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00:00:00Unless you're the artist, you are never making your own record, ever.
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00:00:03And you've got to stop trying to make your own record on other
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00:00:07people's music. That's Andrew Scheps, a man that needs little introduction
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00:00:11in the audio world. He's a Grammy winning engineer and mixer who's worked with icons
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00:00:15like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Adele, Metallica, and Jay Z.
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00:00:18Today we're talking about what it takes to have a career as an engineer in
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00:00:22today's recording industry. We hit it all from the technical skills you need. A
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00:00:25parallel compressor should be more compressed than you would ever
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00:00:29put on the insert directly because you only want to blend in
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00:00:33a little bit. But the way to think about parallel. Compression in general is
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00:00:37through the mindsets you must have. The guaranteed way
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00:00:40to not have a career is to sit at home being mad at the career
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00:00:44you don't have. How the current state of production has transformed
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00:00:48mixing. There's no more
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00:00:51tracking. It's all mixing constantly from the very
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00:00:55first track. And what that means is
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00:00:59that mixing is totally different than it was even
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00:01:03five years ago. Why? AI will probably never make lasting
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00:01:07art. But it can't step outside the training set. And if
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00:01:10you think about everything that, like, went, whoa,
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00:01:14what's that? And you got super excited about it. It was either the first time
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00:01:18anyone had done it or it's the only time anyone had done it. And to
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00:01:20always remember when we can. Work on a project with a musician or an artist
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00:01:24that is making the music we wish we could do. What's better than
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00:01:28that? Nothing.
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00:01:33So I look at your career, I see evolution and
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00:01:36diversification, where you've gone from like analog to all
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00:01:40digital. You were early on atmos. You made a plug in with
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00:01:43waves. You taught yourself to code so you could have a stem
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00:01:47printing solution. So you've added skills and you've kind of like, stayed on the
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00:01:51forefront of engineering. Right. So where do you
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00:01:54think engineering is heading from here? What do you think it looks like,
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00:01:58say, five years? It's a really good
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00:02:01question because there's so many things in play right now. Obviously there's
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00:02:05AI. Apparently Spike Stent has just announced there
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00:02:09will be an AI. Spike stent. I just saw that. Saw that? Yeah.
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00:02:12The website is not terribly informative. I have a feeling it was written
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00:02:16by AI, but, yeah, I mean, Spike's a
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00:02:20super smart dude and he's got his son working on it and stuff, so I'm
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00:02:23sure it's going to be pretty amazing, whatever it is. But that's been
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00:02:27the holy grail. Of the tech companies forever, right. Is to do that.
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00:02:31Because the size of the
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00:02:35market for professionals who make records is
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00:02:38nothing compared to the size of the market of people who
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00:02:42like messing around with music. So the
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00:02:45better their results can be, the happier
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00:02:49they're going to be. And that's going to be amazing. So that will
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00:02:52absolutely drive that kind of thing, just like with online mastering.
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00:02:56And, you know, it's already happened, but the mixing has been a tough nut to
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00:03:00crack. And I think it'll be really interesting to see what, what
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00:03:03Spike's thing is about. And I'm sure everyone else is working on it too. So
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00:03:07that's one thing. The other thing is
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00:03:12there's no more
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00:03:16tracking. It's all mixing constantly
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00:03:20from the very first track. And what
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00:03:23that means is that mixing is
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00:03:27totally different than it was even five years ago for me on most
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00:03:30projects because I am locked into stuff that everyone
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00:03:34loves, but it's not because it's tracked that way. So it's not
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00:03:37individual track processing, it's overall mix
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00:03:41processing. And that makes it cool
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00:03:44because some of it's done, but it also means it's
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00:03:48very difficult to back out of anything because other stuff starts to fall
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00:03:52apart because it's all processing that has everything in it
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00:03:56instead of just like, oh, they did something really weird with that one
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00:03:59drum mic, I can do something different with it. It's not that. It's like
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00:04:03that mic got weird because of the 40 tracks of
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00:04:07background vocals. Right. So that's just gonna keep going. And I. But
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00:04:10what's interesting about that is that moves mixing down
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00:04:14into the creators realm, which is
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00:04:18why something like an AI spike stent
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00:04:21is going to be exactly the right product for what's happening.
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00:04:25Interesting, because. Yeah, I agree. It's like mixing is becoming,
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00:04:29in my experience as well, parallels that less is more because so much has been
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00:04:33done before. Yeah, yeah. And just in an
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00:04:37inside out way. I mean, that mirrors mixing when you're working on eight track or
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00:04:4016 track because everything is tracked. I. So that you put the faders up,
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00:04:44you pan it, and that's the record, but it's
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00:04:47totally the inside out version of that. Yeah. Okay, well, okay, so you brought
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00:04:51up the spike thing. I know that came out yesterday. So that dates this interview
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00:04:54or was announced yesterday. I have an opinion about this and
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00:04:58you can fight me on this or agree, whatever. I think that AI and
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00:05:01mixing at first, it causes people
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00:05:05to get better. Like people that are good, that aren't charging a premium, have to
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00:05:09get great to separate themselves. But I think where the problem
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00:05:12lies is the people that are trying to do the
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00:05:16$100 mixes because they just graduated college, they're
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00:05:19not going to be mixing their peers work because their peers can
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00:05:23have spikes. AI or
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00:05:27whoever's AI, do it for them. So does that mean that
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00:05:31down the line, the craft suffers and there's a generation of people
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00:05:35that kind of miss out on learning it? Yeah, I mean,
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00:05:38that's certainly possible, but at the same time,
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00:05:42podcasts, online classes, stuff inside of paywalls,
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00:05:45outside of paywalls, I mean, that's exploded.
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00:05:49So the opportunity to learn is better than
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00:05:53it's ever been. I mean, I had to go to a four year college and
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00:05:56spend a ridiculous amount of my parents money to get a degree
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00:06:00to learn anything. Same.
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00:06:03Now, you don't have to do that. So it's
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00:06:06democratized on both sides of it. But where it's dangerous
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00:06:10is you have to have some foundational knowledge to
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00:06:14learn from anything that happens with the AI tools. I mean, you know,
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00:06:17ozone AI, it listens to stuff, and it fits
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00:06:21eq curves and things, and it's really good at it. But if you
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00:06:25don't go through the modules that it set up and, like, bypass them one
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00:06:29at a time and tweak some things, and then you're like, oh, okay,
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00:06:32that's what they're doing. And then maybe you'll do it yourself. Then you're
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00:06:36never going to become a mixer. It's just not going to happen because anyone can
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00:06:39slap an ozone on there, and I'll do it for a hell of a lot
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00:06:43less than $100 because I'll mix 500 songs a day.
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00:06:47If all I got to do is slap an ozone on there, we're done.
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00:06:51So it's not about that. And I think this is where the
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00:06:54whole AI thing always trips up a little bit,
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00:06:58is that AI can actually be creative,
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00:07:02but it will only work within its training set. And the training set is
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00:07:06hundreds of thousands, if not millions of things. It's easy to think, like, oh, it
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00:07:10listened to ten songs, and, you know, these training sets are gigantic,
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00:07:13but it can't step outside the training set. And if you think
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00:07:17about everything that, like, went, whoa, what's that? And
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00:07:21you got super excited about it. It was either the first time anyone had done
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00:07:25it, or it's the only time anyone had done it. And it could be anything.
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00:07:28It's the big guitars on creep. It's the distortion on Beck
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00:07:31Odelet. That shit had never happened, but
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00:07:35that's what grabs people and really makes them want to listen. So there'll be this
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00:07:39amazing, huge pool of what you would
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00:07:43then consider middle of the road stuff with middle of the road mixes that might
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00:07:46sound really good when you just put them on, but that's not lasting
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00:07:50art, which is really what we're trying to do. Yeah,
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00:07:54well, I think it drives. It drives people to, like, embrace their
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00:07:58preferences even further as opposed to trying to match what the radio sounds like, because
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00:08:01that's what the AI is going to do. So, you know, like, somebody like Chad
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00:08:05Blake is perfect example. Like, you know what you're going to get? You're going to
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00:08:08get Chad Blake's sound. I think that's going to drive more people to make
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00:08:12artistic choices, and that's probably going to be better. I hope so.
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00:08:15Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So kind of along these lines of I've heard you say
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00:08:19that you believe there's no rules, and I agree with that. I think, like,
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00:08:23you've said what comes out of the speakers. If it sounds good, it's good.
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00:08:26But I do think that when you're young and you're coming up, you're coming out
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00:08:30of college, you're searching for rules because you don't know what to do.
