Speaker:
00:00:00
I'm just going to say it. You don't need any more mixtapes. Nobody needs any
Speaker:
00:00:03
more mixtapes. Don't. Cl. Don't. Hey, do not click that mixtape.
Speaker:
00:00:09
What's up, y'all? Welcome back to Progressions. My name is Travis Farance. I'm an engineer
Speaker:
00:00:12
and mixer based here in Los angeles with nearly 20 years of experience. Got
Speaker:
00:00:16
some Grammy noms and number ones and all that accolade bs. But what's important to
Speaker:
00:00:20
know for this video is I'm kind of old, like almost pre
Speaker:
00:00:24
Internet old. And why that's important is that I learned to
Speaker:
00:00:28
do this job before mixtape, YouTube and before social
Speaker:
00:00:31
media. The access to information that is available today is
Speaker:
00:00:35
amazing and should be empowering to all of us to learn
Speaker:
00:00:39
basically everything. But there's one problem, actually,
Speaker:
00:00:42
let's not call it a problem, let's call it a feature. There's one feature of
Speaker:
00:00:46
this current era and I think we all need to be aware of so that
Speaker:
00:00:50
it doesn't hold us back. So when I came to LA, it was 2006. I
Speaker:
00:00:53
still bought CDs. The Internet was for shreds videos and
Speaker:
00:00:57
social media was in its infancy. I think you still needed a college email to
Speaker:
00:01:01
be on Facebook. So if you wanted to be a recording engineer, you basically had
Speaker:
00:01:04
two choices. Go get a job in a studio or go to an audio
Speaker:
00:01:07
school and then go get a job in a studio where you relearn everything you
Speaker:
00:01:11
just paid to learn. So outside of some industry magazines like Sound
Speaker:
00:01:15
on Sound, Mix or Tape, up there just wasn't a lot of access
Speaker:
00:01:19
to knowledge about the craft without working in a studio and learning it from a
Speaker:
00:01:23
person who learned it from another person who learned it from another person. I was
Speaker:
00:01:26
fortunate in that I started my career at the legendary Capitol Studios in Hollywood. The
Speaker:
00:01:30
people that I was learning from were some of the best that ever sat behind
Speaker:
00:01:34
a recording console. I'll never forget the first time I walked into Studio A while
Speaker:
00:01:37
a session was going. It blew my mind what it sounded like. It
Speaker:
00:01:41
sounded like what I thought was a final mix, but it was just the
Speaker:
00:01:45
band live off the floor during tracking and watching those
Speaker:
00:01:48
guys and listening to what they were doing. Those were my mix tips.
Speaker:
00:01:52
It's not actually that different from watching some tutorials on YouTube. I would just be
Speaker:
00:01:56
off in the corner watching how the session went down, the same way that you're
Speaker:
00:01:59
watching a video right now. The difference was that there was no voiceover describing
Speaker:
00:02:03
the process or, you know, zoom ins on the computer screen or anything like that.
Speaker:
00:02:06
But in some ways it was better, right, because you had to listen to try
Speaker:
00:02:09
to understand why people were making the choices that they were making. Then after
Speaker:
00:02:13
the session, if it felt appropriate, you could ask a few questions to the engineer,
Speaker:
00:02:17
producer, look at the racks to see what kind of compression was going on, check
Speaker:
00:02:20
out the EQ on the console, go in the live room, see where the mics
Speaker:
00:02:23
ended up, and then you go home. And it's what happened when you got
Speaker:
00:02:27
home. That's the big difference between when I started and today.
