Simon Grove: Modern Prog Production, The Human Element, and The Power of Specializing

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 are now on our seventh year. Don't ask me how that all just flew by, but it did. Man, time moves fast and it's only because of you, the listeners, if you'd like us to stick around another seven years and there's a few simple things you can do that would really, really help us out, I would endlessly appreciate if you would, number one, share our episodes with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me at al Levi URM audio and at URM Academy and of course our guest. And number three, leave us reviews and five star reviews wherever you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, thank you for all the years and years of loyalty.

(00:01:01):

I just want you to know that we will never charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way. All we ask in return is a share a post and tag us. Oh, and one last thing. Do you have a question you would like me to answer on an episode? I don't mean for a guest. I mean for me, it can be about anything. Email it to [email protected]. That's EYAL at m dot A-C-A-D-E-M-Y. There's no.com on that. It's exactly the way I spelled it and use the subject line Answer me Eyal. Alright, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM Podcast. My guest today is Simon Grove, who is a musician, songwriter, producer and engineer based out of Sydney Australia, with his studio business in full swing, as well as a performance career as a bassist with the instrumental great Pliny Simon uses a deep background in music to create deep and emotive productions, and they sound pretty amazing. He's worked with a ton of artists internationally, such as protest the hero intervals and a bunch of others. Of course, Pliny, all the Pliny stuff is him. Anyways, I introduce you, Simon Grove. Welcome to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02:18):

Thanks very much for having me, man.

Speaker 1 (00:02:20):

How's it going?

Speaker 2 (00:02:21):

Yeah, not too bad, not too bad. Just a usual day really so far. What

Speaker 1 (00:02:24):

Does that mean? Get

Speaker 2 (00:02:24):

Up, eat, start my computer up and get used to listening to a whole lot of snare drums all day. That's pretty much what I'll be doing today.

Speaker 1 (00:02:32):

That sounds brutal.

Speaker 2 (00:02:33):

Oh yeah. I'm very, very particular about a specific mix I'm doing at the moment and I'm trying to keep it as natural as possible, but there's a few slight shifts in the snare tuning, so instead of just copying the same snare settings across each track, it doesn't really work. They need to be all adjusted and that's kind of what I've been working on lately anyway. I mean amongst the actual songs, that's definitely been one of the hurdles to maintain.

Speaker 1 (00:02:56):

So how are you approaching that?

Speaker 2 (00:02:58):

Basically it's just paying attention to where the fundamental of the snare is. Now sitting in each song, I'll usually cut a lot of low end out to get some of the kick drum out of the mics of the snare. Sometimes I'll be cutting too much because the snare has dropped down closer to the kick. So it is just about paying attention to that sort of stuff or sometimes it's cranked up a little higher. These things are very, very minor movements. This is not a major tuning issue and for the record that it actually is, it's kind of acceptable. It's like a kind of jazz fusion sort of thing in a way. So it does. Yeah, I know. I guess a little bit of organic shifting of that sort of style is acceptable and kind of adds to it, I guess. So yeah, I'm down with it if I can make it work, that's all.

Speaker 1 (00:03:42):

Is it within the song or from song to song?

Speaker 2 (00:03:46):

Song to song, yeah, definitely song to song. So that's definitely not as bad as the bridge isn't like a completely different tuning or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (00:03:53):

That's when it's really a problem.

Speaker 2 (00:03:55):

Oh yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (00:03:56):

When you have a totally different snare pitch in multiple places of the song,

Speaker 2 (00:04:00):

That's the worst. Again, unless it's intentional, I mean that's kind of what you start considering samples or what you can do with any sort of replacement like that.

Speaker 1 (00:04:09):

What's your motivation to keep it natural? Usually

Speaker 2 (00:04:12):

It's always just the actual genre and the intent behind the production itself. Just coming from the artist, I mean, I never really want to be that guy that jumps in on records and just forces everything to sound like the same record, especially if the particular musician artist is a really, I dunno, has quite an original sound or is trying to do something that's a little left of field. I definitely try and retain that. So the idea behind it, I guess from the client was I was told that it was pretty much a live rhythm section, so bass player and drummer is all live, but everything else is meant to sound like an electronic project, so interesting. Lots of synths and lots of crazy stuff going on, which is sick and I'm actually really loving it, but it's one of those things where that's a very specific request and I want to make sure that I don't just funnel it right down the typical sort of Prague metal thing that I'm usually doing. So I try and let their stuff really speak and just keeping it natural is pretty much the easiest way to do that I guess.

Speaker 1 (00:05:12):

It's interesting you just said the p prog metal thing that you're usually doing, but your clients sound radically different from each other.

Speaker 2 (00:05:18):

Well, I mean that's good. Then I listen to this stuff all so much that it just becomes whatever. If that comes across that way, then I guess that's definitely the goal I'm going for, so that's a good thing I guess.

Speaker 1 (00:05:29):

Do you think that uniqueness is created at the mixing stage or that it has to be built into the DNA?

Speaker 2 (00:05:36):

I definitely think for the better half it has to already be in the DNA of the song or the artist or whatever's going on. A mix can definitely drastically change how something is received by the listeners and stuff like that. Or even how a band comes across. You can give a softer sort of more, I guess gentle rock band, a heavier mix and they can kind of almost appeal to a much heavier market that way. But in the essence of it, it's all comes down to the songwriting. It definitely just comes down to what was originally intended for the song in the first place, I think, and they're better the songwriter, the more that is just obvious to the mix engineer.

Speaker 1 (00:06:19):

Since you work with such particular musicians because of the genres you work with, I imagine that they all have very, very specific asks. It doesn't seem to me it would be the type of client where they just want you to invent their sound for them.

Speaker 2 (00:06:35):

Actually, most of the time I'll get a client and they'll usually just say, do your thing. I think that usually relies on me to tap in again to what they were originally intending. Sometimes I'll hit them up with some questions and see what they were trying to do with their whole project and see what they're trying to really achieve. First references are always an easy start. Get someone to say what their favorite records are and what they were influenced by when they were writing the tunes and stuff like that. Most of the time I'll actually just dive in, but at the same time I do just like to communicate and make sure that everyone's on board. I'll usually do a full mix of one song when I'm starting a project pretty much get it to 85, 90% there, send it to the client and just go. It might be considered a good mix, but it may just not be considered the kind of good mix that they want. So I'm like, am I in the ballpark of where you guys were trying to head? And so far every time it's been, yes, so that's a good thing, but if someone was like, no, this is not what we were going for, then we just have to figure it out and find a way. I guess

Speaker 1 (00:07:35):

It sounds to me like they trust your instincts and I wonder if that's because of the fact that you play in the style, you actually play in the style for plenty and that's got to go a long way.

Speaker 2 (00:07:48):

It's definitely been a huge help just in general for me to really relate to the more musical side of things. I guess detaching from the technical engineer headspace and feeling what was trying to be, I guess intended in the songwriting and kind of hearing the moods and the ideas and stuff like that, and even just the ideas behind the actual physical playing. So it definitely helps having that side of me. Yeah, I guess that kind of comes off more naturally. Maybe that's where it is. I've never really tried to assess that, but that very well maybe hit.

Speaker 1 (00:08:23):

I feel like this is the kind of music where unless you really know it, it's probably going to be hard to pull it off. It kind of different types of extreme metal. I mean there's some people who don't listen to it who can pull off mixing it or producing it, but it's super rare. It's super, super rare. Usually it's done by people who are in it for people who are in it and I feel like progressive music is kind of a similar thing.

Speaker 2 (00:08:50):

Yeah, it's definitely a very involved process and an involved genre to the point where the average engineer has to know so much. If you were to get the average prog band into just a commercial studio, they would probably be throwing a lot of things that seem like general terminology to the band at the engineer and the engineer may not really catch onto that if they were talking about certain amp processes or certain sounds or referencing really particular guitar tones on records or drum samples or anything like that. It's not just like, oh, we kind of want a modern sound or we want a rock sound or we want this. It's like they'll be going into types of pickups and really outlining the absolute details that come across almost like the essentials for Prague in a way that they've got to have this stuff to nail that sound.

(00:09:38):

Yeah, it's funny, unless you're really involved in that scene, it probably seems like quite a lot of work touring and stuff like that involves me, just surrounds me in a lot of similar people like that. So I'm constantly hearing about all the new gear and all the new things that people are trying to chase and I guess it kind of keeps me up to date as well. I mean aside from just being a typical gear nerd most of us and keeping up to date that way. But yeah, it's pretty interesting to try and separate from just the usual commercial studio thing too. Yeah, you do pretty much have to be a Prague musician to produce Prague in a way.

Speaker 1 (00:10:15):

I mean to really understand it.

Speaker 2 (00:10:17):

Yeah, well that's actually something funny that I've come across in the past with trying to find assistance and stuff like that. I've tried to delegate more drum editing and stuff like that, just some of the more smaller tasks of when I start a record so that I can just generally be a little bit more efficient and stuff like that and work on multiple things while someone else is taking care of that stuff. And the one thing that I've really found to be good in a certain assistant is knowing what the hell is going on in the drums when someone's playing some kind of complex poly rhythm or some weird time signatures or when there's meant to be a flam on that beat or when there isn't meant to be a flam on that beat and stuff like that. You almost need a drummer that's just as good as the guy that did the recording to understand what the hell's going on just to edit the drums. It's like you can't just hit quantize to 16th and just hope for the best.

Speaker 1 (00:11:07):

I think that to be a really good drum editor, you had to have some degree of musical maturity. It's not something that you can just learn how to do as a technical task. I mean you can learn the technical part of it pretty easily, but understanding the musical intent and like you said, understanding what's actually going on that takes an actual musical understanding.

Speaker 2 (00:11:30):

Yeah, it's honestly probably the one thing that I look for the most outside of just like don't ruin my drums when you edit them, if they can get that and then yeah, it's like it's almost just as important to actually understand because luckily haven't had anything happen yet, and I say yet only because,

Speaker 1 (00:11:50):

Because going to

Speaker 2 (00:11:51):

Anything's possible, yeah, of course, yeah, it's probably going to, but I haven't had anyone kind of just completely shift triplets into 16th or something like that and do some real wild stuff yet, so I consider myself lucky for the time being.

