposter syndrome about any decision I've made for the last 48 hours, let's say. But it doesn't mean that's not going to come back. It doesn't mean that it's gone forever. You know what I mean? It's just

Speaker 2 (01:28:14):

Now it comes in waves. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:28:15):

Exactly. And I have a clear enough mind right now. I've actually mixed a few things in the last couple of days where I clearly haven't forgotten how to do what I do.

Speaker 2 (01:28:24):

Isn't it funny that your latest work determines your mood though?

Speaker 3 (01:28:26):

It totally does. It almost always does.

Speaker 2 (01:28:30):

If you're high on feeling like you did a good job and that you're executing your craft at a level that you're even remotely content with, it's a good day for your girlfriend to ask you questions or it's a good day for decisions or whatever because you feel good about yourself and it's like you're easy going and carefree, but if you can't get the whistle out of 2K on this thing and you can't do this or whatever, it's like, don't talk to me or whatever. But I think that that's totally real. I heard George say that too. His mood is highly dependent on whether or not he had mixed well and had a good workout and it's like a hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (01:29:11):

So this is interesting because back when I used to play and mixed and all that, that was very, very true for me. One of the things that I love about what I'm doing now is that even though I still get the imposter syndrome and all that, my moods are a lot more stable for whatever reason. I don't know if it's just that I'm a little older too. Maybe that might have something to do with it. I'm less moody and maybe it's also working out for four hours or something.

Speaker 2 (01:29:41):

Oh, well that'll do it. But

(01:29:43):

That'll balance you right out. I think that as you mature, it should stabilize. Should there not be anything strenuous going on in your life or you're dealing with. There are certainly factors that can lead to that, but I feel like I've been a lot more stable. It was only recently last week that I straight up told my girlfriend that I think now the lack of social interaction and social variety and stuff is starting to get to me. And I never once last year did I complain about it or say, this is a real bummer. I really wish I could do these things. Or I'm genuinely saddened by the fact that I can't see friends or we can't do these types of things has not been a factor. Maybe I've just been down the rabbit hole with the music and whatever, and I can get, certainly get tunnel vision, but it was only recently that I slowed down and was like, yeah, I think something's starting to get to me now. Something doesn't feel, I feel stifled. I feel like I'm in the cage now. And then we talk it out and realize it's not really impacting me that much. I'm good to carry on. It's all good. These things that come in the go, it's human to have fluctuating emotion or mood or whatever. But it's not drastic though. It's not insanely I have to break down or I've let it boil over and I can't confront it or whatever. It's none of those things.

Speaker 1 (01:31:04):

So question for both of you guys. Sam, are you married or you have a girlfriend?

Speaker 3 (01:31:08):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:31:09):

I'm married. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:31:09):

Okay. That's what I thought. And Aaron, how long have you been with your girl?

Speaker 2 (01:31:13):

Almost a year.

Speaker 1 (01:31:14):

Okay, so it's a real relationship.

Speaker 2 (01:31:17):

Yeah, we live together. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:31:19):

Okay. Yeah. One thing, and I used to do this and I know that a lot of creative people do this and I don't do this anymore, but I don't do it because I worked really hard to not do it. I used to let the stress of whether it's something like you were just talking about this mix I'm working on sucks compared to my last one and I'm in a horrible mood versus the stress of like, are we going to get this tour or not hanging in the air, all that kind of stuff to am I going to get this booking for nail the mix that's going to make a huge difference. In the early days, that kind of stuff really did affect my moods a lot. And it's not that I wanted to take it out on people close to me, but it definitely has happened.

Speaker 2 (01:32:11):

It can happen. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:32:12):

It can. But I don't really do it anymore and I don't do it anymore. I did a lot of work to get to that point, like therapy and thinking about it and changed my lifestyle and I make a point of not doing it. So I guess what I'm wondering is since you guys also have those kinds of stresses you were just talking about, it is very, very real. How do you guys deal with it so that you don't destroy your relationships as well as I do that, and by the way, I consider entrepreneurs to be in the same category of personality types as musicians, artists, producers. We're all creating something out of nothing. So there's that same creative artistic brain is there. And so we all have that propensity to get really wrapped up in our shit. And as you've probably seen a lot of people who are either musicians, producers, entrepreneurs, whatever, have a real hard time staying married or staying in long-term relationships because they're just a fucking nightmare to be with because they can't control themselves.

Speaker 4 (01:33:29):

How

Speaker 1 (01:33:30):

Do you guys keep it under control? You guys seem to look pretty, even people.

Speaker 2 (01:33:35):

Yeah, it's a lot to unpack. I think it's the kind of conversations that need to be had. Other people need to, they wonder,

Speaker 1 (01:33:41):

They need to stop destroying their relationships over a song that's not coming out right?

Speaker 2 (01:33:46):

Yeah, for real. It's okay. You will play the arpeggio and e minor. It's going to be fine. You don't have to burn the house down.

Speaker 1 (01:33:55):

The thing is, as you get older, you realize that relationships are like life.

Speaker 2 (01:34:01):

Yeah. Either one and the same. They're everything. It's the bedrock of your whole, it's like the framework of your entire, if you don't have that, what do you have?