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00:08:34How do you think somebody balances that beginner's
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00:08:37mindset with whatever
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00:08:40the rule is? It's hard
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00:08:44because it used to be you would work in a studio and you'd see
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00:08:48lots of different people do stuff, and so you would learn
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00:08:51the rules while watching people do different
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00:08:55things. So, you know,
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00:08:58tutorials are great if they're good.
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00:09:02And I think that it's hard because it's not
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00:09:06free, but stuff behind a paywall is generally better because otherwise they'd be
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00:09:10out of business. So mix of the masters and pure mix and those
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00:09:13companies, especially pure mix for, like, pure educational videos.
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00:09:18It's an amazing resource. Absolutely amazing. So
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00:09:21the thing, like, there are no rules is true, but there are
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00:09:25fundamental laws of physics and math and electronics
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00:09:28and all that kind of thing. And that's never going to change that stuff.
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00:09:32So that's your toolbox. So you
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00:09:36want to know that really well because then you can be super creative. Otherwise,
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00:09:40you're at the point where you're putting ozone on and you have no idea what
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00:09:43it's doing. You'll never learn anything like that.
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00:09:46So you need to be the person who takes the toaster
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00:09:49apart to see how it works, you know, and hope you don't
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00:09:53die when you plug it in. But it is that, like, you
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00:09:57can learn it from a million different places instead of having to get a gig
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00:10:00at a studio, which is great, but you've got to
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00:10:04pursue the knowledge of it. There is no shortcut to being
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00:10:08good. There just isn't. No, no, because it's
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00:10:11the musicality that makes it good. That's what makes people want to listen again, not
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00:10:15because the snare sound is better. Do you think you discover that
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00:10:19musicality as an engineer over time, or do you think some people just kind of
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00:10:22inherently find it quick? Both.
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00:10:26I mean, in the same with the actual engineering. I mean, there were people I
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00:10:29went to college with, and everything they ever did sounded like a record. Like
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00:10:33Neil Avron. Holy shit. I mean, his stuff. First year of
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00:10:37college was insane, and I feel like I'm still not
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00:10:40the level he was sonically when he started. And this
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00:10:44is. It's 40 years ago. It's 40 years
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00:10:47ago this year. Ah, I'm old.
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00:10:51But the creative thing, I mean, that
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00:10:55just. I mean, think about a musician. You know, Coltrane didn't
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00:10:58pop out of the womb with sheets of sound. I mean, there's a progression,
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00:11:02and again, there's the learning your instrument. There's like, he studied scales. For him not
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00:11:06to. We don't have to make Coltrane the center of this, but Eddie Van
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00:11:09Halen practiced a lot, too. You get
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00:11:13more creative as you go. There's some people who are super creative right
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00:11:17away, and for them, it's just about learning the tools to pull it out of
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00:11:20their head. But I have definitely learned how to listen
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00:11:24and learn to find the things that I really want to bring
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00:11:28out because I think emotionally, that's going to make people connect and stuff
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00:11:31like that. When you're busy, you have an opportunity to practice things while you're
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00:11:35making records. You can toss up an extra microphone, do something weird to it. Nobody
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00:11:38ever has to hear it except for you. Are there ways that you think engineers
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00:11:42can practice these days and kind of hone their skills outside of just actually
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00:11:46working? Yeah, because if they have a laptop and
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00:11:49interface and a couple of microphones, they can go make a record.
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00:11:53So you were saying earlier it's unlikely that
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00:11:57the younger ones are going to be mixing stuff by their peers, but they will
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00:12:00if they go to a club and say, I like your band, let's go make
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00:12:03a record in your living room. Yeah. Nobody's
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00:12:06expecting anything at that point, which means
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00:12:10you can experiment and you can be a creative partnership
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00:12:13with the band, trying to find sounds or something. That's cool. And
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00:12:17I think that that's a great way to do it. And I couldn't do it.
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00:12:20I mean, you think that maybe it was better before,
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00:12:24but it wasn't. I mean, if you couldn't get into a studio. I mean,
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00:12:27I bought gear very early on so that I could
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00:12:31do stuff without having to get into a studio because nothing I wanted to work
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00:12:35on had any money. Yeah. Access to technology, I think,
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00:12:38is pretty powerful. And like you said, the access to
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00:12:42knowledge is amazing. Okay, I feel like I know how you would answer this question,
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00:12:45but would you tell somebody right now that they should go to an engineering school
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00:12:48and pay that money in 2024?
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00:12:53It's really hard to say, to be honest. Like, when I went to school, a
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00:12:57four year college degree was a big deal. Like, you had to have one. There
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00:12:59was just no way you weren't going to have that now. So unless you're
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00:13:03in a specific field, sometimes it's hard to argue that a four year degree is
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00:13:07worth it. Like, if you want to be in tech, tech companies hate it when
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00:13:10you've got a four year degree because they want you to learn the way they
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00:13:12want you to do it. Right. Whereas you would think that you would
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00:13:16need an advanced degree in computer science before you could even
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00:13:20start. So that's part of it. And I think
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00:13:23that there are people who get stuff out of schools and there are people
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00:13:27who don't. So I think it's actually
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00:13:31really personal. There are people who can learn really well. And for me,
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00:13:35it was the best thing I could ever have done because I want to know
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00:13:37how stuff works so that I don't even have to think about it.
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00:13:41But when anything happens, I know why it's happening, and I can react to it
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00:13:45and make it do what I want. Some people, that doesn't work,
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00:13:49that's not the thing. So it's impossible for
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00:13:53me to say one way or the other. I agree with. That's kind of how
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00:13:56I think you have to understand what kind of learner you are. Like, if you
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00:13:59are a self starter, more independent, just want to get your head in there
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00:14:03and do it, then I don't think you need to do it. But some people,
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00:14:06they like the structure. They need the classroom. They need that. And the other thing
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00:14:10is, I met a ton of people, a ton of people who do what
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00:14:14I do, and a lot of them are still in the business. I mean, I
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00:14:17went to college with John Paterno and Joe Barisi,
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00:14:21and I just call them up when I got a question, and it's fantastic.
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00:14:25So meeting your peers like you were talking about.
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00:14:28Yeah, that's invaluable, really. But you don't have to
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00:14:32pay a huge amount of money and go to a multi year school for that.
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00:14:35Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, a lot of my closest friends that I trade gigs with, we
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00:14:38all went to school and moved out here in the same few years, and
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00:14:42that's how it is. I want to shift a little bit to more of a
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00:14:45career thing. A lot of the questions that come up on the show are
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00:14:49things I'm curious about or things I'm struggling with, and I don't always
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00:14:53admit that, but that's, you know, you just did. Exactly.
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00:14:57Now everybody knows, but you get to sit down with cool people and ask questions.
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00:15:00Everybody in this industry kind of believes that there's, like, one credit on the horizon
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00:15:04that's going to, like, change their life and, like, make them
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00:15:07an engineer star. Right. And so I've been lucky to work on a few
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00:15:11records that went number one, and every time I have that feeling
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00:15:15where I'm like, this is it. It's going to launch. This is going to change
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00:15:17everything. And, like, as you probably know, not much changes.
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00:15:21Right. So do you have advice to producers or
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00:15:24engineers that think that that's about to happen to them? How. How they should actually
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00:15:28think about it, how they could maybe take advantage of it, build momentum? Like, what
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00:15:32are your experiences throughout your career? Well,
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00:15:36I mean, look, I've been ridiculously lucky, but if you
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00:15:39look at my discography over the last
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00:15:4335 years, because I did go to school for four years, so not 40
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00:15:47years. It's a slow burn. I mean, I had a lot of
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00:15:50assisting and vocal editing and vocal tuning, like, through the boy
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00:15:54band era, I was tuning vocals. That's how I paid the mortgage,
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00:15:58literally. It's terrible. And there were a
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00:16:01couple of things that were a big deal to a
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00:16:05few people, so it definitely jumped me up a little bit. Like 99
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00:16:09problems. That was a little bit of a jump. And then
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00:16:13the Adele record opened up doors to some stuff, but I don't really work in
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00:16:16that genre that often, so it's not like, oh, now I'm
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00:16:20set. But look, that was a
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00:16:23mixing credit on album of the year of,
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00:16:27like, the biggest selling album three years straight or something like
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00:16:31that. So there's one of
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00:16:34those, you know, it's nothing something.