Speaker 1 (00:12:05):

How does someone get the chance to edit for you? What goes into that?

Speaker 2 (00:12:09):

In the most more recent projects where I've really been into a lot of my own drum engineering, which is not so much the case just because most of my clients are from overseas, so it's very rare and especially during COVID, I'm not flying anywhere to go track drums when I'm engineering stuff, I really notice every single detail to the point where because I was there from the beginning, if something shifts in the editing stage, it's very obvious to me and I'm extremely particular about my drum editing to the point where I don't just grab every note and lock it to the grid. Some things like Pliny's last record, I would pick and choose my spots. I definitely like a gridded sound, especially for something as dense and layered is something like Pliny's record, but just because I think note length is extremely important. If a kick drum resonates for too long and there's a million kick drums going on, then it just becomes this big blur of low end,

Speaker 1 (00:12:59):

Just a muddy pile of shit basically.

Speaker 2 (00:13:02):

Yeah, exactly. And it's got nothing to do really with the drummers of that scene because a lot of the guys I'm working with are phenomenal, but it's more so just a sense that

Speaker 1 (00:13:11):

That's a way that you can screw the drummer if he pisses you off.

Speaker 2 (00:13:15):

Exactly. But in terms of editing, I guess with any of the guys that I've worked with in the past and I bounce around a fair bit, just trying things and seeing what people can do, I just tell them how I want it. I tell them any spots where I need some sort of flexibility or maybe I tell them not to edit it and maybe I'll just brush up the bridge or something like that. If it's a really washy open jazz section or something weird like that, that needs next to no quantizing or zero quantizing.

Speaker 1 (00:13:41):

So when you're talking about the importance of note length, for instance with kick drums, are you saying that when you're editing the drums you will actually edit the note lengths or are you talking about the space between the notes?

Speaker 2 (00:13:53):

No, it's more so just considering the resonance of the drums that were recorded and I guess the speed of the song or the speed of the average fill in the song, say if you've got really long resonating Toms, I think it's really important to understand that come mixing and you start to gate things and shape the sort of envelope of the drum, how much they're going to just bleed over the top of each other or how much they're really going to bump into each other too much. The shorter, I mean I guess if you reference something like tech death, that stuff translates so well because it's just every drum is pretty short, especially in the closer mics. Things are just very tight and snappy and you hear every single hit because the next one isn't pushing over the top of the other. I'm just kind of preempting when I come to mix that I know that if there's a really particularly fast burst of kick drums that I'd probably want them just grided just to make sure that I'll have some sense of control over that clash and that sort of frequency spillover, I guess if you want to give it a term.

Speaker 1 (00:14:54):

So I guess it requires a lot of attention to detail and nuance to go between griding bursts and leaving everything else alone understanding as opposed to say gritting the entire song or not gritting anything. I guess it seems like some people like to do one or the other or just do some sections by hand, but I think that actually gritting just specific little bursts, fills and things like that I think requires a much greater attention to detail.

Speaker 2 (00:15:30):

Yeah, I definitely think that's most likely where any of the benefits of my mixes are in just a general sense is that I think all of it comes down really just to the attention to detail. I've got cool stuff and I've got cool gear and it's just like everyone else does, but I think that the benefit of when I jump in on something is really just me paying attention to that sort of stuff, which is very unexciting to the average person. And when someone asks you they want to pick your brains on Instagram or something about what some secret is with this thing it, it's always that stuff. It's never really some secret plugin or something like that.

Speaker 1 (00:16:07):

Well, it's funny, I think that when people are secret hunting, they want you to tell them something easy, something that they can just do easily that'll just solve their problem for them when in reality the answer is very simple attention to detail, don't cut corners, really pay attention to what needs to be happening and fix only what needs to be fixed. I don't know. I think that the true answer, it doesn't really help many people because if you say, yeah, attention to detail, that's the secret, what does that actually mean to them? You got to figure it out for yourself. So I feel like it's really, really hard to get that through people's heads so subjective,

Speaker 2 (00:16:50):

And it's also just really hard to hear from, say you're a beginner, it's hard to be able to teach yourself how to listen in such a specific way. Referencing something like a musician, they can hear pictures and they can start figuring out intervals and things like that. It comes down to the basic stuff of when you start learning or teaching audio and you tell someone how to hear compression or how to hear a high pass filter on something and you can start going through and putting out those details and it's just pretty much that stuff, but just way more layered and way more in a more complicated and dense situation where you're listening to a whole drum kit and trying to think of where there's too much low end in each mic and stuff like that. And yeah, like you said, it's really not any of the easy stuff that ever just jumps off the page and it's like, oh, I could do that, that's fine. It's just a matter of almost having a checklist in your head of things that you always have to do every mix you do, I guess, if you're trying to be consistent or trying to maintain a certain sound that you're going for and just doing that.

Speaker 1 (00:17:51):

Does that checklist change?

Speaker 2 (00:17:53):

Yeah, especially again, it's really paying attention to the genre and the intent behind the songwriting,

Speaker 1 (00:18:00):

So it seems like it would be multiple checklists depending on the scenario. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:18:04):

It's a very prog way of going about things, really

Speaker 1 (00:18:06):

Like a pilot if engine is falling off one checklist, engine's on fire, different checklist,

Speaker 2 (00:18:14):

It's a different one going on for sure,

Speaker 1 (00:18:16):

And I think that to get to the point of where you can just experience a challenge in a mix or just something that needs attention and having basically not the solution, but I guess like you said, the checklist pop up in your head of, okay, I need to listen for this, that and that, as opposed to a different situation where it would be a different list to get to the point where that just happens, takes a lot of work in many, many years and working on lots of projects and I think building the habit of attention to detail gets it to where I think you don't need to think about it as much anymore. I've heard a lot of super experienced engineers and mixers say that when they hear a problem, they'll immediately think to themselves, alright, first this EQ with this compressor, with that setting with then this and that and that is the way to solve that problem, but to get to the point where that just pops into their head is a decade or more of work.

Speaker 2 (00:19:19):

Oh, for sure, for sure. And it is kind of interesting to work on your habits and I guess your safety nets that you rely on for that sort of stuff. When I started trying to get more professional with my mixing and stuff, probably over 10 years ago now, I was working with a lot of friends and just random stuff that I would write myself that was pretty much just a lot of death, metal based stuff, tech death sort of stuff, anything similar around there, and that's kind of where I had my foundations in. I always liked the typical Prague stuff too, dream theater and stuff growing up, but I definitely think I focused a lot on death, metal tech, death metal and all that sort of stuff. I soon realized that when I started working in other stuff outside of that field, I was completely overcooking it in certain parts.

(00:20:07):

And even things like guitar editing, if there's some obscene, extremely technical breakdown or something like that, I would go in and you got to do the usual thing of cutting out all the silences and making things ultra tight and razors sharp. And then you go and do that on something like a Pliny record, which I've never done luckily, but if I was to do it on a Plin record, you kind of want some of that, the hands moving around on the fret board a bit between the gaps, you want some of the pick that maybe a little early or a little late on the beat to kind of hit the strings and just leave it there. You're not trying to get it directly on the kick drum all the time and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (00:20:42):

Do you think that for people who came up through extreme Metal, you have to work so hard to get one of those mixes to sound clear? You have to put in so much work cleaning everything up, and it takes so long to get to the point where it doesn't sound like fucking garbage. So for someone to get to the point where they're putting out something that's decent, even in extreme metal, they have to have really conditioned themselves to try and fix every single thing. And so then when they get into a style of music that has more space is looser, it's like they don't know what to do with themselves.

Speaker 2 (00:21:21):

That was honestly probably a pretty hefty learning curve for me. I don't think I ever had a major shock moment where I was like, oh my God, what am I going to do? But it was definitely, I guess it would've been when I just started working with Pliny before I was mixing his stuff. I played bass on one of his eps and stuff like that, and we kind of hung out and did some things like that. I would get similar projects coming into the studio just to mix and stuff like that, and I would definitely just have to be a lot more aware of those things and not try and just completely destroy it with obscene kick drums and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (00:21:56):

Well, you have to kind of know when to pull back.

Speaker 2 (00:21:58):

Yeah, I

Speaker 1 (00:21:59):

Think that's hard for some people. It forces you to actually listen and feel it and make a judgment call. This feels right, just

Speaker 2 (00:22:06):

Let

Speaker 1 (00:22:07):

It be.

Speaker 2 (00:22:07):

And I think it's definitely also a progression of way music heads. If there was to be a somewhat, I guess, tech death vibe in a Prague song that I was working on, maybe the intention behind it is not to have it a tech death mix, but it's just have the playing come across. It's prog musicians trying to do a tech section where there is a little, it's a little loose and it's a little more laid back and it's not as surgical, and that's a vibe in itself. I mean, you look at stuff like any of the stuff Animals as Leaders is doing, for example, where there is some absolutely obscene things going on from a musician's point of view down to sheer speed and technicality to composition and stuff like that, but they're not trying to just lock everything to the grid and just absolutely, I don't know, come across in that way. But there's a certain charm about this stuff that when they do go into those moments, it's its own thing and it's kind of part of their signature, and I guess that's a huge influence obviously to the scene that I'm working in that you can kind of hear just a regular band playing some really crazy shit, but they're not trying to sound like an absolute cyborg. They just come across like humans still being cyborgs, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (00:23:20):

In some ways, it's a lot more impressive or almost in every way. It's a lot more impressive.

Speaker 2 (00:23:25):

Yeah, I mean it's almost closer to seeing it live when you actually witness the band that you've been listening to for months do that crazy part of the record and they nail it live. It's almost like, oh, there's a whole different vibe to it live for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:23:38):

So people who make Prague talk a lot about feel musicianship, phrasing, writing, but at the same time there's this intense focus on technicality to where I think critics of Prague will say that that's the priority. I don't think it's true, but you can see where the critics are coming from, but what's your opinion on the marriage between the Uber technicality along with everything else? How do you think they work together?

