TONY LINDGREN: The Black Art of Mastering, Why Metal Is Hard to Master, Prepping Your Mixes

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-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 Tony Lindgren, who's a veteran mastering engineer at Fascination Street Studios in Sweden. Tony has worked with so many acts ranging from creator to Billy Eilish to d Borg, gear to lepers and hundreds more. I introduce you Tony Linn, welcome to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02:05):

Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:02:08):

Pleasure to have you. Ki I've been following your work for a really long time and like we were saying before, I feel like we've just missed each other several times.

Speaker 2 (00:02:19):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you guys were here. Was it like 2017?

Speaker 1 (00:02:25):

Okay, so we've been to Sweden like four or five times and I realize not every place in Sweden is the same place. It's not around the corner

Speaker 2 (00:02:35):

Just because it's in Sweden now.

Speaker 1 (00:02:37):

There's lots of different places in Sweden, but it's all a blur,

Speaker 2 (00:02:41):

But

Speaker 1 (00:02:42):

I think we did nail the mix with Jens the first time in June, 2018.

Speaker 2 (00:02:47):

Okay. Yeah. Either I had my vacation or maybe I was sick or something. I know I missed you guys just when you were here,

Speaker 1 (00:02:55):

So it was June, so it was when you Swedes take your six weeks, six weeks, you're laughing. I know people who take six weeks, but that just seems

Speaker 2 (00:03:05):

Insane to me. I know a lot of people that take six weeks as well, but I think is the standard, but in this business there's no five weeks of vacation.

Speaker 1 (00:03:19):

No, man, I couldn't imagine doing that and I realized that we're in different segments of the business, but when I was producing, I couldn't imagine, imagine that and when I was at first I was producing and had the band and every single time that I'd focus on the band, it was like my production stuff just got knocked back a few pegs. I had to restart the momentum every time and I just feel like taking that long off, especially nowadays when there's so many people doing it, it just seems like a bad idea.

Speaker 2 (00:03:58):

And it's also, I think our problem, what we've had is that we've had a lot of a rush of clients that want to work with us during the summers. Usually when it comes to mastering, it's usually this emergency mastering to be able to release something for festivals and stuff like that. We want to take vacations, but it's kind of impossible. You don't want to say no to anything. At the same time,

Speaker 1 (00:04:27):

Man, saying no is really, really hard. I have a big problem with it, even with what I do now, tell me if you can relate to this. I'm so used to saying yes, because one opportunity leads to the next, leads to the next, leads to the next, and so saying no to an opportunity could be saying no to something that could be potentially transformative.

Speaker 2 (00:04:51):

Oh yeah, for sure. That's exactly how it is. I would say that a lot of my work is word of mouth. It's people talking about being happy with what I did and I did it in a short note and stuff like that, and that they talk to their producer friends and stuff like that and they come in. So I would not want to say no. I have never said no to anything, never, ever. I don't think so. Honestly. Maybe if I've been sick and they're like, we needed tomorrow, I might've had to say no about him. There's so many instances where I've been having a weekend in Stockholm or something with my girlfriend and it's like someone emails me during the weekend and they're like, we need this on Monday morning, and it's like, well, I'm getting back on Sunday evening, let me just run into the studio and do this.

Speaker 1 (00:05:49):

Well, I guess with mastering it might be a little easier than mixing. I don't mean that mastering is easier than mixing, but because it takes less time to rail off a song.

Speaker 2 (00:06:01):

Absolutely. I mean, you can't really compare the two when it comes to how much time it takes. There's always that thought that you need to take time off to kind of get your shit together basically. And also just relax, save your ears. It's a demanding job physically as well, so you need to take that time. I mean, for the ears being objective, I know that when I've had a lot to work on, I need, let's say on a Monday, on Tuesday, I need to deliver a lot of stuff. Maybe I finish up one album and then I actually lay down and have one hour nap or something between the albums just to kind of reset your whole brain instead of just throwing yourself into a new thing straight off. It all depends on what kind of, if it's albums you need to reset a little more. If it's just single songs, it's not a big deal.

Speaker 1 (00:07:05):

You're able to actually slow down enough to take a hour long nap and then work again.

Speaker 2 (00:07:11):

It has happened for sure, for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:07:14):

Impressive.

Speaker 2 (00:07:15):

I'm definitely the one that's been sleeping the most at this place compared to artists coming in. If you can't see it, I'm still at the old place. I know you like the old place. Oh,

Speaker 1 (00:07:28):

I love the old place. I think it's gorgeous. Obviously keeping your ears in great shape is important for any sort of audio engineer, but I think that for mastering engineers it's especially important because you're listening to stuff in less than a DB error of margin,

Speaker 2 (00:07:49):

And you also want to be able to have that kind of first impression feeling so you don't overdo stuff. I know that I usually get in way too much in the details. I am a very meticulous guy overall, but it still want to have that kind of feeling of getting a fresh air on the project as much as you can so quickly that you start to get used to what you're hearing.

Speaker 1 (00:08:17):

I agree, and I just thought of something that I've actually wanted to ask you if I ever got to talk to you. Sure. So back in the day when I would go looking for a mastering engineer to mix my band, I mean not mix my band to master my band bachelor. Yeah, yeah. No shit. Back before I was, before I had this network of people and knew how everything worked. One of my first ideas was get someone who worked on rap and pop because they know how to have huge low end and who maybe did Rob Zombie too

Speaker 3 (00:08:58):

Or something

Speaker 1 (00:08:59):

Because they understand heavy and huge and that's such a great idea. And then I did that and it was a fucking mistake because they tried to dial low end on it. That was for a rap record. It just sounded fucking wrong and part of me told myself, well, maybe the mix sucked, but over the years I had a few clients who also took that approach. They wanted super high end mastering, and I don't mean Ted Jensen or something. They'd go to strictly r and b guys or guys that don't understand metal, not someone like Ed Jensen who can do everything and their masters would always come back just blown out in the low end or super, super muddy and just wrong.

Speaker 3 (00:09:49):

And

Speaker 1 (00:09:50):

I am wondering your opinion on this. Do you think that in order to do a good job with the mastering for Extreme metal like DMU Borg gear or something like that, you kind of need to understand the music and the goals of the music. You can't just walk in there like a mastering engineer blank slate and just do what you do.