Speaker 1 (01:34:11):

Yeah. And if you're destroying that for work.

Speaker 2 (01:34:14):

Oh

Speaker 1 (01:34:16):

Yeah. And we do that to ourselves a lot. So that's why I'm asking.

Speaker 2 (01:34:20):

I have to say that provided we do another one of these at some point, once touring resumes, this question for you because new, I'll ask it again. Please do. We'll revisit new dynamics. So for me, and it all took place in the confines of everything we've experienced since March of 2020. So a lot more predictability and stability in that capacity because here and not doing 150 to 180 shows annually, which it can get to be that when things are in full swing and should we not have been derailed, I probably would be that busy. When it's in that mode, it's obviously just about quality communication, but there's a realistic level in which the individual on the road is able to actually yield, uphold that. So then the next part of the equation is how secure and balanced is the individual at home. And there are, so this is complicated because there are variables here and I've learned through the experience that you can do everything perfect, but it takes two.

(01:35:28):

So the other part of the equation at home perfect is never enough sometimes. So then that's unreasonable for the traveling individual if they're doing their best. So it's going to be largely based on your dynamic understanding communication overall, but then it's rooted in a level of security for the other part of the equation and them being okay with knowing that VIP ran late, or you're in New Zealand, or whatever the thing is that kept you away from your phone knowing that everything's going to be okay, you're going to be there, it's fine. You're not doing something promiscuous with a fan because you didn't text 15 minutes after you said you were going to whatever. So that's part of it. But then at home, like you were saying, letting the work life, not being able to nail apart or a mix or can't perform something or had a bad writing day, week, month, that's a thing. Not letting that ruin your interaction. You got to check yourself. You got to leave it in the studio. And it's hard for obsessive people. We take it with us everywhere we go. I don't know. I feel like I'm a better equipped to give you perspective on that now because I feel like I have to prove myself less because I have a steady career that the machine runs itself. You're an established adult,

(01:37:00):

And I can go off social media for a long period of time and bury my head and just live my life and be away from it all. And it still pays the bills and does everything it's supposed to do and the company doesn't fall apart. And no, I put the time in early and the work in early to get to a point now where I can take my hand off the wheel a little bit every once in a while and make space to have balance in the rest of my life. So a little bit of a different perspective from where I'm at now. I can speak to that a little bit more in trial and error of course, but asked me that question three, four years ago. I dunno, man, I was bad at it early on. We're all still growing. So

Speaker 1 (01:37:37):

What's interesting about what you're saying, and Sam, I want to hear your take next. One of the reasons that I've gotten better too, in addition to working on it is because of the success, not because of money or things like that. Not the superficial reasons,

Speaker 2 (01:37:54):

Personal satisfaction and feeling fulfilled.

Speaker 1 (01:37:57):

Exactly that. And the fact that I'm not clawing my way from the bottom. At this point, I'm still working my ass off. I still feel like I'm just at the beginning and there's still a mountain to climb, but I'm established as myself and I'm an established adult. And so there was a time period at the earlier in the career where you guys know how it is where you're not established. And so your whole life is focused on establishing that and getting good enough to do it and then doing the work once you're even good enough to have a shot at a career, then the actual work of building it up to the point where you are established, it's very hard to be an even keeled person at the same time.

Speaker 4 (01:38:48):

So

Speaker 1 (01:38:48):

I think that the success has helped me. I will make time now for relationship, whereas I did not before.

Speaker 2 (01:38:55):

We're on the same page with all of that, by the way.

Speaker 1 (01:38:57):

Yeah. My priority was completely different. And you know what? Maybe they weren't the right girl or whatever, but at the same time, I don't regret it at all. I don't look back at any of those failed relationships and wish they worked out or wished I was different. I'm glad that I prioritized the career. Now I'm in a spot where, yeah, the career, I still go fucking hard, but I can take the time to allow someone in my life without feeling guilty for it, which means I can be totally present.

Speaker 2 (01:39:28):

Exactly. And it all ties in with the ego and that self sort of security versus insecurities type stuff. These are all tied to the same persona and the ideals that we're achieving and your goals. It's crazy to me that there's a lot of people that don't. I mean, do you guys see that Disney movie Soul yet you watch that?

Speaker 1 (01:39:48):

No.

Speaker 2 (01:39:49):

Okay. You got to watch it. You guys got to watch it. I can't reference anything because you haven't seen it, but it ties directly into this. And there's this whole visual dichotomy between inspired souls vibrating and this other realm of this is what it looks like when all the lives on earth when you're in your zen state or your flow state. And it's like they represent these vibrant little colored souls and another dimension, and then underneath it are all the lost souls. And it's like we all know those people. We all went to high school with them or them and your various walks of life. And it's like, it's so crazy that they don't the average person, this is where a lot of relationship dissonance and the need for therapy and counseling and these types of things come from is because they don't have the ability to be introspective. And I'm not gassing us up. We can sit here and talk about we we're just self-aware. And that's powerful, I think. But I don't want to continue harping on because we should get Sam's perspective in here because it's definitely,

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):

Yeah, I want to hear Sam's perspective. Sam seems like an even keeled dude.

