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Sam Fischmann is a cofounder of the audio plugin company Musik Hack. As a software developer and musician he is passionate about demystifying the mastering process and making it accessible to everybody by creating tools that enable musicians to focus more on the creative and less on the technical.
In this episode, you'll learn about:
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Credits:
Guest: Sam Fischmann
Host: Travis Ference
Editor: Stephen Boyd
Theme Music: inter.ference
00:00 - None
00:20 - Intro
02:38 - The Role of Mastering in Modern Music Production
09:01 - How Standards Become Abused
19:33 - Why We Are Thinking About Dynamic Range Wrong
24:24 - Sam’s Background
26:11 - Where Does AI Fit into the Music Industry
38:06 - Do Tools Like Soothe & Gulfoss Do More Harm Than Good?
41:02 - Starting Musik Hack
47:44 - Success is Following Your Own Path
49:49 - Sam’s Current Goal
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Let's get rid of the technical hurdles so you can spend a lot more time
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on the creative hurdles. That's what we want to do as musicians, as producers, as
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mixers. That's Sam Fishman, the software developer musician behind the audio plugin
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company, Music hack. Since Sam makes a mastering plugin, I thought it would be fun
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to get his perspective on the role of mastering in modern music production,
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which we obviously got into, but we also got into so much more than that.
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Everything from the problem with our obsession with loudness targets.
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Once something becomes a metric, it gets abused, and people pay more attention to the
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metric than the reason the metric was invented.
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Actually be thinking about loudness. You will hear different things
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in the loudness. If you like it, that's what matters. Yeah. You're not
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gonna damage it by submitting a track that's too loud. We also get to the
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role of AI and machine learning in music, including some of the potential
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copyright violations. Tech companies could be making. The ethical barrier there
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is what aren't they telling us about the training data. And that's something that
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I believe the artists should have a right to when it's being used
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for that kind of thing. We just don't know. And a reminder that regardless of
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the tech, regardless of the tools, you have to trust your taste and make
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music that you like. What really matters when you're trying
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to finalize a track and make it really pop and everything is how it sounds
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to you. Just like cooks need to taste their food. If that's not the number
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one thing you're paying attention to,
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no one can help you. So if you're a mastering engineer, mixing engineer, artist,
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doesn't matter. I think you're gonna enjoy this one. So stick around. For my interview
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with Sam Fishman.
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We were gonna talk about the role of mastering in modern
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music production, and I thought that I kind of
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knew what it was. I mean, I still think I know what it is, but
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I did this episode recently called is Mastering Dead? And it
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was a commentary on the value of working with a mastering engineer that
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complements your sonic and musical tastes instead of using
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AI. One button. And
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the comments on that video, not that comments bother
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me, but they were, like, overwhelmingly negative towards
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paying for mastering. And it shocked me. It made me feel like I live in
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this bubble of just the LA recording industry, where we all
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just. We followed the path. And so you make a mastering tool
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that is great, and it's laid out for musicians and producers to
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use easily and get good results. What do you think the role of
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mastering is in 2024. It's a really good question.
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There's, like, so much to talk about, so I gotta rack my brain here and
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figure out where to start. I. There's. There's two things I normally think of that,
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like, immediately when people ask me about mastering. Well, do
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we need to talk about what mastering is for some people? Because a lot of
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times people think about mastering, it's like a dark art. You know, they're like, well,
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what is it? I mean, it. I feel like the.
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I feel like the veil is being taken off every day when, like, a new
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tool comes out. But, I mean, I think mastering something different, everybody.
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Yeah, yeah, that's true. Like, and I have a lot of, like,
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friends and relatives that aren't in music, and they ask me what I do, and
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I'm like, all right, am I making plugins? And the first plugin is a mastering
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plugin. And depending on what they do, I use a different analogy. So if there's
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someone who likes to cook, I tell them, like, it's like getting your
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seasoning right, like getting the salt right. All of the creative decisions about making the
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dish have, like, been made. You know, what are the ingredients? What's it gonna taste
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like? Is it gonna be cold or hot? Like, what are the textures? All the
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stuff. Right? But if it doesn't have the salt right, it just doesn't pop. And
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if you have too much, it just tastes weird and artificial. And if you don't
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have enough, it tastes blande. But you're not trying to change the whole thing. You're
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just trying to get it. Just, like, in this space where all of a sudden
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everything comes together. And then for people who like cars, I'm like, well,
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you can clean a car all you want, but until you wax that thing, it's
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not going to shine and be ready to be put up on a pedestal, you
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know? I don't know what it's like to over wax a car, though. So
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you can definitely do too much when mastering. I don't really know if you can
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over clean a car unless you, like, you know, start rubbing the paint off it
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or something like that. But you can do that when you're mastering because you can
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always do too much. That's true. That's true. Yeah. So that's kind of the
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overall level of it. But when I break it into two parts, there's two things.
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There's, like, the. There's, like, the creative aspect
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of mastering where it's all about your taste. You mentioned that, like, you need to
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find someone that aligns with your vision for your music vision,
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your. What's the word for vision? But with
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your ears, I don't. Whatever
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your imagination of, like, what you want your vision. Right. And then there's the
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part that's, like, the technical. The technical part of
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mastering. And I think that's.
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That's where there's, like, a big divide, I think, in sort of the
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criticism of paying somebody a lot. If you had comments. I didn't read the comments
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in the video because I'm afraid of YouTube comment sections, quite frankly.
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So, like, if what you're looking for in mastering
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is a second set of ears to just to do that
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polish, like, I need somebody who I trust that, like,
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is aligned with me and will catch those little things or, like,
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really lean it in a direction and does something that I can't do
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with my inner ear, with my skill set,
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in terms of my taste or my. That
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part of it, your vision, that is something. I
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don't think that can be replaced, honestly, because you
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can't. I mean, another person and someone who you vibe right with,
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that is what it is. But the technical side of it, I think, is that's.