Speaker 2 (00:10:18):

Yeah, yeah. I do agree for sure, but it's also mastering and mixing is mixing. You kind of want to stay in a certain niche. It's hard to be really good at a lot of different kind of genres when it comes to mixing with mastery. I tend to feel that it's easier for sure. I can't speak for the guys, the rap guys that mastered your metal record, but

Speaker 1 (00:10:47):

They were great mastering engineers. By the way. These are Jews with platinum records and I guess what I mean is do you think that heavy music has a specific type of skillset or certain type of sensibility that you can only gain through actually listening to the music and

Speaker 2 (00:11:06):

Yeah, I mean I would say this. I would say it's easier for me as a metal guy going to other genres than someone that only does hip hop working on a metal mastering because what you're saying is absolutely correct. Metal has so many different kind of things that you need to keep right? You need to have that, no, you want that heavy low end, but you also want that sharp mids, but you don't want the mids to sound harsh and you want that top end that sounds airy, but you don't want everything to sound the Ss in the vocals to be too out there or the symbols too loud and when it comes to metal overall, it's just such a dense kind of genre. You have so many, it's like all the frequencies at the same time and you have to know how to handle that for sure.

(00:12:04):

I would say that mastering metal is actually probably maybe the best way to learn how to get good at mastering because if you can master metal very good, you can probably go to other genres easier at least than going the other way around, I would say because there's space in other genres. There's space for sure. I've done a lot of pop records as well and it's always like, ah, this is so nice, man. It's so easy to master this. You can do whatever you want to and it kind of still sounds okay. While metal is super sensitive, as soon as you do maybe a little bit, maybe boost that kind of three K area a little bit too much and it kind of just tilts over to sound way harsher than it should be, and it's just like the listening and experience just dies because of it. In my ears at least. I dunno if the mainstream audience would care, but I also like metal guys. Metal guys, people in metal are so specific with what they like,

Speaker 1 (00:13:08):

They care.

Speaker 2 (00:13:08):

Oh yeah, for sure. When it comes to pop people, they might just be, we want it louder and it should be brighter and louder. That might be kind of what they want and that's kind of easy to reach, but metal guys, you have the drummer that wants the drums to be super punchy and stand out and you want the guitars to be huge and

Speaker 1 (00:13:32):

It's a different type of audience. I think that the pop audience are more of your general consumers from all walks of life, but metal, even though not every single metal fan is a musician, a large portion large, I don't know what the number is, but I would bet you well over 50% have at least owned a guitar or an instrument or have wanted to do a band at some point. It's an audience of musicians in large part, and so they have more specific tastes.

Speaker 2 (00:14:16):

Yeah, they absolutely do, and that's what you hear. If you just read YouTube comments on whatever, let's say like an Iron Maiden record, people are going to talk about how they love the sound and how a lot of those criteria that even though if the person in question isn't maybe a musician, they have that they might be fiddling around with a guitar at home, and they also have a very specific preference in what they like production wise as well when I don't think you see that as much when it comes to pop music or the pop audience.

Speaker 1 (00:14:56):

Yeah, I think that with the pop audience, do they like the song?

Speaker 2 (00:15:00):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:15:00):

Yes. Cool. Can they move their ass to it? Yes. Cool. Exactly. Basically I think that that's, and I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing.

Speaker 2 (00:15:11):

No, absolutely not. I'm not saying that mastering pop is easy, but I think it's easier. At least you don't have the amount of pressure on you that you normally have working on metal because metal guys are very picky with their sounds.

Speaker 1 (00:15:29):

Yeah. Now, do you think that it's harder to justify the need for mastering as a job these days in metal considering that so many people are doing it themselves and learning how to do it themselves? Your I do think there is, but I'm curious what you think.

Speaker 2 (00:15:58):

I've seen a lot of threads in the community on Facebook talking about that, but I don't know. I've never felt that there's a lot of good home producers out there for sure. I'm not going to lie. I've had stuff delivered here and they send the mix and then they send their own rough master, and the rough master sounds awesome, but that also inspires me even more to make my master sound even better than that. Then we get down to the whole, is mastering only putting a limiter on something and make it loud, or is it like the whole process of actually make every song on a record flow together in a nice way and everything like that, different formats, yada, yada, yada.

(00:16:48):

But I absolutely do still think that a mastering engineer is still important because you want, or I don't know how many want, but I think it's very good to have a second pair of ears that you trust. How I've been working for a long time now, just reaching out and getting producers to what I do. They come back constantly, even though they can do the mastering process themselves, they trust what I do with their songs that they'd rather give me their mixes to master, so I think it's still going to be a long while before we see the mastering business dying out.

Speaker 1 (00:17:32):

Well, I mean that is the place where mixes start to really get ruined.

Speaker 2 (00:17:37):

Oh, yeah, for sure. I kind of usually think of it as when I was over 20 years ago when I was in school, I, I studied theatrical lighting or something like that, and the teacher always told us that if the audience doesn't react to the lighting, if they don't, basically if they don't see the lighting as a thing, then you've done a great job. If someone listens to a song and they just love it and they don't start to remark on the mastering, you've probably done a good job as a mastering engineer. See what I'm saying? If the song and the mix, they can just experience

Speaker 1 (00:18:20):

It.

Speaker 2 (00:18:20):

Yeah, and that is a good mastering. It's not going to be, I mean, of course for us producers and people that are more in the know, we can hear if this probably failed in the mastering stage, but for the normal consumer, if they just feel that this is just everything comes through in a perfect way and you enjoy listening to it no matter how loud it is, that's when the mastering engineer has done a great job, in my opinion, at least.

Speaker 1 (00:18:51):

Now, when you first hear a song, you get that first listen that we were talking about earlier. What is it that starts coming through your mind? Is it technical stuff? Are

Speaker 2 (00:19:02):

We talking about a mix that I'm going to master or just a song off of Spotify,

Speaker 1 (00:19:06):

A mix that you're going to master, you put it in your daw, you hit play.

Speaker 2 (00:19:09):

When I work, I work, I can absolutely enjoy the music I listen to when I work, but I don't start listening to the song to enjoy it. I am kind of quickly into the whole technical bit of my brain listening to a little bit what I do. It's usually like frequency stuff. Is this sounding too dark or is it sounding too stressed or stuff like that when I'm at work. But yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:19:36):

When you're at work, how long did it take you to get comfortable with what you're hearing at work? Are you comfortable with what

Speaker 2 (00:19:44):

Every record and every product is a new product? I mean, of course I have over a decade of experience now, so it's a huge difference for me starting out, but there are projects where I have to try out some different kind of styles or EQs and stuff like that before I really find what makes the song really come together in the best way.

Speaker 1 (00:20:07):

Yeah. How long did it take for you to hear something coming out of your speakers and know that what you're hearing is what's actually there?

Speaker 2 (00:20:17):

Oh, that took a few years for sure. What I did in the beginning for a few years actually was that I mastered, let's say I mastered an album. I mastered it and I took it home and just put it into my computer and with my, I had those, what they're called HSM 80 or something, the Yamaha?