Speaker 2 (01:40:56):

Very different. That's what you think. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:40:59):

I know. I know. That's what I think. But you seem to me like out of the three of us, you seem like the most sane.

Speaker 3 (01:41:06):

I don't know. I mean, I have my moments with it. It's funny you guys both touched on different things that are almost exactly how I feel, but also at the same time, sort of the opposite. Self-awareness is a blessing and a curse, and I think it's easy for the three of us to admit that to certain degrees. I've always had the ability to turn off work when I leave, but work is always in my life equally divided with my relationship. And I've had talks with my wife about this and she's very understanding, thankfully. And she really does get these sorts of things where it's like we've talked about career where she says, I work a career to plan for the future and I do this job. I want to make money, I want to have a family. I want to do all those things. And I'm on board with all of that. But to me, my career is half my life. She's half my life in the career. Neither one really steps above the other. They have their moments where they will. I went to do a record in Australia in the middle of a pandemic. That was my career stepping ahead of

Speaker 2 (01:42:10):

Sam's essentially been gone since the time we wrapped my album, which is crazy when you think about it.

Speaker 3 (01:42:15):

Yeah, I've pretty much, I've been nonstop work since a month before we started your record basically, which

Speaker 2 (01:42:22):

Is like tour. So it is similar. Actually when I think about it, I did sort of make the comment that it's going to be a little different for Sam, but really when you think about it, it is actually you can get lost in the studio down the street, just as much trade hours, all weird and still feel like you're not really together. And then you go and do something. International Australia, it's very much like tour

Speaker 1 (01:42:40):

Producers get dumped all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:42:42):

And that's the thing where I was saying where it's like there's a lot of the similarities, but right now I'm actually experiencing the opposite. While a lot of musicians are sitting at home, a lot of recording guys and producers are almost slammed with work to the point where on top of that, there's always the fear. I'm coming up. I still think I'm very much early in my career as well. So there's a lot of times where I'm taking some opportunities and on top of taking opportunities, I am rescheduling because of COVID and everything. So I'm slamming the second half of my year, maybe even the last third of my year with a whole year's worth of work. And for the first time in my life, I really don't have a problem talking about it. But for the first time in my life, my relationship has actually taken a bit of a toll where that was never something that really was in place before because I'd have a bad day at work or I'd have a stressful thing, but I'm pretty good at eating or sleeping and I'll wake up refreshed and turn it off when I get home and wind down with my wife or whatever.

(01:43:42):

But for the first time, work is sort of, there's so much on my plate for the first time in a really long time that I can't come home and stop thinking about work or I was in Australia, I was in a different time zone. I wasn't able to really work out and quarantine for two weeks. While I was there. I was, but I wasn't as active as I normally was, plus just not being active as much with gyms being closed down and things like that. Before that, my brain starts clouding up. I've got a month and a half where I'm halfway across the world, totally not as focused as I should be. So I'm picking work because I'm there for work. And for the first time in my life, I didn't prioritize relationship stuff nearly as much. And it got to a point where I started talking to a therapist about it.

(01:44:31):

I started trying to figure out what the thing was like while I was in Australia. I've never talked to a therapist in my life. I never had a problem with it. I just never really, it hit the point where I was finally, I need to fix things or else at 30 years old, I'm going to blow up a marriage or at 30 years old, I'm going to fail at my job finally and not be able to do the next thing. So it's weird, had you asked me this question six months ago, just like Aaron saying, you ask me this question in any year when I'm touring again, had you asked me this six months ago, I agree with you a hundred percent out of the three of us, I'm the most levelheaded guy, but I've actually kind of hit this little point in my life where I don't want to say things are falling apart around me, not it at all. But if I don't make the next moves correctly in every aspect, I will face a total meltdown at some point. So I'm balancing that right now. I'm learning how to, and honestly, it is weird to say, but learning how to do that is an important and enjoyable process because the next thing that comes out of this is the next generation of me, the next generation of my relationship, the next generation of my job,

Speaker 2 (01:45:36):

Listen to this guy. How, come on. How inspiring is that? Because the average person, no it, dude, good for you.

Speaker 1 (01:45:45):

It is.

Speaker 2 (01:45:45):

I appreciate that. Good for you dude. Good for you. I'm not just blowing smoke. Good for you. Because so many people would just cower and wither or they would hide. They wouldn't have that conversation with Al and I right now would be afraid to air that out. The fact that you are willing to just be open about that and you've recognized that you have to do the work now to evolve for the better. You're pretty much, in my eyes, good is already arriving at the consequence, the end result of everything you need to do because so many people are just, they blow it in that moment and let other things get in the way and won't admit that's the first step It,

Speaker 3 (01:46:29):

It really is. That was maybe the biggest thing was it was like I've had to rearrange some work totally solely because I have too much on my plate. I've had to put aside things, I don't want to say lucky because it's a super unlucky situation with COVID in general, but the fact that I didn't have to blow a week of going to see a bunch of family really helped me sit with my wife and talk to her about things and figure things out.