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That's the part where we're trying to rip down all the barriers and be like,
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no, you don't have to have a million dollars in gear. No, there aren't 50
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million technical targets you have to hit. No, you don't have to individually phase
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align drum hits so that you can get the maximum headroom out of them. No,
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no, no. All of those things are like, yo, like,
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you're just being sold stuff at that point. And I make a product, right? So,
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like, this is my pitch, in a way, when I say these things, right, which
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makes me feel a little bit. But. But I really want people to understand that,
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like, what really matters when you're trying to finalize a track and
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make it really pop and everything is how it sounds to you. Just like, cooks
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need to taste their food, right? And if that's not
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the number one thing you're paying attention to,
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no one can help you. I agree. I agree. Is that
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the phase alignment? Interesting. Like, commentary on
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that, you know? Cause I'm an engineer. I'm, like, in there. Yeah, I get a
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bunch of kick drums from somebody. The first thing I do is look at the
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phase and it'll be tighter. It'll be like,
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there'll be more thump and whatever, and then I'll flip back and forth between the
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rough mix and there's, like, this, especially in, like, some of the pop
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styles, it's kind of cooler the way that it
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was. And you're like, I fixed it, but I broke it, you know? And
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these rules are meant to be broken. They're like guidelines, you know? Yeah.
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And there's also, like, this comes up in all sorts of
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ways in life, but, like, once there's. I forgot what the words goals
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are corrupting, I think is. Or something. Like, once something becomes a metric, it
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gets abused. And people pay more attention to the metric than the reason
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the metric was invented. Right. In work, this happens because,
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you know, you just cheat to get the numbers looking good, so your boss gives
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you a raise or whatever. But, like, in music, it might be, oh, I want
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to hit a luft's value. Oh, I need to maximize the amount of volume I
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get out of a peak. Oh, I need to whatever. And if you keep a
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narrow focus on this one thing, you're gonna do it to the detriment of other
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things, which is why you always have to keep an ear for the whole thing
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anyway. How does this relate to what mastery means in
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2024? And I think what that means is if you
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have the money to and, you know somebody that you trust, and you really
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need that second set of ears because. Because
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it is that extra opinion, that humanity, that gives you an extra little
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touch on the music cause another person give it a second pass,
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I think that's always a thing. I agree. But
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if you're worried that you don't have the technical skill, but you
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do trust your taste, that's becoming less and less of a thing, and I
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don't think it should be a thing anymore. I think that if you know what
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you're listening for, there are tools available to you that are not too complicated. I
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make one of them that will get you what you want,
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and it's really just about listening and
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knowing what it is you need to change using reference tracks.
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I talked to Bob Yasinski a while ago, and he said, why aren't people bringing
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up listening to reference tracks when they're doing a mix? And I think I
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dodged the question because I wasn't expecting it, but it's 100%.
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If you're making music that you want to sound like something, listen to the thing
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you want it to sound like. And if you know
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that's what you do as a producer and a mixer, or whatever part you're doing,
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you're like, I gotta lean it a little bit brighter or a little bit tighter,
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or whatever it is you need. I agree entirely. But I want to go back.
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Okay, sorry, sorry. Like, there was something that you said that really
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caught me, so we'll just go off on a tangent. The
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thing you mentioned, I can't remember what you said, but it was essentially that, like,
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once a standard is invented, people kind of abuse that standard without thinking
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about where that standard came from. Right. And that is such an
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interesting statement because it really, like,
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take the -14 Spotify normalization standard.
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Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was. Every day there's a
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conversation with somebody about how loud something should be,
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but nobody talks about why that is there.
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I'm literally, this is what my talk on the talk that I'm going to give
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it at the audio developer conference in November is called in praise of
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Loudness. And I'm specifically gunning for this. And
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what's also really interesting, if you read Reddit, I try not
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to, like, post much on Reddit, but I read it a lot. There's, there's a,
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I think it's, I don't remember if it's mixing, mastering, or if it's, like production
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or something. And they have a sticky at the top where one of the moderators
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or someone who's, like, in good with them wrote a whole, a whole essay
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and pinned it to the top about this very topic. And it's like,
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read this before you post anything. We're tired of hearing about
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it. And it's, and it's, it's cool. It's well written, I
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think. I haven't thought about all the parts. I agree and disagree with it, but,
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like, the general gist of it is like, I'm glad it exists. And almost was
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like, do I really need to give my talk now? But, but,
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yeah, that's a good one. Do you want to talk about that much, or are
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you just bringing it up? I kind of do. If there's pieces of that talk
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you want to practice, do you want to. Hear
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where that number comes from? I do. Yeah. Okay.
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So the original issue is simply the,
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like, you know, some things are loud and some things are quiet. Like the
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classic dilemma of I'm watching a tv show and then an ad comes on and
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it's three times as loud. You're like, oh, my, I gotta turn this down. Right.
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But the same thing happens with music. Right. Especially
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now that we have playlists that are mixes of tracks from different
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albums. And it was a common complaint of
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users of various music listening platforms. Not just
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that, but broadcast television, movies, all sorts of stuff. Right, right.
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And so there were various committees that did a bunch of research to try to
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decide, well, how do we. How do we solve this problem? It sounds simple on
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its surface. You're just like, all right, let's. Let's just, you know, let's look at
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blur. No. Okay, everything's fine. Right? But they had to do a bunch of
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studies because there's a bunch of little problems that crop up when you try to
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do this. In fact, can you guess what the original number they came up with
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when they're like, all right, we're going to standardize on a lufs level. This is
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after they invented Lufsden. Can you guess what the original lufts level? They thought that
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ever all media should be normalized on. And Ebu still
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says eventually we should get to it. I mean, tv is like 23 or
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24, right? Negative 23. Yup. Yeah. But they made an
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exception for music. And the reason they made an exception for music, which was negative
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16, we're still not at negative 14 yet. Okay. The reason they made an exception
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for music is they're like, okay, there's a problem.
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The converters on these cheap players suck.
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So if we're shipping music at negative 23 lufts and people have, like,
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crappy headphones and a crappy player, or even they bought a good player, but they
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used a crappy DAC, you are going to have to amplify it
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in order to get it to a listening level that you like. And if it's
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crappy and you're amplifying it a lot and you have a bad signal to noise
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ratio, you're just pushing a lot of noise into that line, and it's not a
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really great situation. So they're like, well, we got it. We got to make music
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louder so that people that are listening on, like, portable players or whatever, I don't
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have to crank the cheap amplifier on their
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portable phone or on whatever they're listening to. Right? So negative 23 was not
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acceptable, but then they had even more problems because they're like, oh, you
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know what? We realize that different tracks on an album are different
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levels, so we need to come up with a way of
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normalizing the volume that keeps the relative differences between
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the tracks. And they're like, okay, well, if we take the
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loudest track on the album and we normalize that to
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-14 so there's a little bit of give on either side,
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then we take the value we got, let's say, okay, it
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got pushed down by three decibels,
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then we just do everything relatively the same. So the things all stay relatively the
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same distance from each other. So we have track
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normalization, album normalization, media broadcast
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normalization, all this stuff. Right. But the real thing that's
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scary is the misinformation that people got from this negative 14
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lufts. That's how we got to negative 14 lufts. And by the way, that's not
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even standardized kind of. They could change at any point. It's not really a
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standard Amazon. That's why if you listen to watch movies
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on different streaming things for video, sometimes you have to turn the volume way up
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on your app, and sometimes you don't. They're not the same. And who knows what
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they'll be next year. So trying to hit these targets, it's, like,
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not gonna help you. Also, let's say you submit a track that's too loud.
