The player is loading ...
Struggling to set your rates? Follow the link below to get your FREE Rate Calculator Worksheet and watch the episode about how to confidently define your value as a music freelancer.
Andrew Scheps is a Grammy winning engineer and mixer who has worked with Adele, Jay-Z, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, and many more. We chat about the future of audio recording, the implications of AI, the mindsets you need to succeed, and the skills every engineer must have.
In this episode, you'll learn about:
Connect with Andrew
🌐 Website: https://www.bouncefactory.net/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascheps
📺 WATCH THE SHOW ON YOUTUBE 📺
https://www.youtube.com/@progressionspod
Connect with Me:
📬 Newsletter: https://www.travisference.com/subscribe
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/progressionspod
🎵TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@progressionspod
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/progressionspod
🌐 Website: https://www.travisference.com/
🙏 Leave a Review or Rating 🙏
Apple: https://www.progressionspodcast.com/apple
Spotify: https://www.progressionspodcast.com/spotify
📢 Our Sponsors 📢
Listen to Secret Sonics!
Sign Up for Complete Producer Network!
Credits:
Guest: Andrew Scheps
Host: Travis Ference
Editor: Stephen Boyd
Theme Music: inter.ference
Speaker:
Unless you're the artist, you are never making your own record, ever.
Speaker:
And you've got to stop trying to make your own record on other
Speaker:
people's music. That's Andrew Scheps, a man that needs little introduction
Speaker:
in the audio world. He's a Grammy winning engineer and mixer who's worked with icons
Speaker:
like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Adele, Metallica, and Jay Z.
Speaker:
Today we're talking about what it takes to have a career as an engineer in
Speaker:
today's recording industry. We hit it all from the technical skills you need. A
Speaker:
parallel compressor should be more compressed than you would ever
Speaker:
put on the insert directly because you only want to blend in
Speaker:
a little bit. But the way to think about parallel. Compression in general is
Speaker:
through the mindsets you must have. The guaranteed way
Speaker:
to not have a career is to sit at home being mad at the career
Speaker:
you don't have. How the current state of production has transformed
Speaker:
mixing. There's no more
Speaker:
tracking. It's all mixing constantly from the very
Speaker:
first track. And what that means is
Speaker:
that mixing is totally different than it was even
Speaker:
five years ago. Why? AI will probably never make lasting
Speaker:
art. But it can't step outside the training set. And if
Speaker:
you think about everything that, like, went, whoa,
Speaker:
what's that? And you got super excited about it. It was either the first time
Speaker:
anyone had done it or it's the only time anyone had done it. And to
Speaker:
always remember when we can. Work on a project with a musician or an artist
Speaker:
that is making the music we wish we could do. What's better than
Speaker:
that? Nothing.
Speaker:
So I look at your career, I see evolution and
Speaker:
diversification, where you've gone from like analog to all
Speaker:
digital. You were early on atmos. You made a plug in with
Speaker:
waves. You taught yourself to code so you could have a stem
Speaker:
printing solution. So you've added skills and you've kind of like, stayed on the
Speaker:
forefront of engineering. Right. So where do you
Speaker:
think engineering is heading from here? What do you think it looks like,
Speaker:
say, five years? It's a really good
Speaker:
question because there's so many things in play right now. Obviously there's
Speaker:
AI. Apparently Spike Stent has just announced there
Speaker:
will be an AI. Spike stent. I just saw that. Saw that? Yeah.
Speaker:
The website is not terribly informative. I have a feeling it was written
Speaker:
by AI, but, yeah, I mean, Spike's a
Speaker:
super smart dude and he's got his son working on it and stuff, so I'm
Speaker:
sure it's going to be pretty amazing, whatever it is. But that's been
Speaker:
the holy grail. Of the tech companies forever, right. Is to do that.
Speaker:
Because the size of the
Speaker:
market for professionals who make records is
Speaker:
nothing compared to the size of the market of people who
Speaker:
like messing around with music. So the
Speaker:
better their results can be, the happier
Speaker:
they're going to be. And that's going to be amazing. So that will
Speaker:
absolutely drive that kind of thing, just like with online mastering.
Speaker:
And, you know, it's already happened, but the mixing has been a tough nut to
Speaker:
crack. And I think it'll be really interesting to see what, what
Speaker:
Spike's thing is about. And I'm sure everyone else is working on it too. So
Speaker:
that's one thing. The other thing is
Speaker:
there's no more
Speaker:
tracking. It's all mixing constantly
Speaker:
from the very first track. And what
Speaker:
that means is that mixing is
Speaker:
totally different than it was even five years ago for me on most
Speaker:
projects because I am locked into stuff that everyone
Speaker:
loves, but it's not because it's tracked that way. So it's not
Speaker:
individual track processing, it's overall mix
Speaker:
processing. And that makes it cool
Speaker:
because some of it's done, but it also means it's
Speaker:
very difficult to back out of anything because other stuff starts to fall
Speaker:
apart because it's all processing that has everything in it
Speaker:
instead of just like, oh, they did something really weird with that one
Speaker:
drum mic, I can do something different with it. It's not that. It's like
Speaker:
that mic got weird because of the 40 tracks of
Speaker:
background vocals. Right. So that's just gonna keep going. And I. But
Speaker:
what's interesting about that is that moves mixing down
Speaker:
into the creators realm, which is
Speaker:
why something like an AI spike stent
Speaker:
is going to be exactly the right product for what's happening.
Speaker:
Interesting, because. Yeah, I agree. It's like mixing is becoming,
Speaker:
in my experience as well, parallels that less is more because so much has been
Speaker:
done before. Yeah, yeah. And just in an
Speaker:
inside out way. I mean, that mirrors mixing when you're working on eight track or
Speaker:
16 track because everything is tracked. I. So that you put the faders up,
Speaker:
you pan it, and that's the record, but it's
Speaker:
totally the inside out version of that. Yeah. Okay, well, okay, so you brought
Speaker:
up the spike thing. I know that came out yesterday. So that dates this interview
Speaker:
or was announced yesterday. I have an opinion about this and
Speaker:
you can fight me on this or agree, whatever. I think that AI and
Speaker:
mixing at first, it causes people
Speaker:
to get better. Like people that are good, that aren't charging a premium, have to
Speaker:
get great to separate themselves. But I think where the problem
Speaker:
lies is the people that are trying to do the
Speaker:
$100 mixes because they just graduated college, they're
Speaker:
not going to be mixing their peers work because their peers can
Speaker:
have spikes. AI or
Speaker:
whoever's AI, do it for them. So does that mean that
Speaker:
down the line, the craft suffers and there's a generation of people
Speaker:
that kind of miss out on learning it? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker:
that's certainly possible, but at the same time,
Speaker:
podcasts, online classes, stuff inside of paywalls,
Speaker:
outside of paywalls, I mean, that's exploded.
Speaker:
So the opportunity to learn is better than
Speaker:
it's ever been. I mean, I had to go to a four year college and
Speaker:
spend a ridiculous amount of my parents money to get a degree
Speaker:
to learn anything. Same.
Speaker:
Now, you don't have to do that. So it's
Speaker:
democratized on both sides of it. But where it's dangerous
Speaker:
is you have to have some foundational knowledge to
Speaker:
learn from anything that happens with the AI tools. I mean, you know,
Speaker:
ozone AI, it listens to stuff, and it fits
Speaker:
eq curves and things, and it's really good at it. But if you
Speaker:
don't go through the modules that it set up and, like, bypass them one
Speaker:
at a time and tweak some things, and then you're like, oh, okay,
Speaker:
that's what they're doing. And then maybe you'll do it yourself. Then you're
Speaker:
never going to become a mixer. It's just not going to happen because anyone can
Speaker:
slap an ozone on there, and I'll do it for a hell of a lot
Speaker:
less than $100 because I'll mix 500 songs a day.