Speaker 2 (01:46:55):

Yes, at a time when relationships get strained a lot for a lot of people, what a crazy time of year when life is normally on the rails and stuff. It can be a really challenging time when things are going on. There's always that cliche, everyone's got a friend or friends that are in a relationship that it's on the rocks and it's like here comes the holidays and they're like, oh, I've got to wait until Christmas or New Year's is done before. It's like

Speaker 4 (01:47:18):

That's

Speaker 2 (01:47:18):

Such a touchy thing. It's like these things have to be dealt with when there's never a good time for that, but it always just exacerbates things. So I think that you're right. I think that COVID did actually give space for certain things to, it's good that you're seeing the silver lining in that anyhow, that you had the time to be able to do it. Low stress. You came home from a trip, so you had to be at home. There's time to talk and work it out. You're acknowledging these things, so you do it. I mean, dude, that's great. You're going to be fine.

Speaker 1 (01:47:49):

Well keep in mind also when things don't work out, and this is in a band, this is in relationships, in a business, obviously communication is key. We all know that, but oftentimes when things don't work out, it's because there's a party that doesn't want to do the work or both parties don't

Speaker 2 (01:48:10):

For sure.

Speaker 1 (01:48:10):

But I'm very, very positive that in most cases, when all the parties involved truly want to make something work, they'll figure it out, but not by ignoring it. They'll figure it out by actually doing the work to figure it out.

Speaker 2 (01:48:25):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:48:26):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:48:26):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:48:27):

Exactly. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (01:48:28):

Wow. We really covered, we ran the gamut on this one. We did the insurrection talk with an American and two Canadians straight into the meat and potatoes that I think everyone expects from a podcast like this, and then right into the emotional, that's what we do here. That is what we do. Yeah. No, that's good. I mean, it's nice that you provide a space for that. I think that, well, I don't know how else you reach, what is this? Are we going on three hours or something crazy like this? Two and a half hours. Whoa. We'll be there pretty soon. Yeah. I don't know how else you get there unless you cover it all, so shout out to anyone who makes it this far.

Speaker 1 (01:49:08):

Dude, most of them do, believe it or not.

Speaker 2 (01:49:10):

I know, know that. I know. It's amazing. You have a very dedicated listener base. I get hit up all the time. People love the Riff Hard podcast, and I listen to yours all the time when the gym was a thing, and even now that it's not just for home workouts and stuff, URM is definitely one of the ones. It's great.

Speaker 3 (01:49:29):

It's nice too. It's a big one for me, and I think we talked about it a little bit when I did. Mine was like, it's not about gear all the time. It's not about whatever. It's about a human connection with the person who you admire in some way, shape or form, and you want to know more about that. At the end of the day, you want to know more about what makes them tick, not like what their favorite fucking compressor is,

Speaker 2 (01:49:49):

And if you do the gear thing, it's done in fucking 25 minutes anyway, so it's like,

Speaker 3 (01:49:54):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:49:54):

Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:49:55):

Not just that the gear thing. There's no way that covering that in a podcast is going to be better than what you are or M does with video.

Speaker 2 (01:50:03):

Well, that's also it too. Yeah. Why are you going to listen to a dude talk about compression settings when you could watch him do it in the format that you guys provide, which is arguably that's the place you want to be learning that content anyway. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:50:18):

It's not that the person that I'm talking to is half-assed in any way. It's just a half-assed way to present the information in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:50:27):

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:50:29):

It's not the right format for that. I know that work is work and it can't always be fun or whatever, but there's absolutely no way in hell that I would be putting in the time and effort to do these podcasts if that's what we were talking about. I don't care about gear that much,

Speaker 2 (01:50:48):

And I could just picture you having to talk yourself into sitting down every day with another Can't do it. Talk about compression settings. Yeah, no, you can't do it. I know. I couldnt do it either. It is not a chance, and trust me, I love talking about gear. Yeah, exactly. I wouldn't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:05):

Well, I don't have anything against gear.

Speaker 2 (01:51:08):

No, of course. I think people understand what we're getting at when we say that. It's like, I don't have any tattoos, but the first one's going to be my string gauge on my forehead, so

Speaker 3 (01:51:18):

I'm talking about gears while I'm blue in the face. It's sick.

Speaker 2 (01:51:20):

But other than some other little shit, the last shit I was probably texting Sam was videos of me jamming on the Juno and stuff and talking about this and that and how sick this is and what we're going to do with this and that. We get hype on stuff. Of course,

Speaker 1 (01:51:32):

Yeah. Tools of the trade.

Speaker 2 (01:51:34):

Of course, there's

Speaker 1 (01:51:35):

Better ways to put that across to someone who wants to learn about it because for instance, talking about gear was one thing. If you and Sam are talking about it, because you're both pros and you're talking shop, but if we're doing something that's educating people who are not pros, who don't know about this stuff, and here's a perfect example. APIs, great, great preamps are known for the harmonic distortion that they can add. They can make things sound a little dirtier, and when you read about that or you hear someone talking about that, if you've never worked with one, you might mistakenly believe that it's similar to what a pedal will do or gain on an amp, like a guitar amp or something. And if you work with them, if you've recorded on them, you know that it's subtle and you've got to push 'em really hard to get any of that, but it's subtle still. It's not some extreme thing on a guitar amp, but if you just hear people talking verbally about things that you're supposed to be able to hear to understand, you're missing a big, big part of the necessary info, and so you could be miseducating people and perpetuating dumb ideas. And I've noticed a lot of people have dumb ideas about gear because all their go bys, something they read or heard somebody talking about on a podcast and didn't understand what they meant by it in the first place.