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Why I say too loud? I just mean louder than negative 14 laps, which isn't
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too loud. There's nothing wrong with that. Look at all the pop music. It's all
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mastered. It's negative eight. Yeah. So let's say you do
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that. Oh, no, they turn it down.
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That's what we call a linear process. It's the same as turning down your volume
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knob. There's nothing. It doesn't distort your audio. It's
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pristine. It's just quieter. That's fine. Yeah, right. Yeah. But
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imagine. Think about what happens when you turn audio up. What if you submit a
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track that's, like, way too quiet and they decide to change the
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standards? You'd have to put a limiter in there. That's exactly right.
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The peaks start to go over and you have to put a limiter. So the
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danger is that you're submitting tracks that are too quiet. They
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can't push them up because they don't want to put a limiter on them because
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it'll change the quality. Some do, like, there's a mode in Spotify for,
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like, louder normalization, and they will put a limiter on the track if they
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push the volume up, but it doesn't by default. So it's just like. But who
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knows? Who knows what they'll do next year, right? What if people complain? The whole
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thing started because people were complaining. So the real danger is submitting
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tracks that are. That are too quiet. Here's another one. Nobody talks about this.
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There's also this whole true peak thing, right? Yeah. And then they also talk
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about needing peak headroom because,
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oh, if we convert to a lossy format, then you're
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going to cause more phase problems. That's going to create your peaks. Going to push
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higher. Oh, it'll hit a DAC, the headroom thing. Well, it'll pop.
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First of all, Dax already have headroom. If they didn't, they'd be terrible
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all the time. So that's supposed to be their responsibility.
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But here's, here's the real kicker. Let's say, let's say that you're worried about two
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problems. One, they're going to lower the volume of my track because it's too loud.
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Oh, no, we already talked about why that's not really a problem. Right? Two, if
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they're lowering the volume of your track at eight decibels by like six decibels
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to get it down to negative 14, then why are you worried about peaks?
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Do you have six decibels of headroom? What's one db gonna
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do if they're gonna lower you? It's just like it does. They don't, they don't
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even match each other. If you're following all the guidelines, you're doing a bunch of
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stuff that changes the characteristics of your track to please
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somebody who's gonna change their mind at any time and whose advice, if you follow
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all of it doesn't even add up. They make sense in vitro,
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but not together. And, and people will say, like, oh, well,
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you can't control the final device. Right? So
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the thing that converts, as it turns out, MP3 s, they don't know about
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peaks. They store information in a way that does not clip.
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The clipping happens when the MP3 is decoded. Right. So
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if the MP3 is clipping or the AAC is clipping,
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it means that the decoder is crappy. They
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should normalize it after decoding, and they should have a decoder that decodes into 32
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bit. None of that should be your responsibility as a producer or mastering engineer.
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Are you doing this so that, like, TLC and Vizio can save $2 a unit
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on tvs? You know what I mean? Like,
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why, that shouldn't even be the purview of,
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you know. Yeah. Like, it's crazy. It's crazy to me. What you should be
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listening to is if I like my mix, I like how it
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sounds and I dial the volume up and I like how that sounds because when
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you push things louder, even if you take a lot of control of the transients,
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like, you will hear different things in the
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loudness if you like it. That's what matters. Yeah.
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You're not going to damage it by submitting a track that's too loud. No, you're
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not going to damage it. If you have peaks that aren't insane, as long as
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they're within, whatever, give yourself a db of headroom. Give yourself half a
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db. You can always convert it to an AAC and listen, and if you don't
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hear anything, it's fine. I really think
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these conversations have been damaging to people because they're getting to focus on all sorts
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of stuff that has nothing to do with how your music sounds. And that's
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bad. Yeah, no, I agree. That was a big rant. No, no,
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I love that rant. That's perfect. I
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think that lays it out in a way that most people don't
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lay it out. Especially talk about the true peak thing is interesting, right? You're like,
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okay, I need to have 1 db headroom, but then they're going to turn it
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down seven decibels. So I don't need that one db headroom when I'm mastering
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because they're going to turn it down. But, yeah,
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that one will mess with you. It reminds me of early
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Mfit mastered for itunes days where it was like,
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I mean, let's talk about something that was like a bit of a
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scam. Like everybody in the beginning that I knew was mastering for cd and then
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turning it down until it passed the little checker. And then you're like, mmm,
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mfit. Here you go. Yeah.
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So, yeah, but is that for your music or is that for the
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distributor, but the distributors?
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Well, there's a whole other conversation you're talking about, like, who's in charge? You
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want to talk about atmos and spatial and whatever, but we won't go
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there. No, I think that's great. I'm glad that you shared that
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the way that you did because people are
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really obsessed with the number and I've always been.
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I use this argument when I'm talking about atmos a lot and it's like, you
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have to make a thing that will live for eternity,
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right? So if that thing sounds killer at minus six lufts
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somehow, congratulations. If it sounds
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good at minus eleven, that's where it sounds the best. That's okay,
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too. Like, you have to make a product that will translate to
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all of the future formats, not worry about what the number is this year
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for. For some companies. So true. You know, spec
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sheet. So, uh. Yeah, that's good. Love that. That brings up another thing.
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It's not just all the stuff in the future, it's also the current. Like,
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it does matter. The current listening environments, not just the.
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Not just the technology you're listening through but the spaces you're listening in. And this,
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I think, is also another conversation that leads into the
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overemphasis on dynamic range as
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a positive in and of itself, which isn't
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true. As in, more dynamic range is more. Positive, as
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in more dynamic range is always better. Exactly. It's not. That's
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not the game. It is true that dynamic ranges can be great, but,
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like, one of the reasons you can never listen to classical music in the car
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is because the dynamic range is too much for you to listen to it in
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that environment. And is that actually the feeling you want when you listen to
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all music? No. No, definitely
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not. No. We listen to music. We
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listen to music. Headphones in loud environments. We listen to music
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in the background. We listen to music in the car. We listen to music at
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the gym. We listen to. There are so many places, and we want it to
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sound great everywhere. And that's part of what mastering also does.