Speaker 2 (00:24:10):

I mean, obviously the first thing with Prague is within that genre there's a lot of movement in terms of how far you want to be leaning more towards the process technical sound, or do you want to be more of an organic band in the room sort of thing, or do you want to sit somewhere in between,

Speaker 1 (00:24:27):

I guess you've got OPEC all the way to Cyborgs and everything in between.

Speaker 2 (00:24:31):

Yeah, it's a matter of really finding that sweet spot for the band, but then I guess when it comes to ultimately, I think you really just want to have the technical capabilities to express what you want to express, which is kind of the age old thing that everyone should technically be doing, I guess. I think if you're trying, for example, referencing plenty, because it's something that I really have quite a lot of work in and I'm quite involved in the production of those records, seeing every sort of stage of it come together. It's like there's a lot of imperfections in pliny's music and imperfections not said in a negative way. I'm not trying to lose a gig right now, but more so in a way that it's definitely the charm and he understands that, which is really good. He's not sitting there panicking about some of the noises in his guitar takes or just how he picks a certain riff or something like that. He's still very aware when he does some things, but it's more so I guess, yeah, it's that sense of just being aware of where your ability, your technical ability sits within your creative ability and just applying that in the right ways.

Speaker 1 (00:25:42):

Yeah, it's interesting that people will call those things imperfections.

Speaker 2 (00:25:47):

Yeah, exactly. It's such a bad term.

Speaker 1 (00:25:49):

I don't really see them that way. I see them as more just the sound of a person playing an instrument,

Speaker 2 (00:25:56):

And I honestly think that is a huge part of the characteristic of each record. I'm very much into that sort of stuff when I'm producing or engineering a record and I'm able to sit in on the part that someone's tracking, and especially stuff like vocals or in instrumental based thing like the lead guitar stuff. I really like making sure that while it's important to have things in time and in tune, it's a really good thing to focus in on just the phrasing and even the rhythmic sensibility of it all, whether it's incredibly behind the beat or if it's really pushing or if there's a certain feel behind it that just has to be insanely energetic or really dynamic and soft. All those things are, when you tap into that as a musician, you start playing a completely different way, and sometimes things aren't perfectly in time. Sometimes things aren't perfectly in tune, and it's definitely worth being aware of when they are and aren't in time and in tune, but it can be a really useful tool, I think to just have that kind of self-awareness or have someone around you that's engineering it that's aware of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:27:02):

I think awareness and intentionality make a big difference. Mistakes and sloppy playing involve being out of tune and out of time, but at the same time playing some things out of time and slightly out of tune works better. And so knowing the difference between when it's a mistake and when it's right, I think comes down to being very, very aware of the musical intent. It's hard to explain, but it's one of those things that you either understand it when you hear it or you don't.

Speaker 2 (00:27:35):

Yeah, and I mean, I guess for a basic way of putting it, if you want to reference something as common as that's in almost all productions, at least guitar based productions is you can reference something like the standard left and right, hard panned rhythm guitars. The beauty behind that sound is that there are slight imperfections. Again, whatever that term means in pitch and timing,

Speaker 1 (00:27:58):

Because if there weren't,

Speaker 2 (00:27:58):

Yeah, if they weren't, it would just sound weird. We've all done that where we've recorded one guitar, duplicated it and panned it onto the other side of the speaker and it just doesn't sound right at all.

Speaker 1 (00:28:07):

Sounds stupid.

Speaker 2 (00:28:09):

So when you nail a take and you do that in left and right, it's a different thing. It sounds good. It doesn't, even though there technically is things that are different in the timing and different in the pitch, it's not a bad thing and it's worth definitely being aware of. That's pretty much how it all relates, whether it's a lead guitar or a vocal, there's those little imperfections I guess, that are the real beauty.

Speaker 1 (00:28:29):

Have you ever tracked a guitar player that's so tight, you're tracking a left and a right rhythm and they play something so identical that it shifts into mono for a second?

Speaker 2 (00:28:39):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:28:40):

The first time that happened, that weirded me the fuck out.

Speaker 2 (00:28:44):

Yeah, it happened quite a lot with a record I did. I dunno if you know Steven Toronto,

Speaker 1 (00:28:48):

I do not. He's

Speaker 2 (00:28:49):

An Australian dude that I started a band with. Well, he's in my band from, I have a band called The Helix Nebula that isn't super active right now, but we've never really quit or anything like that. We just all got caught up in life. I started doing a lot of stuff with Pliny and so did the other guitarist. Anyway, Steven started writing his own solo stuff and I produced and played bass on it and mixed it and stuff like that a couple of years ago. And that guy is one of the most absurdly, very technical, but insanely musical dudes that I've ever kind of hung out with, and his guitar tracks the funniest thing. He's very much not too confident in his own technical ability as an engineer. So he recorded all his guitar and just sent them to me and he's like, I don't know how to edit guitars, so I just try and do the most tightest takes as possible. I was like, well, that's a good start. That's kind of what we always want to go for.

Speaker 1 (00:29:43):

Yeah, that's

Speaker 2 (00:29:44):

Positive. That's a good start. And he would send me through di and some of the takes were like, and I'm talking, this stuff is absolutely obnoxiously technical, and he's doing 30, 42nd takes of these huge passages and just ripping sections. And not only would they be these huge, phenomenal takes that sound great, but they would also phase cancel each other out because they were just so tight with the other part and it's just like I had to go in and start editing things, so they would be kind of out I'd into, yeah, I'd have to genuinely do that, which was kind of ridiculous. There was some moments where I had to go in and plug in a guitar myself and use whatever amp or stuff that we were amping with and just to make things a bit different here and there, which is kind of hilarious.

Speaker 1 (00:30:25):

Well, it proves the point about perfect versus imperfections. It really does. You actually need them or it's going to sound weird.

Speaker 2 (00:30:32):

Absolutely. No, I totally agree. It

Speaker 1 (00:30:34):

Starts to become a little bit harder to pinpoint when it comes to gridding things because some things sound really great gridded while others don't, and that becomes more of a subjective thing, but the left and right rhythms summing themselves to mono is not a subjective thing. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:30:53):

Absolutely. No, it just becomes very strange and you kind of lose all the vibe of the mix for that split second that it does it.

Speaker 1 (00:31:01):

Yeah, the perfection is the mistake, which is crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:31:04):

Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:31:05):

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:31:06):

That was a good one of you to point out because I think most of the other ones are super down to interpretation of what the music's supposed to be.

Speaker 3 (00:31:16):

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Definitely.

Speaker 1 (00:31:18):

Things like how long should the silence be? How much hand noise should be in here? Is it okay if this note got flubbed? The timing shifts a little in this spot. It's a little toony here, a little that it's all subjective stuff. I mean, those things objectively did happen, I guess, but whether or not you think it's a mistake is purely subjective.

Speaker 2 (00:31:40):

And I mean, again, sometimes it can be almost coming down to a complete creative choice. You could either go one way or the other and it either wouldn't sound bad, but it would just very finely funnel the production into a certain sound in a certain, not genre or anything that aggressive. But yeah, it would just have a, we've all heard that one band that we really like that usually has quite organic mixes and they do that one record that's really much heavier on the processing and it's almost sounds like a different band or they're trying a very, very different sound and really it's just like maybe some gone a bit harder on the guitar editing, but it sounds so different to what we're used to. There's a thing on Pliny's last record where it was a piano track by our keys played Dave. Once I'd compressed everything and processed it properly to sit in the mix, there was a really, there's a solo, like a piano solo and there's a rest, and you hear him either it's something either in the piano or in his stool, and it just squeaks right in the middle of this completely silent gap.

(00:32:38):

And I clipped it and sent it to Pliny when I was mixing. I was like, do you want me to take this out or do you want me to just leave it in? And that's honestly the kind of stuff that is the question with that sort of music is it kind of sounds like a dude just sitting at a piano, just playing a solo. You can kind of hear, it's the same when you hear specific symphonic recordings where you hear the pages being turned on, the notation and stuff. I kind of like that vibe in certain situations

Speaker 1 (00:33:05):

Hear are the audience members coughing?

Speaker 2 (00:33:07):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shuffling around in their seats and stuff like that. It's kind of cool in certain situations, I think.

Speaker 1 (00:33:12):

Have you ever heard the remix of OPEC album Deliverance

Speaker 2 (00:33:16):

The Remix? Probably not as much as I've heard the original,

Speaker 1 (00:33:20):

Which

Speaker 2 (00:33:20):

Is an obscene amount, but I haven't heard the remix enough.

Speaker 1 (00:33:24):

We've all heard the original obscene amount,

Speaker 2 (00:33:27):

But

Speaker 1 (00:33:27):

They've got it remixed with all natural drums.

Speaker 3 (00:33:30):

Oh really?

Speaker 1 (00:33:30):

Yeah. I don't have a problem with the original mix, but apparently they did, obviously because they got it remixed and it's natural. The remix is natural and it's weird as in it sounds so much cooler, I think,

Speaker 3 (00:33:47):

Damn,

Speaker 1 (00:33:47):

Because it just sounds so much more intense. You can hear the performances, but I guess in lots of ways it's a lot more imperfect.

Speaker 2 (00:33:56):

I'm one of those strange OPEC fans that I actually find Deliverance is probably my favorite album, and I barely even really caught on to Blackwater Park and stuff like that. I definitely blackwater, but I am not that into it to be honest. And it's not because of any reason. I dunno. I just really got into deliverance a lot.

Speaker 1 (00:34:13):

Deliverance is great. You should check out the remix.

Speaker 2 (00:34:15):

Yeah, but man, I got to check that out. That sounds crazy. I would definitely be into that. I have to hear it after this actually.

Speaker 1 (00:34:21):

I like it better, honestly.

Speaker 2 (00:34:23):

Yeah, I can get that for sure. Like you said, the original mix has definitely got its own thing, and I think being at a certain age when I listen to it, it must just feel like home to me, which is why I don't really have any problem with the mix at all. But it would be interesting to see the whole really ultra natural sort of thing going about it. That'd be fun.