Speaker 2 (01:53:11):

Dude, my favorite from this last week was somebody posted a status on Facebook and it said LOL at bedroom gent guitar players playing their agile eight strings through their Kemper and complaining that Gibson bought Mesa Boogie. I thought that that was so funny because it's exactly that. It's like you don't have that tangible, real world experience with the equipment. You've just like, you've got this very narrow cross section and a lot of guys don't even have those things. They don't even have any of it. They just watch YouTube videos and read stuff

(01:53:49):

And have opinions about stuff. I didn't really mean to take it in that it just is something that was on my mind, and I figured you might appreciate that. I certainly LOL that that was amazing, but no, it really is like that, and I know that I certainly can be capable of it because I get excited about stuff and I'm passionate about things and certain buzzwords get you excited. You started talking about harmonic distortion from an API and now that I'm getting into recording, right, I understand how nuanced and subtle we're really, if we're to get excited about that, that somebody goes and buys a preamp and thinks that they're going to plug their guitar straight into it and get on this world, that's like you are in for some severe disappointment. That is not the instant gratification that you thought you were going to get for the money, that something like that costs,

Speaker 1 (01:54:43):

Or you think it's going to give you dirty sounding drums like vibey dirty sounding drums or something, and it's like, no, not exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:54:52):

Yeah. It's like, oh, I tried running by GD sample through my, okay,

Speaker 4 (01:54:57):

We're

Speaker 2 (01:54:57):

Done here.

(01:54:58):

It's crazy. Look, I worked in music retail, whether this is offensive or not to anybody. When I was, it was a commission sales environment and stuff, and some of my coworkers used to say that I could sell a guitar to the hand Endless man, and it's like you can get excited about stuff and really glorify and describe things in certain ways and use buzzwords and your energy can have an impact on an individual, especially if they're an impressionable type, and nothing will sell a guitar more than sitting down and playing it for them and making it sound a certain type of way. And

Speaker 1 (01:55:33):

Yeah, that's for instance, why we don't monetize this podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:55:39):

Okay, tell me about that.

Speaker 1 (01:55:41):

None of the sponsors for Nail the Mix pay

Speaker 2 (01:55:44):

Us. Oh, because you don't think it's an accurate platform for

Speaker 1 (01:55:47):

Yeah, I mean, maybe we're considering taking sponsorships for the summit just because such an expensive event, but no, we have never taken any money for the podcast and no sponsor for Nail. The Mix has ever given us money. It's straight up, they're giving us prizes for the competition, and yeah, it's because we know how impressionable people are and we want to remain unbiased, and we want people to be able to trust that the info we're giving them is not being tainted.

Speaker 2 (01:56:22):

It's not misleading or Yeah, and you can comfortably have these discussions where we can go in one direction with it or another because sometimes these things are indistinguishable from satire, so it's like it's probably safer to do what you're doing with that. I actually back that, I think because then we can freely discuss,

Speaker 1 (01:56:42):

We can freely discuss, and then we're not taking advantage of how impressionable people are.

Speaker 2 (01:56:48):

Right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I like that

Speaker 1 (01:56:51):

It is important for the integrity of what URM does. Riff Hardd podcast is a different kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:56:57):

Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:56:58):

Because I mean, gear does matter to guitars of course, but it's a whole different sort of thing. But with URM, I'm not saying that there's a trust thing at Riff Hard there just for exactly what URM does. We can't be taking money from sponsors or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (01:57:17):

No, I like it. I think that that's pretty cool. It's funny because when we were talking about obsessing over things and learning what's one of the biggest resources we have, it's YouTube

Speaker 4 (01:57:29):

And

Speaker 2 (01:57:29):

Even I have to check myself when I watch a certain demo, I've weeded out. I will not watch a product demo from X, Y, Z certain individuals

(01:57:39):

Because you know what you're going to get. I love a good, honest, I love when you tell me what's wrong with it or you tell me what you didn't get along with, or just certain methods in which you sort of present something slightly unrelated, but this is why I don't really do share presets. I've done it a little bit for certain things, like the Fort and Cali suite from Neural comes with some presets and no, for the modelers, for the hardware modelers. No, I don't think I've ever done it, and I've been asked even recently, but it is so misleading, and then you get dudes who are mad in that other inbox that we're talking about

Speaker 1 (01:58:17):

That they don't sound like you.

Speaker 2 (01:58:18):

Yeah, I'm an imposter or I'm a sham because your one KRK in your grandma's attic isn't producing. It is like, dude,

Speaker 1 (01:58:31):

I have a story about that. Back in 2015, me and Finn had an online tone store

Speaker 2 (01:58:37):

Selling preset packs and things.

Speaker 1 (01:58:38):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:58:39):

Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:58:40):

We did it 2014, 2015, and we had some from Jason Richardson and John Brown and cool stuff like the John Brown ones, for instance, were the presets he used on his line six stuff on, man, I can never pronounce the name of the record among Newy.