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And the trick that mastering engineers have developed, not the.
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But one of the tricks that they developed over, like, so many years,
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is how do we make it louder? How do we
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technically reduce the dynamic range without it sounding like
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we're reducing the dynamic range? Yeah, because then you can hear it
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better and it doesn't feel worse. And that's the
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game. Yeah, but you can't measure that, because
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all you can measure is what the dynamic range is and what the loudness
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is. You can't really say
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it sounds. It sounds really dynamic, but it isn't. Is
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not really something we have a measurement for.
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And that's why these guys are revered. Guys and gals.
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Sorry. The best mastering engineers I've ever worked
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with. It comes back just
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so loud, but yet not.
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You can't tell. You're like, well, how did he. How did he or she
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get this to this volume and make it sound so
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punchy, not distorted? Like, this is. The people that can do
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that are worth every penny because they have figured something
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out. Yeah. Okay, here's the. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. So
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what's that? Is that. Is that a personal
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vibe thing or is that a technical thing? That's a technical thing. That
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is something that tools can solve. That is something that can
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be made democratic by people having access to the tools that can
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do it, because people that, like, understand the process and have built the tools
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can do it and make it easier. So when you're trying to increase the volume
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of music, that isn't a vibe's decision as much as, like, the
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feel, the width, the breadth, all these other things that are less tangible.
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Yeah. So that is the part where it's like,
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you can do that with the tools on the market now. I mean, that's one
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of the things our tool does best. So that's why I'm so confident about
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it. But that's separate from the part of, like,
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do you need someone who's gonna give you a vibe check? Yeah, yeah,
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yeah, totally. Before we move on to a
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couple other things I have in my notes, I want to, going back to those
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standards, right, the -23 where is that
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standard? And the cd loudness
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wars, where do those things line up? Cause that, there's no way cds were
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at -16 they were always going to be louder than that. Right? So,
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yeah, cds were always loud. The 23, I forgot, I don't have it in front
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of me right now, but I was going back into these. Eb,
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what's the name? There's. The AE's is the American engineering society.
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They do some studies and they have some stuff. And then there's,
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I forgot the name of the european, I think it's EbU.
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European Broadcast Union. Maybe we'll make that up. Somebody will comment on that.
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Yeah, Ebu also does these studies. And so the negative 23 came from a
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bunch of research, I believe, that was done by the EBU. And they were basically
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saying, like, what level can we get stuff on that
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we can standardize for literally all media? It has enough
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dynamic range built into that level where
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you have all sorts of stuff you can do with cinema, but you could also
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provide music at it. I'd have to look at the paper again to remind myself
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exactly how they centered on that number. But basically, it was a very versatile place
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to end up with things. Yeah, but again, I don't, I'd have to pull up
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the paper to just, if I were in the throes of researching the, for this
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final talk, I would have the answer for you, just like, burp. But
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they, they did do a lot of work and research. And I'm saying the number
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as if it's ridiculous, but it's, it's only ridiculous for
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the thing we're talking about. It's not ridiculous if you're thinking
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about. I want to provide constant level media
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for people as a distributor of Mediaev,
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like, it makes sense what they're doing. They did a lot of research to figure
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out what would work best for them. So I don't mean to disparage them, is
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what I'm saying there. So you've mentioned the talk a
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couple of times that you're going to do in November. I'm just out of my
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curiosity. You must be really
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into just the technical, the research.
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What's your original background? Did you come
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from an electrical? I mean, obviously you're a coder, but. No, I
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came from. I was a composer. Oh, okay. Yeah,
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I studied music at UCSB. That's in Santa Barbara
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in California. Curtis Rhodes was there at the time. He was the guy that.
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I think he's like the father of granular synthesis, right? Yeah, I think sounds
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right. But I was an undergrad so I only got to take a couple classes
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with him. But I looked forward when I was at the beginning of college, I
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was like, I can't wait. But I couldn't figure out how to
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make my way in music after school. And so
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over many years of working in kind of like embedded systems industries and other random
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stuff, I taught myself how to code and
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then eventually I had a good mind for it. I made a lot of
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friends in these industries that were like really technical people.
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And so then I married the two
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interests. I don't know why it took me so long to do it. It took
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me until I was like 40. And then I, I'm never looking back. That's awesome.
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No, I love, I can tell that you're super passionate
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about what you're doing just from like how.
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Because I watched a few other things. You had a really great interview on a
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show that I can't remember that I really enjoyed. Maybe
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help me, Devon. It was help me to Vaughn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those guys are
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so great. They put on a fun event
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in the. Yeah. So I was just curious
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like where that spark came from. But let's move because
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we talked beforehand and there's a bunch of things that we want to get into.
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We were emailing back and forth and you mentioned
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that you see a place for AI and machine learning and
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music. I totally agree. I see a place for it. I see
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places it shouldn't go to you.
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What is the kind of ethical lens
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developers and idea people should be looking through when
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you're making tools for audio and music?
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I got a couple, I got a couple things. I'm going to get the ethical
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thing like 1 second. But I got to go back to that split about the
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technical versus the creative and the inspirational.
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And I think that the big hype problem with AI right now is it's
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conflating them. I have not seen
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a mid journey dolly, whatever picture that I'm
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like, oh yeah, an original thought really
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makes me think right it's all, by its very
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nature, derivative in a way that's inhuman. True,
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and we are, ourselves good with patterns and stuff like that. But there's something
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about human spirit and inspiration and creativity
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that is very personal. And I
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like the term machine learning more than AI, because it isn't an intelligence. It has
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no emotions. It's not thinking about you or your family or your pets. It's
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not ever going to make a hard decision in its life. And
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looking to it to generate the art that we use to inspire ourselves in all
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sorts of ways is preposterous. It's, in fact, one of the things
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that makes me feel upset about
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the way that people in Silicon Valley might frame their
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technologies. I don't, I don't, I don't like that
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feeling. And so that's, that's a
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personal thought on my part. I think a lot of people might disagree with me
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on that, but I'm, I'm standing by that statement for the rest of my life.
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I don't think I'll, I'm not going to change my mind on that, so don't
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try to convince me. However. Yeah, I don't know what else to say
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about that. But that's just, that's what it is, right? And I think that, you
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know, three or four years down the road, we'll know a little more about what
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can and can't be done with certain types of stick. But the technological end, that's
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different. Machine learning is extraordinarily
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phenomenal. Mathematical pattern matching machine.