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00:16:38I think what's more important is that there were projects when I
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00:16:42was working on them, and I thought musically, like, this is
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00:16:45my favorite thing I have ever worked on, and if this
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00:16:49doesn't come out, I'm done, like the music business and
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00:16:53whatever, and twice that I can think of just off the top of my head,
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00:16:56they didn't come out. Or if they did, absolutely nothing happened. The promo was
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00:17:00terrible, and there are these amazing records that nobody's
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00:17:03heard of. And so instead of
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00:17:07saying, like, well, I'm going to get out of the business, you
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00:17:10realize how incredible it was to have
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00:17:14two opportunities to work on something you love that
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00:17:17much. Yeah, it sucks when it's not going well. And you
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00:17:21really do think that. And I've seen there's so many people
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00:17:25who are, like, mad about a
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00:17:28credit they feel they deserve but didn't get. Like, you know,
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00:17:32I engineered some overdubs. I should get an engineering credit. And,
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00:17:35I mean, that's the whole, that's a whole different topic about, you know, making sure
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00:17:39you take care of your credits before the project starts because you will never get
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00:17:42a credit that you think you should get if you haven't already negotiated it. So
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00:17:46you can take that question off the list. It's a brutal,
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00:17:49brutal business, and
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00:17:53I am just ridiculously lucky that I've, you know, made it or whatever,
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00:17:57but I'm still scrambling a lot of the time. Like, I'll go without
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00:18:00work and then I'll have some work that I take because I didn't
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00:18:04have work, but it's low paying, but it's taking up a huge amount of time.
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00:18:08And then all of a sudden a gig comes in that actually would pay for
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00:18:12some stuff, but I can't take it because, you know, there's always a juggling
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00:18:15act. I just happen to be juggling the really good balls most of the time.
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00:18:19Yeah. But right after the Adele win, right after the Grammys, I didn't work for
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00:18:23three months. I had absolutely no work. January, February,
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00:18:26March of whatever year that was none. Not
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00:18:30a single paying gig. How'd you feel like that? I
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00:18:34curled up in a ball and I just go and do something
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00:18:37else. One time when that happened, I went and started teaching a class at
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00:18:41UCLA. Another time, I helped a buddy out who had a low
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00:18:45voltage installation thing. He did audio, but also stuff that
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00:18:49made the curtains open and close and tvs come up out of people's beds.
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00:18:54You know, you gotta stay busy. Yeah, look, the last thing I'm gonna do is
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00:18:57complain and whine. I'm lucky.
Speaker:
00:19:00Yeah. Well, I don't know. I don't think.
Speaker:
00:19:04I hate to use the word luck. It's more like it
Speaker:
00:19:07works, but it's building trust with people. It's following through,
Speaker:
00:19:11it's being prepared when the opportunity comes. And the more you have those
Speaker:
00:19:15things stacked up in your favor, the more it seems like you're lucky,
Speaker:
00:19:19because the right people call, you. Follow through, they call again.
Speaker:
00:19:23Cycle continues. Yeah. The guaranteed way to
Speaker:
00:19:27not have a career is to sit at home being mad at the career you
Speaker:
00:19:31don't have. You know, if you want to be in the right place at the
Speaker:
00:19:34right time, you got to be everywhere all the time. That's the thing. So you've
Speaker:
00:19:37got to be out there seeing bands, meeting people, joining
Speaker:
00:19:41stuff. Join Naras, join AE's. Maybe
Speaker:
00:19:45if you're a little more technical. There are groups in the UK, there's the
Speaker:
00:19:48MpG. Like, there are groups everywhere where you get to just go hang
Speaker:
00:19:52out and talk about plugins. Do it. One of those people will offer you a
Speaker:
00:19:56gig at one point. Yeah. Or just bring you up to somebody. It's like, top
Speaker:
00:19:59of mind. It's like, oh, you have to just be in the
Speaker:
00:20:03space. Okay. So this kind of leads to another question I was gonna
Speaker:
00:20:06throw in somewhere. Is there a limiting belief that you think holds people back
Speaker:
00:20:10in this industry? I mean, for me, it's imposter syndrome.
Speaker:
00:20:14I've got a gigantic, colossal, world sized
Speaker:
00:20:18case of that. I don't know that it holds me back,
Speaker:
00:20:21because fortunately, while I'm actually digging in
Speaker:
00:20:25on something, unless it's just a disaster, I don't have it
Speaker:
00:20:29until I send a mix. But I have it going
Speaker:
00:20:33into sessions. If I'm tracking, I mean, I've pulled over to the side of the
Speaker:
00:20:36road and thought about, well, I could call in sick and just go
Speaker:
00:20:40home, like crazy stuff. And then you get there and you get going, and
Speaker:
00:20:44it's okay. So I think it's that, for
Speaker:
00:20:47me, I will do stuff almost like I'm in a trance. It's like, okay,
Speaker:
00:20:51I'm doing it. Like there isn't a choice anymore. I'm doing it, and then
Speaker:
00:20:55it starts happening, and then it's okay. It's like, you remember,
Speaker:
00:21:00this is what I do. This is my thing. So there's that, and then the
Speaker:
00:21:04opposite of it is what we were just talking about, which is
Speaker:
00:21:0890% of the gig, everyone assumes you know everything
Speaker:
00:21:12about what to do, to do your job. So 90% of it
Speaker:
00:21:16is, don't be a dick, which is my other phrase. It's whatever
Speaker:
00:21:20comes out of the speakers. And don't be a dick, because you need to be
Speaker:
00:21:23able to be somebody people want to have in the room, and they
Speaker:
00:21:27will gladly take someone who's a little slower, who isn't a
Speaker:
00:21:30dick. That is the truth. And I think
Speaker:
00:21:34that's something that you learn in the big studios because you
Speaker:
00:21:38see it. You see when you get kicked off of a session and when an
Speaker:
00:21:42engineer producer doesn't want you as the assistant again. But I think when you're
Speaker:
00:21:45independent, you're working in your backyard now and you're just working with your friends. I
Speaker:
00:21:48don't think people understand that the way that they would if they came up through
Speaker:
00:21:51the system. Yeah, well, it's also
Speaker:
00:21:55the sort of studio hierarchy, like in a bigger studio. You learn very,
Speaker:
00:21:59very quickly that the assistant, if they have an idea, tells the engineer, the engineer
Speaker:
00:22:03tells the producer, the producer tells the artist. Nobody except the
Speaker:
00:22:06producer talks to the artist unless it's your 12th record with them
Speaker:
00:22:10and it's one big happy family. But when it's. Yeah,
Speaker:
00:22:14when it's you in your backyard, you think that you're always making your own record.
Speaker:
00:22:18Okay, so that's the lesson to learn, though, is unless you're the
Speaker:
00:22:21artist, you are never making your own record, ever.
Speaker:
00:22:25And you've got to stop trying to make your own record on
Speaker:
00:22:29other people's music. You're making their record. And if you're not present
Speaker:
00:22:33understanding what it is they're going for, even if you don't like it, you
Speaker:
00:22:37think it would be so much better. That's not the
Speaker:
00:22:41job. Yeah, there you go. There's another one. That's good.
Speaker:
00:22:45They're falling out today. There's a clip. We've got a clip, people.
Speaker:
00:22:49I can't not talk a little bit of technical stuff with you, although I would
Speaker:
00:22:52love to just do career all day. I'm looking at my notes. Let's talk a
Speaker:
00:22:55little bit about adding skills to your repertoire.
Speaker:
00:22:59Taught yourself to script and created bounce factory. Did
Speaker:
00:23:03you learn to script to create something like bounce factory, or did you realize the
Speaker:
00:23:07power that you had when you started automating things and, like, learning
Speaker:
00:23:11how you could make the computer work for you? It's a little
Speaker:
00:23:14bit of both where, like, I've tried to teach
Speaker:
00:23:18myself programming because I'm a total geek and thought, oh, that'd be really cool. Yeah.
Speaker:
00:23:22And several times in my life, and it never went well because I didn't have
Speaker:
00:23:25a project. Then I discovered sound
Speaker:
00:23:29flow and immediately built a couple of things, like tiny
Speaker:
00:23:33things. I've got my function. My f 19 key
Speaker:
00:23:37swaps the input state of the bottom track in my session. Doesn't matter
Speaker:
00:23:40what session's open because that's how I monitor things. The rough or
Speaker:
00:23:44my previous mix is on an audio track at the bottom. If I switch to
Speaker:
00:23:47input, it's the live mix. I used to have to scroll to the bottom of
Speaker:
00:23:50the screen and then click the input button. Now I don't. That took me
Speaker:
00:23:54about ten minutes. And that's when I knew, like, okay, so for a while, it
Speaker:
00:23:58was just automating, like, little things, session prep or setting
Speaker:
00:24:01preferences or stuff like that. And then I started
Speaker:
00:24:05writing the bounce script that most people who use
Speaker:
00:24:09soundflow will eventually write, and it'll be very, very specific to
Speaker:
00:24:12themselves, which is fine, that's great, because that's
Speaker:
00:24:16all you need. But then I started generalizing
Speaker:
00:24:20it when I realized how many different types of things I bounce.