Speaker 2 (01:58:59):

The Emanu.

Speaker 1 (01:59:01):

Yeah. All he did was export them from his pod, whatever, and we sold them, so they're exactly, exactly what he used. The thing is dangerous though. We know that he's got incredible Hulk hands and he plays, oh, he's playing 'em a certain way.

Speaker 2 (01:59:20):

They're sitting a certain way in the mix. There's a lot of factors there. They're

Speaker 1 (01:59:23):

Very low gain.

Speaker 2 (01:59:25):

Oh yeah. He beats the piss out of his guitars. They're extremely low game. They probably all feel like they're heavily gated, even though they're not. There's not enough. Yeah, there's not enough like instant gratification like, oh, the tone plays itself. No, some guys actually do play their instrument. It's like the work comes from the human. It's not from the user.

Speaker 1 (01:59:45):

We got people really mad at us for selling them the fake tones. I tried playing through them and I was like, holy shit, John, how damn hard do you play?

Speaker 2 (01:59:55):

No, he really, yeah, no, that's real. I think that's just a testament to everything that, I mean, that's great. That's what he's selling you with. Riff hard. He's selling you exactly that, and I think that, and shout out to that because there isn't enough emphasis on it coming from the, it's all, everyone wants to sell you the gear or the preset or the easy way out. It's like, do the work,

Speaker 1 (02:00:18):

Develop your fucking hands.

Speaker 2 (02:00:21):

It's the thing,

Speaker 1 (02:00:22):

God dammit,

Speaker 2 (02:00:22):

That's the number one thing that's driving the entire product. You can't even use the product without that. So it's like, yeah, it's crazy to me.

Speaker 1 (02:00:30):

So I have some questions from the audience.

Speaker 2 (02:00:34):

Perfect.

Speaker 1 (02:00:35):

That I want to ask you guys before we sign off.

Speaker 2 (02:00:38):

I have a question for Sam really quick. The X is on the board behind you. Is that my nonsense still? Yes, it is. Nice. We got the progress board back there. That's

Speaker 3 (02:00:47):

Still from, the easiest way to put it is you were the last serious record where we were able to just chart it and start knocking stuff off without me pulling my hair out. So that's why that hasn't been wiped off yet.

Speaker 2 (02:00:59):

Oh wow. Okay. Cool insight. We'll talk about other things later. That's nice. And the big old party category with a bunch of Xs in it. Let's go.

Speaker 3 (02:01:07):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (02:01:08):

Very nice. We're talking about a whiteboard if people don't know the ones you see in all the studio docs with the Xes, we're organized. We know how to make a record, right?

Speaker 3 (02:01:16):

Yeah. The last one you can't see, the last one says Party, and every time I finished a mix, I crossed off the party, this big old section.

Speaker 1 (02:01:21):

I mean, that's what matters. And

Speaker 2 (02:01:24):

We had a pizza party. We did. Yeah, that's right. We did. We had a pizza party.

Speaker 1 (02:01:28):

So this is from Maximilian Mueller, which is what's the process behind getting the interval song? I guess the one that we have on nail the mix to sound so funky, the song is Metal of Heart, but the mix doesn't sound like a typical metal mix.

Speaker 3 (02:01:45):

Yeah, I mean, well, that comes down to production. I think a big goal where Aaron and I talked about the record is why we touched on it earlier, why me? It's because I'm not here to make a metal record. I'm here to bring the best elements of the song out. So if you're feeling a funky vibe, it's a funky song more than anything else. It could have just easily gone like samples and heavy, and these tones be very back to the whole preset talk. These tones be very stock and very whatever, but the idea for the record was a sound comes out of Aaron's hands at the end of the day, and if you're vibing on that, and if you're getting a funky vibe, it's a funky song. And if it doesn't come across like that in the mix, then we didn't serve the song properly. So I think that comes down to a conversation that you have before you even press record. What's the end result for this record?

Speaker 2 (02:02:37):

For sure. And then there's also just the added element that Nathan doesn't play drums like a metal drummer, and that's going to be a huge reason that if it wasn't just lock and ke, it was any of the songs on the record, even the crazy more like something like Vanta Black. Yeah, there's tons of D beats and wild stuff, but there's also a lot of feel and pocket and nuance in some of the more spread out parts. Just while you were answering, I'm like, does lock and key feel funky? And it's like, I think what could make a person feel that way is, yeah, it's got a bop to it. It definitely has a certain kind of pocket and bounce, but then as soon as it opens up in the verse and you hear all of that nuanced, loose, high hat work and stuff that Nathan's doing to make those grooves feel, and it's just spacious all of a sudden, and he's like, we didn't edit. We don't edit everything. He plays dead, dead, dead tight to the grid. Dean knows how to preserve Nathan's performance.