Speaker 1 (00:20:38):

Yeah, those

Speaker 2 (00:20:39):

Speakers, but I used at home back in the day when I recorded at home and stuff like that, so I knew them pretty well in that kind of shitty setup that they were in. If something sounded really good here and crappy at home, I knew that I probably still either overdid something in the mastering or didn't correct something in the right way, but it took a while for me to really get used to instantly knowing now it sounds good. It can be so hard. Sometimes it is like, ah, this sounds really good now, and then you start referencing other tracks that sound really good and it's like, ah, damn, I still need to work on this

Speaker 1 (00:21:20):

Now. Do you think it's something that comes from experience or monitors or treatment or a little bit of all of it?

Speaker 2 (00:21:28):

That's why I think master engineers are still going to be needed. You need a really good listening environment and a really good room to be able to kind of get the feel that this is going to work in a lot of systems. You need that transparency to really hear everything. I know some do, but I couldn't imagine only master on headphones or something. Even if I had great headphones, I wouldn't do it. Something that happens when the music really moves in the air that I want to hear to really be sure that something will sound good in a lot of different systems. But yeah. What was your question? I'm rambling. Sorry.

Speaker 1 (00:22:12):

Oh no, it's okay. We're just talking about knowing that what you're hearing is what's actually there and room treatment and

Speaker 2 (00:22:20):

Yeah. Yeah, so if you want to do mastering, it's going to take a good while for you to really get into how your speakers sound, how you should treat the material to translate well, sometimes that's kind of the danger with working with also a really good setup because certain things, for example, like base here sounds freaking awesome.

Speaker 1 (00:22:46):

I'm sure I've heard it in there.

Speaker 2 (00:22:48):

Yeah. Yeah, and it's even better now if I go and push the base a lot here it's like, ah, this sounds so cool, but I know from experience that this is not going to work, so it's not that maybe what I hear is the crucial point, but I know that this much space is not going to work when you listen to the phone or through earbuds or whatever. So you have to get comfortable whatever setup you have, but also be able to check out everything. Nowadays, people listen to their phone, through their phone, just phone speakers so much that you actually have to keep that in mind as well.

Speaker 1 (00:23:27):

Yeah. It's funny because people used to make fun of that. They'd say, oh, my clients are giving me mixed notes off of a phone, but lots of people listen to music that way, so you just got to accept it.

Speaker 2 (00:23:38):

They do. Yeah, for sure. I've mastered for a lot of people that make the hits, let's just say call the one hit wonder things, they want to have a pop hit. They always listen through the phone always. They wouldn't care about having a super setup to listen through. They want to see that it works on the platform. They know they have to conquer. They need the kids to love it on the phone basically.

Speaker 1 (00:24:06):

Fair enough. If that's their platform, that's their platform.

Speaker 2 (00:24:09):

Yeah. That's the challenge with mastering. It's just like even if you're comfortable with your listening environment, how people are listening to masters or music nowadays, it's going to make you have to rethink some of your choices some of the times.

Speaker 1 (00:24:23):

Yeah. There's a lot of anger about that I think in the engineering community, but I think it's best to just accept it because it's not changing.

Speaker 2 (00:24:33):

Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. I'm not the guy that I get angry about that kind of stuff. You just have to roll with people love music, and you can't stop them listening to whatever platform they want to listen to.

Speaker 1 (00:24:46):

Yeah, exactly. You brought up headphones. Here's something I've noticed lately, so there was a time period where people said, don't mix in headphones no matter what you do. It is verboten, but a lot of mixers have been mixing in headphones and I mean good mixers and they're getting a lot better at it, and some of them master their own stuff and do a really good job, but one thing that I have noticed is that mastering engineers who master other people's stuff have not moved to headphones.

Speaker 2 (00:25:18):

I mean, I'm sure there are some. I know nowadays we have the sonar works and all those kind of correctional things, but I dunno, it is just something about hearing the music move the air around. You feel the music. I couldn't work only with headphones. I absolutely use headphones to check out what I'm doing for sure, but I would never make any major changes just because of the headphones. Personally, I'm much more comfortable with doing that in speakers.

Speaker 1 (00:25:47):

I think it's different if you're a mixing engineer,

Speaker 2 (00:25:49):

I guess,

Speaker 1 (00:25:50):

Or a producer who's mixing something that they recorded and then doing it all. I don't know why, but I think it's a little bit different. There's something about only doing it in headphones for tracks that you're getting for the first time. Maybe mastering engineers will eventually adopt doing it that way. The way that a lot of mixers are, who knows? Maybe one of the reasons that they're not moving in that direction is because the amount of money that they have invested in their listening environments. It could be, but I still think there's something to it. For some reason, mastering engineers who take outside work are for the most part, not moving to headphones.

Speaker 2 (00:26:31):

I know some people both mix and do their masters in headphones, but it's all also how you grew up in this business, how you listened to music. It's like some people, I think, is it Buster that uses a lot of use headphones a

Speaker 1 (00:26:47):

Lot? Yes, and he's great.

Speaker 2 (00:26:49):

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That's like he's been using it for so long that I can see how he has learned to listen through them in an objective way. For me, that wouldn't be possible at this moment if I didn't start with headphones.

Speaker 1 (00:27:04):

Alright, let me amend my statement. I think that that is part of it. I think you're absolutely right. I think that the generation that grew up listening and working in headphones are probably going to stick to that because that's what they understand. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:27:18):

The only thing that I feel a lot where I can basically know that something is mixed in headphones is there's something about headphones where a lot of people get the stereo image kind of weird. Sometimes you don't perceive the left right in the same way as you do in speakers.

Speaker 1 (00:27:38):

Yes,

Speaker 2 (00:27:38):

Sometimes you can get things that are extremely widened that sounds weird on speakers, but on their headphones maybe sounds huge, but it sounds extremely weird when you hear it through a physical medium like a speaker instead of just pressed to your ears. So that's where I think the headphone people might have more of a challenge. You can't perceive that in the same way as you would hearing something through a speaker.

Speaker 1 (00:28:07):

Yeah. Just so Buster doesn't hear this and say, Hey, you guys misrepresented me. He does use speakers too. He does both.

Speaker 2 (00:28:16):

No hate against Buster at all. Absolutely. Buster Buster is great. Oh yeah, for sure. For sure, for sure. I just know that he uses headphones a lot, so that's why I use him as example.

Speaker 1 (00:28:25):

I think that the physics of it will lead to weird stereo image issues. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:28:30):

I'm sure a lot of engineers that have grew up on headphones, they will know how to place things in stereo in a good way using headphones, but I hear a lot of, almost every now and then I get a mix where it's like the stereo image is not translating well and I can almost swear every time that it's on headphones made on headphones.