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Yeah. And it does some crazy types of stuff
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where we don't exactly tell it what to do, but we show it a bunch
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of pieces and it kind of, you give it a process that has
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all of these things that can be tuned, and they're called weights
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eventually. And so it comes up with like, a bunch of these weights, which just
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looks like a big list of floating point numbers that are like
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15, 30, 30 decimal points of
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whatever, because that's what it is. You're running it through some sort of crazy matrix
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multiplier. It's bl and it's just sort of pattern
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matching. So let's
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say I am trying to model
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an analog circuit. This is not something that I tend to
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do all the time. Classically, I'd have to
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say, hey, I'm going to look at the way a mathematician might
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think about the parts of the circuit, and then I'm going to look at the
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way that changes as you push voltages through it, and I'm going to build myself
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a mental model of how this machine reacts to electricity flowing through
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it. And I'm going to come up with math that a computer might actually be
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able to do in real time. And then I'm going to tune all the
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little bits and pieces so that they match what the hardware kind of does.
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And you can imagine without knowing how to do any of it, that there's probably
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three or four people that have figured out different techniques of doing this kind of
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modeling and whatever, and that's what makes its way into plugins, right?
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It's like, okay, well, I want to make something sound like a Moog ladder
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filter. Okay, well, what are the parts of a ladder filter? What are their resistances?
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What is blah, blah, blah? And then you do all these things. I'm not down
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talking that, I'm just saying, like, it's a lot of stuff. I can't even begin
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to explain all that stuff
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now. And we might call that, well, I'm not going to use, you know what,
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there's some terms that were called black box and white box. We're trying to move
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away from them, but I don't know what the new terms are, so I don't
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know what to call them. But essentially I'll call it a transparent box and an
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opaque box that would be a transparent box, because
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you can see all the pieces you've tried to put together and all the stuff
Speaker:
you're trying to do and da da da da da. Right? Machine learning gives us
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an approach where like, you know what? I'll just throw a bunch of random signals
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into this, into this algorithm, and it's going to look at the input
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and the output, and it's going to just sort of change all
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these little things around in the weights that I've set up for it, the neurons,
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and I'll come up with an approximation that when you
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put stuff in, it generally looks like what you told me comes out of it,
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but you have no understanding of why. Right, right.
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So it's really interesting is that if there is
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a piece of gear or a feeling or thought or whatever that you're trying to
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model and you don't know how to model it, or maybe it'd be too mathematically
Speaker:
complex or complicated for a machine to do in real time. AI is amazing
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for that. I don't know whether it's better or worse for things that we have,
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like models for and stuff like that, but it's an amazing tool
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for. We don't have the mathematical
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theoretical lens to look at this through.
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So can a computer figure it out for us,
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maybe. Yeah, in some cases, yes, it definitely can. And
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what's even cooler is that I'm working with
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this other guy whose name is Jotun Chowdhury. He's done some really cool
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stuff, and he told me one day that one of the other interesting things about
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it is sometimes you learn from the models because you're throwing all this different data
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at it, what some important things are for the
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input. Oh, I had no idea that in order to reach this
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goal, it's important to know this thing about the audio,
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which might lead you to get a better understanding of what's going on under the
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hood, and then you might not even use the model or AI in the long
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run. It may have simply pointed you in the right direction so you could do
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something else. So there's all sorts of ways. Anyway, anytime you're trying to
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do some sort of pattern matching or whatever, I think it's really cool. I'm
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not a huge fan of generative AI for the reasons I spoke about before. I
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think that it's, it's really good at giving you grey goo.
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If what you want is gray goo, go get it.
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There's my alliteration for the day. Go get your grey goo. Yes.
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Maybe don't put that in because people could misinterpret it. But that's kind of just
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the nanobot thing. Right. But for gray matter, like, in your brain. I don't know.
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Right. You get it. No, that's. I never actually thought about
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machine. Cause I think, like, use case, like, where. Yeah, where can
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machine learning or AI speed up? Like, my, my workflow,
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but, but make me more creative. But I actually didn't think about the
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software side, like, finding a more accurate model or a
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more, uh, a better, a better plugin. Not that I
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want another 1176 plugin, but. Exactly. Yeah, we don't, we don't need that.
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But we. There is gear we might not be able to measure, or it might
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be able to do it really efficiently down the road if we find out there's
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a special way to do it. Yeah. Oh, but the other thing you said, too,
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is also really important, and it's kind of the same thing, though. It's like,
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in a weird way, it's like, it's very good at pattern matching, so it should
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be able to get rid of minutiae. Minutia in
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our lives. Right? Yeah. For mathematicians, that might mean modeling something. That's
Speaker:
just like, I don't want to go through the motions of modeling this thing. I
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know how to do it. It'll take me a week, but I'll just throw it.
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Right? Yeah, because it wouldn't make a difference. Like, if it wouldn't make a difference,
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why not use it? Right? Right. So anything that's a productivity tool or
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where we're going through the motions non creatively. Right.
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Level matching, ducking things. I
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have a cousin who works in video editing. He was talking about this today. There's
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a lot of just technical phases or
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phases of production you go through where you just have to go through the motions
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of doing this really boring thing. And tools will get better and better at doing
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those boring things for you. Yeah, it's impressive. I
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mean, I don't really know any code, but I'll
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build a soundflow script to do something, or I'll take one that
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I have. I don't know if you're familiar with soundflow, throw it into GPT
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and be like, hey, this is what this does. This is what I want it
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to do. And it spits out code and I paste it in. It works. I'm
Speaker:
like, this is sick. That stuff is great. I'll never learn how to code now
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because now I have the box. That's it. There
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you go. It's another pattern matching, transparent box.
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Yeah, right. Where you're like. Or, no, no, sorry. Pattern matching, opaque box. My
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bad. Where you're just like, I know what I need to do. I know it
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can do it. I know the input. I do the thing and it does the
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thing. It does the thing. And that's all great. So to the degree
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in which you can eliminate those things, that's great. If you want to
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make a movie and you don't want to pay a composer, and instead you want
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bland music that's incredibly derivative and makes weird decisions that
Speaker:
then you can use generative AI. But that's where I'm like, I don't like that
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ethical boundary that much. But, like, still, okay, if you want to
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make poor, mediocre stuff, like, go for it,
Speaker:
that doesn't mean you can't use generative AI as part of a process.