Speaker 4 (02:03:32):

And

Speaker 2 (02:03:32):

That was something we were really, really focused in on, was making that he plays his heart out on that drum set. And there's a reason I work with Nathan. There's a sound and a feel and a performance and an energy and a charisma to his drumming. So for sure that's going to lead you to feel that way. You don't just, if it was just my pre-pro midi drums, it might feel a touch more rigid. However, I take pride in the velocities and the timing of those things. So it was pretty close, but as soon as Nathan touches it, all of a sudden breathes a little more, and that's going to make it feel that way for sure. On top of everything Sam said,

Speaker 3 (02:04:08):

Extending that too. I think it's all three of you guys really. You're the three best people to make a groovy record. You Jacob and Nathan, you know what I mean? Regardless of the fact we did it back, because everybody these days, I'm sure we did drums last for the record, bass was done in another country for this record, no matter what, if you can connect to the fact it's funky, that comes down to these guys knowing their shit and producing this record in a way to preserve what they did. At the end of the day, more than just punching note for note and quantizing every single thing and dropping samples everywhere. There is effort put into the preservation of the performance way more, I'd say, than almost any record I've worked on maybe ever.

Speaker 2 (02:04:48):

Nice. And I shouldn't leave Jacob out of that as well. His feel is synergistic with Nathan's, and we've all found a dynamic from playing live together since, I mean, I've been playing music with Nathan for a really long time, but Jacob came into the fold summer 2017, and it's been the three of us as the backbone for the whole thing since then. So I've had a lot of time to explore that. And yeah, I think that that all contributes to why you would think that. That's a good question.

Speaker 1 (02:05:15):

Awesome. Alright, let's see here. This one is from sar, and if you don't remember, that's fine, but he says two parts. Did they use high over sampling of the neural DSP plugins they used for the record? And also what were the settings on stressor that they use on the way in for the guitar? Di

Speaker 2 (02:05:37):

Did we use stressor or we using a different compressor?

Speaker 3 (02:05:40):

I'm pretty sure I used the Distressor. The distress was totally set in a very transparent way. It was probably two to one and it was only taking off your most percussive guitar moments, if that makes any sense. That's just a safety net. I mean, I didn't need to do that at the end of the day. It's something that's been ingrained in me since I've always recorded. I don't know why I always hit DI with a distress, but I wasn't looking for a tone or anything like that. I was literally just having a red line protection at the end of the day on the guitar. And then,

Speaker 2 (02:06:11):

I mean, there is a sound to passing through that transformer, of course. And if you've got it, you might as well use it. But I can still, and funny enough, I need my presets for a project that I'm working on. Sam's going to send them to me afterwards, but I can still plug straight into my UAD and I'm going to get the same response out of the presets. It's not like the distress was doing something magical or whatever. In fact, I was surprised to know that there was a compressor in line on the way in on the idea.

Speaker 1 (02:06:36):

Just there. Just there for protection.

Speaker 2 (02:06:37):

Yeah, just there. There for protection. So that's cool. And then the oversampling, did we go high? We went high on everything. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (02:06:42):

We did. Yeah. Yeah. What we did, the very first song, I had my iMac and it was shitting its pants its entire time. And it was the reason I went out and bought a new iMac before we did your record. Oh, shit. Because I was like, fuck this. We're tracking everything. I want to hear it high sample. I want to vibe it high sample. So yeah, funny enough, I think when we got, there's a feature on lock and key.

Speaker 2 (02:07:04):

Yeah. Oh, that's right. And Josh sent his guitars over and he had the high sampling turned off on one of the prints, and you were wondering, you were like, did you? And then he's like, oh shit. And then he went and switched it, and then we got all this dimension in top end that wasn't present before.

Speaker 3 (02:07:18):

It literally turns it from an amp sim to an amplifier. That's the easiest way to put what that switch does. So I think what we did was I reprinted all of his main ones, like anything very, very important with it. But a lot of the stuff that we just tucked in, I probably kept his printed versions that he sent my way.

Speaker 2 (02:07:33):

Sure. And there's a sound with keeping it off. It is kind of like a presence roll off or if that's attractive to you. I mean certainly there's other ways of doing it, but if CPU preservation is something that's important or a factor for a given individual, don't be afraid. You can certainly do it. I keep it on on all my stuff for sure too. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:07:51):

Since I've had this iMac, I've had zero problems keeping 15 rolling in a session all on high parallax on high, and then it's fine. Yeah, this the beast. I love it. Very sick.

Speaker 1 (02:08:03):

Alright, final question. This one is from Instagram actually is from Jimmy Can 95. Why did Aaron choose to track his parts with Sam? He could have tracked them on his own.

Speaker 3 (02:08:16):

Why

Speaker 1 (02:08:16):

Did you choose to track 'em with me?

Speaker 2 (02:08:18):

I don't like tracking myself.

Speaker 1 (02:08:19):

I fucking hate it.