Speaker:
If all I got to do is slap an ozone on there, we're done.
Speaker:
So it's not about that. And I think this is where the
Speaker:
whole AI thing always trips up a little bit,
Speaker:
is that AI can actually be creative,
Speaker:
but it will only work within its training set. And the training set is
Speaker:
hundreds of thousands, if not millions of things. It's easy to think, like, oh, it
Speaker:
listened to ten songs, and, you know, these training sets are gigantic,
Speaker:
but it can't step outside the training set. And if you think
Speaker:
about everything that, like, went, whoa, what's that? And
Speaker:
you got super excited about it. It was either the first time anyone had done
Speaker:
it, or it's the only time anyone had done it. And it could be anything.
Speaker:
It's the big guitars on creep. It's the distortion on Beck
Speaker:
Odelet. That shit had never happened, but
Speaker:
that's what grabs people and really makes them want to listen. So there'll be this
Speaker:
amazing, huge pool of what you would
Speaker:
then consider middle of the road stuff with middle of the road mixes that might
Speaker:
sound really good when you just put them on, but that's not lasting
Speaker:
art, which is really what we're trying to do. Yeah,
Speaker:
well, I think it drives. It drives people to, like, embrace their
Speaker:
preferences even further as opposed to trying to match what the radio sounds like, because
Speaker:
that's what the AI is going to do. So, you know, like, somebody like Chad
Speaker:
Blake is perfect example. Like, you know what you're going to get? You're going to
Speaker:
get Chad Blake's sound. I think that's going to drive more people to make
Speaker:
artistic choices, and that's probably going to be better. I hope so.
Speaker:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So kind of along these lines of I've heard you say
Speaker:
that you believe there's no rules, and I agree with that. I think, like,
Speaker:
you've said what comes out of the speakers. If it sounds good, it's good.
Speaker:
But I do think that when you're young and you're coming up, you're coming out
Speaker:
of college, you're searching for rules because you don't know what to do.
Speaker:
How do you think somebody balances that beginner's
Speaker:
mindset with whatever
Speaker:
the rule is? It's hard
Speaker:
because it used to be you would work in a studio and you'd see
Speaker:
lots of different people do stuff, and so you would learn
Speaker:
the rules while watching people do different
Speaker:
things. So, you know,
Speaker:
tutorials are great if they're good.
Speaker:
And I think that it's hard because it's not
Speaker:
free, but stuff behind a paywall is generally better because otherwise they'd be
Speaker:
out of business. So mix of the masters and pure mix and those
Speaker:
companies, especially pure mix for, like, pure educational videos.
Speaker:
It's an amazing resource. Absolutely amazing. So
Speaker:
the thing, like, there are no rules is true, but there are
Speaker:
fundamental laws of physics and math and electronics
Speaker:
and all that kind of thing. And that's never going to change that stuff.
Speaker:
So that's your toolbox. So you
Speaker:
want to know that really well because then you can be super creative. Otherwise,
Speaker:
you're at the point where you're putting ozone on and you have no idea what
Speaker:
it's doing. You'll never learn anything like that.
Speaker:
So you need to be the person who takes the toaster
Speaker:
apart to see how it works, you know, and hope you don't
Speaker:
die when you plug it in. But it is that, like, you
Speaker:
can learn it from a million different places instead of having to get a gig
Speaker:
at a studio, which is great, but you've got to
Speaker:
pursue the knowledge of it. There is no shortcut to being
Speaker:
good. There just isn't. No, no, because it's
Speaker:
the musicality that makes it good. That's what makes people want to listen again, not
Speaker:
because the snare sound is better. Do you think you discover that
Speaker:
musicality as an engineer over time, or do you think some people just kind of
Speaker:
inherently find it quick? Both.
Speaker:
I mean, in the same with the actual engineering. I mean, there were people I
Speaker:
went to college with, and everything they ever did sounded like a record. Like
Speaker:
Neil Avron. Holy shit. I mean, his stuff. First year of
Speaker:
college was insane, and I feel like I'm still not
Speaker:
the level he was sonically when he started. And this
Speaker:
is. It's 40 years ago. It's 40 years
Speaker:
ago this year. Ah, I'm old.
Speaker:
But the creative thing, I mean, that
Speaker:
just. I mean, think about a musician. You know, Coltrane didn't
Speaker:
pop out of the womb with sheets of sound. I mean, there's a progression,
Speaker:
and again, there's the learning your instrument. There's like, he studied scales. For him not
Speaker:
to. We don't have to make Coltrane the center of this, but Eddie Van
Speaker:
Halen practiced a lot, too. You get
Speaker:
more creative as you go. There's some people who are super creative right
Speaker:
away, and for them, it's just about learning the tools to pull it out of
Speaker:
their head. But I have definitely learned how to listen
Speaker:
and learn to find the things that I really want to bring
Speaker:
out because I think emotionally, that's going to make people connect and stuff
Speaker:
like that. When you're busy, you have an opportunity to practice things while you're
Speaker:
making records. You can toss up an extra microphone, do something weird to it. Nobody
Speaker:
ever has to hear it except for you. Are there ways that you think engineers
Speaker:
can practice these days and kind of hone their skills outside of just actually
Speaker:
working? Yeah, because if they have a laptop and
Speaker:
interface and a couple of microphones, they can go make a record.
Speaker:
So you were saying earlier it's unlikely that
Speaker:
the younger ones are going to be mixing stuff by their peers, but they will
Speaker:
if they go to a club and say, I like your band, let's go make
Speaker:
a record in your living room. Yeah. Nobody's
Speaker:
expecting anything at that point, which means
Speaker:
you can experiment and you can be a creative partnership
Speaker:
with the band, trying to find sounds or something. That's cool. And
Speaker:
I think that that's a great way to do it. And I couldn't do it.
Speaker:
I mean, you think that maybe it was better before,
Speaker:
but it wasn't. I mean, if you couldn't get into a studio. I mean,
Speaker:
I bought gear very early on so that I could
Speaker:
do stuff without having to get into a studio because nothing I wanted to work
Speaker:
on had any money. Yeah. Access to technology, I think,
Speaker:
is pretty powerful. And like you said, the access to
Speaker:
knowledge is amazing. Okay, I feel like I know how you would answer this question,
Speaker:
but would you tell somebody right now that they should go to an engineering school
Speaker:
and pay that money in 2024?
Speaker:
It's really hard to say, to be honest. Like, when I went to school, a
Speaker:
four year college degree was a big deal. Like, you had to have one. There
Speaker:
was just no way you weren't going to have that now. So unless you're
Speaker:
in a specific field, sometimes it's hard to argue that a four year degree is
Speaker:
worth it. Like, if you want to be in tech, tech companies hate it when
Speaker:
you've got a four year degree because they want you to learn the way they
Speaker:
want you to do it. Right. Whereas you would think that you would
Speaker:
need an advanced degree in computer science before you could even
Speaker:
start. So that's part of it. And I think
Speaker:
that there are people who get stuff out of schools and there are people
Speaker:
who don't. So I think it's actually
Speaker:
really personal. There are people who can learn really well. And for me,
Speaker:
it was the best thing I could ever have done because I want to know
Speaker:
how stuff works so that I don't even have to think about it.
Speaker:
But when anything happens, I know why it's happening, and I can react to it
Speaker:
and make it do what I want. Some people, that doesn't work,
Speaker:
that's not the thing. So it's impossible for
Speaker:
me to say one way or the other. I agree with. That's kind of how
Speaker:
I think you have to understand what kind of learner you are. Like, if you
Speaker:
are a self starter, more independent, just want to get your head in there
Speaker:
and do it, then I don't think you need to do it. But some people,
Speaker:
they like the structure. They need the classroom. They need that. And the other thing
Speaker:
is, I met a ton of people, a ton of people who do what
Speaker:
I do, and a lot of them are still in the business. I mean, I
Speaker:
went to college with John Paterno and Joe Barisi,
Speaker:
and I just call them up when I got a question, and it's fantastic.