Speaker 1 (00:28:54):

So what is the ideal scenario for you? Someone sends you a track to master in Metal and let's just say it's not someone like Jens who what they send you is going to be fucking immaculate, so yeah, let's exclude people like that.

Speaker 2 (00:29:13):

Yeah, sure. Like I said, there's a lot. I worked with a lot of people that are great at work out of their bedroom and stuff like that, so it doesn't need to be Jenz or David or someone like that. I usually recommend to mixing engineers to mix through a limiter, but that also goes as far as don't push the hell out of it in your limiter. If you push your limiter way too hard while mixing, you might do weird kind of. You might push the snare way louder than it needs to be, and in a real mastering setup, you won't need some of those adjustments that some mixing engineers do mixing through a limiter you won't need them, but always being able to hear what your mix sounds when the energy is compressed a little bit by a limiter is always good. So if they have had that in the beginning and preferably also send that mix so I know how they've been listening to the mix straight up, that's always good, but the dream scenario, I just, well mixed arranged song. It doesn't need to be anything made by someone super famous, super good. It's just like, especially if you've got your volumes right, your overall EQs on point, it's going to sound well. It's when people go, usually when people go way too far into techniques they have seen that they don't understand that you try to apply to stuff and it's just like everything is falls apart. That's when it's tougher to work on a song usually, if that makes sense. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:30:48):

It does make sense. I think a lot of people, and I do feel that we're guilty for helping this happen,

Speaker 2 (00:30:55):

But you guys are actually learning. You're teaching people to do the right stuff, but I'm talking about those who have just checked out a YouTube link somewhere.

Speaker 1 (00:31:06):

Well, yeah. I try really, really hard to get people to understand that they shouldn't get into mid side EQ if they're not good at EQ in the first place.

Speaker 2 (00:31:19):

Exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:31:19):

Things like that, don't fuck with parallel compression if you don't understand compression in the first place. Don't do machines crazy outside, inside routing technique if you can't get a mix sounding good with just one master bus, things like that. I try really hard to get people to understand that, but I think I was just talking to somebody yesterday, they home recorded and sent their shit to a really good metal mixer. They made a bunch of mistakes in the tracking to where a lot of guitars were monitoring out things like that, and I used to give him tips and would tell him all those important little basic details to think about when tracking, tuning, tightness, all the little things you have to think about and he would ignore me. He told me he would ignore me. He was trying to make me think that he already knew all that shit, so he would skip ahead to the super advanced stuff and try to do all that. Then he records an album, sends it to a really good mixer and they encounter lots of problems because he did skip a bunch of the basics and there were tons of problems as a result. I have noticed that a lot where getting things right at a basic level isn't nearly as sexy as MS processing.

Speaker 3 (00:32:39):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:32:40):

It just sounds so much cooler to know how to do that stuff, but it's not the right order of operations

Speaker 2 (00:32:48):

For sure, and we offer a mixed feedback feature when people send tracks for mastering and something that I always come back to, it's like volume automation. You don't need to compress the vocals anymore. You can ride that volume fader to make the vocals sit right in the mix. The most basic of everything, volumes of each element in the mix is so important that if you fail that it doesn't matter if you have the coolest most punchiest snare in the whole world. If everything else is just wrong in the balance, the mix is going to sound bad. That's just how it is.

Speaker 1 (00:33:27):

It's interesting too that a mix that might not have the most amazing surgical EQ work and tricks applied to it, if it's just balanced well will typically sound all right.

Speaker 2 (00:33:41):

Yeah, for sure. It really does. The shortcomings that you might have with maybe you haven't given everything that kind of right brilliance that really needs, you can kind of balance that in the master stage in a way that you can't undo crazy technique cool stuff in a mix, and I know a lot of people that are really good at all these kind of crazy techniques, but it's also about you have to put the song first. You have to put the arrangement first. Then when you know how to EQ something so it sounds well and place everything in volume, well, if you start there and get that really good, you can start fiddling with all the other different kind of styles of mixing. What I think is maybe a little bit of a quote problem is that, like you said, it's not as sexy as parallel compression, so people want to get to the sexy stuff before they learn how to do the basic stuff that it's you're going to get so far. So, so far, if you just know the basic stuff,

Speaker 1 (00:34:43):

This is kind of funny. Back when Ys was on the first time and we had the pec track, I noticed that people were fucking obliterating it. They were destroying it, and I was thinking, how is this possible raw? It sounds amazing. How are you making it sound worse

Speaker 3 (00:35:03):

Than

Speaker 1 (00:35:03):

It does raw? And so I issued a challenge, the no plugin challenge balancing and panning only, let's see what you do. Lo and behold their mixes got way better and then of course from there and start adding your plugins. But it was mind blowing to so many people what they could do when all they could deal with was volume. The reason I'm bringing this up in this episode is because something that I've noticed mastering engineers get asked all the time is how do you get shit loud? I want loud masters, and I know that the answer is the mix has to be capable of being mastered loud in the first place.

Speaker 2 (00:35:46):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:35:46):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:35:47):

Like I said, I kind of jumped the truck a little bit, but when you've reached the level of you are a competent mixing engineer, I think it's always good to kind of preview stuff through a limiter. If you know how things start to sound when you compress that energy, you're going to quickly discover that, okay, as soon as the energy starts to compress a little bit, that base is way too or because when you have that headroom that you usually have when you mix something like the base for example, can be way more alively, way boomer and not sound bad, but as soon as you start to compress that energy and getting it loud, all those faults and especially problems in the low end are going to stand out way, way more. So I think that's something that I think most engineers should at least always double check. You don't need to mix the perimeter, but at least have a quick check to make sure that when I compress the energy to just a normal amount of loudness, everything translates still pretty good.

Speaker 1 (00:36:59):

It doesn't completely fall apart or get crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:37:01):

Exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:37:02):

But kind of like on the topic of people wanting the sexy stuff before the basic stuff, when you say, well, a loud master, it has to be in the DNA of the mix itself. That's not the answer people want because Well, you mean I actually had to get better at mixing first?

Speaker 2 (00:37:22):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like you said in the beginning, it's people nowadays basically have the same stuff that I have when they're at home that I use when mastering. So it's not that my equipment is wildly different. I have some hardware that probably most people don't have at home, but it's not that I don't use the same plugins or anything. It's just like how to get something really loud. You just have to, like you said, the mix has to sound good, will be well balanced. Even if I balance it with an e EQ in the master, it's not going to, you can quickly mess things up. By me as a mastering engineer starting to rebalance stuff too much, if I start to do mixing in the mastering, that's when the master will fall apart and sound bad.