Speaker:
00:24:24And. Yeah, so I learned because I had
Speaker:
00:24:27to learn because I had to write this app. But there were a couple of
Speaker:
00:24:30apps before. There's the offset counter, because you
Speaker:
00:24:34can't offset the minutes and seconds counter in pro tools. So you open up
Speaker:
00:24:38this counter, put the cursor anywhere you want, hit a button. Now
Speaker:
00:24:41that's zero, and you can locate to the numbers you just got in the email
Speaker:
00:24:45with all your mix notes. Exactly. It's genius. So
Speaker:
00:24:49it was that it started off as that, and then it just turned into bounce
Speaker:
00:24:52factory, which was two full years of just coding because
Speaker:
00:24:56Covid. I mean, that's. I discovered bounce factory during COVID So. That
Speaker:
00:25:00was one of your Covid adventures? Like, I started a podcast. You made bounce
Speaker:
00:25:04factory? Yeah, yeah, those two things. That's what I did. What
Speaker:
00:25:07are some of your favorite automations? Music or non music that aren't like the
Speaker:
00:25:11ones that people know about, like bounce Factory or the
Speaker:
00:25:15counter? I think all of mine are music
Speaker:
00:25:18just because I use it when I'm sitting in the chair and I don't have
Speaker:
00:25:21hue lights and, you know, but I know a lot of people controlling
Speaker:
00:25:25everything with it. Prep a session
Speaker:
00:25:28in less than ten minutes now. So
Speaker:
00:25:32it imports tracks from my template, but it knows which format it
Speaker:
00:25:36is because I told it. Oh, this is stereo. This is atmos with all the
Speaker:
00:25:38crap. This is atmos from stems. It imports the right tracks, it sets the
Speaker:
00:25:42preferences the right way. I can color code and add to groups
Speaker:
00:25:46in seconds now. Like, it's
Speaker:
00:25:49basically every single time I do anything that's
Speaker:
00:25:53bothering me. I could do it again in four or 5
Speaker:
00:25:57seconds, but I will stop for 2 hours and write a script, and then I'll
Speaker:
00:26:00never have to do it again. Yeah, I have
Speaker:
00:26:04an extremely long list of things that I want to build, but I
Speaker:
00:26:08don't take the 2 hours to build them. But it's a long list.
Speaker:
00:26:11But you know what? When you do it. It's so
Speaker:
00:26:15awesome. It is. You're happy because you're
Speaker:
00:26:19not doing the thing. It isn't just. It's not going to make me sad. It
Speaker:
00:26:23actually makes you happy. And you're super creative. As soon as it's done running
Speaker:
00:26:27that script and you can get back to work. Yeah. Like I told you
Speaker:
00:26:31when we chatted, like a week or so ago, I found bounce factory right
Speaker:
00:26:34after I had my daughter. And it was all of a sudden,
Speaker:
00:26:38like, what am I going to do? Like, how am I going to do this?
Speaker:
00:26:41And to be able to automate something to that level and know that I can
Speaker:
00:26:44print an entire album of atmos stems, because God knows,
Speaker:
00:26:48like, somebody's like, we're gonna mix atmos and you're like, I don't want to print
Speaker:
00:26:51those stamps. I don't have that time. It's just like, I don't know anybody
Speaker:
00:26:55that fights against automation just makes me a little bit crazy. There's one of my
Speaker:
00:26:58friends that's gonna listen to this and he's gonna know who he is, but
Speaker:
00:27:02I just. I wish everybody would just get on board a little bit, you know?
Speaker:
00:27:05Well, but, you know, if they're happy doing it that way,
Speaker:
00:27:08then cool. I guess if you're happy, right? Yeah,
Speaker:
00:27:12yeah. I mean, if it starts impacting your life because he can never get out
Speaker:
00:27:15of the house because he's printing stems or she printing stems 24 hours
Speaker:
00:27:19a day, then, you know. But see, the difference for me, first
Speaker:
00:27:23of all, it's that it's exactly what you're saying. You can do other stuff. I
Speaker:
00:27:26can go watch something with my wife. I can go on a walk. I can
Speaker:
00:27:30sleep, that kind of thing. But it's also
Speaker:
00:27:33for atmos. I would have been printing ten or twelve stems per
Speaker:
00:27:37song because it's such a pain in the ass. And it's a twelve song record.
Speaker:
00:27:40That's still 144 stems, and that's a
Speaker:
00:27:44lot. Yeah. I'm printing 40 or 50 every. I
Speaker:
00:27:47basically print every single thing separate so the audio is
Speaker:
00:27:51baked in. But if I want to split up the background vocals
Speaker:
00:27:55into a sphere of background vocals, I have them separate. I
Speaker:
00:27:59can do it. Yeah. Without even thinking about it. Yeah. And it's not. It's
Speaker:
00:28:02not a heavier lift for you because it's just you've set it up. Because I
Speaker:
00:28:06agree. If I wasn't automating my bounces, I would
Speaker:
00:28:10be trying to do atmos with far fewer stems for my stereo mix
Speaker:
00:28:14because just out of time. And now you have the freedom.
Speaker:
00:28:17There's been this thing over the last, I don't know, ten years, where
Speaker:
00:28:21labels want you to deliver a multitrack. It's like, well, get that from the producer.
Speaker:
00:28:25That doesn't come from the mixer. But then, you know, none of the sounds are
Speaker:
00:28:29there. There have been edits done since the producer, like, they sent you a new
Speaker:
00:28:32vocal and all that stuff. So now I actually have a
Speaker:
00:28:36multi track where you can just put the faders up and you're really, really close
Speaker:
00:28:39to the mix. Yeah, that's a big deal for the band.
Speaker:
00:28:43You know, I get calls from Hozier's
Speaker:
00:28:46musical director. Front of house. Actually, I think he's front of
Speaker:
00:28:50house. I don't remember. But he's the guy who emails me and says, hey, I
Speaker:
00:28:54need some stuff for this song. I would have to open
Speaker:
00:28:58it up and print specific things, but I just send him the folder, and
Speaker:
00:29:01he loves it. He just pulls up whatever he needs. He can submix on his
Speaker:
00:29:05own. And there you go. You eliminate back and forth and extra questions of,
Speaker:
00:29:09like, can you split these? I already did. Yeah, it's all done.
Speaker:
00:29:13The multitrack delivery, that sparks a question. I feel like there's a debate on the
Speaker:
00:29:16Internet. I don't know. Maybe this is just my algorithm. You never
Speaker:
00:29:20know about the multitrack mix session
Speaker:
00:29:24being the mixer's intellectual property and
Speaker:
00:29:27not sending it out. Yeah, I will never give anyone a
Speaker:
00:29:31session. Absolutely not. But you would print
Speaker:
00:29:35everything, commit it, and send it. Yeah, and it's not
Speaker:
00:29:38because I feel like everyone should have it. And they can take apart
Speaker:
00:29:42my thing and see, but they can't see what I did, and they don't know
Speaker:
00:29:46what the source material was. So whatever, they could hear
Speaker:
00:29:49a cool delay effect or something, but
Speaker:
00:29:53it's because the artist is going to need it. They're gonna need it.
Speaker:
00:29:57And you can't trust labels to hold onto anything. I mean, you know, witness
Speaker:
00:30:00Sony setting half their catalog on fire, and
Speaker:
00:30:04you realize they only have one copy of everything, like crazy. So if a
Speaker:
00:30:08major's gonna do that, a small label, you know, it's gonna
Speaker:
00:30:11flood. Like something's gonna happen. And this way,
Speaker:
00:30:15you have the music, which is the whole point. So
Speaker:
00:30:19it used to bug me when it was a huge amount of work, when it
Speaker:
00:30:22took forever. No way in hell was I sending that to you. But
Speaker:
00:30:26now I'm doing it anyway. Now, if you don't want atmos on your record, I'm
Speaker:
00:30:29not doing that. So there isn't a multitrack to send, but if I'm
Speaker:
00:30:33doing the atmos then that's what I want. And so once it
Speaker:
00:30:37exists, I'll send it. If I mix it in stereo and they're getting
Speaker:
00:30:40someone else to do the atmos for whatever reason, they don't get 50
Speaker:
00:30:44stems. I split it up reasonably, but they're getting ten or
Speaker:
00:30:48twelve, you know, because that's the deal. Enough for live, enough
Speaker:
00:30:52for sync, no crazy overlaps. I mean, that's, that's
Speaker:
00:30:55rational. So for you it's not, it's not about an IP thing.