Speaker:
I mean, you can do whatever you want, but I'm sure there's lots of
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amazing creative ways we could do that. But the emphasis right now seems to
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be on mimicry, which I don't love. No, I
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think it's the flashiest, right? You're talking to somebody that
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doesn't make music, and you show them that the computer made
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a song. Like, the musician's not impressed, but
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that's only 0.05% of the world. Everybody else is
Speaker:
like, whoa, that's mind blowing. So I feel like it's the flash
Speaker:
is why the generative mimic is the thing. Because
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it's bitter for the share price. It is. It is
Speaker:
bitter. And I don't mean to say if you take, like,
Speaker:
backyard potluck video of you and your friends and you don't know anything about making
Speaker:
music, you're like, someone make music for me and it'll be needing to the video
Speaker:
and you get to do it, that there's something that horrible about it, like, no,
Speaker:
actually, that's fine. Not everyone knows someone who can do that
Speaker:
kind of thing. And you're not going to pay licensing fees for your own
Speaker:
video. So stuff like Suno AI is cool for that. But the ethical
Speaker:
barrier there is what aren't they telling us about the training data?
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That's something that I believe the artist should have. Right.
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Just to. When it's being used for that kind of thing, we just don't know.
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It's very. Again, it's an opaque box. Yeah. Yeah. That's
Speaker:
something that I think is going to be really interesting over the next couple of
Speaker:
years, is the training data. And I think that's going to stretch across all
Speaker:
the AI because I think people are starting to realize
Speaker:
that there's value in licensing your voice or value
Speaker:
in licensing your footage or whatever, but if it's just being taken
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off and used, then you're missing that opportunity.
Speaker:
Right. I did see that this is kind of old news, but
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YouTube was doing a thing for shorts. I don't know if it ever launched,
Speaker:
but they had five or six voices. Charlie
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Puth was one of them. I mean, all names, you know, and you were gonna
Speaker:
be able to generate like a 32nd, 45 2nd piece of custom music
Speaker:
for your YouTube short. And I don't know if that
Speaker:
ever came to light, but there's obviously business opportunities for people that are
Speaker:
willing to sell their thing. Yeah. And
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I think it would also be really interesting to be able to train an AI
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model with your own music and be like, what would my, you know, weird
Speaker:
thing, like inspiration or something, you know, there's cases for it.
Speaker:
Yeah, they're interesting. There's interesting cases for it. Whether they would
Speaker:
work or whether they would, you know, there's some stuff out. There,
Speaker:
if you don't mind me, bring it back to the mastering conversation, though. It's all
Speaker:
back to that kind of spark of, you want something that's going to satisfy a
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requirement for you, or do you want something that is going to inspire you. Yeah.
Speaker:
And I think if you want to satisfy a requirement, there are applications for machine
Speaker:
learning that are pretty, they're pretty good, but if you want something that's going to
Speaker:
inspire you, which I think is something most people actually want out of their
Speaker:
music. That's why I think AI doesn't really have a great place
Speaker:
in, um, in. In that part of the. The phase, because
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it's. It's saying, I'm going to make these
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creative decisions without a soul. And you're okay with that? So.
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Okay. Yeah. Do you. This is kind of related to pattern matching, but
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back, back to mastering. Do you ever feel like the new
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play, like the gullfoss, the soothe, or just
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isotope tonal balance? And I'm not. I use all these tools. I I'm not. I'm
Speaker:
not railing on these companies. Yeah, yeah. The fact that these things are matching
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some kind of algorithm curve or making suggestions based on what's
Speaker:
pleasing to the ear. Do you think that's hurting
Speaker:
young engineers who are. Who should be shaping their taste and, like, maybe
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your taste is dirty and bright, but you're never going to find it because you
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put soothe on everything? I don't know the answer to
Speaker:
that. I don't know.
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I want to say no. I want to say no. It's not. I think that
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that's one of the things where it's like, any tool can be
Speaker:
misapplied and it doesn't make the tool necessarily bad.
Speaker:
There are some tools that are necessarily bad, but I would
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not. The tools that you mentioned, I think they have legitimate uses. I love them.
Speaker:
And I think that for people that are listening for something in specific, they offer
Speaker:
a great way to get there without doing a bunch of technical
Speaker:
work. And that's the thing that I advocate for. Let's get rid of the technical
Speaker:
hurdles so you can spend a lot more time on the creative hurdles. That's what
Speaker:
we want to do as musicians, as producers, as mixers. That's the part
Speaker:
that gets us going. We all. I mean, I love technical stuff, too. Right. But
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I know when I'm in the creation mode, like, like
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if I'm just geeking out, no one's gonna want to hear it. There things like
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make an extra difference. And when you're making music and if you're. Especially if you're
Speaker:
talking about, I don't know, like youth, kids,
Speaker:
whatever, whatever that is now, they're taking the most risks of
Speaker:
anybody. Young people tend to take the most risks. They're trying to
Speaker:
stand out. So if there's a tool, they're also gonna be the ones that are
Speaker:
most likely to either totally reject it or totally abuse it in a way that's
Speaker:
totally unique. So I think the more tools that exist for that thing, that's great.
Speaker:
Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, there's. I'm not a
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curmudgeon. I definitely, as I get older,
Speaker:
I often, like, wonder when files come into mix. I'm like, what the fuck did
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you do? How'd you make it sound like this? This is
Speaker:
cool. Yeah, they don't know the rules. Can I ask, or is it not
Speaker:
polite to ask because I know you did it?
Speaker:
Weird. But, yeah, no, there is.
Speaker:
That's why it's nice to collaborate with people of, like, all ages and, like, step
Speaker:
outside your circle, because you're like, oh, shit, my friends, don't do. Don't do
Speaker:
that. I like that trick. You know, the human aspect is. I don't
Speaker:
know, it's just the thing that is never going to go away. Right. Sitting in
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a room with people making music. That's why we all started this,
Speaker:
right? It's how we're going to keep doing it. That's right.
Speaker:
Yeah. Before we go, I love people that
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build something. Right. Whether that's a product like you have or if it's. Maybe
Speaker:
it's just like a unique career perspective or
Speaker:
direction. Right. And so I think there's a lot to take away from those stories.
Speaker:
So, a, can you share what the core mission behind
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starting music hack was? And b,
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are there any takeaways from the journey so far of building a
Speaker:
business that you think I are valuable to a producer engineer's
Speaker:
career? Oh, wow.