Speaker 1 (00:38:11):

I've always thought that that's a weird thing to do. That gear by the way that you're talking about that probably not in most people's home studios, do you even need it? I mean, I know you like it, but do you need it? You could work without it. I'm sure

Speaker 2 (00:38:26):

I've done a lot of the mastering in the box, so I don't need it, but it's especially for metal when it comes to punchiness and the certain sound that metal guys want. I would rather clip a great sounding ad converter than only using plugins, but I can absolutely only use plugins if I want to. For sure.

Speaker 1 (00:38:46):

Hey everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast and 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 OPEC shuga, bring me the Horizon Gaira 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.

(00:39:38):

And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jens Bore, Dan Lancaster, toy 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 game 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 and enhanced.

(00:40:32):

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. Do you think that people learning how to do this stuff at home are in any way, shape or form limited by gear as far as just getting good is concerned?

Speaker 2 (00:41:06):

Certain kinds of sound might be limited a little bit with gear, but most of it is not. I think you could reach a very high level, at least just by doing stuff in the box, what you need is at least what I would need is a good pair of speakers and a well-treated room that I can trust. For me, what it's all about, I can use a fab EQ if I want to. The e EQ won't be the problem for me. For me, it's just trusting my speakers, the room. That's way more important for me.

Speaker 1 (00:41:44):

Yeah, it's unfortunate though that stuff is just not nearly as sexy.

Speaker 2 (00:41:50):

Yeah, I know it's not.

Speaker 1 (00:41:52):

Then again, that's part of why I think it's hard to get good at this kind of stuff is because anything else that requires discipline, you have to be disciplined enough to focus on the right things.

Speaker 2 (00:42:04):

Yeah, for sure. Like I said, it took me years. I'm just, I'm so grateful for Ys to have the patience with me to, I sat here so many times after he quit for the day. I sat here afterwards just practicing on all kinds of different kinds of albums just to learn how to use the tools and to learn how the room sounds and how things sound when I push something through the speakers.

Speaker 1 (00:42:35):

So speaking of Ys, how did you get involved with him?

Speaker 2 (00:42:38):

I think he mentioned it, but I can do a little flashback.

Speaker 1 (00:42:42):

He did, but I can't assume that people listening to this have heard that for

Speaker 2 (00:42:46):

Sure. I studied music production here in bu,

Speaker 1 (00:42:50):

So that's how you pronounce it?

Speaker 2 (00:42:51):

Yeah. What did you say? Bu

Speaker 1 (00:42:54):

Man, I am not even going to try

Speaker 2 (00:42:56):

It is a really weird word to say in English. So I think we both say the name differently every time, but it's BU in Swedish

Speaker 1 (00:43:05):

All you,

Speaker 2 (00:43:06):

I started music production and I think maybe half a year into it, we started to have YZ as a teacher in mixing and recording and stuff like that. I had barely heard about Fascination Street, so I didn't really know exactly who he was, but I knew that he had worked with some cool bands. So I was excited for sure, but at the time I was so much into, I still into Prague, but I was into Porcupine Tree's, one of my favorite bands ever, and so I was kind of into that softer kind of Prague rock stuff, and GenZ was mainly maybe more extreme metal guy. We had him for I think a year or something like that. And when I was done with music production, I was, because actually not from here, I'm from a smaller town up north called that is, I think it's

Speaker 1 (00:44:08):

Like that's even harder.

Speaker 2 (00:44:10):

You don't need to, I checked it yesterday. I think it's in Miles. I think it's something around 600 miles from here.

Speaker 1 (00:44:16):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:44:17):

It's pretty far. It's way up in Sweden. So I was actually considering moving back. I didn't have anything to do, and just before the music production class ended, y contacted some of us asking if we would want to work for him doing admin stuff and mastering, and I was like, of course over the moon that he contacted me. I realized during music production I learned that back in the day I was more into writing songs and maybe become an artist or a songwriter for other artists or something like that. I was way more into that and also actually more into mixing and producing overall. But when he reached out to me and suggested this, I was like Mastering, it's really cool and I really love it. I love all different kinds of music. It would be so cool. So I did a lot of tryouts for Ys and fortunately for me, I came out on top above the other contestants.

Speaker 1 (00:45:21):

What do you mean by lots of tryouts?

Speaker 2 (00:45:24):

Lots of tryouts. I sat here for, I think it was three or four nights. I sat here in the studio doing mastering at the time, the position kind of involved helping him with mixing revisions and different kind of assistant stuff. So we kind of spent one day each for each kind of thing, mixing, revision, mastering, emailing, whatever. And then everything just went quiet for two weeks or something and I was sure that I didn't get it. He didn't say anything. So I think I called him after two weeks and I was like, dude, I can't do this anymore. Just tell me that I didn't get it so I can basically just move home or something. And he was like, well, I've been thinking and I think you're going to get it. I was like, it was such a weird time in my life. I was still living in a dorm as well, and if you're not studying, actively studying, you actually can't live in a dorm. But they did checkups every half year I think. So I was kind of closing in on that checkup, so I knew that I had to move very soon. Yeah. Anyway, I started working here or started trying out, basically just staying behind him, watching him do whatever he does and then as often as I could every evening I just sat down in the studio when he left and practiced, practice, practice, practice, whatever I could get my hands on, I just tried to master and yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:47:06):

What do you think it was, do you know what it was that got him to pick you?

Speaker 2 (00:47:12):

I don't think Ys knows nowadays either. I don't know. I think what the main thing for us both, I think we are very alike when it comes to how meticulous and how detail oriented we are.

(00:47:26):

Probably too much for my own good. Sometimes I want everything to sound really good. I'm not going to, I treat every project as a high-end project no matter what. It doesn't matter if it's like a demo band locally or if it's like Dema Boer. Everyone should be as happy as could be when they master with us. And we also had a lot of the same kind of musical taste. Jan was also into Porcup country and shared a lot of stories When he was my teacher, we talked a lot about music and realized that we a lot of the same stuff. He's more like maybe goth oriented maybe, and I was a little bit more kind of power metal oriented when it came to my metal taste, but overall when it came to Prague, we kind of had kind of the same taste. So yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:48:16):

I like that you said that no matter who comes through, they're going to be treated like a high-end project. And I'm saying that because I remember lots of experiences being around mixers and producers who would kind of scoff at the local bands that they would mix during off time or they would, they'd say stuff like, well, it doesn't matter as much. I'm not going to work as hard on it, which I always thought was fucked up. I always thought was fucked up for several reasons. Number one, it's like how seriously do you take your legacy?