Speaker:
00:30:59It's about you don't want the session because five years from now it's not going
Speaker:
00:31:02to work. So take these stems. These are better. Yeah, the IP thing would be
Speaker:
00:31:06the session and that's because, and this
Speaker:
00:31:10is another thing where we were talking about how production is now mixing. So this
Speaker:
00:31:13gets very, very murky. But let's say they've
Speaker:
00:31:17hired somebody to mix the record and it's not going well, but
Speaker:
00:31:21they like some of the stuff that person has done and then they hire me
Speaker:
00:31:25to mix the record. I should absolutely not
Speaker:
00:31:28get what they've done, I should get what they were given. I agree with
Speaker:
00:31:32that, but at the. Same time I absolutely have
Speaker:
00:31:36to get whatever created this ridiculously processed rough
Speaker:
00:31:39mix that sounds amazing. You cannot send me raw
Speaker:
00:31:42tracks and then a mix that's got
Speaker:
00:31:467000 plugins on it. And I would spend my entire life trying
Speaker:
00:31:50to recreate what was already done so that I could tweak it.
Speaker:
00:31:53So I have to get something that adds up to the rough. Yeah,
Speaker:
00:31:57yeah. This makes me feel so much better about my life. The fact that
Speaker:
00:32:01you're echoing these things because the battle of the rough
Speaker:
00:32:05mix sounding nothing like the files is just like, it defeats the
Speaker:
00:32:08purpose because by the time I match your rough mix, a, it's not gonna be
Speaker:
00:32:12the same, it's going to be my sonic preferences. And b, I'm tired.
Speaker:
00:32:16Like, I'm no longer creative. And all we did was get back to zero. That's
Speaker:
00:32:19a huge, huge job matching it. And I'm not good at matching mixes.
Speaker:
00:32:23I'm terrible at it. But here's the other thing, is that,
Speaker:
00:32:27you know, we're saying how there's so much mixing as part of the production. Now
Speaker:
00:32:31on my phone at the gym, it's just cycling music. Now, I've listened to
Speaker:
00:32:35enough records that Apple suggests things. It does some really
Speaker:
00:32:38weird stuff sometimes. Like it'll play the same song twice in a row, like
Speaker:
00:32:42really. But every once in a while stuff comes on
Speaker:
00:32:45because like, I've listened to something I've done ten years ago, whatever, and
Speaker:
00:32:49a song will come on and it's like, wow.
Speaker:
00:32:53And sometimes I think, like, man, that sounds really good.
Speaker:
00:32:57And it's because I got raw tracks, but there wasn't a rough mix that was
Speaker:
00:33:00anything other than those raw tracks. Yes. So
Speaker:
00:33:04things are recorded with intent. The sounds mean something and they're what
Speaker:
00:33:08they're supposed to be. But I could do anything, and some of those
Speaker:
00:33:11mixes are better than anything I've done on projects
Speaker:
00:33:15where it comes to me sounding great. So you'd think, like, oh, well, that's an
Speaker:
00:33:19easy gig. It already sounds great. Just fix a couple of things. But
Speaker:
00:33:23that can take as long as mixing from scratch.
Speaker:
00:33:27But you can't mix from scratch, which means you also can't, like, you're
Speaker:
00:33:31having to be creative inside someone else's brain at that point,
Speaker:
00:33:34which is really, really difficult for me. Okay, Dell's
Speaker:
00:33:38advocate, do you think that those mixes are your favorite mixes because they are all
Speaker:
00:33:42your sonic taste, or do you think they're
Speaker:
00:33:46arguably better mixes? Technically? No, I think they're better. Okay. I
Speaker:
00:33:50really do. I think that there are.
Speaker:
00:33:54I mean, part of it, obviously, is because it's my taste, so I like
Speaker:
00:33:58them. Right? Yeah. I mean, it
Speaker:
00:34:01has to be that, because what's the other filter? I'm listening in. But I
Speaker:
00:34:05also do think that's why they're better, because I
Speaker:
00:34:09had. I had control over everything. So it isn't that,
Speaker:
00:34:13like, I couldn't make the vocal sound better on a really mixed
Speaker:
00:34:16mix. Like, sure, that's my job and that's what I'm going
Speaker:
00:34:20to do. But I can't shape everything around the vocal.
Speaker:
00:34:24I can't get into the mid range the same way, so I can't make
Speaker:
00:34:28things have separation or space if they're already smashed
Speaker:
00:34:31together, because then things start to fall apart. So,
Speaker:
00:34:35yes, it is because it's my filter, but I'm
Speaker:
00:34:38right. I'm definitely not right.
Speaker:
00:34:42Oh, that's good. That's good. Okay, so let's do
Speaker:
00:34:46atmos for a second. We keep touching on it, right. My
Speaker:
00:34:49perspective of atmos at the moment is that it's
Speaker:
00:34:53a label artist game, and it's a little bit more about pleasing apple than it
Speaker:
00:34:57is making art. But you are doing significantly more atmos than I
Speaker:
00:35:00am. Do you see artists and producers getting excited?
Speaker:
00:35:04And I should say that I love it and I think we should do more
Speaker:
00:35:07of it. Do you see artists getting into it? I guess is the
Speaker:
00:35:11question. When artists hear it on
Speaker:
00:35:15speakers, their minds are blown. If it's a good mix.
Speaker:
00:35:18There are so many bad atmos mixes. I mean, there are more
Speaker:
00:35:22ways you can screw up a song in atmos than in stereo.
Speaker:
00:35:26Absolutely. You can pull stuff apart, and now the groove is gone, the song is
Speaker:
00:35:29gone. Nobody wants to hear it, so that's a problem. But
Speaker:
00:35:33when it's good, and by good, I don't mean it sounds good. I couldn't
Speaker:
00:35:37care less if stuff sounds good, but it feels like their song.
Speaker:
00:35:41You cannot do that in stereo. You can't. It's
Speaker:
00:35:45impossible. And there is something emotionally
Speaker:
00:35:48that just can destroy you if you're listening to
Speaker:
00:35:52a good atmos mix that you know you'll enjoy
Speaker:
00:35:56it in stereo, but you cannot get across what happens. And there are
Speaker:
00:36:00actually people doing doctorates on why that's the case. Interesting.
Speaker:
00:36:03This isn't just like, hey, I'm in a room, I like atmos. Like, this is.
Speaker:
00:36:07It's clinically proven stuff,
Speaker:
00:36:11but it is a format for speakers, so
Speaker:
00:36:15that's the thing. And 99% of the consumption is
Speaker:
00:36:19on headphones. So that requires the ability
Speaker:
00:36:23of the listener to externalize, to hear something as if it's coming
Speaker:
00:36:26from elsewhere. And I can't do it
Speaker:
00:36:30like four or 5 seconds a week, things will explode
Speaker:
00:36:34out while I'm working on the headphone version of a mix. And then it
Speaker:
00:36:37collapses again, and then I'm really sad. But
Speaker:
00:36:41it's not just one service. I mean, it used to be that
Speaker:
00:36:45people said, oh, well, Apple will bury your album if you don't deliver atmos.
Speaker:
00:36:48Well, no, they have a lot of playlists that are
Speaker:
00:36:52immersive only. That's true. Obviously, you
Speaker:
00:36:56can't be on that playlist, and they're pushing the format. It's not that
Speaker:
00:37:00they're dumping your record down to the bottom of the bin, it's that your record
Speaker:
00:37:03can't go on all the stuff they're putting on the front because that's what they're
Speaker:
00:37:07trying to promote, and now they pay more for it. So there's a little bit
Speaker:
00:37:10of incentive. I mean, I have no idea what the numbers are, but.
Speaker:
00:37:13But the format itself, like, talk to anybody who has mixed
Speaker:
00:37:16atmos. And they just love it.
Speaker:
00:37:20Absolutely love it. The problem is that people that don't like it have never heard
Speaker:
00:37:24it in a good room, and they've never got to do it on speakers. And
Speaker:
00:37:27I just. I feel like. I wish there was more focus on making the binaural
Speaker:
00:37:31experience better, because then you would bring more people on board.
