RSR064 - Warren Huart - Produce Like A Pro

Everybody's the same. A singer is a singer. Um, they're just as demanding whether they're Steven Tyler. Love you, Steven, but it doesn't matter if it's Steven Tyler or, you know, you know, Steve from down the street. Everybody, they're singers, and they want their mix to be perfect, and they want to be inspired, and that's just the way it is.

[Music] [Music] Welcome to Recording Studio Rockstars. I'm Lid Shaw, and this is the podcast created to help you become a rock star of the recording studio. Hi, Rockstars. It's your host, Lid Shaw, and welcome to Recording Studio Rockstars, the podcast bringing you into the studio to learn from recording professionals so that you can make your best record ever and be a rock star of the studio yourself. My guest today is Warren Huert, a producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist based in Los Angeles. He is also a gentle, well-spoken Englishman and a lot of fun to listen to. Warren is the creator of a highly prolific YouTube channel and audio learning website called Produce Like a Pro, where he teaches you how to record and produce music through tutorial videos, interviews, studio tours, and a dedicated membership site. He is also owner of Spitfire Music, a one-stop music house focusing on licensing music for film and TV. Warren has been a part of many platinum-selling and Billboard-charting albums over his 20-year career and has participated in the development of a number of successful artists' careers. Some of Warren's credits include Ace Frehley, James Blunt, Mark Broussard, The Muppets, The Thrills, The Fray, Better Than Ezra, and Vintage Trouble, to name a few. Please welcome our guest, whose voice, as you'll hear in a moment, sounds much cooler than mine does. Warren Huert to Recording Studio Rockstars. Warren, my distinguished colleague, are you ready to rock?

Absolutely. I am ready to rock. Now, you got to remember, in England, all we wanted to be was American, right? So, you know, so you've got the core voice for me.

Well, you know, I did put in a couple of months when I was young in England, just north of London. One of the jobs I had was being a telemarketer for a motorcycle courier company. And sure enough, when I cold-called people and they answered the phone and heard my voice, they thought I had a cool accent. So, I felt pretty good about that, too.

Yeah. I mean, there was hardly any singers that are English that sing with an English accent. I think maybe David Bowie, who I'm a huge fan of, of course. Um, I think Bowie was probably one of the few handful of singers that actually sang with an English accent. Uh, Damon Albarn, of course, from, uh, Blur, also sings, but those, those are massive exceptions. I think Robert Smith has a pretty intense English accent, but none of the Beatles, you know, twist little baby now. You know, that isn't twist little baby now. You know, it's, if anything, they may have picked up a German accent, you know, when they were down there for, uh, you know. And I think of Mick Jagger, you know, he's picked up a southern accent.

Oh, I mean, yeah. Well, the other thing is, frankly, everybody in England in the '60s also wanted to be black. They wanted to be a blues star, right? So, you know, that was that was a big deal. It was everybody wanted to play like, um, you know, a blues musician. They wanted to sing like a blues musician. Um, have you ever read that book, uh, The Sound of the City by Charlie Gillett?

No, not yet.

Highly recommend it. It's a really, really good book, and it talks about all of the different cities in America. All the, all the, you know, the Philadelphia sound, you know, Atlanta, you know, you name it, all the obvious ones like New York and Chicago and, uh, Los Angeles. But he then talks about how, you know, the English or the British in general took American music and just kind of, you know, regurgitated it, as Mike Bloomfield said. You know, the, uh, British took American music and sold it back to the Americans.

I like it, man. And, uh, you know, not far from here, I always is Memphis, Tennessee, and I remember with bands like Big Star, they were always described as, as our, you know, southern response to the British Invasion at that time.

Yeah, I agree. Um, I worked with the Bangles a bazillion years ago, and, um, I know that they were huge Big Star fans, and, um, they actually came out of a very credible scene in, uh, the early '80s in Los Angeles, which I think everybody's going to tell me I'm wrong because I'm sure I am. But I believe was called like the Paisley, something Paisley. It was the early '80s, and there was this sort of underground germs kind of punk rock thing going on, but at the same time, there was also this kind of psychedelic pop, um, thing going on, primarily driven by bands like Big Star. And then going back, they used to do "September Gals" in their set.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I love that. So, this would be the New Wave era, too. But, you know, there, I guess we came out of punk rock and into New Wave. Um, it was, it was called the Paisley Underground.