Speaker:
00:02:31
Once I got home, there was no content to watch. Sure,
Speaker:
00:02:34
there were some blogs and books, but really what you did when you went home
Speaker:
00:02:37
was you opened up whatever daw you had and you just messed
Speaker:
00:02:41
around, which wasn't always that exciting if you didn't have anything fun
Speaker:
00:02:45
to play with, right? So we just never went home. We'd stay at the
Speaker:
00:02:48
studio and play with gear all night. Everybody I knew
Speaker:
00:02:52
in town who worked at a studio was always at that studio, whether
Speaker:
00:02:56
you were getting paid or not. Because if you weren't at the studio,
Speaker:
00:03:00
you probably weren't learning anything new. So you'd just
Speaker:
00:03:03
always be there because you knew one day you would get thrown
Speaker:
00:03:07
into the hot seat and have to put into practice everything that you'd just been
Speaker:
00:03:10
watching up until that point. There's a great story about Jimmy Iovine, who is probably
Speaker:
00:03:14
best known at this point as the Interscope Records label head who started
Speaker:
00:03:18
Beats with Dr. Dre, which they ultimately sold to Apple
Speaker:
00:03:22
for $3 billion. But in the 1970s, he was just a young
Speaker:
00:03:25
assistant engineer at Record Plant in New York, and he got a huge
Speaker:
00:03:29
break when he was called in last minute on Easter Sunday to
Speaker:
00:03:33
engineer because nobody else was available. He showed up at
Speaker:
00:03:36
the studio to find out that the artist he was recording was John Lennon.
Speaker:
00:03:40
And successfully making it through that session while also leaving an impression on
Speaker:
00:03:44
John, would set him on the course to work with everybody from Springsteen to
Speaker:
00:03:47
U2. And that's a super common story on how so many engineers and
Speaker:
00:03:51
producers got their start. They were suddenly thrust into a
Speaker:
00:03:55
situation that mattered and had to go from observing and
Speaker:
00:03:58
learning to doing. And usually at a very
Speaker:
00:04:02
high level. Studio managers generally have a great read on who's
Speaker:
00:04:06
ready and who isn't. And the good ones, they'll push
Speaker:
00:04:10
those into a situation where they know that they can grow. So if you're asking
Speaker:
00:04:13
yourself what this has to do with mixtapes, that's fair.
Speaker:
00:04:17
There's been a lot of setup here. The point I'm getting to is that
Speaker:
00:04:20
today there is so much information that it's actually
Speaker:
00:04:24
overwhelming how much you can learn. You can go deep down the
Speaker:
00:04:28
rabbit hole and learn about how this person mixes vocals versus how that person
Speaker:
00:04:31
mixes vocals. How this plugin compares to that plugin compares
Speaker:
00:04:35
to the analog version. You can go on and on
Speaker:
00:04:39
constantly learning, but never doing. And that's the
Speaker:
00:04:42
stark difference between the pre Internet era and today.
Speaker:
00:04:46
Twenty plus years ago, there was a ceiling to how much you could learn
Speaker:
00:04:50
without doing it. Now you can learn
Speaker:
00:04:53
infinitely. But learning is not the same as doing.
Speaker:
00:04:57
Earlier, I made a subtle comment about going to audio school and then
Speaker:
00:05:00
relearning everything when you started in the studio. I believe that
Speaker:
00:05:04
education, formal or not, is teaching you the foundational
Speaker:
00:05:07
skills you need to go out into the real world and follow what
Speaker:
00:05:11
is being done. You learn the basics so you can see a session in
Speaker:
00:05:15
real life or on a video and digest why people are
Speaker:
00:05:19
making choices. Not ask what are they doing?
Speaker:
00:05:22
Mixtape. YouTube is giving you the what and the how, which
Speaker:
00:05:26
is important. But the why is going to be
Speaker:
00:05:29
unique to each of us. And the only way to really learn that
Speaker:
00:05:33
is to do it yourself. Example, slamming the input to a piece
Speaker:
00:05:37
of equipment to distort it. That's the what you're doing and how
Speaker:
00:05:41
you're doing it. But why you're doing it is your choice. Maybe
Speaker:
00:05:45
it's because you like the tone of it. Maybe it's because it brings out an
Speaker:
00:05:48
emotion in the part. Now let's go back to that assistant thrown into a
Speaker:
00:05:52
session situation. There's an important thing that happens when you're pushed beyond
Speaker:
00:05:55
your comfort zone and you pass the test. Confidence.