Speaker 1 (00:34:40):

I was thinking of that because you said that you could have a band that you're used to hearing in a natural setting, and then they try something different, a heavier mix or something, and really all it is is heavier editing or louder samples or whatever. I think that that's what the Andy Sleep Deliverance mix is.

Speaker 3 (00:34:59):

Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (00:35:00):

Compared to all their other work. Then you hear the deliverance mix the way that I think that they wanted it and it fits a lot more with everything else that they've done.

Speaker 3 (00:35:09):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:35:10):

Wow.

Speaker 1 (00:35:10):

But I love Andy Nee.

Speaker 2 (00:35:11):

Oh, me too, man.

Speaker 1 (00:35:12):

He's fucking God.

Speaker 2 (00:35:14):

I was listening to something at the gym yesterday and I remembered it was mixed by Andy Nee. It might've been like a job for a cowboy record or something. And I was just constantly reminded how much I love Andy Snoop. That guy can do no wrong.

Speaker 1 (00:35:26):

No, he really can do no wrong. It's interesting. People would always say that his stuff sounded the same and his stuff does not sound the same.

Speaker 2 (00:35:35):

No, no way. That guy, he's got that perfect approach to things where it's very much, he still serves the music and he serves the songs as an engineer and doesn't just manhandle his way through things and he doesn't say It's my way or the highway basically, and just processes it to death until it sounds like every record he's ever done. He definitely gets in there and really allows it to be itself while also just doing the right processing that it needs.

Speaker 1 (00:36:02):

And he doesn't really take projects he doesn't like.

Speaker 2 (00:36:05):

That's sick.

Speaker 1 (00:36:05):

It's interesting. I talked to a lot of URM students and one of the things that a lot of the very early on students talk about is working with only stuff that they like, and sometimes they will get very discouraged if we have a band on nail the mix that they don't like,

Speaker 3 (00:36:26):

Which

Speaker 1 (00:36:27):

I think is really dumb. You should mix it anyways,

Speaker 3 (00:36:30):

Because

Speaker 1 (00:36:31):

When else are you going to get the chance to work with stuff at that level, even if it's not to your taste? But I think that that's the dream, though. The dream is getting to the point where you can only work with artists that you like, and I think that that's total luxury and anyone who's gotten there, congratulations basically.

Speaker 2 (00:36:53):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:36:54):

Sounds like you're getting there.

Speaker 2 (00:36:56):

It's always the goal for sure. But at my current state, I feel like all I'm really trying to do is find very like-minded musicians and bands that are, I guess the first thing that I really hope they tick is that they really, really care about their music. Some of the earliest stuff that I did when I first got into mixing, I was kind of finding myself going way harder at the stuff than the actual people that wrote the music. They were just, it wasn't so much that they were, I dunno

Speaker 1 (00:37:22):

If I was, do you care more than the band?

Speaker 2 (00:37:23):

Yeah. And it was weird. It was really weird. It was just like I would slave over this stuff. And most of the time I really do try my best to tap into the headspace of almost like I'm an additional band member of this band at the time, and it allows me to care about the project as much as if it was my own. And yeah, the early days, obviously I was just finding myself doing way too much work for people that didn't hear the details anyway and didn't care about the details too much. And that's not like, it was just very minor things, but it was just these things that I kept noticing, adding up, adding up every time I jumped into that. And I would slowly work my way up to a point where I would stop saying yes to every project, which is probably a healthy thing for me.

(00:38:05):

And having just a little bit more flexibility and just having the ability to pick and choose a bit more. So the next checklist is on the C checklist, sorry, is to kind of see if I can be quite involved in the engineering side of things most of the time. There's too many times where I've worked on a great record with some really good musicians and stuff like that, but it just hasn't been engineered the way it needs to be. Or maybe there's been a lot of problems and stuff like that with mics dying halfway through the session or overrated drums or samples and stuff thrown all over the top. And I don't get to choose whether I have samples on the drums or not and weird things like that. So if I can get in and be much more hands-on in that stage, that's a big plus for me. And then the final one, obviously just being able to pick and choose the bands that I work with based on how good their music is and how hard they really want to go at it. And all I really want to find now is more bands that just give a shit tons of effort into the production of their records and we just kind of join forces and make some cool records. If that's the absolute outcome, I'd be totally stoked.

Speaker 1 (00:39:17):

I really do think that your career as a basis doing what you do really helps you carve that niche out to where those are the bands that you'll tour with. Those are

Speaker 4 (00:39:29):

The

Speaker 1 (00:39:29):

Bands that you will socialize with. So I think that people who are going for a music career should be very careful about a plan B because the moment you have a plan B, you're not really working very hard, you're not working as hard as you could for plan A and somebody else will work that hard for it. But the exception in my opinion is when you have two things that feed each other, what you're doing with your bass playing career and your production career, when you have two focuses that work in tandem like that, I think it's super powerful.

Speaker 2 (00:40:05):

Yeah, I mean it's definitely, definitely a good point that you made about it being a social thing. I've definitely got a lot of my clients from my mixers from just touring with them or meeting them in certain countries around the world or something like that. Or they'll be friends of people that I know, and it's one of those things they get to know you as that guy that also engineers stuff, and then they're like, you're going on a tour promoting the band or playing bass for the band that you also mixed. And everyone's like, oh, the new record that you're touring with sounds great and they just work together really well. Like you were saying, there is always a point where if you focus too much on plan B then or plan A, sorry, that plan B does dilute itself and someone's going to come up and kind of just make that more of a thing than you are used to.

(00:40:51):

But the beauty of me doing the whole touring world thing, and I say this a lot to people, is it's almost like the introvert versus extrovert personality types where if you were to sit in a studio like I do and it's quiet and it's controlled, and if that one second of music wasn't perfect, I can roll back for the entire day and perfect it if I need to. Whereas the touring world is just get on stage and most of the time, I mean we do headline tours, but we still do a lot of support stuff. So it's kind of get on stage, play your shit, get off if anything goes wrong, deal with it, it digs into your time, cut a song, whatever that is just how it is. So it's very different and some people would find that conflicting, but I find it almost like they benefit each other. It doesn't allow me to settle into one comfort zone or one safety net I guess.

Speaker 1 (00:41:47):

Well, I don't know how you feel about this, but to me, one of my biggest fears in music was to become one of those people who hits a certain age and then just autopilots into misery, basically sails it off into a miserable

Speaker 4 (00:42:03):

Existence

Speaker 1 (00:42:03):

Where they just start to hate it and start to hate touring, start to hate recording, start to just hate their lives and don't really see a way out of it. But I think that giving yourself the opportunity to mentally reset that often is a really positive thing.

Speaker 2 (00:42:21):

And I didn't really notice that. I mean, when I first started touring quite heavily, which wasn't too long ago really, it was maybe like 20, 20 15, 20 16, 20 16 was definitely the first real intense year of touring for me. But it was a matter of, at first, I just had too much on my plate. I was playing for two bands most of the time throughout Europe and North America and stuff like that. And I was also trying to mix a whole bunch of stuff. I do edits on the road while I was sitting on the bus and

Speaker 1 (00:42:49):

Good luck with that.

Speaker 2 (00:42:50):

Yeah, it became so unbelievably overwhelming. It still took me a while for some reason, I dunno why I didn't realize it sooner, but if there was one thing to take away from that, I definitely needed to get used to saying no more, even if a project would come along, it's not the end of the world if I just can't do it. And at the time I was kind of prioritizing touring because I don't know, being a bass player in a very weird niche of music from Australia, getting to tour the world was something that I didn't really know anyone that was getting that opportunity. So I thought I may as well take advantage of it as much as possible while it lasts. If it dies tomorrow, then it dies tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (00:43:26):

But at least you did it.

Speaker 2 (00:43:27):

Yeah, just because, I don't know, it is pretty rare, so I should be grateful and just take advantage of it. Developing that over the years of touring and engineering and mixing more, I found myself trying to look after myself in a way that was just a bit more logical and a bit more just thinking about my schedule and what I can actually fit into a day's work. So saying no to stuff and hopefully finding a point where I can just get into those records that are maybe someone's willing to wait till they get off tour that I can jump into it. And those are the people that also probably care enough about their music in the first place to wait for the right guy to mix it. And in that case, I guess I'm that guy for them.

Speaker 1 (00:44:06):

Speaking of trying to work while on the road, it's really, really hard to do,

Speaker 2 (00:44:12):

Dude. It's ridiculous. It's honestly one of the worst things I've ever done as a professional, whatever huge thing that I definitely should have caught on too much earlier.

Speaker 1 (00:44:20):

I know so many people who approach tours with that intention, we're going to utilize that downtime.

Speaker 2 (00:44:26):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:44:27):

So,

Speaker 2 (00:44:27):

Oh, there's so much downtime too. It'd be great to just have a nice little mixed room somewhere and get six hours work done or something like that in a day would be great.

Speaker 1 (00:44:35):

Just doesn't work out that way.

Speaker 2 (00:44:37):

Yeah, like shitty little in-ears on a bandwagon that while everyone's trying to hang out before the show is not really not really going to cut it. And I've still gotten a ton of jobs from the stuff that I have done mostly on the road and that's fine, but I come home and I listen to it once I finish the tour or something like that and I'll throw the mix through my monitors and I'll be like, it sounds like a completely different person mixing it. And it's not something I'm really, I've, I've got to maintain a certain sound. I think if I want a career in this field and being that inconsistent is not something I'm interested in, so it's not worth trying to cram it in.

Speaker 1 (00:45:15):

So when you go into tour mode, it's tour mode and when you're home studio mode,

Speaker 2 (00:45:20):

And again, it's way better for the headspace too, like you were saying, being able to let the two coexist completely separately is really good instead of just constantly blending the two.

Speaker 1 (00:45:32):

Yeah, it's almost like when you're blending the two, you're not really getting the opportunity to do one all the way.

Speaker 2 (00:45:38):

Yeah. You don't get that separation. I think completely giving yourself to one or the other of those moods is where you really benefit. And if you don't, then you don't. It's kind of diluted.

Speaker 1 (00:45:48):

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

(00:46:40):

And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jenz Boren, Dan Lancaster to Matson, Andrew Wade, and many, many more. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, which is our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics as well as Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for use in your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those of you who really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhanced, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain, staging, mastering low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed.