The Paisley Underground.

Underground. Yeah.

Cool. Well, that's a new, that's a new one for me, so I'm gonna have to, uh, do a little more research and learn about that.

Well, so Warren, tell us a little bit about, you know, starting out in music and recording for you. And I've got an odd way of asking it. Um, I want to ask you, what did it smell like to you?

Well, everything smells like the ocean to me.

Okay. Groovy. Groovy. Now, even when you were in England, or just when you're in LA?

Uh, both. I mean, you can pretty much drive for 45 minutes in any direction when you're in England and hit the ocean. That's not entirely correct, of course, because of traffic, but, you know, England or Britain itself is one-third the size of California. Wow. So, it's a tiny little country with 65 million people crammed into it. You know, ultimately, it's tiny. Though you don't have to drive for very long and you can go to the ocean. And when I was a kid, I mean, we had a canal near our house, and my dad, um, had a little boat that he built because he's clever like that. So, we would, um, go take that down, and it was like a, it was literally, he started off like, built like a slightly larger rowing boat, and then put a mast on, mast on it, and it became a sailboat. As a kid at school, we'd go to Cowes, which is, you know, uh, on the ocean, and that was probably about 45 minutes from where I lived, and we'd go sailing. And I wasn't, didn't come from a wealthy family. These are just things that you did. It wasn't like we had a yacht. We had a homemade boat.

That's cool, man. I like the sound of that. That sounds very quaint.

It's very nice. Nice.

Well, so now, what about recording and and getting into music? Um, what did that smell like? You know, were you, uh, playing instruments first, and then did you discover the recording studio when you were in England?

Yeah, but that took a long time. I, I, I didn't have any sort of traditional, um, route to get from, uh, being a player to get into the studio. Um, I, I think to sort of preface this, I, I, I think I came out of an era where that was really just for an elite. If you didn't get signed or you didn't have a lot of money, you couldn't go anywhere near a studio. Even sort of like entry-level studios in those days were probably a third of what, uh, a high-level studio was. But who, who could afford that? I mean, if a, if a London studio in the '80s and early '90s was £1,000 a day, which it probably was, pounds, you know, which was, um, then the local studio was probably £300. And not many musicians in, you know, 1989, 1990 could afford to go to a studio for five days to make an indie album or something like that and, you know, record it and mix it. And I didn't assist in any, um, studios. So, for me, it was all where we're at at the moment. It was sort of everything was homespun. Um, two cassette recorders at first, um, then four tracks. I think the first real thing I got was like a, a beaten-up eight-track reel-to-reel. Um, and then some friends of mine were in a band, and they had a studio, and they eventually bought an MSR 24, which was a 1-inch, 24-track machine, and that was like the heavens opened, and it was like, that's it, we've made it. And we had a 30, I feel like it was a 36-channel. It was a weird one, but I, I have to double-check, but I think it was a 36-channel Soundtracs console.

Oh, those made, those were cool consoles. That was the first one I worked on, I think, was a, a Soundtracs.

Yeah, it was, it was a good console. It was before they went really tiny and, and like the Topaz, which came later, which I also had one of, but this was like a, probably a, I'm going to guess late '70s, '80s, early '80s kind of console. It was, it was old then.

Um, was this sort of a, um, a dark brown? Do you remember the color of the console?

I can't remember if it was dark brown or black. Um, I do remember that it was pretty large. I have a photo of it somewhere. I have. And to be honest, we made a lot of records that ended up selling. My route was more one of, um, work in independent bands, record independent bands, get, get them record deals, you know, develop them. My own band got a record deal. Um, you know, developed it, got a record deal.

That must have been exciting.