Speaker 3 (00:48:50):

Number

Speaker 1 (00:48:51):

Two, you don't know who from what project is going to end up where at what point in time you don't know who they know. Three, I think that excellence is a habit. It's not something that you just do here and there. If excellence is what you do, you have to do it always.

Speaker 2 (00:49:11):

Absolutely. I know it sounds kind of that I'm just saying this because it sounds good, but for me, I always want everything to be as good as it can get. I don't care if it's op or if it's the local demo band. Everyone should be when they leave, even sometimes delays happen and stuff like that can happen, but they should always feel that their product they got from us when it comes to mastering is like that's what they wanted. That's what they paid for. They got the fascination street experience. That's what I want for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:49:46):

By delays you mean

Speaker 2 (00:49:48):

What I mean is sometimes maybe we have a lot of work, so maybe it can take a few days before they get the master, but what I mean is just at the end of the day, they should feel like they are not treated as just some band or whatever. I want them to feel that this is the a fascination street product.

Speaker 1 (00:50:10):

That makes perfect sense. I like that attitude a lot. I've always thought that if you're not going to do that, just don't book the project.

Speaker 2 (00:50:18):

Yeah. But I've never said no either. So

Speaker 1 (00:50:21):

Let's talk about that. I know we talked about it a little bit at the beginning. Nowadays with the amount of work that you guys have, how do you not say no? How do you balance it?

Speaker 2 (00:50:34):

I mean, it's not an amount that is impossible it that I'm stuck with two albums a day. It's not like that. We have a lot of work for sure, but you can always manage, always rearrange your schedule a little bit to facilitate a really tight deadline or something like that. There's always ways, at least this far, there's always been ways to facilitate all kinds of projects when it comes to mixing, of course you might have to say no because a mixing product is way more time, but mastering, you should be able to do a master for sure, unless it's like an insane deadline, but normally it's doable for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:51:20):

So do you ever get situations where you have to deal with very unrealistic expectations from the client? Maybe they send you, so that's a yes. So okay, so I'm asking this because you say you want everyone to have the fascination street experience. Fascination Street is synonymous with really great sounding records, but say you get sent something to master that just, it's just shitty. It's just badly done, and you doing your best is going to only make it mediocre. You're going to be able to take it from an absolute fail to mediocre, which is a miracle, but there's no way that you're going to be able to bring it up to a plus level.

Speaker 2 (00:52:09):

I do absolutely agree, but what I mean with the fascination street experience, what I mean is they shouldn't walk away feeling like, goddammit, we did three revisions and it still didn't end up. We wanted it to. I think most people nowadays know that they can't expect a remix through the mastering, if you know what I'm saying. They know that they can only, there's a limit to what they can expect through mastering. So of course shit in shit out, but you can at least make that poop shine,

Speaker 1 (00:52:45):

Make it a more consistent po.

Speaker 2 (00:52:48):

Yeah, exactly. So I mean, what I mean is not that every album is going to sound like watershed, it's not anything like that, but it's when you understand what mastering can get you, you also understand what a bad master is. Because what I notice a lot is that so many artists and bands and whatever have had bad experience. This bad experience is mastering so many times, and that's where I come in basically, and you show that sure, you've had a lot of bad experiences, but even if this mix isn't perfect, we can still make it sound really cool and make everything in the mix shine as good as possible.

Speaker 1 (00:53:36):

Those bad experiences, man, I call it Studio PTSD, because bands will come into the studio for production having had a bad experience the previous time or something, and they'll carry that baggage with them from the bad experience, whether it was a producer or a mixer or mastering engineer. They'll carry that forward, and I think that one of the challenges as being the new mixer, the new mastering engineer is also to deal with their psychology about that stuff. If they've had a bunch of bad experiences, obviously they changed mastering engineers hoping that it'll be better, but I'm sure still in their heads somewhere they're halfway expecting it to go shitty again.

Speaker 2 (00:54:23):

For sure. I've talked to a lot of the bands that are major in my world at least, that have been visiting us almost every time I hear a story about, we were so happy with the mix, everything sounded so cool, and after maybe the label has their go-to place when it comes to mastering and when they get back their songs, it just sounds like ass. They don't recognize the songs that have always been my goal to preserve the song, the music. It doesn't matter if I don't like the song, doesn't matter if it's a bad mix, but preserve the song, make it sound as good as possible. I'm not interested in making it my own. I think a lot of this kind of a branch of mastering engineers out there that are like, they want to make something their own, this is my touch. My touch sounds like this. That's not me. I've done everything from Billy Eilish to Dimi Bogger, as you said, and I don't use a certain e eq to make it sound, Tony. I always focus on the material at hand only.

Speaker 1 (00:55:32):

I feel like that artistic side of it should be in the mix in the production.

Speaker 2 (00:55:37):

Yeah, I know, but tell that to some mastering engineers.

Speaker 1 (00:55:42):

It's weird. It makes me wonder if they just didn't pick the wrong thing to specialize in.

Speaker 2 (00:55:52):

Probably,

Speaker 1 (00:55:54):

Or maybe in their world, the mastering engineer does that, but I feel like it's one of those things where I've always thought, if you want to play a bunch of solos, that's your thing.

Speaker 3 (00:56:07):

Don't

Speaker 1 (00:56:08):

Play bass. And I'm sure there are some bassists who can do nly shit and keep it cool, but there's three of them in the world. It's kind of like if you want to be a virtuoso and play solos, there's an instrument that's really, really good for that. It's called guitar, and I feel like it's the same sort of thing if you want to add your own artistic touch and your own tone and all that shit. Well, there's something called mixing and producing

Speaker 2 (00:56:42):

For that. Absolutely. But let's face it, mixing is, even though mastering is always being considered the black arts of music production, mixing is harder. It's way more complicated. At least mastering is hard, but not complicated. So I think it might just be people who feel that mixing is too much. I'm going to get into mastering and I can collect a lot of cool stuff, and I can put them on every track that I get here. And yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:57:16):

Dude, you say it's easier, but it's super easy to ruin a mix with a master. So is it really easier?

Speaker 2 (00:57:25):

But it's even easier to ruin a mix by mixing

Speaker 1 (00:57:29):

True, yeah, true.

Speaker 2 (00:57:30):

What I mean by easy is I don't have 200 tracks to keep track of. It's usually just one stereo track, and if it's a good mix, maybe it just needs a little bit of loudness. It doesn't need to be like, I don't need to use any magical stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:57:48):

Well, I think that that's part of the, what's difficult is knowing that, knowing that you don't need to do anything nuts.