(00:47:34):

Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to URM Academy to find out more. Lots of people have asked me, and I'm sure they've asked you to, how to get a career as a mixer. And I really do think that one of the best things you can do is become a good musician and get into a band. I mean, alright, so this is, not everyone can do this, but get into a band that people like, but even if you don't and you just write your own music and you put it out there and you make it sound good, that's already a huge plus.

Speaker 2 (00:48:25):

Absolutely. And much like the touring thing that I was saying before, it has been a huge benefit to my career as an engineer to be able to play for bands that yeah, are good. It definitely helps just people saying, Hey, do you want to come on a tour with us and play bass for us? And then you turn off and the music's great and the people are great and they already have a solid following and stuff like that. It's very convenient for sure. I guess at that point it's up to me to make sure that I maintain that and reflect that in my other work as well, that if I'm considered to be good enough to play in these bands and stuff like that, then I want to be able to be considered good enough to produce that stuff. And it's just the same as going back and figuring out what I need to practice on base to be that good. I need to get in the studio and work my shit out until I can kind of produce mixes and records that sound on that level as well.

Speaker 1 (00:49:17):

So you see it kind of as a similar sort of discipline, even though the techniques are different?

Speaker 2 (00:49:22):

Yeah, I mean the amount of times I think about people saying, because I never went to audio school or anything like that. I did do a degree playing bass at a school, but there were these tiny little side elective courses that to finish the degree you kind of had to choose something outside of just playing bass. So there was a whole ton of things. There was songwriting courses and all this sort of stuff. And I just chose basic audio technology when I didn't really even do any recording at home at all myself. And I get a lot of people asking me, how did you get to where you are without school or any formal training. And I just think back to, it's the same as bass. I did a ton of practice. I would honestly just sit there with my dad's laptop that he borrowed from work and I would download some sketchy recording software and I would just plug in some cheap guitar that I had with some makeshift interface that I borrowed from someone write 32nd shitty songs and completely suck for years until I figured out one little thing. Oh, high pass on distorted guitars is a really useful thing, so I'll start doing that. Or certain compressors on snare drums sound really cool. I think I'll stick to that for a while. And honestly, it's like playing an instrument. You're going to suck for a while and you just got to keep

Speaker 1 (00:50:36):

Suck a little less and then suck a little less.

Speaker 2 (00:50:38):

As long as you're analytical and critical of yourself. I think it's really important to separate that ego and really be aware of when you are sucking and there's no better thing. I guess most musicians know this nowadays, where we can all record ourselves. There's nothing better than being able to record yourself to really realize where you're at as a musician, but then also if you try and mix that you understand how important a good take is. You understand how important maybe your mixers can save a bad take. What can you do in your mixers to save a bad take and you're kind of shaping all those skill sets at once.

Speaker 1 (00:51:14):

What you were just saying made me think of something that my first producer told me, which is, you never get good at music, you just suck less.

Speaker 2 (00:51:24):

Yeah, absolutely. It, there's always the day that you start considering that you've really conquered the instrument is the day that you start really sucking. As soon as you start waking up and patting yourself on the back and going, you know what you're really fucking good at bass. Congratulations. That's just, that's a dangerous spot to be in because there's nothing pushing you to try anymore. You think you have conquered it, and that's the same with any other skillset. The day that I start thinking that my mixes are absolutely phenomenal is the day that I probably just get comfortable and maybe stay stagnant at that level or get worse.

Speaker 1 (00:51:57):

It's weird because you have to have enough confidence in your work to put yourself out there and go for it, but at the same time, you can't have too much confidence in your work. It's this weird line. It's the tight rope that you need to walk.

Speaker 2 (00:52:13):

Yeah, I mean, referring back to that point I was making about the two very different states of mind with touring and with studio work, I mean the actual concept of playing a gig almost sounds so absurd when you've been in the studio for so long. When you're sitting in this quiet room that's very, very controlled and relaxed and it very, very much feeds my control freak side of me, and then I go out and you're literally standing on a stage pretty much with lights just shining on you and you're demanding to be looked at. You're like, look at me, look at me and look at all my technical ability and look at the stuff I can do. It's a very egotistical thing to do. I guess being aware of that is helpful. Again, if I went on stage and I was just like, yeah, I definitely deserve this and started just cheering myself on, that would be, again, problematic. But yeah, it's a weird headspace to get in.

Speaker 1 (00:53:04):

It is a weird headspace to get in, but man, I know a lot of amazing engineers who do feel like they kind of suck when they really, really don't, but obviously they don't think they suck that bad if they're going to put their stuff out there.

Speaker 2 (00:53:21):

If you're throwing it on YouTube for the comment section to go nuts on, then you must have some sort of faith in it.

Speaker 1 (00:53:26):

It's weird though, man, because nobody who's really great ever seems to feel like they're really, really great, and so when students get insecure about their progress, I get that that's frustrating and hard, but I really think they need to just figure out a way to get used to it. That feeling never goes away.

Speaker 2 (00:53:46):

Absolutely. I think it's a huge thing to be aware that it really just doesn't go away and every one of their heroes probably feels that on some level, in some way, shape or form, and it could be just really minor things. I'm sure some of the best engineers in the most skilled and experienced mixed engineers in the world still might sit around and put together a mix and maybe three days into a record they're like, you know what? Those Toms are just kind of shitty. I'm sure they still have those moments and they still have to revise and they still have to, the first thing they always reach for isn't always perfect. That's probably the most important thing, and in this game it's very much important to realize that you've got to revise things, you've got to take breaks, come back with fresh ears and do all the usual things that you do as a rookie even to this day.

Speaker 1 (00:54:32):

Where do you draw the line though between revising versus killing something?

Speaker 2 (00:54:38):

That's probably one thing for me that eats a lot of my time is I really like to be really detailed with things. I tend to sit in a mix for a long time and really listen out for a lot of stuff. Sometimes I'll even have a checklist of certain things or I'll do a mix and I'll go to the gym and when I'm there I'll listen to that mix, which is sometimes not the most inspiring thing to listen to at the gym. It just sounds like work, but I try and approach it as if I'm just another music consumer and I'm listening to it on my headphones along with the other bands that I'm listening, I start picking it apart. I'll write notes in my phone as I'm at the gym and I'm like, okay, too much sub frequency kick drum can be quieter, blah, blah, blah, and I'll just write down these little things.

(00:55:16):

I'll go home and make those tweaks. But yeah, there is a point where you've got to be realistic. I like to take quite some time on my records if the clients allow it and if not, then usually it's almost a case of whether it's worth me doing just because I think my sound and my productions take time for me. I'm not the fastest engineer in the world to get stuff done, but I think when I finish it, I'm happy with the general sound of it and I just realize and I recognize that that's what it takes is just effort in these weird little details. So it's a fine line though, where I can could easily spend too long on it and just drive myself crazy. I don't really know where I abandon it. Definitely the sense of it, there's that common quote where a mix is never finished, it's just abandoned,

Speaker 1 (00:56:03):

But then sometimes you can mix something to death, mix the life out of something if you keep going.

Speaker 2 (00:56:09):

I'm definitely the kind of person that needs to step away from a mix quite often, whether it's when I finish a really big record or something that I've been working on for quite some time and maybe it's for a very particular band or even if it's just a smaller band or someone's first record or something like that, but there's just been a ton of effort put into it. I check with the client if it's cool that I literally take three or four days off from just listening to it and maybe I'll start another record, maybe I'll do nothing for those three or four days, and if they're cool and their timetable is more flexible, then that's excellent. I can just come back to it with incredibly fresh ears, line up all the tracks and have a good listen to it somewhat in the headspace of an engineer, but also again like a music consumer. Just feel it out. I think that's like I need referencing, man. I need to go back and really take my time with things. That's a huge part of it.

Speaker 1 (00:57:02):

I think that if you know that about yourself in this day and age, it's that much more important for you to work with like-minded clients because of the speed at which things are expected at nowadays. If you're going to go against that, it's really important to work with people who get it.

Speaker 2 (00:57:19):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I have no interest in trying to churn out a record in three days or something like that, and that's no shade on anyone that can do that stuff. If you can do that, you're a mutant and it's unbelievably sick to be able to do that. But yeah, just for whatever reason, maybe it's something I've just never practiced, who knows. It could be one of those things that it could definitely be something I could, and I'm always trying to streamline my workflow more and stuff like that, but yeah, some of the things you hear about people, some of the most, the sickest records that have ever existed are done in a week or a week and a half, and it's just like, okay, I'm talking like, yeah, they tracked it as well in that time and you're just like, I dunno what's going on. I don't dunno how anyone does that power to, if you can do that, go for it. That kind of thing just drives me a bit crazy if I try and do it and I'm never really stoked about it, so I guess I've figured out what my thing is and I'm just going to try and work on my strengths and keep working at that.

Speaker 1 (00:58:17):

Well, I think that there are artists out there who understand that and who want to take time on things.

Speaker 2 (00:58:22):

Yeah, I mean, again, going back to plenty stuff, there's been a lot of records that we've done where the recording circumstances have just been vastly different. He's always just tracked stuff at home in terms of guitars, which is cool. It allows him to really get his lead lines down a lot more fluid and the way he really wants them. I've always done just the base at my place and depending on the drummers we've worked with and the studios and stuff like that, we've gone all over the place, but the last one we did was definitely the one that took the most time. It's also been a few years since he's done a full length album, so it probably felt like it took quite a while as well, but we have had chats since finishing the record and he was really happy with just I guess sitting down and taking and giving the music the time it's worth and what it needs without any, because I mean there's been a ton of things that have jumped in the way of the previous records.