Speaker:
00:37:34Well, but, like, one of the things is, if you don't, we can go
Speaker:
00:37:38geeky for a second. If you don't have a personalized HRTF,
Speaker:
00:37:42it doesn't matter what they're doing on the encoding side, it's not going to work
Speaker:
00:37:45well for us it might because you're using a
Speaker:
00:37:49generic HRTF which is based on something and it's based on
Speaker:
00:37:52white northern western hemisphere. It's not
Speaker:
00:37:56demisphere men. Okay, so we have
Speaker:
00:38:00a better chance of it working for us, but asian women
Speaker:
00:38:04have absolutely no chance of it working without having a
Speaker:
00:38:07personalized one. So finally, with phone true depth
Speaker:
00:38:11cameras and stuff like that, you can get a reasonable HRTF and that will
Speaker:
00:38:15help. But the good thing is, is that consumer
Speaker:
00:38:18speakers are getting better sound bars that will hook up to a couple speakers
Speaker:
00:38:22behind you and a subwoofer. Now all of a sudden you've got a five one
Speaker:
00:38:26system with up firing tweeters and you can start to get the feel of
Speaker:
00:38:29it because it's not like, oh, the speakers have to be in the right place.
Speaker:
00:38:33You just need to feel like you're in the middle of whatever the hell's
Speaker:
00:38:37going on, instead of it just being in front of you like a television. Yeah,
Speaker:
00:38:41yeah, I. That's the thing that I'd never gotten into binaural is I'm one of
Speaker:
00:38:44those people that I don't hear anything behind. I think that's a thing for
Speaker:
00:38:47some people, right? Some people can. They get the rap and I don't, I just
Speaker:
00:38:51get the room directly behind. You is actually almost impossible.
Speaker:
00:38:55Okay. Once it's off to the sides, you should be able to localize a little
Speaker:
00:38:58bit. And I can't, but it's, I mean, back to the seventies,
Speaker:
00:39:02there was a, you know, binaural sound effects record or something like that.
Speaker:
00:39:06And it's because everything is completely
Speaker:
00:39:09balanced. Delay, frequency, all of that. Just like if
Speaker:
00:39:13it's right in front of you. Right. So it's almost impossible to hear
Speaker:
00:39:17that something is behind you. But as it's moving, that's the thing where
Speaker:
00:39:21people who are lucky get to hear it moving, and I don't, it sounds
Speaker:
00:39:24weird. Have you. I've heard, I haven't heard it. The Sony
Speaker:
00:39:28360 tech, I've heard that. That is actually pretty amazing in headphones. Have you
Speaker:
00:39:32heard that? I've done a lot of Sony 360 mixes. It's a different
Speaker:
00:39:35headphone algorithm. Again, I never
Speaker:
00:39:39externalize, so I hear the worst case version of it.
Speaker:
00:39:43I'm hearing the encoding. I'm not hearing a binaural
Speaker:
00:39:46mix. All right. Yeah. Anyway, I don't
Speaker:
00:39:50know. I like atmos. I hope more people get on board, but
Speaker:
00:39:54everything you just mentioned is, I feel like, the barrier for why
Speaker:
00:39:58people. Hate on it and for people like us
Speaker:
00:40:02who can make it to the west coast in January. Go to Namm,
Speaker:
00:40:05because PMC has a booth. Neumann has a booth. There are probably
Speaker:
00:40:09others where you can just sit there and listen to people's atmos mixes all
Speaker:
00:40:13day. And if you don't walk out of there at least wanting to try it,
Speaker:
00:40:16I'd be surprised if you like music and listening to
Speaker:
00:40:20music, it's like, I am so excited to play some of my stuff
Speaker:
00:40:24at NAmm because my room is tiny. Like, it is
Speaker:
00:40:28literally the smallest room you can put an atmos system in. A
Speaker:
00:40:32friend of mine who I went to college with works for Dolby, and he was
Speaker:
00:40:35visiting, he's like, let me measure your room. And he's like, yeah, you've got a
Speaker:
00:40:38couple inches to spare. Yeah. So I can't
Speaker:
00:40:42hear the separation in the speakers at all. Right. Right.
Speaker:
00:40:46But I get to Namm, put it up in one of those booths, and
Speaker:
00:40:50it's just awesome. That's amazing. And the
Speaker:
00:40:53PMC booth is just stacked with speakers. It's like, more speakers and chairs in
Speaker:
00:40:57there. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. It's crazy.
Speaker:
00:41:00It's amazing. Okay, I wanted to ask you. We'll step away
Speaker:
00:41:04from atmos parallel compression. I feel like a lot
Speaker:
00:41:08of people, when they're starting out,
Speaker:
00:41:12they're using parallel compression because they hear engineers like yourself talk
Speaker:
00:41:16about it, and they just take an 1176, they hit all buttons in,
Speaker:
00:41:20they pin the meter, they push it up until something sounds bigger, but they never
Speaker:
00:41:23think about that compressed signal. So can we talk about the actual
Speaker:
00:41:27compressed signal? How are you approaching that compression
Speaker:
00:41:31and attack and release? And what are you thinking about? Well, you're not going to
Speaker:
00:41:34like my answer that much because it doesn't matter what it sounds
Speaker:
00:41:38like on its own at all. Like, not even a little bit. Okay.
Speaker:
00:41:42Because, like, one of the drum parallel crush things
Speaker:
00:41:45in my template, and it's been there since the very first time I
Speaker:
00:41:49was doing anything in the box, which is before I had a console. It's
Speaker:
00:41:53Fairchild plugin. Right? Right. You put that on drums? Sure you
Speaker:
00:41:57do. So it's Fairchild. It's set up kind of like it would be on
Speaker:
00:42:00drums. If you listen to it on its own, it's pretending to be a
Speaker:
00:42:04fairchild, which means it's pretending to have low end and be
Speaker:
00:42:07slow and whatever. When you blend it in as a parallel thing, stuff gets
Speaker:
00:42:11brighter. Yeah. Okay. So I don't know
Speaker:
00:42:15why. So there you go. Okay, here's the
Speaker:
00:42:18thing. A parallel compressor should be more compressed than
Speaker:
00:42:22you would ever put on the insert directly because
Speaker:
00:42:26you only want to blend in a little bit. But the way to think about
Speaker:
00:42:29parallel compression in general is if you put an
Speaker:
00:42:32insert compressor on something, it reacts to the loud stuff right below
Speaker:
00:42:36the threshold. It leaves everything alone above the threshold. It turns it down
Speaker:
00:42:40a lot. When? Well, if you're compressing a lot
Speaker:
00:42:44at a high ratio, when you've got something
Speaker:
00:42:47absolutely crushed and you're blending it in,
Speaker:
00:42:51you still have your uncompressed signal. So you've got full range with
Speaker:
00:42:55all of your transients. All the stuff above what the threshold would have
Speaker:
00:42:58been completely untouched. And then you start
Speaker:
00:43:02slamming this slab of the same sound, but
Speaker:
00:43:06doesn't have the dynamic range, and you're blending it in.
Speaker:
00:43:10It's not exactly this, but technically you're making the quiet
Speaker:
00:43:14stuff louder instead of the loud stuff quieter. And the
Speaker:
00:43:18character of that is what I like. It has nothing to do
Speaker:
00:43:21with. It's bigger if you do it one way or whatever. I
Speaker:
00:43:25love the sound of an uncompressed vocal. I love the sound of
Speaker:
00:43:29uncompressed drums. The transients on uncompressed
Speaker:
00:43:33kicks and snares are like, they surprise you. They're so
Speaker:
00:43:36awesome. You start compressing, the drum kit will sound cool, you'll get some great
Speaker:
00:43:40noise going on. But the kick and snare don't make you laugh when they're way
Speaker:
00:43:44too loud. Like that's a thing. There's some emotional thing to
Speaker:
00:43:48really getting pummeled with the transients. Yeah. So you use parallel
Speaker:
00:43:51compression to get the drums so that you can slam a bunch of guitars over
Speaker:
00:43:55them, but still hear them. But you still have your transients,
Speaker:
00:43:59so that's why. But to be fair,
Speaker:
00:44:02over the last year, year and a half, I've gotten to the point
Speaker:
00:44:06where I am using almost no parallel compression anymore.
Speaker:
00:44:09Wow. Almost none. The rear bus hasn't made
Speaker:
00:44:13an appearance in a mix in probably a year.
Speaker:
00:44:18How are you getting that same quiet stuff
Speaker:
00:44:22up? I don't know.
Speaker:
00:44:26I mean, part of it is if I'm mixing something that has already
Speaker:
00:44:29been mixed, well, then I don't need it. There's no room for it
Speaker:
00:44:33anyway. That's also true. But even on the stuff that isn't like that,
Speaker:
00:44:37it's not about technically what I get at the other end.