Speaker 2 (00:57:56):

Yeah, for sure. But that's experience and also knowing what the clients want. Talking about yz, YZ has such a great and final sound to everything he does, that it's sometimes hard to know if he wants something more or if it's exactly balance wise, exactly where he wants it to be at. So in those cases, it can be almost difficult to know if you need to do anything.

Speaker 1 (00:58:25):

Do you just ask him

Speaker 2 (00:58:26):

Sometimes? For sure. But I mean, everything moves on so quickly. That's kind of what happens here. We never have time to really step back and think too much we have to press on. If he sends me a mix and he is like, this sounds really good as it is, you don't need to do much or anything, then I know kind of that he is already set the standard and balance of everything that he wants. So it might just need small adjustments between songs to make everything come together. But yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:59:00):

Communication man comes down to that. I think at the end of the day

Speaker 2 (00:59:04):

It does for sure

Speaker 1 (00:59:05):

When it comes to knowing what the client wants. So you and Yz have a decade of experience together, so I think that just through experience working with him, you're going to understand his requests. But what about when you're dealing with clients who are not good at communicating things, you have to interpret what they want. What's your process with that?

Speaker 2 (00:59:29):

I would say if I had a superpower, it would probably be that I'm usually pretty good at understanding what a band goes for, or at least what a band, what they have in mind when it comes to references. So I usually know what to reference in order to get what they want. I'm actually pretty good at that. So there's actually a lot of psychology, I would say, when it comes to mastering, you need to, if the band isn't talkative or isn't really wanting to, sometimes the classic thing is like a band saying, we trust you, just do your thing. And when you do your thing, they have a thousand comments afterwards,

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):

Whatever that means. Just do your thing.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. For mastering as a whole, I think it's super important to have a communication with the band. Just talk to them. What do you have in mind? Do you have any references? They don't need to have any references, but just to get a feel for if they want something super loud or if they want just feel 'em out a little bit. That's always good, and something that I think that I've become better at also with the years. I think in the beginning I kind of was hesitant to ask too much, but I don't know if I maybe thought that it was maybe unprofessional. But nowadays I feel it's way more professional to really get a feel for what you're doing. I don't know the band, so I need to understand what they want know. So I feel that it's my,

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):

It's interesting that you thought it was unprofessional. I think at the beginning, a lot of people have this urge to make other people believe that they're working with an expert,

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):

So

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):

You don't need to ask so many questions. Because

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):

Why I said that is also because starting to work here, for me, it was going from the kids league up into NHL or whatever. It was such a huge leap for me, had barely done any real productions, full album productions, and then all of a sudden I'm in a studio with Devin Townsend. It was insane. So I think for me, not starting my own studio and not growing up in the position that I was in a natural way, may have put some ideas in my head that if you're professional, you need to be, you already know what somebody wants or something like that. But throughout the years, I've just realized that keep communication transparent and open and clients will love you more for it than they will feel that you don't need to over do too many questions, but just get a feel for what the band wants and they're going to like you even more for it

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):

Because you give a shit.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):

Yeah, exactly. If you're interested in their music, that's what they want.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):

I have a few questions here from listeners for you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):

Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):

From Philip Self, do you ever have to send stuff back to the mix engineer to fix before you master it? If so, how do you start that conversation? Especially when the mixer could want to charge for revisions and the band may not want to pay for another revision.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):

Yes. I quite often ask if something can be done to a mix. Let's say what I'm mastering, and I feel like the mix is really sounding really good, but that low end is just so boomy and OneNote resonancy that if you don't take care of this in the mix, I have to compensate too much in the master that's going to make it not sound as good as it can sound, and I would say 90% of bands are, or even more are so happy for you to comment and send something back for a quick fix if you feel like this could really make the sound of the master be better at the end if you fix this. I've never, I don't think I've ever experienced someone being mad at me because I say this, I'm very polite in emails, of course, as I think you should. You're providing a service so you shouldn't be like an asshole. But still, I think most people appreciate you taking the time to not just steamroll through it and don't give a crap. Because like I said, that's the experience I want people to have is I as an engineer, cared for what actually happened to the end result, not just limit the hell out of it and just collect the money.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):

I don't know any really good mixers who would charge for that

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):

If

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):

The mastering engineer was like, Hey, I need you to fix something, please.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):

Yeah. That's the second part of the question. I've had the issue that they won't afford it maybe twice in 10 years or something. For me, it's been extremely rare for the client to say, oh, the mixer, they're just going to charge way too much, so we can't afford it, and if they can't afford it, we used to work with what we have, but I always, if there's something that is an obvious thing that could be better handled in the mixing stage, let's at least try to do that first. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):

So a question here from Scott Bennett, what is the most common issue that you see when mixers try to master their own material?

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):

What's it called? Pro L two? Nah, the most common problem is probably, yeah, loudness is probably the most common thing. People, they look at numbers too much. They try to reach those minus five LUFS or whatever it is, and maybe not listening to what's best for the song. Because a lot of mixing engineers, when they're done mixing, I know that a lot of mixing engineers to this day really want, they want a loud master, but you can get, like we talked about earlier, you can get something that sounds loud without smashing the hell out of it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):

Of all the mastering engineers have spoken to who do it for real. When it comes to those numbers, they typically say, yeah, they look at the numbers, but it's not the priority.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):

It can't be, I know the whole Spotify, I know they try and good for them, but I don't sit around looking at numbers at all. If it doesn't sound good, I couldn't care less about numbers.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):

Alright. Question from Toby William Allen. What is the biggest non audio skill you've learned from working with the ends?

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):

Actually, something that I've learned from working with the ends, that is something that I might have not have done at all before. It's just like research yourself before you start asking everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):

Yeah, that is a good one.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):

Yeah, I know I an annoyed him a lot in the beginning with a thousand questions, and I probably do still, but just trying to find the answer to yourself can often be more productive than just asking. Then again, I still feel that it's really good to have that kind of communication when you get to ask people. For some people, myself included, it's easier to understand if someone explains it to me rather than just reading it. But you can get a long way just by trying to find the answer yourself. So that's probably it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):

Well, there's certain kinds of questions where I know that if someone's asking me these questions, they're telling me they're lazy. They don't need me for that answer. So they're lazy and they're inconsiderate. They're not respecting my time. However, there are some things where I would prefer that they ask me because they need me to explain it. Google's not going to explain it as well as I could. They should ask.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):

Exactly. And also as a non-native English native speaking person, sometimes it's just annoying and hard. If you haven't grown up in this business to know the actual term for certain things that you want to know about can be difficult to just come up with. To be fair, most of the knowledge out there is going to be in English and not in Swedish, so that can be tough sometimes if you want to find answers for yourself. It's just like what even is this thing in English?