Speaker:
00:05:59
And this is something that the Internet cannot give you. In fact, this is where
Speaker:
00:06:02
the access to information actually works against us. Think about this.
Speaker:
00:06:06
How many times have you been working on music and thought, I wonder how
Speaker:
00:06:10
insert hit producer name here does this? And don't
Speaker:
00:06:13
say that you haven't. I have. I've been doing this for 20 years and I
Speaker:
00:06:17
will stop mid mix to check out how some great engineer does the same thing
Speaker:
00:06:20
that I'm doing. And it's because knowing that we can makes us want
Speaker:
00:06:24
to validate what we're doing. We don't always have total confidence in the things that
Speaker:
00:06:28
we're doing inside our vacuum. Most of us are working alone.
Speaker:
00:06:32
This wasn't the case 30, 40 or 50 years ago. Engineers did things and everybody
Speaker:
00:06:35
in the room liked it or they didn't. There was immediate
Speaker:
00:06:39
feedback to whether you were on the right path. And the more positive feedback you
Speaker:
00:06:42
got, the more Confident you became in your skills. A lot of us don't have
Speaker:
00:06:46
that anymore. So many people are writing, recording and mixing their own music, which
Speaker:
00:06:50
is amazing. But the more isolated you are in that
Speaker:
00:06:53
process, the more likely you are to turn to the Internet to see
Speaker:
00:06:57
whether you're doing the right thing, completely ignoring the fact that there
Speaker:
00:07:01
is no right thing. This is why it's important to find your version of assistant
Speaker:
00:07:04
thrown into a session. Right? You have got to balance the ability to constantly learn
Speaker:
00:07:08
and better yourself with taking action. Nothing will make you
Speaker:
00:07:12
better than doing the thing. So to go all the way
Speaker:
00:07:15
back to the beginning, this feature of mixtape YouTube that I
Speaker:
00:07:19
mentioned earlier that we need to be aware of so that it doesn't hold us
Speaker:
00:07:23
back. It's the same feature that makes it amazing,
Speaker:
00:07:27
the free and essentially unlimited amount of it. Now, it's
Speaker:
00:07:30
hard to think that learning as much as you can about something isn't a
Speaker:
00:07:34
good idea. But if you are using that learning to avoid doing because
Speaker:
00:07:38
of a fear of failure or a lack of confidence, then in
Speaker:
00:07:42
fact learning is actually holding you back. No amount of
Speaker:
00:07:45
learning will take away your fear. The only way to do that is to dive
Speaker:
00:07:49
in and put yourself in situations to test yourself. This is a
Speaker:
00:07:52
disadvantage of the Internet information age. It doesn't force you to test
Speaker:
00:07:56
yourself the way that that older apprenticeship or mentorship model
Speaker:
00:08:00
would. Which is why it's super important to recognize when you are
Speaker:
00:08:03
avoiding taking a step outside your comfort zone. And I tell you this because
Speaker:
00:08:07
I am fully guilty of this myself. I am no better than anyone else at
Speaker:
00:08:11
these things. I may not do this in my audio career anymore. When it comes
Speaker:
00:08:14
to the podcast or YouTube, the creator side of my life, I have done
Speaker:
00:08:18
this way too many times. The things I am doing right now are the things
Speaker:
00:08:22
I should have done three years ago. So I encourage you
Speaker:
00:08:26
to take a look at your life and see if there is anywhere that you
Speaker:
00:08:29
are using learning to avoid doing. So if I've convinced
Speaker:
00:08:33
you to step away from Mixtape YouTube for a bit and you want some rapid
Speaker:
00:08:36
fire non technical advice, check out this episode where
Speaker:
00:08:40
I share everything I've learned over the last 18 years about how to build a
Speaker:
00:08:44
successful career in the recording industry.