Speaker:
So meeting your peers like you were talking about.
Speaker:
Yeah, that's invaluable, really. But you don't have to
Speaker:
pay a huge amount of money and go to a multi year school for that.
Speaker:
Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, a lot of my closest friends that I trade gigs with, we
Speaker:
all went to school and moved out here in the same few years, and
Speaker:
that's how it is. I want to shift a little bit to more of a
Speaker:
career thing. A lot of the questions that come up on the show are
Speaker:
things I'm curious about or things I'm struggling with, and I don't always
Speaker:
admit that, but that's, you know, you just did. Exactly.
Speaker:
Now everybody knows, but you get to sit down with cool people and ask questions.
Speaker:
Everybody in this industry kind of believes that there's, like, one credit on the horizon
Speaker:
that's going to, like, change their life and, like, make them
Speaker:
an engineer star. Right. And so I've been lucky to work on a few
Speaker:
records that went number one, and every time I have that feeling
Speaker:
where I'm like, this is it. It's going to launch. This is going to change
Speaker:
everything. And, like, as you probably know, not much changes.
Speaker:
Right. So do you have advice to producers or
Speaker:
engineers that think that that's about to happen to them? How. How they should actually
Speaker:
think about it, how they could maybe take advantage of it, build momentum? Like, what
Speaker:
are your experiences throughout your career? Well,
Speaker:
I mean, look, I've been ridiculously lucky, but if you
Speaker:
look at my discography over the last
Speaker:
35 years, because I did go to school for four years, so not 40
Speaker:
years. It's a slow burn. I mean, I had a lot of
Speaker:
assisting and vocal editing and vocal tuning, like, through the boy
Speaker:
band era, I was tuning vocals. That's how I paid the mortgage,
Speaker:
literally. It's terrible. And there were a
Speaker:
couple of things that were a big deal to a
Speaker:
few people, so it definitely jumped me up a little bit. Like 99
Speaker:
problems. That was a little bit of a jump. And then
Speaker:
the Adele record opened up doors to some stuff, but I don't really work in
Speaker:
that genre that often, so it's not like, oh, now I'm
Speaker:
set. But look, that was a
Speaker:
mixing credit on album of the year of,
Speaker:
like, the biggest selling album three years straight or something like
Speaker:
that. So there's one of
Speaker:
those, you know, it's nothing something.
Speaker:
I think what's more important is that there were projects when I
Speaker:
was working on them, and I thought musically, like, this is
Speaker:
my favorite thing I have ever worked on, and if this
Speaker:
doesn't come out, I'm done, like the music business and
Speaker:
whatever, and twice that I can think of just off the top of my head,
Speaker:
they didn't come out. Or if they did, absolutely nothing happened. The promo was
Speaker:
terrible, and there are these amazing records that nobody's
Speaker:
heard of. And so instead of
Speaker:
saying, like, well, I'm going to get out of the business, you
Speaker:
realize how incredible it was to have
Speaker:
two opportunities to work on something you love that
Speaker:
much. Yeah, it sucks when it's not going well. And you
Speaker:
really do think that. And I've seen there's so many people
Speaker:
who are, like, mad about a
Speaker:
credit they feel they deserve but didn't get. Like, you know,
Speaker:
I engineered some overdubs. I should get an engineering credit. And,
Speaker:
I mean, that's the whole, that's a whole different topic about, you know, making sure
Speaker:
you take care of your credits before the project starts because you will never get
Speaker:
a credit that you think you should get if you haven't already negotiated it. So
Speaker:
you can take that question off the list. It's a brutal,
Speaker:
brutal business, and
Speaker:
I am just ridiculously lucky that I've, you know, made it or whatever,
Speaker:
but I'm still scrambling a lot of the time. Like, I'll go without
Speaker:
work and then I'll have some work that I take because I didn't
Speaker:
have work, but it's low paying, but it's taking up a huge amount of time.
Speaker:
And then all of a sudden a gig comes in that actually would pay for
Speaker:
some stuff, but I can't take it because, you know, there's always a juggling
Speaker:
act. I just happen to be juggling the really good balls most of the time.
Speaker:
Yeah. But right after the Adele win, right after the Grammys, I didn't work for
Speaker:
three months. I had absolutely no work. January, February,
Speaker:
March of whatever year that was none. Not
Speaker:
a single paying gig. How'd you feel like that? I
Speaker:
curled up in a ball and I just go and do something
Speaker:
else. One time when that happened, I went and started teaching a class at
Speaker:
UCLA. Another time, I helped a buddy out who had a low
Speaker:
voltage installation thing. He did audio, but also stuff that
Speaker:
made the curtains open and close and tvs come up out of people's beds.
Speaker:
You know, you gotta stay busy. Yeah, look, the last thing I'm gonna do is
Speaker:
complain and whine. I'm lucky.
Speaker:
Yeah. Well, I don't know. I don't think.
Speaker:
I hate to use the word luck. It's more like it
Speaker:
works, but it's building trust with people. It's following through,
Speaker:
it's being prepared when the opportunity comes. And the more you have those
Speaker:
things stacked up in your favor, the more it seems like you're lucky,
Speaker:
because the right people call, you. Follow through, they call again.
Speaker:
Cycle continues. Yeah. The guaranteed way to
Speaker:
not have a career is to sit at home being mad at the career you
Speaker:
don't have. You know, if you want to be in the right place at the
Speaker:
right time, you got to be everywhere all the time. That's the thing. So you've
Speaker:
got to be out there seeing bands, meeting people, joining
Speaker:
stuff. Join Naras, join AE's. Maybe
Speaker:
if you're a little more technical. There are groups in the UK, there's the
Speaker:
MpG. Like, there are groups everywhere where you get to just go hang
Speaker:
out and talk about plugins. Do it. One of those people will offer you a
Speaker:
gig at one point. Yeah. Or just bring you up to somebody. It's like, top
Speaker:
of mind. It's like, oh, you have to just be in the
Speaker:
space. Okay. So this kind of leads to another question I was gonna
Speaker:
throw in somewhere. Is there a limiting belief that you think holds people back
Speaker:
in this industry? I mean, for me, it's imposter syndrome.
Speaker:
I've got a gigantic, colossal, world sized
Speaker:
case of that. I don't know that it holds me back,
Speaker:
because fortunately, while I'm actually digging in
Speaker:
on something, unless it's just a disaster, I don't have it
Speaker:
until I send a mix. But I have it going
Speaker:
into sessions. If I'm tracking, I mean, I've pulled over to the side of the
Speaker:
road and thought about, well, I could call in sick and just go
Speaker:
home, like crazy stuff. And then you get there and you get going, and
Speaker:
it's okay. So I think it's that, for
Speaker:
me, I will do stuff almost like I'm in a trance. It's like, okay,
Speaker:
I'm doing it. Like there isn't a choice anymore. I'm doing it, and then
Speaker:
it starts happening, and then it's okay. It's like, you remember,
Speaker:
this is what I do. This is my thing. So there's that, and then the
Speaker:
opposite of it is what we were just talking about, which is
Speaker:
90% of the gig, everyone assumes you know everything
Speaker:
about what to do, to do your job. So 90% of it
Speaker:
is, don't be a dick, which is my other phrase. It's whatever
Speaker:
comes out of the speakers. And don't be a dick, because you need to be
Speaker:
able to be somebody people want to have in the room, and they
Speaker:
will gladly take someone who's a little slower, who isn't a
Speaker:
dick. That is the truth. And I think
Speaker:
that's something that you learn in the big studios because you
Speaker:
see it. You see when you get kicked off of a session and when an
Speaker:
engineer producer doesn't want you as the assistant again. But I think when you're
Speaker:
independent, you're working in your backyard now and you're just working with your friends. I
Speaker:
don't think people understand that the way that they would if they came up through
Speaker:
the system. Yeah, well, it's also
Speaker:
the sort of studio hierarchy, like in a bigger studio. You learn very,
Speaker:
very quickly that the assistant, if they have an idea, tells the engineer, the engineer
Speaker:
tells the producer, the producer tells the artist. Nobody except the
Speaker:
producer talks to the artist unless it's your 12th record with them
Speaker:
and it's one big happy family. But when it's. Yeah,
Speaker:
when it's you in your backyard, you think that you're always making your own record.