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Yeah, it's really been a journey. So Stan and I talked
Speaker:
about this for a while. We met through a mutual friend, and then we talked
Speaker:
about the mastering chain for a while. And the idea really
Speaker:
was to get rid of those technical hurdles, to get rid of.
Speaker:
To make people feel like they can be confident that their taste,
Speaker:
that they know what they want, and that that's enough. You don't have to have
Speaker:
some kind of deep wizardry or technical
Speaker:
knowledge or insane amount of control in
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order to make something properly mastered sounding great. If you have
Speaker:
a good mix coming in, you can have a fantastic master track coming
Speaker:
out, and you can spend your time on the creative aspects of it
Speaker:
rather than wondering what the technical trick is that would get you
Speaker:
where you wanted to be. And that's why everything on master plan is named, like,
Speaker:
loud, wide, high, thick. It's named after the
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quality that you want to change in the sound. And I want to make tools
Speaker:
like that. Yeah. Because you don't make instruments like
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a violin doesn't have, like, 500 knobs on it, that each have a different
Speaker:
name. It's just like you got them strings, you know
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what I mean? Yeah. And you just gotta move them. Right. Yeah.
Speaker:
And I think that making something that is eminently
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playable and musical
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and that gets rid of this sort of gatekeeping
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attitude of technical excellence
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and precision as gospel, we
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wanted to make something that anyone could feel confident taking their taste and
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applying it to a track. Yeah, that was it.
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Actually, while you were describing that, I was like, oh, they really put this into
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the plugin because I was thinking about the way that it's named and
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how I've been using it is I don't really care what
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the EQ frequency is or what the tape button
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does and what happens on the right side or the left side. I just press
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the button and I move it, and I'm like, let's go this way. Yeah, that's
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better. And it's quick to just shape, and I feel
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like you guys really epitomize that statement.
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So congrats. Yeah. As far
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as the journey, I think the most applicable things are
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you have to be determined and persistent. It doesn't matter what you're
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doing. You have to do it a lot, and you have to. When you get
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thrown a curveball or when something doesn't go your way or when something you thought
Speaker:
would work just falls flat on it, you just got to try something else or
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try it again. Keep pushing for what you know
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is what you want to create, and you will find your way there. Because it's
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never easy to get something amazing that you love. If you
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are a self critical person, and then the world is going to
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criticize you, too, when you put it out there and you have to think about
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what are all the things that went into. You just got to keep
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going. Some things are ridiculous, and some things are frustrating, and some things
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are confusing, but all of them will respond to you trying
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again, trying a little bit differently, putting yourself out there again.
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I say this as somebody who personally stopped doing production,
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but I didn't. But I stopped doing production because when I spent
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time in some camps and stuff like that, I found that, you know, what
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I'm most myself and best put to use when I'm helping
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people with the tools that they're using to do the production, I'm more
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effective at, like, being part of the group when
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that's what I'm doing, so that's what I'm going to do. And I can feel
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good about myself for that. So the other thing that I think that's worth doing
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is whatever you're part of, try
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to find what is it that you feel the most comfortable in that role, and
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own that role. It might not be the role you want. The joke I think
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I told on help me to honor something else. It's not even a joke. It's.
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The truth is, like, I just. I thought I was going to make some sick
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synth rifts, but guess what? They weren't sick enough. So that's. And you
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know what? That's fine. I found something that I could be proud of. That was
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something else. That's cool. Yeah. And it's not
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always gonna be what you want, but if you can take pride in it
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and. And own it, like, it can be really fun. Yeah. And you
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have to find the people around you that understand that's what you're doing, that they.
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They get that all that is stuff that transfers to anything you're doing, even
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outside of music. I don't care. Everything. Everything there was. While you were saying that,
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there's a. There was a phrase. There's a phrase that came. Came to mind, and
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I feel like this phrase has kind of. Kind of been
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twisted around the wrong way. That phrase of, like, you know,
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failing your way to the top. And I think people, people use that in a
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negative connotation now. Yeah, but it's
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all about the mistakes of learning. It's like any entrepreneur, like, and you
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will tell you how many times they failed at something and what
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they took away from it. And I kind of hope that that phrase started there,
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and now it's been, like, twisted around, but I don't know why that came to
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me. You're just talking about, like, growth and making mistakes. And I'm like, no, that's
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the thing. We're using this phrase wrong.
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Yeah. It's like failing. Failing up isn't like, oh, you
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got promoted, even though you suck, or like, some pay attention, though. Even you suck.
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And it doesn't mean faking it when you don't really have
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anything. It means making an earnest attempt at doing
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what you really want to do and making an earnest attempt at listening
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when people receive it and finding out what it is works and
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doesn't it? Yeah. And that entails all kinds of emotions. I
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can't tell you what you're going to go through, but it's going to be something.
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Everything you just said, really fits with the core
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of the show. Your career is going to go in different directions. I
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would never believe that I would be doing a podcast. And as soon as
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you fixate your success on the role that you want, as soon as
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that role isn't exactly what you thought, it's a
Speaker:
big letdown. It's like you have to understand that things change,
Speaker:
and when you find your place, it's gonna be the right place, you know?
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But, yeah, that is great insight. People should go back and listen to it
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again. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I gotta listen to it on a bad day.
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Yeah, exactly. That's the other thing. It's like I gotta remind yourself.
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Yeah. Yeah, we
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all have those days, and then it's really hard. And the trick is to
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just try to bounce. Try to bounce back. I got it. Yeah.
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I'll see if I can find that clip, and I'll just try to inspire myself
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on a random Tuesday. I don't know. I'll clip it out. I'll send it to
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you. Yeah. Hey, thanks. I'll tell my editor to find it, and I'll
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make it minus six lufts, but it'll sound good.
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Oh, no. So I've got two questions I ask everybody before we go.
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One is, has there ever been a time in your career where you chose
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to redefine what success meant? When you say career, I'm thinking,
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broadly speaking, life since kneading. Yeah. That would be
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when I left my job working for someone else to do this. I
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changed from trying to convince other people that I worked with
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that I knew what would make a good
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product, or I knew how to help people with whatever the
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tool was that we were making. And I realized you
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can't. You're really lucky if you get a chance to do that. You have to
Speaker:
be at a very small company or know someone really in a special way. But
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if that's what you want, you can't do it.