00:00:00
I'm just going to say it. You don't need any more mixtapes. Nobody needs any
Speaker:
00:00:03
more mixtapes. Don't. Cl. Don't. Hey, do not click that mixtape.
Speaker:
00:00:09
What's up, y'all? Welcome back to Progressions. My name is Travis Farance. I'm an engineer
Speaker:
00:00:12
and mixer based here in Los angeles with nearly 20 years of experience. Got
Speaker:
00:00:16
some Grammy noms and number ones and all that accolade bs. But what's important to
Speaker:
00:00:20
know for this video is I'm kind of old, like almost pre
Speaker:
00:00:24
Internet old. And why that's important is that I learned to
Speaker:
00:00:28
do this job before mixtape, YouTube and before social
Speaker:
00:00:31
media. The access to information that is available today is
Speaker:
00:00:35
amazing and should be empowering to all of us to learn
Speaker:
00:00:39
basically everything. But there's one problem, actually,
Speaker:
00:00:42
let's not call it a problem, let's call it a feature. There's one feature of
Speaker:
00:00:46
this current era and I think we all need to be aware of so that
Speaker:
00:00:50
it doesn't hold us back. So when I came to LA, it was 2006. I
Speaker:
00:00:53
still bought CDs. The Internet was for shreds videos and
Speaker:
00:00:57
social media was in its infancy. I think you still needed a college email to
Speaker:
00:01:01
be on Facebook. So if you wanted to be a recording engineer, you basically had
Speaker:
00:01:04
two choices. Go get a job in a studio or go to an audio
Speaker:
00:01:07
school and then go get a job in a studio where you relearn everything you
Speaker:
00:01:11
just paid to learn. So outside of some industry magazines like Sound
Speaker:
00:01:15
on Sound, Mix or Tape, up there just wasn't a lot of access
Speaker:
00:01:19
to knowledge about the craft without working in a studio and learning it from a
Speaker:
00:01:23
person who learned it from another person who learned it from another person. I was
Speaker:
00:01:26
fortunate in that I started my career at the legendary Capitol Studios in Hollywood. The
Speaker:
00:01:30
people that I was learning from were some of the best that ever sat behind
Speaker:
00:01:34
a recording console. I'll never forget the first time I walked into Studio A while
Speaker:
00:01:37
a session was going. It blew my mind what it sounded like. It
Speaker:
00:01:41
sounded like what I thought was a final mix, but it was just the
Speaker:
00:01:45
band live off the floor during tracking and watching those
Speaker:
00:01:48
guys and listening to what they were doing. Those were my mix tips.
Speaker:
00:01:52
It's not actually that different from watching some tutorials on YouTube. I would just be
Speaker:
00:01:56
off in the corner watching how the session went down, the same way that you're
Speaker:
00:01:59
watching a video right now. The difference was that there was no voiceover describing
Speaker:
00:02:03
the process or, you know, zoom ins on the computer screen or anything like that.
Speaker:
00:02:06
But in some ways it was better, right, because you had to listen to try
Speaker:
00:02:09
to understand why people were making the choices that they were making. Then after
Speaker:
00:02:13
the session, if it felt appropriate, you could ask a few questions to the engineer,
Speaker:
00:02:17
producer, look at the racks to see what kind of compression was going on, check
Speaker:
00:02:20
out the EQ on the console, go in the live room, see where the mics
Speaker:
00:02:23
ended up, and then you go home. And it's what happened when you got
Speaker:
00:02:27
home. That's the big difference between when I started and today.