Speaker:
Okay, so that's the lesson to learn, though, is unless you're the
Speaker:
artist, you are never making your own record, ever.
Speaker:
And you've got to stop trying to make your own record on
Speaker:
other people's music. You're making their record. And if you're not present
Speaker:
understanding what it is they're going for, even if you don't like it, you
Speaker:
think it would be so much better. That's not the
Speaker:
job. Yeah, there you go. There's another one. That's good.
Speaker:
They're falling out today. There's a clip. We've got a clip, people.
Speaker:
I can't not talk a little bit of technical stuff with you, although I would
Speaker:
love to just do career all day. I'm looking at my notes. Let's talk a
Speaker:
little bit about adding skills to your repertoire.
Speaker:
Taught yourself to script and created bounce factory. Did
Speaker:
you learn to script to create something like bounce factory, or did you realize the
Speaker:
power that you had when you started automating things and, like, learning
Speaker:
how you could make the computer work for you? It's a little
Speaker:
bit of both where, like, I've tried to teach
Speaker:
myself programming because I'm a total geek and thought, oh, that'd be really cool. Yeah.
Speaker:
And several times in my life, and it never went well because I didn't have
Speaker:
a project. Then I discovered sound
Speaker:
flow and immediately built a couple of things, like tiny
Speaker:
things. I've got my function. My f 19 key
Speaker:
swaps the input state of the bottom track in my session. Doesn't matter
Speaker:
what session's open because that's how I monitor things. The rough or
Speaker:
my previous mix is on an audio track at the bottom. If I switch to
Speaker:
input, it's the live mix. I used to have to scroll to the bottom of
Speaker:
the screen and then click the input button. Now I don't. That took me
Speaker:
about ten minutes. And that's when I knew, like, okay, so for a while, it
Speaker:
was just automating, like, little things, session prep or setting
Speaker:
preferences or stuff like that. And then I started
Speaker:
writing the bounce script that most people who use
Speaker:
soundflow will eventually write, and it'll be very, very specific to
Speaker:
themselves, which is fine, that's great, because that's
Speaker:
all you need. But then I started generalizing
Speaker:
it when I realized how many different types of things I bounce.
Speaker:
And. Yeah, so I learned because I had
Speaker:
to learn because I had to write this app. But there were a couple of
Speaker:
apps before. There's the offset counter, because you
Speaker:
can't offset the minutes and seconds counter in pro tools. So you open up
Speaker:
this counter, put the cursor anywhere you want, hit a button. Now
Speaker:
that's zero, and you can locate to the numbers you just got in the email
Speaker:
with all your mix notes. Exactly. It's genius. So
Speaker:
it was that it started off as that, and then it just turned into bounce
Speaker:
factory, which was two full years of just coding because
Speaker:
Covid. I mean, that's. I discovered bounce factory during COVID So. That
Speaker:
was one of your Covid adventures? Like, I started a podcast. You made bounce
Speaker:
factory? Yeah, yeah, those two things. That's what I did. What
Speaker:
are some of your favorite automations? Music or non music that aren't like the
Speaker:
ones that people know about, like bounce Factory or the
Speaker:
counter? I think all of mine are music
Speaker:
just because I use it when I'm sitting in the chair and I don't have
Speaker:
hue lights and, you know, but I know a lot of people controlling
Speaker:
everything with it. Prep a session
Speaker:
in less than ten minutes now. So
Speaker:
it imports tracks from my template, but it knows which format it
Speaker:
is because I told it. Oh, this is stereo. This is atmos with all the
Speaker:
crap. This is atmos from stems. It imports the right tracks, it sets the
Speaker:
preferences the right way. I can color code and add to groups
Speaker:
in seconds now. Like, it's
Speaker:
basically every single time I do anything that's
Speaker:
bothering me. I could do it again in four or 5
Speaker:
seconds, but I will stop for 2 hours and write a script, and then I'll
Speaker:
never have to do it again. Yeah, I have
Speaker:
an extremely long list of things that I want to build, but I
Speaker:
don't take the 2 hours to build them. But it's a long list.
Speaker:
But you know what? When you do it. It's so
Speaker:
awesome. It is. You're happy because you're
Speaker:
not doing the thing. It isn't just. It's not going to make me sad. It
Speaker:
actually makes you happy. And you're super creative. As soon as it's done running
Speaker:
that script and you can get back to work. Yeah. Like I told you
Speaker:
when we chatted, like a week or so ago, I found bounce factory right
Speaker:
after I had my daughter. And it was all of a sudden,
Speaker:
like, what am I going to do? Like, how am I going to do this?
Speaker:
And to be able to automate something to that level and know that I can
Speaker:
print an entire album of atmos stems, because God knows,
Speaker:
like, somebody's like, we're gonna mix atmos and you're like, I don't want to print
Speaker:
those stamps. I don't have that time. It's just like, I don't know anybody
Speaker:
that fights against automation just makes me a little bit crazy. There's one of my
Speaker:
friends that's gonna listen to this and he's gonna know who he is, but
Speaker:
I just. I wish everybody would just get on board a little bit, you know?
Speaker:
Well, but, you know, if they're happy doing it that way,
Speaker:
then cool. I guess if you're happy, right? Yeah,
Speaker:
yeah. I mean, if it starts impacting your life because he can never get out
Speaker:
of the house because he's printing stems or she printing stems 24 hours
Speaker:
a day, then, you know. But see, the difference for me, first
Speaker:
of all, it's that it's exactly what you're saying. You can do other stuff. I
Speaker:
can go watch something with my wife. I can go on a walk. I can
Speaker:
sleep, that kind of thing. But it's also
Speaker:
for atmos. I would have been printing ten or twelve stems per
Speaker:
song because it's such a pain in the ass. And it's a twelve song record.
Speaker:
That's still 144 stems, and that's a
Speaker:
lot. Yeah. I'm printing 40 or 50 every. I
Speaker:
basically print every single thing separate so the audio is
Speaker:
baked in. But if I want to split up the background vocals
Speaker:
into a sphere of background vocals, I have them separate. I
Speaker:
can do it. Yeah. Without even thinking about it. Yeah. And it's not. It's
Speaker:
not a heavier lift for you because it's just you've set it up. Because I
Speaker:
agree. If I wasn't automating my bounces, I would
Speaker:
be trying to do atmos with far fewer stems for my stereo mix
Speaker:
because just out of time. And now you have the freedom.
Speaker:
There's been this thing over the last, I don't know, ten years, where
Speaker:
labels want you to deliver a multitrack. It's like, well, get that from the producer.
Speaker:
That doesn't come from the mixer. But then, you know, none of the sounds are
Speaker:
there. There have been edits done since the producer, like, they sent you a new
Speaker:
vocal and all that stuff. So now I actually have a
Speaker:
multi track where you can just put the faders up and you're really, really close
Speaker:
to the mix. Yeah, that's a big deal for the band.