Speaker:
Maybe that's a cynical look, but it's really, really, really, really hard to get
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people to deploy resources on your behalf. That's true. That's
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true. I agree. For me, my goal changed when I
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realized I can't be doing that because I want to make
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something whole from nothing, which, it's okay if you don't want to
Speaker:
do that. Some people, it's like, I want to
Speaker:
focus on making this one thing that I know about this process better, and it's
Speaker:
much easier to find your right place in that. So I don't want to
Speaker:
be disparaging to people like, that's not what I'm trying to say here, but that's
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when my goal changed from please this other person so that
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I can get what I want out to just make the thing,
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get the people around you who will help you make the thing and make the
Speaker:
thing. And I
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make it so that people can, you know, make some
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tool that people really can use to make some stuff that they love. Yeah. As
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opposed to, like, help some company make some tool that they can use to
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sell to a defense contractor. So, yeah, my goal
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changed. My goal changed there. Yeah. Fair, fair.
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I love that. I have a lot of parallels in my life. I won't go
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into it, but, yeah, yeah, but yeah, there is. When you want to
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do your thing and you're in a place where you can't do your thing,
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it's so frustrating. So I feel you.
Speaker:
Feel you. Drives you crazy. Yeah. But last question
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before we go is what is your current biggest goal that you can share with
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us and what's the next smallest step you're going to take to go towards that
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goal? So right now we have a plugin
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that, well, we feel, but I think a lot of people that are using it
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feel like you can put it on a whole. On the two track, on a
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whole production, and almost anything will
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benefit from it. The people that start using it just, they know they can put
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it on anything. My next goal is to make something
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for that, that has that on an individual track
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basis where you could put it on any track and it has a real lot
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of useful stuff you could do with it because that's a whole different
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animal than a mixed bus or track. And I want to make it
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template worthy. Just like, I feel like master plan is where people just. It's
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a go to. Yeah, I know that doesn't sound like a lofty goal, but it
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is like making a template worthy plugin is really hard. Making one for the two
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bus or for a mix bus versus one for individual tracks is even
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harder. And so
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that's. Yeah, that's what that is.
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I don't know if that's. I wish I could say something more lofty, but it's
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got to have all of those things. It has to be indispensable, it has to
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be very musical and creative, and it has to be
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uncomplicated but very expressive. Like these are. These are lofty
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goals. And the smallest thing I'm doing to this aim is actually very
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technical. And that's that I myself make myself
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tools so that it's easier to do what I'm doing.
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And so I'm changing the whole way that we're doing
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graphics and stuff. And so I just want to finish
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that, which, relatively, is a small step. But once
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it's done, I can put it to rest and focus just on
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making more of the best plugins I can make.
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Yeah. And it's almost silly at this point because it's like,
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man, I've wanted to release this thing for so long because we could have been
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this one plugin company. I'm like, we got it. We already. We have the other
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one. Can't say what it is yet, but
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this has been holding me back, and I just can't wait to get it behind
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me. So that's the small step I'm taking, and it will
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open up a lot of ui ux
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things that I think will be very, just delightful stuff that'll be,
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like, make it more pleasing to use. That's awesome.
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Well, I'll look out for it. Do you think it's a far way
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away or a close. No. Okay. It's a close way away. Like,
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because, you know, there's, like, who knows? There's all of the little
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things you have to do that you don't expect. But, like, yeah, I want it
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out of nice. That's awesome. If other people want it out, believe me, no
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one wants it more than me. Maybe. Maybe Stan and Alex,
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the other two music hackers do, but, yeah,
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that's great. That's great. Well, Sam, please tell people where they could find you, where
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they can find music hack, where they can maybe see your thing
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later from the developers conference. Whatever you want to share, go for it.
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Yeah, you can find me. I'm actually on a discord with a
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music hack discord, which you can find at our website,
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www.musichack.com.
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and you can also just look up master planning. There's, like, videos of a bunch
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of stuff that. Help me, Devon. If you just look up my name. Help me,
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Devon. Sam Fishman. Maybe he'll spell it out in this
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thing or like, that. They'll. They'll find it there. The conference. They
Speaker:
take a while. Cause, you know, like, they take registration fees for people to listen,
Speaker:
and then, like a year, like, oh, yeah, seven, eight months later, they released the
Speaker:
talk. But I did a talk about oversampling. Okay. Last year.
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So if you're interested in that topic, you can look up ADC.
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Oversampling. And my name will probably pop up there. ADC is the audio
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developer conference. If you're in the audio world, and you're interested
Speaker:
in engaging with developers in any sort of way
Speaker:
or just curious about what's going on in our world. Registering for that conference and
Speaker:
checking it out is really cool. Where's it at? It's in Bristol. But you can
Speaker:
do it remotely, you can do it online. That costs money though. But there's
Speaker:
diversity scholarship, stuff like that. I don't mean to be an ad for them, but
Speaker:
you know, if you're, if you want to meet developers or you're like a producer
Speaker:
mixer or something and you're looking for someone to collaborate with, it's a great spot
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to be. Those are the spots I hang out. My instagram is Sam
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makesfood. Love it because I cook a lot. That's my other
Speaker:
thing. And our music hack, one is music hack underscore.
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So yeah, if you want to reach out, reach out. I'm around.
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Yeah, I will. I'll put a lot of that. Links to most of that in
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the notes. Cool. Yeah, this is a lot of fun. I'm glad we got to
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connect one more thing. Yeah. I'm also totally love
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technical deep dive. So if like you're seeing this and you're like, I really want
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to know how something works or whatever, if I can answer the question, like
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I will do. If I can answer in 90 seconds, I'll just do a video
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of it and throw it up on Instagram. So like ask me questions on the
Speaker:
music hack Instagram if you have them. I'm game. Love it. Love it.
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Yeah. All right, somebody get nerdy and send him a
Speaker:
message because I want to. I want to see it go down. Awesome, man. Well,
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thank you. Are you in LA? I am. I'm in downtown LA. Oh, okay. I'm
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in Pasadena. I'm gonna send you an email. We'll get a beer someday.
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Yeah, let's make it happen. That's it for this week's episode of Progressions. Thank you
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so much for watching or listening. Be sure to check out all the links and
Speaker:
resources mentioned in the episode down below, in the video description or in
Speaker:
your podcast show notes. If you're listening to this as an audio
Speaker:
podcast, please leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It helps the show so
Speaker:
much. And if you're watching on YouTube, feel free to drop any thoughts or
Speaker:
questions about the episode down below. Let's keep the conversation going.
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For those of you watching, you'll be getting a link to another episode you might
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enjoy popping up somewhere right about now. And for those of you
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listening, check out the YouTube hit that subscribe button if you haven't
Speaker:
already. And I will see y'all next time.
Here are some great episodes to start with.