Speaker:
00:02:31
Once I got home, there was no content to watch. Sure,
Speaker:
00:02:34
there were some blogs and books, but really what you did when you went home
Speaker:
00:02:37
was you opened up whatever daw you had and you just messed
Speaker:
00:02:41
around, which wasn't always that exciting if you didn't have anything fun
Speaker:
00:02:45
to play with, right? So we just never went home. We'd stay at the
Speaker:
00:02:48
studio and play with gear all night. Everybody I knew
Speaker:
00:02:52
in town who worked at a studio was always at that studio, whether
Speaker:
00:02:56
you were getting paid or not. Because if you weren't at the studio,
Speaker:
00:03:00
you probably weren't learning anything new. So you'd just
Speaker:
00:03:03
always be there because you knew one day you would get thrown
Speaker:
00:03:07
into the hot seat and have to put into practice everything that you'd just been
Speaker:
00:03:10
watching up until that point. There's a great story about Jimmy Iovine, who is probably
Speaker:
00:03:14
best known at this point as the Interscope Records label head who started
Speaker:
00:03:18
Beats with Dr. Dre, which they ultimately sold to Apple
Speaker:
00:03:22
for $3 billion. But in the 1970s, he was just a young
Speaker:
00:03:25
assistant engineer at Record Plant in New York, and he got a huge
Speaker:
00:03:29
break when he was called in last minute on Easter Sunday to
Speaker:
00:03:33
engineer because nobody else was available. He showed up at
Speaker:
00:03:36
the studio to find out that the artist he was recording was John Lennon.
Speaker:
00:03:40
And successfully making it through that session while also leaving an impression on
Speaker:
00:03:44
John, would set him on the course to work with everybody from Springsteen to
Speaker:
00:03:47
U2. And that's a super common story on how so many engineers and
Speaker:
00:03:51
producers got their start. They were suddenly thrust into a
Speaker:
00:03:55
situation that mattered and had to go from observing and
Speaker:
00:03:58
learning to doing. And usually at a very
Speaker:
00:04:02
high level. Studio managers generally have a great read on who's
Speaker:
00:04:06
ready and who isn't. And the good ones, they'll push
Speaker:
00:04:10
those into a situation where they know that they can grow. So if you're asking
Speaker:
00:04:13
yourself what this has to do with mixtapes, that's fair.
Speaker:
00:04:17
There's been a lot of setup here. The point I'm getting to is that
Speaker:
00:04:20
today there is so much information that it's actually
Speaker:
00:04:24
overwhelming how much you can learn. You can go deep down the
Speaker:
00:04:28
rabbit hole and learn about how this person mixes vocals versus how that person
Speaker:
00:04:31
mixes vocals. How this plugin compares to that plugin compares
Speaker:
00:04:35
to the analog version. You can go on and on
Speaker:
00:04:39
constantly learning, but never doing. And that's the
Speaker:
00:04:42
stark difference between the pre Internet era and today.
Speaker:
00:04:46
Twenty plus years ago, there was a ceiling to how much you could learn
Speaker:
00:04:50
without doing it. Now you can learn
Speaker:
00:04:53
infinitely. But learning is not the same as doing.
Speaker:
00:04:57
Earlier, I made a subtle comment about going to audio school and then
Speaker:
00:05:00
relearning everything when you started in the studio. I believe that
Speaker:
00:05:04
education, formal or not, is teaching you the foundational
Speaker:
00:05:07
skills you need to go out into the real world and follow what
Speaker:
00:05:11
is being done. You learn the basics so you can see a session in
Speaker:
00:05:15
real life or on a video and digest why people are
Speaker:
00:05:19
making choices. Not ask what are they doing?
Speaker:
00:05:22
Mixtape. YouTube is giving you the what and the how, which
Speaker:
00:05:26
is important. But the why is going to be
Speaker:
00:05:29
unique to each of us. And the only way to really learn that
Speaker:
00:05:33
is to do it yourself. Example, slamming the input to a piece
Speaker:
00:05:37
of equipment to distort it. That's the what you're doing and how
Speaker:
00:05:41
you're doing it. But why you're doing it is your choice. Maybe
Speaker:
00:05:45
it's because you like the tone of it. Maybe it's because it brings out an
Speaker:
00:05:48
emotion in the part. Now let's go back to that assistant thrown into a
Speaker:
00:05:52
session situation. There's an important thing that happens when you're pushed beyond
Speaker:
00:05:55
your comfort zone and you pass the test. Confidence.