Speaker:
You know, I get calls from Hozier's
Speaker:
musical director. Front of house. Actually, I think he's front of
Speaker:
house. I don't remember. But he's the guy who emails me and says, hey, I
Speaker:
need some stuff for this song. I would have to open
Speaker:
it up and print specific things, but I just send him the folder, and
Speaker:
he loves it. He just pulls up whatever he needs. He can submix on his
Speaker:
own. And there you go. You eliminate back and forth and extra questions of,
Speaker:
like, can you split these? I already did. Yeah, it's all done.
Speaker:
The multitrack delivery, that sparks a question. I feel like there's a debate on the
Speaker:
Internet. I don't know. Maybe this is just my algorithm. You never
Speaker:
know about the multitrack mix session
Speaker:
being the mixer's intellectual property and
Speaker:
not sending it out. Yeah, I will never give anyone a
Speaker:
session. Absolutely not. But you would print
Speaker:
everything, commit it, and send it. Yeah, and it's not
Speaker:
because I feel like everyone should have it. And they can take apart
Speaker:
my thing and see, but they can't see what I did, and they don't know
Speaker:
what the source material was. So whatever, they could hear
Speaker:
a cool delay effect or something, but
Speaker:
it's because the artist is going to need it. They're gonna need it.
Speaker:
And you can't trust labels to hold onto anything. I mean, you know, witness
Speaker:
Sony setting half their catalog on fire, and
Speaker:
you realize they only have one copy of everything, like crazy. So if a
Speaker:
major's gonna do that, a small label, you know, it's gonna
Speaker:
flood. Like something's gonna happen. And this way,
Speaker:
you have the music, which is the whole point. So
Speaker:
it used to bug me when it was a huge amount of work, when it
Speaker:
took forever. No way in hell was I sending that to you. But
Speaker:
now I'm doing it anyway. Now, if you don't want atmos on your record, I'm
Speaker:
not doing that. So there isn't a multitrack to send, but if I'm
Speaker:
doing the atmos then that's what I want. And so once it
Speaker:
exists, I'll send it. If I mix it in stereo and they're getting
Speaker:
someone else to do the atmos for whatever reason, they don't get 50
Speaker:
stems. I split it up reasonably, but they're getting ten or
Speaker:
twelve, you know, because that's the deal. Enough for live, enough
Speaker:
for sync, no crazy overlaps. I mean, that's, that's
Speaker:
rational. So for you it's not, it's not about an IP thing.
Speaker:
It's about you don't want the session because five years from now it's not going
Speaker:
to work. So take these stems. These are better. Yeah, the IP thing would be
Speaker:
the session and that's because, and this
Speaker:
is another thing where we were talking about how production is now mixing. So this
Speaker:
gets very, very murky. But let's say they've
Speaker:
hired somebody to mix the record and it's not going well, but
Speaker:
they like some of the stuff that person has done and then they hire me
Speaker:
to mix the record. I should absolutely not
Speaker:
get what they've done, I should get what they were given. I agree with
Speaker:
that, but at the. Same time I absolutely have
Speaker:
to get whatever created this ridiculously processed rough
Speaker:
mix that sounds amazing. You cannot send me raw
Speaker:
tracks and then a mix that's got
Speaker:
7000 plugins on it. And I would spend my entire life trying
Speaker:
to recreate what was already done so that I could tweak it.
Speaker:
So I have to get something that adds up to the rough. Yeah,
Speaker:
yeah. This makes me feel so much better about my life. The fact that
Speaker:
you're echoing these things because the battle of the rough
Speaker:
mix sounding nothing like the files is just like, it defeats the
Speaker:
purpose because by the time I match your rough mix, a, it's not gonna be
Speaker:
the same, it's going to be my sonic preferences. And b, I'm tired.
Speaker:
Like, I'm no longer creative. And all we did was get back to zero. That's
Speaker:
a huge, huge job matching it. And I'm not good at matching mixes.
Speaker:
I'm terrible at it. But here's the other thing, is that,
Speaker:
you know, we're saying how there's so much mixing as part of the production. Now
Speaker:
on my phone at the gym, it's just cycling music. Now, I've listened to
Speaker:
enough records that Apple suggests things. It does some really
Speaker:
weird stuff sometimes. Like it'll play the same song twice in a row, like
Speaker:
really. But every once in a while stuff comes on
Speaker:
because like, I've listened to something I've done ten years ago, whatever, and
Speaker:
a song will come on and it's like, wow.
Speaker:
And sometimes I think, like, man, that sounds really good.
Speaker:
And it's because I got raw tracks, but there wasn't a rough mix that was
Speaker:
anything other than those raw tracks. Yes. So
Speaker:
things are recorded with intent. The sounds mean something and they're what
Speaker:
they're supposed to be. But I could do anything, and some of those
Speaker:
mixes are better than anything I've done on projects
Speaker:
where it comes to me sounding great. So you'd think, like, oh, well, that's an
Speaker:
easy gig. It already sounds great. Just fix a couple of things. But
Speaker:
that can take as long as mixing from scratch.
Speaker:
But you can't mix from scratch, which means you also can't, like, you're
Speaker:
having to be creative inside someone else's brain at that point,
Speaker:
which is really, really difficult for me. Okay, Dell's
Speaker:
advocate, do you think that those mixes are your favorite mixes because they are all
Speaker:
your sonic taste, or do you think they're
Speaker:
arguably better mixes? Technically? No, I think they're better. Okay. I
Speaker:
really do. I think that there are.
Speaker:
I mean, part of it, obviously, is because it's my taste, so I like
Speaker:
them. Right? Yeah. I mean, it
Speaker:
has to be that, because what's the other filter? I'm listening in. But I
Speaker:
also do think that's why they're better, because I
Speaker:
had. I had control over everything. So it isn't that,
Speaker:
like, I couldn't make the vocal sound better on a really mixed
Speaker:
mix. Like, sure, that's my job and that's what I'm going
Speaker:
to do. But I can't shape everything around the vocal.
Speaker:
I can't get into the mid range the same way, so I can't make
Speaker:
things have separation or space if they're already smashed
Speaker:
together, because then things start to fall apart. So,
Speaker:
yes, it is because it's my filter, but I'm
Speaker:
right. I'm definitely not right.
Speaker:
Oh, that's good. That's good. Okay, so let's do
Speaker:
atmos for a second. We keep touching on it, right. My
Speaker:
perspective of atmos at the moment is that it's
Speaker:
a label artist game, and it's a little bit more about pleasing apple than it
Speaker:
is making art. But you are doing significantly more atmos than I
Speaker:
am. Do you see artists and producers getting excited?
Speaker:
And I should say that I love it and I think we should do more
Speaker:
of it. Do you see artists getting into it? I guess is the
Speaker:
question. When artists hear it on
Speaker:
speakers, their minds are blown. If it's a good mix.
Speaker:
There are so many bad atmos mixes. I mean, there are more
Speaker:
ways you can screw up a song in atmos than in stereo.
Speaker:
Absolutely. You can pull stuff apart, and now the groove is gone, the song is
Speaker:
gone. Nobody wants to hear it, so that's a problem. But
Speaker:
when it's good, and by good, I don't mean it sounds good. I couldn't
Speaker:
care less if stuff sounds good, but it feels like their song.
Speaker:
You cannot do that in stereo. You can't. It's
Speaker:
impossible. And there is something emotionally
Speaker:
that just can destroy you if you're listening to
Speaker:
a good atmos mix that you know you'll enjoy
Speaker:
it in stereo, but you cannot get across what happens. And there are
Speaker:
actually people doing doctorates on why that's the case. Interesting.
Speaker:
This isn't just like, hey, I'm in a room, I like atmos. Like, this is.