It was. Well, it was a different time. Um, and it's a different sort of mentality in England than it than it is in America. Over here, as you know, um, because you work in the music industry, is this is a, a business. It's a music. It's very different to the way it is in, in England, and probably the rest of the world. You know, I, in England, if you recorded a really cool band or a really cool artist and co-wrote the songs or did whatever you did, took it into a label, I'd still say it's 90% sure that they'll put it out. Over here, they'll be like, "That's really great. We should give it to blah blah blah to recut, and this guy will remix it, and that guy will replay everything." Yeah, it's a business over here.

Yeah, indeed. Well, you know, one of the things that you mentioned that rings so true with me is the two cassettes. So that was also my first introduction to recording songs and, you know, DIY studios was there was another student downstairs in the dormitory I was at in college, and I walked by their room one day and I heard some guitar coming out, and I, and I, you know, stuck my nose in there. I was like, "Hey, you guys play guitar? I, I play guitar." And, uh, and these guys had a double cassette player, and they just had figured out how to put a microphone into it and play, you know, record onto the cassette, and then flip-flop them from one to the other, and then play that one back and record on the next cassette. And that process of layering was just such a mind-blower for me that these guys were making songs, you know. I'd never seen anybody do anything like that, you know, and I don't, you know, I don't know what the equivalent of that is today. Maybe sort of making songs on your iPhone or something.

Yeah. Yeah. I think the, anything goes mentality is just kind of the equivalent, whether it be, uh, whether it be cassettes or, yeah, like you say, iPhone, iPad, you know, um, any, any kind of device. I've been hearing from a lot of people. I'm not an Android user. Um, but I've been hearing that there's latency issues with a lot of the apps on Android. Is that true?

There are. In fact, I went deep down that path. I had an Android phone, and then I got an iPhone. And the reason I got an iPhone, the number one reason, other than, you know, everybody else who had an iPhone seemed to look really cool, was that, um, none of the audio stuff worked on my Android. It just, the latency stuff, they tried to do multitracks, it never worked. It was great for note-taking and great for business stuff, but so with the iPhone, it seemed to work. And what I discovered was the reason it works on iPhone and not on the Androids is because with an Android, they're creating operating systems that work for every device anybody can think of. And they all have variations. So nobody can ever write an app that works flawlessly for all of them when it comes to stuff like audio or touching the screen, all that. Whereas on the iPhone, you know, they can design it so that it works exactly right, and it's always consistent. I was working, um, this company, um, you know, Open Labs, have a software called Stage Light, and they sent it for me to try because it's free. I was like, "Hey, if it's free, I want to talk about it. If I like something and it's free, I'm going to talk about it. If I like something and it's inexpensive, I'm going to talk about it." To me, it's about going off onto one of my famous tangents. Um, having come from frankly, very sort of humble beginnings, my, my father's a painter, you know, he's he's an artist, and nice feast or famine. We didn't grow up with any real money. That would be an understatement. And so for me, it's like I'm always looking for the sort of non-dogma kind of gear, the stuff that really encourages people. Because yes, I have a lot of equipment, but I've had 20 years buying this and acquiring it. And yeah, there's no way I would do it again in this day and age. There's no way I'd be sitting in front of an SSL console, um, if I was starting now. It, it's a whole different journey. And I think it's, it's getting so much better. The last couple of years have improved so drastically, but, um, when I first started doing the YouTube thing, there was a lot of sort of dogma still, like heavy dogma about equipment and everything, but it's definitely getting better and better and better. Um, which I love. And, and most of the guys I know that are sort of pop producers are, um, are making albums on laptops, quite frankly. And that was a couple of years ago, five years ago, it was rare. A couple of years ago, it was a lot of the time. And now it's, it's, it is almost all the time. You know, my, my friends are showing up at sessions, you know, and producing, putting a pair of headphones on and producing a track there and then.

Well, it's pretty exciting. And I'm pretty sure as I, very exciting, you know, as I retire, I'm going to be so thrilled to unload all of my gear in my studio and just have a laptop. You know, I, I think I have this dream of just getting in a van and touring the country, um, with a laptop studio and an acoustic guitar and just kind of, you know, open the door to beautiful nature and write songs. To simplify it. But, you know, you and I were talking earlier before this about, um, incredible-sounding sample libraries and things like that, and, you know, how the, the idea that you can get libraries of orchestral sounds or things like that and create really amazing-sounding stuff, and it's just done with plugins in a laptop. So, yeah, the world has opened up to us in a way that it never has before. I'd say now more than ever, it becomes about you, the user, and, you know, what are you going to do with this stuff?