Speaker:
00:44:41It's that I no longer like the sound of it as much. Right. So
Speaker:
00:44:45mixes are taking me longer because I'm not just like ooh, cool.
Speaker:
00:44:48That is my starting point, because I really do have to do everything
Speaker:
00:44:52individually, which I'm sure part of the Internet will be very happy, because
Speaker:
00:44:56apparently putting anything on your mix bus is cheating. I didn't realize that,
Speaker:
00:44:59but everything I do is bespoke. But you're
Speaker:
00:45:03silly if you don't have a template of some sort, because it's, like automating
Speaker:
00:45:07stuff. You're going to be building the same stuff over and over and over.
Speaker:
00:45:11But, yeah, I just don't like the sound of it as much. And my
Speaker:
00:45:15mixes are a little quieter because of it, which is crazy for me because I'm
Speaker:
00:45:18the loud guy. Yeah, but parallel compression,
Speaker:
00:45:22don't spend a huge amount of time listening to what the parallel thing is. Spend
Speaker:
00:45:25a huge amount of time listening to it as you blend it in as a
Speaker:
00:45:29parallel thing, which I think. Is the best
Speaker:
00:45:32advice all around for all mixing people are like, what's your mixing tip? I'm like,
Speaker:
00:45:36when you're turning the guitars up, listen to the vocal. Like, listen to
Speaker:
00:45:40everything else. Like, yeah, you're right. Solo, we all. We all know solo
Speaker:
00:45:43doesn't always help. Yeah, I mean, it's good to find out, like, what it is.
Speaker:
00:45:47Yeah, but then it doesn't matter what you do until it's back in context.
Speaker:
00:45:51So. Listening to everything you said, I translate as faster
Speaker:
00:45:55attack, though, because you. Do you want to kill those transients in those parallel tracks
Speaker:
00:45:58or you let those live? No, because it'll actually double them up. I mean,
Speaker:
00:46:02compressors in general. I'm slow attack, fast release. Okay.
Speaker:
00:46:06Okay. But, yeah.
Speaker:
00:46:10Before we get into my closing questions, I wanted to ask you. Well, first I
Speaker:
00:46:13want to say thank you for always sharing so much. You're on so many podcasts,
Speaker:
00:46:17you share so much with the engineering community, so thank you. But is there a
Speaker:
00:46:21question that you always wish somebody would ask you?
Speaker:
00:46:27No. Perfect. I mean, I could make a
Speaker:
00:46:30joke about, you know, ask me what I want for dinner.
Speaker:
00:46:34I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I'm lucky that I do get to
Speaker:
00:46:37talk about this stuff all the time, and I do mix with the
Speaker:
00:46:41masters seminars. Like, that's one thing the Adele record got me. They got in
Speaker:
00:46:45touch and wanted me to do a mix of the masters seminar, so I've done
Speaker:
00:46:4813 of them now, 14, something like that, and I just did one a
Speaker:
00:46:52few weeks ago, and I'm basically
Speaker:
00:46:55talking for a week, so I get to
Speaker:
00:46:59say everything. But what's great about it is you put your process
Speaker:
00:47:03into words, and some people, like oh, don't inspect the process. But I
Speaker:
00:47:07like to inspect the process because not only do
Speaker:
00:47:10you have to articulate, you don't have to say why you do it,
Speaker:
00:47:14but you say what it is that you're actually doing, but also because I do
Speaker:
00:47:18them every year I see the stuff that's changed and
Speaker:
00:47:21obviously changing from the console to the laptop was a big deal,
Speaker:
00:47:25but there's so much that changes every single
Speaker:
00:47:29year about how I think about things and what I do that it's
Speaker:
00:47:33great, but it means that I've managed to say everything
Speaker:
00:47:36at least a thousand times. I mean, is there anything you feel
Speaker:
00:47:40like no one's asked me? I mean, no, that's one of. When I was
Speaker:
00:47:44like, oh, I got to reach out to Andrew. He's on my dream list. And
Speaker:
00:47:46I was like, like, what the fuck am I going to ask him? Well,
Speaker:
00:47:50see, okay, so here's what we'll do. We'll take up that time with me
Speaker:
00:47:53saying that everybody has to go listen to low roar, the artist low roar.
Speaker:
00:47:57Which I started listening to this morning, sounds amazing. So there you
Speaker:
00:48:01go. I believe that right before this podcast,
Speaker:
00:48:04I may have recorded the last thing on the last
Speaker:
00:48:08album. So cool. Amazing. Very depressing
Speaker:
00:48:11in a way. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you guys can look
Speaker:
00:48:15at the Internet and see what's up with loroar. It's very sad, but
Speaker:
00:48:18this album is now almost done. That's great.
Speaker:
00:48:22I just thought of a question that no one's asking you, probably because this question
Speaker:
00:48:26doesn't exist. I meant to ask it earlier, so I'm cheating a little bit, trying
Speaker:
00:48:29to figure out how to get this question in. Back to AI mixing. What do
Speaker:
00:48:33you think about the idea of this is basically what Spike presumably has
Speaker:
00:48:36done from what we've readdeveloped. Training an AI on your
Speaker:
00:48:40own work to then operate as an assistant for yourself.
Speaker:
00:48:44Yeah, I think that that's
Speaker:
00:48:48great. But I think again, and I'm really
Speaker:
00:48:51curious to know what they did with Spike's stuff.
Speaker:
00:48:55To get a good model, you need
Speaker:
00:48:59hundreds of thousands of things that it learns
Speaker:
00:49:02from 10,000 things. I mean, Spike
Speaker:
00:49:06has mixed a metric fuck ton of records, but I
Speaker:
00:49:10don't know that he's mixed hundreds of thousands of songs. So is it
Speaker:
00:49:14enough? Maybe it's been supplemented with
Speaker:
00:49:18stuff he likes. You know, I don't know. I don't know what they're
Speaker:
00:49:21doing at all. But, like, for me, what the
Speaker:
00:49:25AI is amazing for is separation of things. Like the
Speaker:
00:49:29low roar record. Most of it was tracked with Ryan at a piano,
Speaker:
00:49:32singing. But I needed to do stuff with the vocals. And
Speaker:
00:49:36I actually managed to split the bleed out of both the
Speaker:
00:49:40piano mics and the vocal mics so that I could treat them
Speaker:
00:49:43completely separately. And if I wanted the vocal bleed
Speaker:
00:49:47from the piano mics because it was part of the vocal sound, I have
Speaker:
00:49:50it separate. But it's not in the piano mics.
Speaker:
00:49:54Yeah, that's huge. And that's AI. But that's been
Speaker:
00:49:58trained on probably a couple of million recordings of vocal
Speaker:
00:50:01and piano to be able to do that. Now, did you do that? Was that
Speaker:
00:50:05with RX or was it with something else? No, that was with
Speaker:
00:50:08Steinberg spectralayers, which at the moment, if you're not a
Speaker:
00:50:11total geek and running stuff in these Google collabs
Speaker:
00:50:15online, by far the best piece of software I've used for
Speaker:
00:50:19this stuff. It can be a little clunky, but when it works, it's
Speaker:
00:50:22insanely good. And its tools are crazy.
Speaker:
00:50:26Absolutely crazy. There's one, they're like weird
Speaker:
00:50:29magic Photoshop select tools where one, you
Speaker:
00:50:32can drag it along what looks like the fundamental and it will
Speaker:
00:50:36grab it and all the harmonics. So you can grab a
Speaker:
00:50:39piano note with all of its harmonics and pull
Speaker:
00:50:43it out manually and copy it to a different layer.
Speaker:
00:50:47And when it separates things, if you don't mess with it bit for bit,
Speaker:
00:50:51it goes back together. There's zero audio loss. Every bit is
Speaker:
00:50:54somewhere. That's wild. It's ridiculously cool. I mixed a
Speaker:
00:50:58record where a lot of the drums were recorded, where the
Speaker:
00:51:01overheads weren't cymbal mics, they were absolutely the kit and that was
Speaker:
00:51:05a big part of the drum sound. But on a couple of the songs there
Speaker:
00:51:09was some symbol that was crazy loud and I needed
Speaker:
00:51:13to turn the cymbals down for 16 bars, split
Speaker:
00:51:17the overheads into cymbals, kick, snare, turn the cymbals down.
Speaker:
00:51:20What? And the cake and snare don't change at all.
Speaker:
00:51:24And this is for stereo mixing. A lot of people talk about the demixing to
Speaker:
00:51:28make yourself more source material for atmos or whatever. Spectral
Speaker:
00:51:31layers might be the best money I've spent in years.