Speaker:
It's clinically proven stuff,
Speaker:
but it is a format for speakers, so
Speaker:
that's the thing. And 99% of the consumption is
Speaker:
on headphones. So that requires the ability
Speaker:
of the listener to externalize, to hear something as if it's coming
Speaker:
from elsewhere. And I can't do it
Speaker:
like four or 5 seconds a week, things will explode
Speaker:
out while I'm working on the headphone version of a mix. And then it
Speaker:
collapses again, and then I'm really sad. But
Speaker:
it's not just one service. I mean, it used to be that
Speaker:
people said, oh, well, Apple will bury your album if you don't deliver atmos.
Speaker:
Well, no, they have a lot of playlists that are
Speaker:
immersive only. That's true. Obviously, you
Speaker:
can't be on that playlist, and they're pushing the format. It's not that
Speaker:
they're dumping your record down to the bottom of the bin, it's that your record
Speaker:
can't go on all the stuff they're putting on the front because that's what they're
Speaker:
trying to promote, and now they pay more for it. So there's a little bit
Speaker:
of incentive. I mean, I have no idea what the numbers are, but.
Speaker:
But the format itself, like, talk to anybody who has mixed
Speaker:
atmos. And they just love it.
Speaker:
Absolutely love it. The problem is that people that don't like it have never heard
Speaker:
it in a good room, and they've never got to do it on speakers. And
Speaker:
I just. I feel like. I wish there was more focus on making the binaural
Speaker:
experience better, because then you would bring more people on board.
Speaker:
Well, but, like, one of the things is, if you don't, we can go
Speaker:
geeky for a second. If you don't have a personalized HRTF,
Speaker:
it doesn't matter what they're doing on the encoding side, it's not going to work
Speaker:
well for us it might because you're using a
Speaker:
generic HRTF which is based on something and it's based on
Speaker:
white northern western hemisphere. It's not
Speaker:
demisphere men. Okay, so we have
Speaker:
a better chance of it working for us, but asian women
Speaker:
have absolutely no chance of it working without having a
Speaker:
personalized one. So finally, with phone true depth
Speaker:
cameras and stuff like that, you can get a reasonable HRTF and that will
Speaker:
help. But the good thing is, is that consumer
Speaker:
speakers are getting better sound bars that will hook up to a couple speakers
Speaker:
behind you and a subwoofer. Now all of a sudden you've got a five one
Speaker:
system with up firing tweeters and you can start to get the feel of
Speaker:
it because it's not like, oh, the speakers have to be in the right place.
Speaker:
You just need to feel like you're in the middle of whatever the hell's
Speaker:
going on, instead of it just being in front of you like a television. Yeah,
Speaker:
yeah, I. That's the thing that I'd never gotten into binaural is I'm one of
Speaker:
those people that I don't hear anything behind. I think that's a thing for
Speaker:
some people, right? Some people can. They get the rap and I don't, I just
Speaker:
get the room directly behind. You is actually almost impossible.
Speaker:
Okay. Once it's off to the sides, you should be able to localize a little
Speaker:
bit. And I can't, but it's, I mean, back to the seventies,
Speaker:
there was a, you know, binaural sound effects record or something like that.
Speaker:
And it's because everything is completely
Speaker:
balanced. Delay, frequency, all of that. Just like if
Speaker:
it's right in front of you. Right. So it's almost impossible to hear
Speaker:
that something is behind you. But as it's moving, that's the thing where
Speaker:
people who are lucky get to hear it moving, and I don't, it sounds
Speaker:
weird. Have you. I've heard, I haven't heard it. The Sony
Speaker:
360 tech, I've heard that. That is actually pretty amazing in headphones. Have you
Speaker:
heard that? I've done a lot of Sony 360 mixes. It's a different
Speaker:
headphone algorithm. Again, I never
Speaker:
externalize, so I hear the worst case version of it.
Speaker:
I'm hearing the encoding. I'm not hearing a binaural
Speaker:
mix. All right. Yeah. Anyway, I don't
Speaker:
know. I like atmos. I hope more people get on board, but
Speaker:
everything you just mentioned is, I feel like, the barrier for why
Speaker:
people. Hate on it and for people like us
Speaker:
who can make it to the west coast in January. Go to Namm,
Speaker:
because PMC has a booth. Neumann has a booth. There are probably
Speaker:
others where you can just sit there and listen to people's atmos mixes all
Speaker:
day. And if you don't walk out of there at least wanting to try it,
Speaker:
I'd be surprised if you like music and listening to
Speaker:
music, it's like, I am so excited to play some of my stuff
Speaker:
at NAmm because my room is tiny. Like, it is
Speaker:
literally the smallest room you can put an atmos system in. A
Speaker:
friend of mine who I went to college with works for Dolby, and he was
Speaker:
visiting, he's like, let me measure your room. And he's like, yeah, you've got a
Speaker:
couple inches to spare. Yeah. So I can't
Speaker:
hear the separation in the speakers at all. Right. Right.
Speaker:
But I get to Namm, put it up in one of those booths, and
Speaker:
it's just awesome. That's amazing. And the
Speaker:
PMC booth is just stacked with speakers. It's like, more speakers and chairs in
Speaker:
there. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. It's crazy.
Speaker:
It's amazing. Okay, I wanted to ask you. We'll step away
Speaker:
from atmos parallel compression. I feel like a lot
Speaker:
of people, when they're starting out,
Speaker:
they're using parallel compression because they hear engineers like yourself talk
Speaker:
about it, and they just take an 1176, they hit all buttons in,
Speaker:
they pin the meter, they push it up until something sounds bigger, but they never
Speaker:
think about that compressed signal. So can we talk about the actual
Speaker:
compressed signal? How are you approaching that compression
Speaker:
and attack and release? And what are you thinking about? Well, you're not going to
Speaker:
like my answer that much because it doesn't matter what it sounds
Speaker:
like on its own at all. Like, not even a little bit. Okay.
Speaker:
Because, like, one of the drum parallel crush things
Speaker:
in my template, and it's been there since the very first time I
Speaker:
was doing anything in the box, which is before I had a console. It's
Speaker:
Fairchild plugin. Right? Right. You put that on drums? Sure you
Speaker:
do. So it's Fairchild. It's set up kind of like it would be on
Speaker:
drums. If you listen to it on its own, it's pretending to be a
Speaker:
fairchild, which means it's pretending to have low end and be
Speaker:
slow and whatever. When you blend it in as a parallel thing, stuff gets
Speaker:
brighter. Yeah. Okay. So I don't know
Speaker:
why. So there you go. Okay, here's the
Speaker:
thing. A parallel compressor should be more compressed than
Speaker:
you would ever put on the insert directly because
Speaker:
you only want to blend in a little bit. But the way to think about
Speaker:
parallel compression in general is if you put an
Speaker:
insert compressor on something, it reacts to the loud stuff right below
Speaker:
the threshold. It leaves everything alone above the threshold. It turns it down
Speaker:
a lot. When? Well, if you're compressing a lot
Speaker:
at a high ratio, when you've got something
Speaker:
absolutely crushed and you're blending it in,
Speaker:
you still have your uncompressed signal. So you've got full range with
Speaker:
all of your transients. All the stuff above what the threshold would have
Speaker:
been completely untouched. And then you start
Speaker:
slamming this slab of the same sound, but
Speaker:
doesn't have the dynamic range, and you're blending it in.
Speaker:
It's not exactly this, but technically you're making the quiet
Speaker:
stuff louder instead of the loud stuff quieter. And the
Speaker:
character of that is what I like. It has nothing to do
Speaker:
with. It's bigger if you do it one way or whatever. I
Speaker:
love the sound of an uncompressed vocal. I love the sound of
Speaker:
uncompressed drums. The transients on uncompressed
Speaker:
kicks and snares are like, they surprise you. They're so
Speaker:
awesome. You start compressing, the drum kit will sound cool, you'll get some great
Speaker:
noise going on. But the kick and snare don't make you laugh when they're way
Speaker:
too loud. Like that's a thing. There's some emotional thing to
Speaker:
really getting pummeled with the transients. Yeah. So you use parallel
Speaker:
compression to get the drums so that you can slam a bunch of guitars over
Speaker:
them, but still hear them. But you still have your transients,
Speaker:
so that's why. But to be fair,
Speaker:
over the last year, year and a half, I've gotten to the point
Speaker:
where I am using almost no parallel compression anymore.