Absolutely. I mean, I think, yes, the, the only thing, the only thing stopping you is, is, uh, your own creativity. I do think there's something to be said for, uh, acquired knowledge and going through stuff. Um, and then, then there's also something to be said for, you know, the objectivity that you get from jumping in kind of feet first, as well, first to be. I, you know, so I, I, I think having everything at your fingertips is absolutely amazing, and for some people, it is incredible. For other people, it could be a little overwhelming. So I don't think, I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all kind of approach. But a part of me does like limitations. Um, and, and another part of me likes the vast array of, uh, you know, the ability to get whatever you need, whenever you need it. Um, that's it. Those, those fulfill two different things for me. The limitations push my creativity, um, in one way, and because it makes me think, "Oh, you know, I've only got an acoustic guitar and a vocal, so what can I do with this acoustic guitar?" Or only got a piano, or only got whatever it might be, four instruments, three instruments. Um, but then, of course, it can be just as fulfilled where I'm like, "Wow, I really would like to track this song, but orchestrally, or as a dance track, or as a, you know, whatever it might be." So that also is great. So I think it's, it's really a combination of both ways of thinking.

Well, a simple sort of aha moment for me, um, was back when I was in school, and, and I was studying architecture before I decided to take the path of music. And we were studying the Bauhaus School of Design, which was a German design school, famous architecture and art design coming from there. But we were just focusing on poster design. So, a simple poster, you know, um, a rectangle shape, and you've got to get your message across on it. And these amazing designs would do simple things like, "Hey, what if we take the text and, you know, blow it up big and push it outside the limits of the poster?" And that was my introduction to this, you know, the very simple idea of just sort of thinking literally outside the box. Take a real simple limitation, and how can you artistically create something that pushes all those boundaries and really gets your attention? And I've always carried that with me. You know, that translates into the studio. It's why it's so beautiful to record with two cassettes, or or eight-track, or, you know, even though a laptop opens up all sorts of possibilities, in a way, it's a limitation of sorts, too, which says, "Now all you've got is this laptop and these headphones, and, you know, you got to make your music within it." So, I'm with you on that. I think I think limitations, when they are a good fit for the project you're doing, are very helpful and always benefit us.

So Warren, one of the things I like to ask our guests is for an inspirational quote. And I feel like you've been sharing some inspiring thoughts already, but do you have anything specific you might like to share with us?

I suppose I'm, I'm in danger of, uh, repeating the things that I always say, but I think, you know, creativity is king. I think about that from, uh, Dave Jordan. And I've probably said this too many times, but, um, when I was working with Dave Jordan in the late '90s, both as a musician and as an engineer, there was this one time when I was, he was actually producing a band I was in. I think we were just battling the song, like you do as an artist, you know, trying to get the right parts, you know, the arrangement, whatever, doing all of the things that you do to try and make the song sound the best it possibly could. And, uh, he just turned to me and he said, uh, "Sometimes you've got to, you know, rip the whole part of the song. You've got to, um, you know, you've got to change the key, the tempo, you know, the lyrics, the melody, you know, you name it. And other times, you just got to get out of the way of the band and help them make a great recording." Yeah. And there's sort of no one-size-fits-all. I think that, um, the great thing about doing this for a long time, um, is that, you know, you get to see all of the different things. I mean, I, I, in the late '80s and early '90s, when I first started, you know, sort of doing music, I also DJed. And,

Oh, cool.

But DJed like proper, you know, I, I was doing dance music in the late '80s, early '90s when it was like a novelty, uh, for America. And I remember moving over here in the mid-'90s, and I would do hair conferences, believe it or not.

Ah, so it'd be like, there'd be like this huge kind of like, you know, it was all models and stuff like that. And I was DJing it, and I was playing, you know, English dance music. Um, some of it was like five, ten years old, and people were like, "Wow, this is so cutting edge, you know."