(00:59:16):

Tours have pretty much been the main thing. I tracked a lot of the bass for his son head EP while I was in Europe. We have this joke where a lot of the guys are going out and somewhere in Germany just eating pork knuckles and partying and enjoying themselves and I was stuck in this really cheap hotel with a base just knocking out some base track di while trying to finish the back end of the record. So yeah, I think him valuing how we did the last record in the sense of how much time we dedicated to certain things and how much detail we paid attention to on every single step of the way really came into the light in this process and in this record to the point where I think he doesn't really want to, from what I've heard and from what he's mentioned, he doesn't really want to do it any other way now, which is sick. I wish every client was like that where they were just like, yeah, let's just go all out every time.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):

I think it takes a special kind of musician to totally

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):

Special

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):

Kind of person to be cool with that. It's interesting you would think that everybody would be all about going all out, but they're not.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):

Yeah. I just wonder if it's that sense of understanding and do they really know how far it can get or how good it can really be if you tell someone, Hey, if you give me an extra week on this record, it'll be 25% better. Can they hear that 25% or do they really care about that 25% at all?

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):

Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. I've definitely been in that scenario where I asked for that extra week. There were things that definitely would've made it better where the powers that be were not into the idea gave no fucks.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):

I mean that's crazy to me mainly because I'm also a musician, so I guess I try and relate it back to if it was something I was writing or something. I mean every record takes, for the most part from what I hear in the stuff that I'm doing, it takes months or even years to put together and it's like what is a week to all that? If you can promise yourself that you're going to have some pretty substantial improvements with a week's more effort, that doesn't even involve the band. It just involves some other guy sitting in his house or in his studio for that week. Why not? It is definitely a thing. It's an unfortunate thing, but it's a reality and that's something we've got to work with some way or another.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):

Well, what do you think about deadlines? I guess because the times that I've been blocked from doing that have been because of deadlines. Somebody else had a deadline, which is a very real thing. I feel like you have to balance the artistic ideal with whatever the business deadline is.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):

I try to outline it a lot in the beginning of setting up the record and when we're talking about how many tracks it is and giving quotes and all the basic stuff, I definitely try to outline that how I work and how I like to take a little more time and I like that maybe I find out if there are any definite deadlines or if there's a soft deadline that could be moved around in the worst case scenario or something like that. I think it's really good to know that and I don't think I work and take advantage of that. I don't try and plan on having a soft deadline. If someone says I need it done by this date, then I hit that date, but if there's any point where we're coming up to it, I'm like, it would be really good if we could do this instead of I could get you to rerecord this one part.

(01:02:37):

There are some moments like that, very, very small things, but it's usually just an engineering issue or a technical problem of some type. Maybe I need mean. That's the thing. It's also a lot of people don't really separate the mixing from the producing and sometimes people will be like, Hey, how can you make this song better? And a lot of the times I'll be like, oh, you need to double this guitar part or Can you send me another DI of this thing and I'll it, which is obviously a little more outside of just the mix realm, but it really does enhance that stuff a lot more and that's the stuff that pushes into deadlines and as long as the clients understand that sort of stuff, that's great. I'm not really working with a ton of bands that are on massive labels or anything, so I'm sure I'd be battling very aggressive deadlines if that were the case, but at the same time, I'm really happy where I'm at in terms of the indie guys that I'm working with. It seems to be more and more of a thing in this field. It

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):

Is guys

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):

Trying to do it themselves and they're doing it well, so power to 'em if they're not becoming broke and they're not driving themselves insane and someone else has taken all their money, then I'm definitely all for that

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):

Man. Over at Riff Hardd on that podcast we, we talked to lots of guitar players and

Speaker 4 (01:03:48):

More

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):

And more and more of them are completely indie and they're all in these genres. It's specifically in these progressive genres. Maybe I'm just noticing it now, but I don't think so. I think I've been paying attention for a while. I feel like now more than ever, there's just a lot of guitar players specifically who have figured out how to just do it without a label and they do it just fine,

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):

And I think it's such a strange field to be a part of in the first place that maybe there's not the world's most lucrative, financially lucrative career waiting for them at the end of it, but at the same time, it can be a really, really decent income if you just again, go indie, do it yourself, take care of yourself, look after your own ins and outs, and I guess that's clearly a pretty interesting thing for someone to want to chase as just a general musician. But yeah, I think if you're a relatively switched on person and you're willing to do that work, I know that Pliny does a lot of that stuff in terms of just, he's obviously a great songwriter and a great guitarist, but he spends a lot of his time just doing the boring management stuff,

Speaker 4 (01:04:59):

Talking

Speaker 2 (01:04:59):

To people about talking to booking agents, logistics and stuff like that and managing himself and he's got certain people on his side helping that stuff, but it's all circumstantial. He's got people helping him book tours and things like that, but it's not like everyone's handling everything for him and he's paying a ton of money to do that. So it's definitely a career that is worth chasing if you are willing to put in the effort, just like as if you were to ride music or practice, sit down for a few hours a day and do emails and boring shit like that if it's important.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):

I think also this kind of music lends itself to that because it doesn't need the types of distribution channels and the same type of promotion that a big label would offer.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):

Totally.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):

It doesn't need that it exists in its own. It's like in its own little universe basically where it kind of pushes itself if it's good enough and impressive enough.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):

Yeah, I mean it is a very strange genre to really think about if you consider what is expected of the average musician in this scene, and I say Prague, but it really does stretch out quite a bit further, but almost the same way that the lineage of technology has kind of directed us, but everyone's expected to engineer their own guitars at the very least these days, and everyone's expected that they can pretty much program drums at the very least, and most people can operate a door in very basic sense at the very least, and there's just a lot of self-sufficiency expected of us, whether you're an up and coming musician or if you're a guy that's kind of been doing it for a while. So I guess that's just another facet. It's just another avenue to go down. Once you've learned all the guitar stuff and you've learned all the stuff about pro tools or logic or whatever, and you've learned all the things about shooting your own videos and you start getting better lighting and better camera gear and it just seems to create a community of these people that are very self-sufficient in most aspects.

(01:07:03):

Anyway, so I guess going down the self-managed independent path is an obvious one for most dudes, which is cool. It's really cool to see,

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):

Unlike a lot of other parts of the industry, and I know people in other genres will laugh when I say this because they'll say that they don't really have an industry either behind them, but it's just not true. There is other genres where there is an industry behind it and where the musician doesn't have to assume all roles. That doesn't mean that it doesn't help them to know how to operate a DAW and shoot their own videos and take control of their careers and understand the money part, but in progressive music, if you don't do that, you don't have a career.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):

I mean, you're so right. It's not only just the fact that it's helpful for your career, but it's almost like expected of you that you have to have a pretty good grasp on being an all rounder in this sort of field just to kind of survive in a weird way,

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):

Which is really cool in my opinion. I think it's really cool that there can be such a deep skillset in a community like that. So I was talking to somebody who works in publishing who they would hire out different songwriters for different placements, and this isn't for movies and stuff, this is for commercials and stuff that's not very cool, but that takes up a lot of space on earth basically. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):

Totally. The

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):

Bad music that you hear in everything that you don't think about where it came from, and they were telling me that the most reliable people, out of all the different writers that they had were always the metal guys or the progressive guys.

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):

Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):

Because they were just self-sufficient. You asked them for something with certain instructions and they would just do it and

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):

That's cool.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):

Get it back to you. There's no manager to get in the way. They didn't have to go to some studio and then go through all these steps and work with all these different people to just get the assignment and return the music.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):

Yeah, that's funny you mentioned that. I was remember being told a few years ago by a friend I won't name, but they were basically getting one of the greats of the metal world to play a guest guitar solo on their record and he was telling me like, oh, it's going to be really sick. I can't wait for this guy to do it. And then he told me the process of it and he's like, oh, it's really funny because this dude's so old school that we've literally got a book studio time for him.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):

Oh my God,

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):

In this country that he lives in, this guy's got to go into a place and set up his amp and get it all rigged up and get some sounds going just to track this 22nd solo and send it over to me. He doesn't know how to plug into an interface and grab a DI or anything like that. It's just like I

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):

Believe it

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):

Completely different world to him. This dude's like a god of the eighties, so it's like that's cool, you do your thing, and clearly that's just what he expects all he is ever done, but that's like he could have saved himself most likely thousands by just plugging a guitar lead into a computer and just going for a few takes and probably having more flexibility that way. It's such an interesting thing. Definitely

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):

Having more flexibility. Yeah, I've heard about those kinds of stories. It blows my mind that they still take place. I feel like I do know a lot of old timers who have totally adapted,

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):

So

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):

It's weird to me when there's with these weird holdouts,

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):

I think it's really cool when you see some of the older guys adapting. If they were living in this time period when they were coming up, they would've been just the same dudes that are pushing to do everything, get good at shooting videos, get good at audio, and they'll be just those guys. So it's cool to see that stuff for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:10:40):

In some ways, when those old schoolers adapt, they're scary. They have all the old skills, especially in the studio that if they adapt successfully coming from the analog world like someone like Andrew Sheps or something,

Speaker 3 (01:10:54):

Those

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):

Are the most frightening ones. They can do everything.

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):

Absolutely. They just got it all. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):

It's hard to imagine being that good.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):

It must be really sick. Must be really sick to feel that way.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):

But the thing is I don't think he feels that way.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):

No, no, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):

No.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):

Again, it's one of those things where the kind of guys that are that good are still telling themselves that they're not that good.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):

I mean, I think he told me on the podcast that he doesn't feel that way.

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):

Excellent.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):

Good to know. It's good to know it doesn't change.

Speaker 1 (01:11:24):

No, that's why I'm saying it doesn't change is because I've talked to so many people now who you would think, alright, this person has to know that they rule their stuff is unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (01:11:35):

Yeah, that's good. I think that's something really important for a lot of people to recognize.

Speaker 1 (01:11:39):

It's usually only when I talk to 19 year olds or something,

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):

They got it all figured out.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):

Yeah, they think they fucking rule life hasn't taught them that they don't yet.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):

Oh yeah, it all happen. It always does.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):

Oh yeah, of course. So out of curiosity, you were saying that the first time you went into the studio, you went with a high school band.

Speaker 3 (01:11:58):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):

And you weren't interested at all in it then why do you do it?