Speaker:
Wow. Almost none. The rear bus hasn't made
Speaker:
an appearance in a mix in probably a year.
Speaker:
How are you getting that same quiet stuff
Speaker:
up? I don't know.
Speaker:
I mean, part of it is if I'm mixing something that has already
Speaker:
been mixed, well, then I don't need it. There's no room for it
Speaker:
anyway. That's also true. But even on the stuff that isn't like that,
Speaker:
it's not about technically what I get at the other end.
Speaker:
It's that I no longer like the sound of it as much. Right. So
Speaker:
mixes are taking me longer because I'm not just like ooh, cool.
Speaker:
That is my starting point, because I really do have to do everything
Speaker:
individually, which I'm sure part of the Internet will be very happy, because
Speaker:
apparently putting anything on your mix bus is cheating. I didn't realize that,
Speaker:
but everything I do is bespoke. But you're
Speaker:
silly if you don't have a template of some sort, because it's, like automating
Speaker:
stuff. You're going to be building the same stuff over and over and over.
Speaker:
But, yeah, I just don't like the sound of it as much. And my
Speaker:
mixes are a little quieter because of it, which is crazy for me because I'm
Speaker:
the loud guy. Yeah, but parallel compression,
Speaker:
don't spend a huge amount of time listening to what the parallel thing is. Spend
Speaker:
a huge amount of time listening to it as you blend it in as a
Speaker:
parallel thing, which I think. Is the best
Speaker:
advice all around for all mixing people are like, what's your mixing tip? I'm like,
Speaker:
when you're turning the guitars up, listen to the vocal. Like, listen to
Speaker:
everything else. Like, yeah, you're right. Solo, we all. We all know solo
Speaker:
doesn't always help. Yeah, I mean, it's good to find out, like, what it is.
Speaker:
Yeah, but then it doesn't matter what you do until it's back in context.
Speaker:
So. Listening to everything you said, I translate as faster
Speaker:
attack, though, because you. Do you want to kill those transients in those parallel tracks
Speaker:
or you let those live? No, because it'll actually double them up. I mean,
Speaker:
compressors in general. I'm slow attack, fast release. Okay.
Speaker:
Okay. But, yeah.
Speaker:
Before we get into my closing questions, I wanted to ask you. Well, first I
Speaker:
want to say thank you for always sharing so much. You're on so many podcasts,
Speaker:
you share so much with the engineering community, so thank you. But is there a
Speaker:
question that you always wish somebody would ask you?
Speaker:
No. Perfect. I mean, I could make a
Speaker:
joke about, you know, ask me what I want for dinner.
Speaker:
I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I'm lucky that I do get to
Speaker:
talk about this stuff all the time, and I do mix with the
Speaker:
masters seminars. Like, that's one thing the Adele record got me. They got in
Speaker:
touch and wanted me to do a mix of the masters seminar, so I've done
Speaker:
13 of them now, 14, something like that, and I just did one a
Speaker:
few weeks ago, and I'm basically
Speaker:
talking for a week, so I get to
Speaker:
say everything. But what's great about it is you put your process
Speaker:
into words, and some people, like oh, don't inspect the process. But I
Speaker:
like to inspect the process because not only do
Speaker:
you have to articulate, you don't have to say why you do it,
Speaker:
but you say what it is that you're actually doing, but also because I do
Speaker:
them every year I see the stuff that's changed and
Speaker:
obviously changing from the console to the laptop was a big deal,
Speaker:
but there's so much that changes every single
Speaker:
year about how I think about things and what I do that it's
Speaker:
great, but it means that I've managed to say everything
Speaker:
at least a thousand times. I mean, is there anything you feel
Speaker:
like no one's asked me? I mean, no, that's one of. When I was
Speaker:
like, oh, I got to reach out to Andrew. He's on my dream list. And
Speaker:
I was like, like, what the fuck am I going to ask him? Well,
Speaker:
see, okay, so here's what we'll do. We'll take up that time with me
Speaker:
saying that everybody has to go listen to low roar, the artist low roar.
Speaker:
Which I started listening to this morning, sounds amazing. So there you
Speaker:
go. I believe that right before this podcast,
Speaker:
I may have recorded the last thing on the last
Speaker:
album. So cool. Amazing. Very depressing
Speaker:
in a way. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you guys can look
Speaker:
at the Internet and see what's up with loroar. It's very sad, but
Speaker:
this album is now almost done. That's great.
Speaker:
I just thought of a question that no one's asking you, probably because this question
Speaker:
doesn't exist. I meant to ask it earlier, so I'm cheating a little bit, trying
Speaker:
to figure out how to get this question in. Back to AI mixing. What do
Speaker:
you think about the idea of this is basically what Spike presumably has
Speaker:
done from what we've readdeveloped. Training an AI on your
Speaker:
own work to then operate as an assistant for yourself.
Speaker:
Yeah, I think that that's
Speaker:
great. But I think again, and I'm really
Speaker:
curious to know what they did with Spike's stuff.
Speaker:
To get a good model, you need
Speaker:
hundreds of thousands of things that it learns
Speaker:
from 10,000 things. I mean, Spike
Speaker:
has mixed a metric fuck ton of records, but I
Speaker:
don't know that he's mixed hundreds of thousands of songs. So is it
Speaker:
enough? Maybe it's been supplemented with
Speaker:
stuff he likes. You know, I don't know. I don't know what they're
Speaker:
doing at all. But, like, for me, what the
Speaker:
AI is amazing for is separation of things. Like the
Speaker:
low roar record. Most of it was tracked with Ryan at a piano,
Speaker:
singing. But I needed to do stuff with the vocals. And
Speaker:
I actually managed to split the bleed out of both the
Speaker:
piano mics and the vocal mics so that I could treat them
Speaker:
completely separately. And if I wanted the vocal bleed
Speaker:
from the piano mics because it was part of the vocal sound, I have
Speaker:
it separate. But it's not in the piano mics.
Speaker:
Yeah, that's huge. And that's AI. But that's been
Speaker:
trained on probably a couple of million recordings of vocal
Speaker:
and piano to be able to do that. Now, did you do that? Was that
Speaker:
with RX or was it with something else? No, that was with
Speaker:
Steinberg spectralayers, which at the moment, if you're not a
Speaker:
total geek and running stuff in these Google collabs
Speaker:
online, by far the best piece of software I've used for
Speaker:
this stuff. It can be a little clunky, but when it works, it's
Speaker:
insanely good. And its tools are crazy.
Speaker:
Absolutely crazy. There's one, they're like weird
Speaker:
magic Photoshop select tools where one, you
Speaker:
can drag it along what looks like the fundamental and it will
Speaker:
grab it and all the harmonics. So you can grab a
Speaker:
piano note with all of its harmonics and pull
Speaker:
it out manually and copy it to a different layer.
Speaker:
And when it separates things, if you don't mess with it bit for bit,
Speaker:
it goes back together. There's zero audio loss. Every bit is
Speaker:
somewhere. That's wild. It's ridiculously cool. I mixed a
Speaker:
record where a lot of the drums were recorded, where the
Speaker:
overheads weren't cymbal mics, they were absolutely the kit and that was
Speaker:
a big part of the drum sound. But on a couple of the songs there
Speaker:
was some symbol that was crazy loud and I needed
Speaker:
to turn the cymbals down for 16 bars, split
Speaker:
the overheads into cymbals, kick, snare, turn the cymbals down.
Speaker:
What? And the cake and snare don't change at all.