Speaker:
00:05:59
And this is something that the Internet cannot give you. In fact, this is where
Speaker:
00:06:02
the access to information actually works against us. Think about this.
Speaker:
00:06:06
How many times have you been working on music and thought, I wonder how
Speaker:
00:06:10
insert hit producer name here does this? And don't
Speaker:
00:06:13
say that you haven't. I have. I've been doing this for 20 years and I
Speaker:
00:06:17
will stop mid mix to check out how some great engineer does the same thing
Speaker:
00:06:20
that I'm doing. And it's because knowing that we can makes us want
Speaker:
00:06:24
to validate what we're doing. We don't always have total confidence in the things that
Speaker:
00:06:28
we're doing inside our vacuum. Most of us are working alone.
Speaker:
00:06:32
This wasn't the case 30, 40 or 50 years ago. Engineers did things and everybody
Speaker:
00:06:35
in the room liked it or they didn't. There was immediate
Speaker:
00:06:39
feedback to whether you were on the right path. And the more positive feedback you
Speaker:
00:06:42
got, the more Confident you became in your skills. A lot of us don't have
Speaker:
00:06:46
that anymore. So many people are writing, recording and mixing their own music, which
Speaker:
00:06:50
is amazing. But the more isolated you are in that
Speaker:
00:06:53
process, the more likely you are to turn to the Internet to see
Speaker:
00:06:57
whether you're doing the right thing, completely ignoring the fact that there
Speaker:
00:07:01
is no right thing. This is why it's important to find your version of assistant
Speaker:
00:07:04
thrown into a session. Right? You have got to balance the ability to constantly learn
Speaker:
00:07:08
and better yourself with taking action. Nothing will make you
Speaker:
00:07:12
better than doing the thing. So to go all the way
Speaker:
00:07:15
back to the beginning, this feature of mixtape YouTube that I
Speaker:
00:07:19
mentioned earlier that we need to be aware of so that it doesn't hold us
Speaker:
00:07:23
back. It's the same feature that makes it amazing,
Speaker:
00:07:27
the free and essentially unlimited amount of it. Now, it's
Speaker:
00:07:30
hard to think that learning as much as you can about something isn't a
Speaker:
00:07:34
good idea. But if you are using that learning to avoid doing because
Speaker:
00:07:38
of a fear of failure or a lack of confidence, then in
Speaker:
00:07:42
fact learning is actually holding you back. No amount of
Speaker:
00:07:45
learning will take away your fear. The only way to do that is to dive
Speaker:
00:07:49
in and put yourself in situations to test yourself. This is a
Speaker:
00:07:52
disadvantage of the Internet information age. It doesn't force you to test
Speaker:
00:07:56
yourself the way that that older apprenticeship or mentorship model
Speaker:
00:08:00
would. Which is why it's super important to recognize when you are
Speaker:
00:08:03
avoiding taking a step outside your comfort zone. And I tell you this because
Speaker:
00:08:07
I am fully guilty of this myself. I am no better than anyone else at
Speaker:
00:08:11
these things. I may not do this in my audio career anymore. When it comes
Speaker:
00:08:14
to the podcast or YouTube, the creator side of my life, I have done
Speaker:
00:08:18
this way too many times. The things I am doing right now are the things
Speaker:
00:08:22
I should have done three years ago. So I encourage you
Speaker:
00:08:26
to take a look at your life and see if there is anywhere that you
Speaker:
00:08:29
are using learning to avoid doing. So if I've convinced
Speaker:
00:08:33
you to step away from Mixtape YouTube for a bit and you want some rapid
Speaker:
00:08:36
fire non technical advice, check out this episode where
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00:08:40
I share everything I've learned over the last 18 years about how to build a
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00:08:44
successful career in the recording industry.