Speaker 2 (02:08:21):

I don't like putting the pick down to touch the track pattern the most. I don't know. So

Speaker 1 (02:08:26):

You wanted to be a guitar player? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:08:28):

I

Speaker 1 (02:08:28):

Don't

Speaker 2 (02:08:29):

Want, yeah, imagine that. Look, I'm enjoying it now that I'm writing with, there's zero pressure, especially because I just bought myself a lot of time with the new record and yeah, I'm okay with it sometimes and I do. I am finding a new joy daily for coming in here and turn the lights on in the studio, turn all the gear on and make stuff. And it's cool because there's a different set of expectations. But for final takes, no, I need to focus on the instrument. I need somebody who can just rapid fire, reque the playhead and hit record again and go. And if we're punching a moment, I don't want to worry about zooming in on transients and worry about cross fades and stuff like that. That's just not, some guys can do it. I don't know how I'm supposed to manage both parts of my brain to the fullest of their potential simultaneously, especially considering Sam does how I work. We're scrutinizing minutia that you would never consider for different reasons whether, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 3 (02:09:28):

I was going to say that comes down to, I couldn't imagine how frustrated I would be being you if I'm really trying to nail something and every second I have to reach for the keyboard or set up a pre-roll or something. You know what I mean? When you fucked something up, which in my opinion you didn't fuck a single thing up, you just wanted to do it until you got it. I get it about that. But you know what I mean? There were some moments in the studio which I felt were exhausting, but also felt to myself that if you had to do that on your own, you'd fucking throw your guitar and explode.

Speaker 2 (02:09:58):

It's impossible. I can achieve something that would be possible and it would take a lot out of me, or I can relegate that to the jurisdiction of a professional. I always use this analogy, but if I need a tooth pulled, I'm going to the dentist.

Speaker 3 (02:10:14):

Yeah, exactly. I can pull my own tooth out for sure.

Speaker 2 (02:10:17):

We can make it. Yeah. There is string and a doorknob in this apartment. We can make it work.

Speaker 1 (02:10:22):

I've got a wrench,

Speaker 2 (02:10:23):

Give me a toothpick and avocado and a snorkel. I'll make it work. But

Speaker 3 (02:10:29):

It's funny, I know lot. There's a lot of young guys on URM and guys starting out and guys deciding whether they want to make records or mix records or engineer or produce. But there's super value to a really great engineer at the end of the day. And that's not me hyping myself up. I actually consider myself an engineer second, but I also need to know that my job, if I'm going to engineer anything, I need to do it to the absolute best of my abilities or I'm not going to be the guy to do it. And there's a value in knowing that Aaron's the performer. I'm the engineer. We have our jobs. We don't need to double up on anything. I'm not there telling him how to play a certain guitar part unless it's for the benefit of the part or something like that. I'm not there when I'm in engineering mode to do any of that. I'm there to make sure he can just be as creative and ready to go as possible.

Speaker 2 (02:11:16):

For sure. And also, there's an open dialogue about my performance that I'm looking for because sometimes it is beyond me what needs to tweak, whether or not I'm dragging or I'm rushing a moment, or if we think that a hammer on is better than a pull off, or I should say like a hammer on versus a slide or something like that. How much I'm sliding out, how far down do I go? How much mouth do we put on the pinch harmonic, that's acronym or an adjective we use often. That was a big one.

Speaker 3 (02:11:43):

The mouth.

Speaker 2 (02:11:44):

Yeah. You know what I mean? And so once I get him dialed into how I'm thinking, I can offload. It's like DSP, it is like this processor is out of core. I need him to be running some of that processing so that we can both think together in tandem and he can hear what it is that I might be missing out on so he can get micro. While I get macro, I'm trying to deliver an entire sequence. He's like the third note is the thing. It's like, okay, got it. So it's all about team, man, you got to have a team. I don't want to do this shit myself. I don't think I'll ever be a point. I did something recently for Tune Track and Putney mixed it and it was for his drum product. And I wrote and recorded that all within a matter of days and finished it.

(02:12:28):

And I was so nervous. I'm like, ah, Putney's going to mix something that I recorded. And I always feel like my recording is so half-assed, but I really pushed myself and it took a lot out of me. You can go to YouTube and you can check out Drum ception if you search my name and will Putney's name or tune track or whatever. You can see that on YouTube. I wrote it, recorded it, and shot a play through video at Wyatt's in a matter of 72 hours. And it was a lot. But I did actually, just based on everything we're talking about, I wanted to challenge myself. Okay, should I need to do it? Can I do it? And I can, but the takes aren't what I would consider to be what goes on a final intervals record. It has to be Sam's caliber minimum.

Speaker 1 (02:13:08):

Aaron and Sam, it's been a pleasure talking to both of you again.

Speaker 2 (02:13:12):

Oh, it's been a blast. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, man. Thanks for having us on. It's cool. I'm excited for to nail the mix stuff to come up. I just want to watch Sam break down my mix. I consume the content all the time, so just, yeah, I'm going to be right there along with everyone getting excited about it and it's extra special for me. So

Speaker 1 (02:13:31):

Yeah, no, I'm very excited for the session. Thank you for allowing it to happen. First of all, again, just I'm stoked that we got to talk. It was a great conversation. Now the mix is going to be phenomenal this month for people listening in the future. This is January, 2021.

Speaker 2 (02:13:50):

Fuck yeah. Good shit.

Speaker 1 (02:13:51):

Yeah, and I'm sure we'll do this again sooner than later.

Speaker 2 (02:13:54):

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. Down everybody. Be safe.

Speaker 1 (02:13:58):

Yeah. Oh, especially right now as possible.

Speaker 2 (02:14:01):

As safe as possible.

Speaker 1 (02:14:02):

Okay. Then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends, as well as post them to your Facebook, Instagram, or any social media you use. Please tag me at al Levy 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.