Speaker:
And this is for stereo mixing. A lot of people talk about the demixing to
Speaker:
make yourself more source material for atmos or whatever. Spectral
Speaker:
layers might be the best money I've spent in years.
Speaker:
It's incredible. That is. That is amazing. Well, I'm
Speaker:
glad that we pushed that question into the end. Even though
Speaker:
I almost let it go. I didn't answer your question.
Speaker:
I mean, look, the idea of being able to train your own stuff is
Speaker:
incredible. None of us have enough material to make it actually work
Speaker:
very well. I never thought about that thing that sucks. Like with the Beatles
Speaker:
stuff that they did, separating
Speaker:
the things so that they could do the Atmos mixes it is
Speaker:
a much more specific data set because they had the recording.
Speaker:
But then if they wanted to split the bass out, they had every single
Speaker:
performance of that bass part. So
Speaker:
it knows what order the notes are coming in, and that's how they trained it.
Speaker:
So the Peter Jackson thing is trained with every,
Speaker:
like, that model only knows about that song, period.
Speaker:
That's nuts. That's it. But it can pick the bass
Speaker:
out because it's always Paul playing the bass, same
Speaker:
line, everything's the same. That's wild. Do you think that Peter Jackson
Speaker:
Tech will ever enter the world?
Speaker:
I don't know. I don't know. There's always talk of it. But again,
Speaker:
I think that it's not generalized tech,
Speaker:
it's specific. So you'd have to go train on how to train it
Speaker:
to get anything done. And how many of us have datasets that
Speaker:
are the right thing? And I'm going by hearsay. I've never talked to
Speaker:
anybody, but I've heard that that's what it does.
Speaker:
They trained it by other performances of the same part.
Speaker:
So what do you have as a job where that would
Speaker:
work? Nothing. I've never in
Speaker:
my life had something where that would work. That's
Speaker:
true. So, you know, that's amazing. All right, well,
Speaker:
I know you've got to get back to your day. I've got the last two
Speaker:
questions that I hit everybody with, which I was. Supposed to look at, and I
Speaker:
didn't. Well, if you didn't, it makes it more fun.
Speaker:
Was there a time in your career that you ever chose to redefine what success
Speaker:
meant to you? Well, we already talked about it, actually. Those
Speaker:
projects where it was like, if this isn't huge, then everything's wrong
Speaker:
with the world and all of that. And, yeah, I've tried, and
Speaker:
it's really difficult, but I have tried
Speaker:
constantly to make the success that I
Speaker:
get to work on some stuff that I still want to listen to when I'm
Speaker:
done that I'm actually really proud of,
Speaker:
and that's hard, but it's, you know,
Speaker:
when it happens, it. That's what. That's why we're doing it. None
Speaker:
of us are doing it to get rich. You know, I bought a modular, so
Speaker:
I'm doing all right. But, you know, you're not doing it to be on MTV
Speaker:
Cribs, which anyone under the age of 30 won't even know what that is.
Speaker:
We're doing it to make music that we love. And
Speaker:
we're in a position, the people who do what we do, where we can't
Speaker:
make the music ourselves. So when we can work on a project with a
Speaker:
musician or an artist that is making the music we wish we could
Speaker:
do, that's the best. I mean, what's better than that? Nothing. Nothing.
Speaker:
Nothing. I think people think that when you're at the top of
Speaker:
your career that every day you're doing, like, your favorite song ever. But
Speaker:
that's just not. That's not the case. Oh, no. Absolutely not. I
Speaker:
mean, I'm so lucky to have the low Roar project because
Speaker:
for six albums over, I mean, I
Speaker:
work. I've been working with Ryan for twelve or 13 years or something like
Speaker:
that. I've had album after album. That is my
Speaker:
favorite music I've ever worked on. But that's six
Speaker:
records. Exactly. Only six. And there's other stuff I've worked on
Speaker:
I love. I mean, there's lots of stuff I've been very lucky to work on,
Speaker:
stuff that I like, but. Yeah, but the other part is you
Speaker:
do do this to pay your bills as well. But if you can't
Speaker:
take that part of it, then do something else to pay your bills so
Speaker:
that you still love it when you work doing what we're doing. Because if
Speaker:
you start not liking this, what's the point? It's
Speaker:
brutal. It is a brutal, horrible job where everything you
Speaker:
do is completely subjective. You can think you've done the best thing ever
Speaker:
that took you five weeks, and they just go, nope, I don't like it.
Speaker:
Yes, yes. It reminds me of my January.
Speaker:
You're just like, this is the. I love this. And they're like, we're not gonna
Speaker:
use it. You're like, anytime. I really like it. They hate it.
Speaker:
Yeah. I can almost say that as well. Yeah. Every time. It's my
Speaker:
favorite. It's not theirs. Yeah. Okay, so last
Speaker:
question before you go. What is your current biggest goal and what's the next smallest
Speaker:
step you're going to take to go towards it? I really should have
Speaker:
read the questions beforehand. Like, Tony
Speaker:
Maserati has this great thing where he has a yearly
Speaker:
review where he does exactly what you're talking about. Like, okay, so what are my
Speaker:
goals? How am I going to get there? And he's got like, okay, here are
Speaker:
the steps I'm going to take. And then he has a meeting with himself in
Speaker:
a year to say, like, okay, have I done that? Have my goals changed? What
Speaker:
did I, you know, which I think is great. I mean, a short
Speaker:
term goal, just selfishly, is
Speaker:
I'm going to try and get bounce factory out there a little bit more
Speaker:
because I love working on it. I actually love the coding because it isn't
Speaker:
subjective and I would love for that to kind of
Speaker:
cushion. So I don't have to work on records. I don't want to. And, you
Speaker:
know, again, people think you're all day, every day. That is
Speaker:
absolutely not the case. I need to work. I have to work
Speaker:
because I like electricity and water and food.
Speaker:
So, you know, like, everybody, again, in a good
Speaker:
position. So I don't want to get, you know, trolled over this. And then
Speaker:
the next thing is to just try
Speaker:
and find, like, what is the next low roar thing going
Speaker:
to be for me, if there is one? There may not be. I mean, a
Speaker:
lot of people would never even have one, so I'm
Speaker:
super lucky. So I've got, what am I going to
Speaker:
do with the legacy of Loroar? Like, I'm going to be doing a vinyl box
Speaker:
set and things like that, but I don't want it to just disappear. So
Speaker:
I have no idea what the first step is with that, though. That's unknown. So
Speaker:
that doesn't answer your question at all. It's good, though. I'm with it.
Speaker:
Well, I think it highlights diversity, and I feel like it doesn't
Speaker:
matter how long you've done this. Having diversity in
Speaker:
income allows you to do the records you love because the record you
Speaker:
love might not be the one that's going to pay your bills. So if something
Speaker:
else does, whether it's music related or not,
Speaker:
that makes your life better as a musician? Yeah, absolutely. I mean,
Speaker:
I love making the plugins because I'm making plugins that I actually wish
Speaker:
existed, but at the same time, that's a little bit of extra money and
Speaker:
get enough of those things, and it just takes some pressure
Speaker:
off. Yeah. Which is good, because I think all of us can smell a
Speaker:
gig that's going to really suck, and it may have nothing to do with the
Speaker:
source material or the music. It's usually about the people
Speaker:
and, you know, going in that you really wish you could say no. Yeah.
Speaker:
Yeah. Everybody's been there. Everybody's been there. If you enjoyed this one and
Speaker:
it's got you thinking about how you can. If you could better build your sonic
Speaker:
identity as a producer or engineer, then you're gonna want to check out my interview
Speaker:
with Tony Hoffer, the producer mixer behind Beck, Midnight Vultures, the kooks,
Speaker:
inside in, inside out. M 83, midnight city and many more.
Here are some great episodes to start with.