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):

Yeah, well, that's a funny thing. I was probably like 15, 16 years old, maybe I could give or take a couple of years, but I was in this hardcore band in high school and we were like, okay, cool. We've got a bunch of songs. Let's go do an ep. We know this place, let's book some time. It came down to me just kind of sitting in on some of the sessions and stuff like that, and I'd never been in a studio like a proper studio of any form up to that point. I remember just watching the engineer sit there and he was using logic funnily enough, which is what I use now, and even then I was just completely overwhelmed. I don't know why. I remember him just getting me to play a ton through and this was legit. I had a base amp micd up and stuff like that.

(01:12:48):

It was very, very no di shit. I mean we might've had a separate di, but honestly I had no idea. Yeah, just watching him do his thing and sit things in a mix and kind of just even at a tracking stage was mind blowing and really overwhelming. I was already just in my own space about trying to get my base parts down. I don't really know what happened was like the whole time I just thought it was this phenomenal skillset that this guy had. I was like, dude, this all sounds so good and it's all so wild what you're doing and watching him pull up parametric EQs on the screen and just calve shit out and do some wild stuff, it all just caught me completely off guard to the point where I was like, I'll never get good at this stuff, and I literally said that to myself and I dunno why I wasn't trying to neg myself out, but it just seemed so far gone that even I was 15, but it seemed way too much for me to try and tackle, and then I think way later in life when I started doing that base degree, I did those really simple introduction to audio courses and I got to basically just doing some really simple classes on navigating pro tools and logic, just getting around working with media instruments and just playing around with that sort of stuff and I think as soon as I demystified the functions of a workstation and what each button does and where I need to go and how I can undo things if I make a mistake, it became way less scary and I just remember though, as soon as I figured all that stuff out, it was honestly within a week or two that I was absurdly passionate about getting into audio more.

(01:14:23):

It was just as strong as the first sensation when I wanted to first play an instrument

Speaker 1 (01:14:27):

As soon as it wasn't looking at the cockpit of a spaceship and not knowing what the hell is what from that, as soon as you figured out what the hell is what, then you're into it

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):

Totally. I guess if you put it down to an instrument or something like that, as soon as you realize what notes you're playing and if you can reference it to maybe when you start reading tab or something like that, you look at a number on a page or a dot on a page and you go, okay, cool, this relates to this instrument on this fret or whatever, and as soon as you start breaking down the physical boundaries of either your technique and your actual playing or in a audio sense just what you're staring at and what all these buttons do, the more understanding obviously the more comfortable you're going to be. I think it also just opened up what was actually possible to me. When I first learned how to play guitar, I was like, holy shit, I can just start drilling out all these Metallica songs that I've wanted to do forever. So I just would do that and then with audio it's as soon as I figured out that stuff, I was like, man, now every band I'm in, or even when I'm sitting around bored at home, I can just start tracking demos and they sound semi acceptable at that stage. So I was like, that was mind blowing to me and it was really, really exciting and that's what pushed me to do that practice I was talking about where I would just constantly write 32nd songs and just practice playing and mixing.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):

Were you looking at it as practice when you were doing it?

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):

No, I wasn't really. It was really, really driven. It was something that I needed to do the same as when you get passionate about an instrument, it was like, it's so fun and it's so gratifying when you start just picking away at certain things and seeing that slight improvement every week or so that there was just those days that the same as where I would be up until the early hours of the morning playing bass in my bedroom. I would be sitting in my computer room just trying to work on drum samples and make things sound cool that way and it was no different. Looking back on it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):

Just out of curiosity, when you were writing the 32nd songs and getting into it, I'm just trying to understand how often were you doing this? Do you remember the elapsed amount of time?

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):

I guess it would ultimately depend on a few things. One, how good I was at guitar at the time, two, how good I was at songwriting at the time, and three, how good I was at mixing at the time, depending on those skill sets would definitely delay the process of it all to give it a rough average. It was probably every two weeks I was just knocking something out maybe even more, but they would almost always be connected. I would finish one song, work on it over the course of a week or so, maybe take a couple of days off, then start another one, and it was simply driven by passion to do that. It wasn't I better start a new one this week because I haven't done one in a few days. It would usually be like I would listen to a new band and I would want to write something similar, but at the same time I wouldn't want to release it because it just sounds like a complete rip off of this band.

Speaker 1 (01:17:22):

I get asked a lot about motivation, people who have trouble with motivation and I don't understand that I have a hard time knowing what to say because people that I know who have gotten really good at something, whether it's playing or mixing or running a business or whatever the hell, they don't try to be motivated. They just do it. They just want to do it, and even when they don't feel like doing it, they just do it anyways. It's not an issue of motivation. I have a hard time telling people that because they think I'm being a dick when I say maybe you're not really that into it,

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):

And maybe it's just a sense of they need to recalibrate what they're actually into,

Speaker 1 (01:18:02):

Which is fine,

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):

And I think there was a lot of points in my mixing career, for example, where I was not questioning whether I should continue it. I just questioned how long I could do it for that intense period of time because it was the moment where I was just putting too much on my plate and ultimately it was just more so the fact that I needed to work to towards that goal of having the ability to be more picky with my clients, finding people that are more like-minded. That was always a goal and I just had to tell myself that I was working towards that point

(01:18:30):

And now that I'm there, I honestly think I'm probably the most satisfied. I've been with just the clients. I'm still working my ass off all the time, but it's just a matter of whether I'm enjoying it or not. So the motivation is there because I genuinely love the bands that I'm working with and they're genuinely allowing me to just do what I want to be doing with it. If someone gave me a mixed job and they were like, oh, I just want you to mix the drums, it'd be like, I like mixing drums, I really like mixing drums, but that's not what I'm trying to chase at the moment.

Speaker 4 (01:18:59):

Maybe

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):

I would've done it a few years ago if I needed to pay rent or if I needed to hopefully work towards maybe grabbing the mix on their whole record the next time if they were a really good band or something. But yeah, it's just a matter of really knowing what you want to be doing.

Speaker 1 (01:19:14):

So you were able to identify the difference between not being into mixing versus not being as into it in this moment because you're working with the wrong kind of clients. That's kind of important,

Speaker 2 (01:19:27):

Super important, really, really important. I think I'm a very self analytical person and I pull apart everything I do, whether it's playing or if it's audio stuff. I think it's constantly important, not in a way that you just belittle every single thing you do and point out all your flaws, but it's more so the fact that it's just good to know what you like and what drives you and what affects you positively and negatively. So the more and more that you can define that and quantify all those things, then the more you're able to be happy in the field that you're working in. I know some guys that love editing drums.

Speaker 1 (01:20:08):

Yeah, me too.

Speaker 2 (01:20:09):

I genuinely love editing drums, which that's a mutant of a type of person to me.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):

God bless them.

Speaker 2 (01:20:14):

Absolutely. I have a weird passion with drum editing. I really do like it sometimes, but it has to be something that I'm absolutely a hundred percent committed to, which is very rare in terms of just, I dunno, I have to be really specific about it for some reason or another. For example, Pliny's record, I split the drum editing up between myself and Mike Malian from monuments.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):

Shout out Mike.

Speaker 2 (01:20:37):

Yeah, good old Mikey. There's a lot of stuff to handle in a short amount of time, and I just thought he's one of those guys that's clearly a very, very, very capable drummer, and he's also got his editing chops down, so he was able to understand what our drummer Chris was doing, which is some pretty wild stuff at the time. But yeah, it's just a matter of me going, you know what? I don't want to do a ton of drum editing on this record. As much as I love Pliny's music and as much as I had fun getting in on it, I would prefer more to move forward and get into the mix and stuff like that. There were a few particular songs that I really wanted to have my hand in the editing just because of that kind of where I pick and choose what is edited from almost like an artistic point of view and what I think that both Chris and Pliny were intending with the section, so obviously instead of me trying to convey that to Mikey, I could just do it myself and get it done, but there's definitely no way in my life that I would ever be a guy that just sits down and edits drums for a living.

(01:21:33):

As much as you could make that a career, it's like I just know that that's not a thing. It's not a thing for me, and I won't have a very happy career if I do that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):

There are some people that that's maybe not their entire career, but a good 80% of it and they love it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):

It's wild, but it's like, I know, I get it. I get it in some degree.

Speaker 1 (01:21:51):

Well, you need all types, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):

Exactly, exactly. And that's where they come in handy and you can find those people to work on your records, and it's funny, those people also will completely perfect a drum performance in terms of editing and they won't give a shit about mixing it.

Speaker 4 (01:22:07):

Whereas

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):

When I get edited drums, I'm like, man, I can't wait to throw a mix on this and see how it sounds and start really tweaking things as soon as the editing process is done. The only reason that drives me to get things edited is because I know how good they're going to sound mixed, so I'm really excited to get into the mixing side of things, but they're just happy to abandon it at the worst point where they don't get to enjoy anything.

Speaker 1 (01:22:28):

I see it a lot like the traditional Guitar Lu Air.

Speaker 2 (01:22:31):

I've

Speaker 1 (01:22:31):

Never understood why someone would want to do that instead of play. I just don't get it. I know I have some friends who build guitars for fun. I mean, the person whose passion in life is to build and fix and set up guitars instead of making music. I don't understand that one bit, but I'm really happy that those people exist.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):

Absolutely. Yeah. It's like imagine spending months or even years on some guitar builds and they do every single detail and they know of all these particular measurements and certain specs that you need to get to make this absolutely phenomenal guitar, and then as soon as they finish it, they take some photos of it and give it to someone. It's like that is the most backwards way about it in my sense, but at the same time, that's coming from someone that plays guitar, so there's got to be another sense of passion behind that, that maybe the end goal is just getting the photos of it and seeing it in its final form that is the end goal for them.

Speaker 1 (01:23:32):

I think that's what it is. I mean, this is why though, I think it's important for people to try to develop as much self-awareness as possible and to try to be analytical, self analytical like you were mentioning earlier, because if you're beating your head into a brick wall basically and really having a hard time motivating yourself and not enjoying it, it could be that maybe you're working with the wrong kind of people. That's definitely a possibility. It could also be that maybe there is something in music that's for you, but maybe you're not doing it yet.

Speaker 3 (01:24:04):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):

Maybe

Speaker 1 (01:24:05):

It is something like that. You're meant to be a guitar tech.