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):

You guys are great at English though.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):

Oh, are we? I don't know. Phil

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):

In general. Fuck

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):

It.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):

I guess better

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):

Than Americans. So question from Jay. What was it like for you when you took on your first big client and how did you manage the additional pressure that comes with it?

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):

Also, a good question. I'm going to be honest and it's going to sound insane, but I rarely feel pressured by, even if I know it's a big artist, I don't feel more pressure from that compared to just your average album, just because I have such a high lot of pressure on myself for everything I do, my quality check is through the roof usually. I'm usually having a really hard time liking what I do, even though I know that this is going to sound good. Just personally know if I know that I worked on an album, I'm having a little bit of a hard time listening to it afterwards just because I hear all the things I could have done better. But the first really big thing, I think it was the Paradise Lost Draconian Live thing they did when they did the anniversary for Draconian, I dunno how old it was, like 20 years or something, and Ys mixed that and let me master it. That was just huge because I grew up listening to a lot of metallic and everything. Paradise Loss was always on the radar, so it was a name that I saw when I was checking out stuff on the internet. I wasn't a fan myself maybe, but still

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):

You knew the name.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So absolutely. It was something that there was a special feeling to it for sure, but I rarely, and I think that's maybe also a good thing for me that I rarely get over pressured by it being a major client.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):

It's interesting you say that. That shit has never stressed me out either,

(01:09:49):

Which I think is why I am able to do what I do and have been able to do what I've done is because I don't think anyone's special. So it doesn't, I mean, they are, yeah, I, I say that kind of joking. I know that I talk to and work with some of the most amazing people in the world at this shit, but I don't care. I don't care who they've worked with or any of that stuff. I'm impressed by their skills, but it's, it's not like this fan type thing, and so it doesn't pressure me. Obviously, I want certain things to work out, but I don't feel those nerves that they're talking about, and so it's made it very easy. I mean within, it's not easy, but it's made it appropriate. I think you don't get that. I think that that's part of what's allowed you to succeed.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):

Yeah, like I said, it's not that I don't feel pressure. I absolutely do. Like I said, I put a lot of pressure on myself, but I do that for everything I do.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):

It's

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):

Not going to change if it is, it has to be something very close to heart. Like say for example, dream situation, Metallica calls me and want to master. In that case, I'm sure something not only because Metallica, but because that's how I got into metal. It was like I listened to them 24 7, so if it's something really close to heart, that would change. But other than that, I just put a lot of pressure on myself. I know that my thinking is always like, if Ted Jensen can sound this good, I can as well.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):

That's a good way to think of it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):

Somehow I can as well.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):

I bet you though, if you got Metallica as crazy as it would be to book Metallica,

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):

Probably

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):

Everything leading up to it, once you're actually working, I'm sure you would just be doing your work.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):

Yeah, for sure. For sure. I still think that I might be like, Ooh, this is actually Metallica.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):

Well, yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):

But you see what I'm saying? I know Metallica might

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):

Like, it would have to be Metallica,

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):

It has to be Metallica, so kind of a ridiculous example. But other than that, it's just the pressure that comes from myself that is the major part.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):

Yep. I think that that's key. I really do. If you're getting freaked out by the clients, going to have a hard time doing a good job.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):

Oh yeah, for sure. To be honest, working here, I think me not being into Extreme music the first two years I worked here kind of helped because I didn't know any of the bands that we were working on. It was like, oh, okay, this is a band, and maybe it was something actually huge within the genre, but I didn't know about them. So that kind of helped the first years.

Speaker 3 (01:12:42):

But

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):

Nowadays I'm, I know about so many people and know about so many bands, so nowadays that wouldn't happen, man. But I think it actually helped me a little bit, at least sounds like it would being oblivious.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):

Question from Ted Jr. On a scale of one to 10, how worried do you get about sample peaks in your finished masters?

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):

One maybe to do the douchey mastering engineer? The answer you always hear, see on every master engineering forum, use your ears. If it sounds good, it sounds good. I don't, I always double check everything, but I don't like it. Of course, it's a problem that going resampling and whatever, it's of course an issue, but you have a lot of tools nowadays that you can at least preview stuff while working that you can at least see how it translates when you change formats and stuff like that. But sure, at the end of the day, would I like a reassemble to be perfect? Of course, of course. But it's not something that, let's bump it up to a three, at least

Speaker 1 (01:13:57):

A three,

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):

But it's not something that

Speaker 1 (01:14:00):

A soft three,

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):

A soft three, that's not my main issue when it comes to mastering.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):

All right. Last question from Nick Heti, how often would you say you stem master a song instead of getting just the stereo file?

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):

Maybe one in 20, maybe one in 20 projects. So not in one in 20 songs, but

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):

Good. I'm glad to hear that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):

Actually, right now we have more of them just going, but it's not the most common thing. Most people are happy going with their stereos, and when people ask me, I always say, sure, I make more money out of doing STEM mastering, but it's not like I don't hate STEM mastering as much as I know some people do. I also know that it's, even if the end results can be way better by doing STEM mastering, I also know that it's easier to end up in me messing up some levels or whatever and just creating unnecessary work for myself and for the client as well. That has to start revising guitar volumes and stuff like that in the mastering stage. That's not what I want.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):

Makes sense. I skipped a bunch of questions about Whaty cues you use or what compressors you use. I just want people listening to know that I don't think that that's going to help you, and if we do something with you on URM on video, then we'll go into that stuff, but I don't think that in the context of a podcast, it's going to help. And you already said you pretty much use the same shit that everyone already has, so they've already got it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):

I would say that 99% of what I do when it comes to EQ is in the box. Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):

It doesn't matter, in my opinion. The whole point isn't what you're using, it's how you're using it and they've already got all the tools they need for the most part.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm sure most of the people in the community has more plugins than I do, actually. Kind of. I've just set up a new system here, so it's kind of a bare system, so I'm only, I only installed what I need,

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):

So it's got like two plugins,

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):

Maybe not that bad, but it's not that much. You can absolutely reach great results using your in the box stuff for sure. Totally. But would I love to have a plethora of outboard EQs? Yes, for sure. But it's, oh, why not? Yeah, exactly. But the problem is I do have some outboard EQs, but the problem is the rate. We're doing stuff nowadays and especially people getting better at knowing what they want and maybe ask for revisions, revising stuff with outboard gear is just annoying and the factor, annoying versus effectiveness. Effectiveness usually wins.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):

Yeah, good way to put it. Alright, Tony, it's been a pleasure having you on. I think this is a good place to end the episode. Very much enjoyed it and thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):

Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):

Alright then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post some of your Facebook and Instagram or any social media you use. Please tag me at a 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 EYAL at M dot acm y 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.