Speaker:
00:51:35It's incredible. That is. That is amazing. Well, I'm
Speaker:
00:51:39glad that we pushed that question into the end. Even though
Speaker:
00:51:42I almost let it go. I didn't answer your question.
Speaker:
00:51:46I mean, look, the idea of being able to train your own stuff is
Speaker:
00:51:50incredible. None of us have enough material to make it actually work
Speaker:
00:51:54very well. I never thought about that thing that sucks. Like with the Beatles
Speaker:
00:51:57stuff that they did, separating
Speaker:
00:52:01the things so that they could do the Atmos mixes it is
Speaker:
00:52:05a much more specific data set because they had the recording.
Speaker:
00:52:08But then if they wanted to split the bass out, they had every single
Speaker:
00:52:12performance of that bass part. So
Speaker:
00:52:16it knows what order the notes are coming in, and that's how they trained it.
Speaker:
00:52:19So the Peter Jackson thing is trained with every,
Speaker:
00:52:23like, that model only knows about that song, period.
Speaker:
00:52:26That's nuts. That's it. But it can pick the bass
Speaker:
00:52:30out because it's always Paul playing the bass, same
Speaker:
00:52:34line, everything's the same. That's wild. Do you think that Peter Jackson
Speaker:
00:52:37Tech will ever enter the world?
Speaker:
00:52:41I don't know. I don't know. There's always talk of it. But again,
Speaker:
00:52:45I think that it's not generalized tech,
Speaker:
00:52:49it's specific. So you'd have to go train on how to train it
Speaker:
00:52:53to get anything done. And how many of us have datasets that
Speaker:
00:52:56are the right thing? And I'm going by hearsay. I've never talked to
Speaker:
00:53:00anybody, but I've heard that that's what it does.
Speaker:
00:53:04They trained it by other performances of the same part.
Speaker:
00:53:07So what do you have as a job where that would
Speaker:
00:53:11work? Nothing. I've never in
Speaker:
00:53:15my life had something where that would work. That's
Speaker:
00:53:18true. So, you know, that's amazing. All right, well,
Speaker:
00:53:22I know you've got to get back to your day. I've got the last two
Speaker:
00:53:25questions that I hit everybody with, which I was. Supposed to look at, and I
Speaker:
00:53:28didn't. Well, if you didn't, it makes it more fun.
Speaker:
00:53:33Was there a time in your career that you ever chose to redefine what success
Speaker:
00:53:36meant to you? Well, we already talked about it, actually. Those
Speaker:
00:53:39projects where it was like, if this isn't huge, then everything's wrong
Speaker:
00:53:43with the world and all of that. And, yeah, I've tried, and
Speaker:
00:53:47it's really difficult, but I have tried
Speaker:
00:53:50constantly to make the success that I
Speaker:
00:53:53get to work on some stuff that I still want to listen to when I'm
Speaker:
00:53:56done that I'm actually really proud of,
Speaker:
00:54:00and that's hard, but it's, you know,
Speaker:
00:54:04when it happens, it. That's what. That's why we're doing it. None
Speaker:
00:54:07of us are doing it to get rich. You know, I bought a modular, so
Speaker:
00:54:11I'm doing all right. But, you know, you're not doing it to be on MTV
Speaker:
00:54:15Cribs, which anyone under the age of 30 won't even know what that is.
Speaker:
00:54:19We're doing it to make music that we love. And
Speaker:
00:54:22we're in a position, the people who do what we do, where we can't
Speaker:
00:54:26make the music ourselves. So when we can work on a project with a
Speaker:
00:54:30musician or an artist that is making the music we wish we could
Speaker:
00:54:33do, that's the best. I mean, what's better than that? Nothing. Nothing.
Speaker:
00:54:37Nothing. I think people think that when you're at the top of
Speaker:
00:54:41your career that every day you're doing, like, your favorite song ever. But
Speaker:
00:54:44that's just not. That's not the case. Oh, no. Absolutely not. I
Speaker:
00:54:48mean, I'm so lucky to have the low Roar project because
Speaker:
00:54:52for six albums over, I mean, I
Speaker:
00:54:55work. I've been working with Ryan for twelve or 13 years or something like
Speaker:
00:54:59that. I've had album after album. That is my
Speaker:
00:55:03favorite music I've ever worked on. But that's six
Speaker:
00:55:07records. Exactly. Only six. And there's other stuff I've worked on
Speaker:
00:55:10I love. I mean, there's lots of stuff I've been very lucky to work on,
Speaker:
00:55:14stuff that I like, but. Yeah, but the other part is you
Speaker:
00:55:18do do this to pay your bills as well. But if you can't
Speaker:
00:55:22take that part of it, then do something else to pay your bills so
Speaker:
00:55:25that you still love it when you work doing what we're doing. Because if
Speaker:
00:55:29you start not liking this, what's the point? It's
Speaker:
00:55:33brutal. It is a brutal, horrible job where everything you
Speaker:
00:55:36do is completely subjective. You can think you've done the best thing ever
Speaker:
00:55:40that took you five weeks, and they just go, nope, I don't like it.
Speaker:
00:55:44Yes, yes. It reminds me of my January.
Speaker:
00:55:49You're just like, this is the. I love this. And they're like, we're not gonna
Speaker:
00:55:52use it. You're like, anytime. I really like it. They hate it.
Speaker:
00:55:57Yeah. I can almost say that as well. Yeah. Every time. It's my
Speaker:
00:56:01favorite. It's not theirs. Yeah. Okay, so last
Speaker:
00:56:04question before you go. What is your current biggest goal and what's the next smallest
Speaker:
00:56:08step you're going to take to go towards it? I really should have
Speaker:
00:56:12read the questions beforehand. Like, Tony
Speaker:
00:56:15Maserati has this great thing where he has a yearly
Speaker:
00:56:19review where he does exactly what you're talking about. Like, okay, so what are my
Speaker:
00:56:23goals? How am I going to get there? And he's got like, okay, here are
Speaker:
00:56:26the steps I'm going to take. And then he has a meeting with himself in
Speaker:
00:56:29a year to say, like, okay, have I done that? Have my goals changed? What
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00:56:33did I, you know, which I think is great. I mean, a short
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00:56:37term goal, just selfishly, is
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00:56:40I'm going to try and get bounce factory out there a little bit more
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00:56:44because I love working on it. I actually love the coding because it isn't
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00:56:47subjective and I would love for that to kind of
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00:56:50cushion. So I don't have to work on records. I don't want to. And, you
Speaker:
00:56:54know, again, people think you're all day, every day. That is
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00:56:58absolutely not the case. I need to work. I have to work
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00:57:02because I like electricity and water and food.
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00:57:06So, you know, like, everybody, again, in a good
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00:57:09position. So I don't want to get, you know, trolled over this. And then
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00:57:13the next thing is to just try
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00:57:17and find, like, what is the next low roar thing going
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00:57:20to be for me, if there is one? There may not be. I mean, a
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00:57:23lot of people would never even have one, so I'm
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00:57:27super lucky. So I've got, what am I going to
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00:57:31do with the legacy of Loroar? Like, I'm going to be doing a vinyl box
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00:57:34set and things like that, but I don't want it to just disappear. So
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00:57:38I have no idea what the first step is with that, though. That's unknown. So
Speaker:
00:57:42that doesn't answer your question at all. It's good, though. I'm with it.
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00:57:45Well, I think it highlights diversity, and I feel like it doesn't
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00:57:49matter how long you've done this. Having diversity in
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00:57:54income allows you to do the records you love because the record you
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00:57:57love might not be the one that's going to pay your bills. So if something
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00:58:00else does, whether it's music related or not,
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00:58:05that makes your life better as a musician? Yeah, absolutely. I mean,
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00:58:08I love making the plugins because I'm making plugins that I actually wish
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00:58:12existed, but at the same time, that's a little bit of extra money and
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00:58:16get enough of those things, and it just takes some pressure
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00:58:19off. Yeah. Which is good, because I think all of us can smell a
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00:58:23gig that's going to really suck, and it may have nothing to do with the
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00:58:26source material or the music. It's usually about the people
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00:58:30and, you know, going in that you really wish you could say no. Yeah.
Speaker:
00:58:34Yeah. Everybody's been there. Everybody's been there. If you enjoyed this one and
Speaker:
00:58:37it's got you thinking about how you can. If you could better build your sonic
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00:58:40identity as a producer or engineer, then you're gonna want to check out my interview
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00:58:43with Tony Hoffer, the producer mixer behind Beck, Midnight Vultures, the kooks,
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00:58:47inside in, inside out. M 83, midnight city and many more.