Yeah. Um, but, you know, in '95, '96, there was no dance scene. Not, not like there is now. But my point is, is like, when, you know, when I got success as a producer and an engineer with, with bands like The Fray and stuff like that in the mid-2000s, 2004, 2005, people saw me as like, "Oh, you're the guy that does the piano pop stuff." Um, you know, I got James Blunt out of it, and all those kind of things. So, it's, it was all great. I'm not complaining. But, you know, my story is putting on a pair of headphones as a little kid, like a little kid, and hearing Queen and wanting to be in a rock band. Yes. And so, you know, by 11, my favorite bands were, uh, Queen, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. And by the time I was 13, it was those bands plus The Beatles, plus The Stones, um, Floyd, and The Who, and, and, you know, by the time I was, you know, 21, it was punk rock and dance music thrown in there as well, and soul. And, you know, we, I grew up with Stevie Wonder. My dad was a huge Stevie Wonder fan, on top of jazz and primarily classical music.

So, now, did you like anything that was bad?

Well, I mean, that's the point. There is only two types of music, isn't there? Good and bad. Um, there's no genres. You know, people that, you know, if there's a time in your life when you're pigeonholing yourself into a genre, it's probably okay, and it's probably part of the growth anyway. Because if you asked me at 11 who the greatest band in the world was, I would have said Queen. Now, honestly, I still think they are. But my point is, is like, it was, it was just rock. That's all I cared about at 11. Yeah. Um, it was probably a little bit reactionary against all the classical music that I grew up on, because, you know, my dad, my house was full of music, but it was always, you know, Beethoven and Handel and Elgar and, you know, all of that stuff. Yeah. As opposed to like, you know, the pop music of the day. So, so anyway, my big, big, long, laborious point is just to really kind of make is like, yeah, you know, when people say to me, "Oh, you know, you don't do dance music, or you don't do this," I'm like, "Yeah, you know what? I, I, I, I used to have ADATs, um, in the early '90s, and I would sync sequencers through MIDI, and I was like doing dance music in like, you know, early '90s before, you know, before it became a thing in America 10 years later." You know, something about that era and producing dance music or electronic music or anything with drum machines is that half the thrill was syncing it up and getting it all to work. You know, it's one of the reasons maybe why that music was so simple a lot of times in the production, because if you could just get the beat to lock up with something and get a groove, and boy, you know, if you had some loops that were lined up and they sounded pretty good together, it was exciting times. Um, whereas now, obviously, you know, you, you open up your GarageBand, and you just drag the loops over from the right to the left, and instantly you, you've got stuff that's in sync together, and then you, you layer too many of them. But anyway, it's, it's cool to hear those stories. I like hearing that stuff.

Warren, can you share with us a moment of time for you? I mean, you've done a ton of stuff. You've been through all these different genres. You know, you've, you've had success in different areas of music. Um, you've built this incredible YouTube channel and, um, teaching network, but can you help humanize it a little bit? Share with us a real failure moment for you, um, or maybe like a, a real nightmare in the studio moment that sort of brings it back down to earth for the rest of us.

I mean, there's loads. God, I don't know where to start. Name a week. Uh, I feel like it's, uh, I feel like it's constant. Yeah. I, I feel like I'm always, I, I don't know anything where it just runs smoothly and perfectly. I think the biggest lesson is really is understanding that nothing runs smoothly or perfectly in the creative world. And it's how you handle those things. I, I will say a big differentiator between those that succeed and those that don't are the ones that don't know how to handle it. Um, yeah, I, I have assistants that come and go that, one of the biggest things is the mic goes down, you know, tube, the tube goes on the mic, the, uh, um, the power goes out, the console shuts down, the, uh, you blow a speaker. Um, I mean, one of those are all the big dramatic ones, but there's also a thousand little tiny annoying things like cables not working, trying to figure out which patch cable's gone, and blah, blah, blah. You know, how do you handle it? I had one engineer that worked with me that when anything would go wrong, um, something, it was always the worst-case scenario. You know that phrase, um, the doctors always say the, uh, when you hear when you hear hooves, think horses, not unicorns, right?

I've never heard that expression before, but I like it.