Speaker 2 (01:24:08):

You look at all the guys outside of just being musicians and involved in a tour, like you're saying guitar techs or managers, tour managers, venue managers, live sound engineers and stuff like that. Most of them have a background in playing some instrument. They've just figured out that they've worked somewhere a bit better or maybe they weren't totally into it enough to make an entire career out of it, and that's fine. It's not like you're a failed musician or anything. You just found what you were good at, and that's more important I think, instead of being stubborn and just sticking at it for the sake of trying to prove something, you've decided to efficiently go about things in a very intelligent and mature way and just be like, you know what? This is actually what I like. If I woke up tomorrow and I realized all I want to do is produce records like jamira choir, then I would go nuts and go do that. That's

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):

Jami,

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):

Dude. I would love to actually work on a record like that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:03):

Haven't thought about that guy in a while.

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):

Yeah, I mean, it is just, I've got to be aware that that's what my thing is and I got to be comfortable sitting with that as opposed to trying to fit a certain expectation or anything like that, I guess, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:25:20):

Well, yeah, I think it's weird because I don't think other people expect it of you. I think the whole idea of you were just saying they're not failed musicians, they're just people who figured out what they're good at,

Speaker 3 (01:25:31):

But

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):

I think internally some people might be afraid of making those types of moves

Speaker 3 (01:25:38):

For sure

Speaker 1 (01:25:38):

Because of this weird dialogue they've got in their head concerning that they will feel like they failed.

Speaker 2 (01:25:45):

I think it's definitely a thing of concerning yourself with what other people think way too much. Yes,

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):

You're

Speaker 2 (01:25:50):

Going to be thinking about the guys that you started playing music with, and then they watch you put the instrument down and do something else and what are they going to say or what are they going to think or are they still going to want to hang out with me? And it's like, don't fucking worry about any of that stuff. As soon as you go into that field that you are better at and you feel more comfortable, you're going to attract people that are also way more like-minded in that field, and it's just everyone wins really. It's a way more healthier headspace to be in.

Speaker 1 (01:26:13):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, how far into things were you when you made the realization that you were just working with the wrong clients?

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):

Honestly, it took some time, and this is probably one of the biggest things that I wish I could probably tweak if I had any, I don't want to say regret because that sounds really dramatic, but if I had anything that I could make some adjustments in my past, then that would definitely be something that I left too long to address, but I would say I probably took maybe five or six years of grinding to really start noticing that and then maybe a couple more years to really start putting in place better things to look after my, not only mental health in a way of just not overworking myself and burning myself out, but also just to improve my career, finding those people that worked. I worked.

Speaker 1 (01:26:59):

I think there's a danger though of people try to make those moves too early.

Speaker 3 (01:27:02):

Totally,

Speaker 1 (01:27:03):

Because I think at the beginning when you're first learning who you are and refining your skills, you're not good enough to pick and choose and you shouldn't think that you should just try to work on as much as you can so you can get as good as you can.

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):

I think that was definitely a part of my head space that I was kind of just like, well, I'd gotten to a point, especially during the touring thing, when that really fired off where I had to quit my job. I was teaching private music school and it was great, and I really loved it, and I did it at multiple schools for seven years or so, and it was really cool to be able to make a living off teaching music, but as soon as the touring started taking off, I found myself telling my boss and my students that, oh, I'm not going to be here for the next three weeks, not going to be here then, and I'll be back then and we'll have to make up some lessons and stuff like that. I didn't want to be that teacher in someone's upbringing where I would just be flaky and all over the place, and I did genuinely care about my students to the point where I was like, it's better if I probably just dip from this and completely quit, but that for me was like, holy shit, I'm quitting my day job to do Tour p Prague metal around the world.

(01:28:13):

That's probably one of the most ridiculous things I've ever thought I'd do,

Speaker 1 (01:28:16):

So that's probably a pretty good indicator.

Speaker 2 (01:28:18):

It was also that it was like, well, if it's becoming that much, then I need to quit. I need to do this and I need to somehow make it sustainable. So yeah, part of it was just saying yes a little more often to the projects that I maybe weren't exactly stoked on doing or less than ideal situations maybe it was like maybe the music was cool but the engineering wasn't up to scratch or something like that, and just seeing how flexible I needed to be to just make that work in my career at that point. Yeah, definitely. I guess it definitely is a point where it's like you don't really have a choice to just, I couldn't see it back then and just be like, Hey, there was definitely points where I wasn't even had anything to do with Plin and I couldn't just sit there and dictate who I was working with at all. No way. So sometimes you just got to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:59):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly. You had to work your way up to that, and

(01:29:04):

I just think that it's important for people listening who are going to be influenced by this to understand that as awesome as that is and a good goal, it's something that happens once you're into your career. You're already making money with it. You're already developing or have developed a reputation. You've already worked on stuff. You're already in demand. Once you're in demand, then you can start working with that demand and making, basically tailoring your life to your own specifications, but until there's that demand, you can't really tailor your life without clients to tailor it with.

Speaker 2 (01:29:43):

Yeah. I think you've very much got to be just comfortable with the fact that going into any sort of career like this, especially that there is going to be a stage where you're just eating shit for a while. Whether that's worth it or not is up to you, and if you really want to push through that and really grind through it, I'm not going to say that's a guaranteed way to a perfect life, but it's definitely seems to be the way that most guys get there anyway. You've got to work through that shit.

Speaker 1 (01:30:07):

I don't really know too many people who didn't

Speaker 2 (01:30:10):

Exactly same.

Speaker 1 (01:30:11):

I can't think of any actually. No,

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):

Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:30:15):

I mean, someone will probably think of an example of someone who got big on TikTok or something when they were 15 and then that was it. Their career is just set, but that's an anomaly when stuff like that happens.

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):

Yeah, absolutely. If we're trying to be realistic about this and you're just trying to be an average dude that wants to make a living, then yeah, this is more so what we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):

Yeah, exactly. More than likely if somebody listening is going to create a career, it's going to be like that through a shit ton of grinding for a really, really long time and through slowly carving out a niche. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:30:50):

Exactly, exactly that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:51):

Do you think that specialization is a good idea, and I'm asking this because clearly you're specialized and that's working for you?

Speaker 2 (01:30:59):

Yeah. I had a teacher when I was doing my base degree that I got to the end of the whole degree, and he was kind of just like, okay. Pretty much every class was just him drilling me with certain things and exercises and weird chord changes and stuff like this and all my weaknesses, and then at the end of it he was like, well, you seem to be really particularly situated in sort of this Prague world. You have a sound and you have kind of an approach. Obviously everyone's still learning and I still have a lot to go. Even to this day, I have a whole lot to learn. He was like, it's got to come to a point where you consider if you want to work on all your weaknesses and figure that stuff out, then maybe you'll be a really good all rounder and you'll be a session musician playing for pop gigs and stuff like that, which is cool.

(01:31:42):

But I didn't think I ever really considered myself trying to chase that. I wasn't really, that was never really the goal in the first place, but at the same time, I didn't really have a goal. I just wanted to play bass and get as good as I could be at it, and then at the end of it, he's like, maybe work on your strengths. Maybe just keep pushing this and specialize in just really focusing in on what you do and try and be the best at what you do. And that bit of information was insanely important to me more so than he probably realizes, but it's just the fact that I'd never really thought of, I don't know, doing what I was already doing, but more so and just constantly and constantly, and I realized that over time that it's still very much a thing that is developing.

(01:32:26):

With touring for example, it really tends to limit creativity a little bit. Obviously I'm spending so much time learning everyone's material. Some tours I'll be playing for three bands and I'll be just spending all my time practicing and revising material and getting stuff together, but I'll get halfway through the tour and I'll realize how consistent my playing is being just small things like that. My right hand, my picking hand is just really consistent and I'll be really happy with that and I'll listen back to some things or I'll just notice it halfway through and be like, cool. I was struggling with this at the start of the tour. That was the one moment I was concerned about, and now I'm just drilling through it. So thinking that I was already the Prague guy doing the Prague base thing, there was still so much room to grow, even though I'd been absolutely hammering just that for so long, and it's the same thing now. I could still get so much better at base, and it's just a matter of trying to realize that I have, even though they're my strengths, my strengths still have their own weaknesses and I have miles to go.

Speaker 1 (01:33:28):

Well, what's interesting though is I wonder if he would've given the same advice to everybody or not. I think probably he heard something unique or defined and identified that maybe it's a good idea to pursue that, but I bet you that there will be, or there have been other students who may have been skilled but didn't have built in direction that probably wouldn't have gotten that advice of do your thing.

Speaker 2 (01:33:54):

Yeah, and I think I'd never really been told that in the sense or I'd never even really been told that that was a thing at all. It's always work on your weaknesses, and that's just a thing in life in general is if you've got something you're not good at, you should, and it's a concern of some form, you should get better at it. That just seems like such a simple thing to state. Yeah, I guess maybe that was a thing either way, and it's like mixing. It's like I very much kind of put myself in the world of this prog metal sort of thing, and that wasn't really intentional, but I do like the variation of the genre how different certain sections and stuff can be and how varied the music can be is kind of a very welcome challenge because like I said, it can really go from a more metal just straight ahead, progressive sort of thing to a fusion jazz, whatever sort of vibe, electronic elements and stuff like that, which is the other end of the spectrum and it's cool to be able to thrown it in the deep end and trying to just work my way out of it all, but that's a strength that I think will always be something that I need to focus on and I need to develop over time.

(01:35:02):

I'm confident in it, but it's good knowing that I'm not perfect at it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:07):

Yeah, I mean knowing that you're not perfect at it is what'll keep you working at it.

Speaker 2 (01:35:11):

Simon

Speaker 1 (01:35:11):

Grove, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Speaker 2 (01:35:17):

Totally, man. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:35:18):

Anytime. Alright, 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 and Instagram or any social media you use. Please tag me at al Levi URM audio at URM Academy and of course tag our guests as well. I mean, they really do appreciate it. In addition, do you have any questions for me about anything? Email them to [email protected]. That's EYL at urm. Do ACA MY and use the subject line answer me a. All right, then. 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.