You know, some people say when you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras. I mean, either way, whether it be zebras or unicorns, it's like, what's the Sherlock Holmes thing? The, um, the simplest explanation is probably the most likely, probably the right one. Yeah.

Uh, no, I, I see where you're going with this, but keep going.

Yeah. It's just, you know, things go wrong all the time. I, I want to tell anybody who might be listening to me waffling on that the same problems that they have are what I have every single day. Yeah. So, the, what's the difference between the singer being unbelievably demanding and asking the headphone mix to be changed? Nothing. I get that whether it's the local singer or the world's most successful singer. And I've worked with everybody from from A to Z as far as like success and and names and all that stuff. And they're, everybody's the same. A singer is a singer. Um, they're just as demanding whether they're Steven Tyler. Love you, Steven. It doesn't matter if it's Steven Tyler or, you know, you know, Steve from down the street. Everybody, they're singers, and they want their mix to be perfect, and they want to be inspired, and that's just the way it is.

Now, having said that, I, we talking about the Paisley Underground movement a second ago. Um, when I worked with Susanna Hoffs, I remember, I remember, I'll tell you this story. It's kind of, kind of fun. I, I had a studio in an overhang. No, what it was was like an archway, um, between two buildings, and it wasn't soundproofed, and that would be an understatement. It, it was right against like a main street, and I had this local band in, and I was doing vocals. And while we were doing vocals, a car drove past and maybe honked his horn. Like, and the singer, bear in mind, this is, um, '99, I think, or 2000, and the singer said to me afterwards, he goes, "I can't believe this. This is not a professional environment," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You, uh, you need to be soundproofing. Bear in mind, this guy was probably at best paying me $15, maybe $20 an hour, right? It's always the, the worst that complained the loudest, you know.

Mhm. So, I mean, I'm doing, I think I was making $150 a day at that point and happy to be making $150 a day. So, so this guy's like ripping my head off about how unprofessional I was because, you know, you could hear the car noise. And I remember it was, flash forward to a couple of months later, same environment. And this time I am tracking a vocal with Susanna Hoffs, who had sold, you know, a bazillion records and had been massively successful. And I had worked with them in a rehearsal studio, and they had said to me, "Oh, can you record our demos?" Um, and I was like, "Of course, yeah, you know, yeah, no problem." You know, at the point I was terrified, you know, right? And, uh, anyway, we were doing a vocal, and she was singing like the bridge, and it was getting super quiet, and this truck outside started backing up. So the truck is backing up, and she's like, singing this beautiful, pretty vocal, and she's a great singer. And we get to the end of the song, and she just bursts into laughter, like it's the funniest thing ever.

Yeah. Yeah. And I just remember thinking to myself, there's two lessons to be learned from this is like, it happens. That's number one. It happens. Um, and, you know, I'm embarrassed or whatever. Um, in both situations, I was embarrassed, but the artist taught me so much. The artist taught me like, "It happens. Like, you know, whatever, you know?" It's like, and no disrespect, but I've never heard of that artist again that that was, you know, so upset. And so you, you sort of learn by osmosis. The mistakes are all the things you learn. In fact, every story you could pull out of me probably involves some kind of mistake, some kind of thing breaking, something blowing up. Um, you know, the, those are the stories that I remember most, and they're the ones that I learn the most from. So, you know, to, to really kind of, you know, because I think the important thing for me as I look at my career, the important thing for me, and the reason why I like doing this, and the reason why I like what we're doing now, talking about it, is to say, I, I didn't have any advantages. I did not have any advantages. And I say this all the time. I don't have, didn't have any friends in the music industry when I started.

Wait a minute. A quick question for you. Did you by any chance have any advantages when you started out?

But you know what I mean. I was just another guy like everybody else. I was kind of, all I did was pick up the guitar and practice my ass off. Yeah. So, you know, I, I don't have any friends in, I do now, of course, but I didn't have any friends in the music industry when I started. I don't have any family members in the music industry. I don't have any, you know, whether it be uncles, aunts, dads, whatever, brothers or sisters. There was no, like, a leg up kind of thing. And I certainly didn't go to school for it. I didn't know that you could. To be honest, I didn't know. Did you know that there was music schools? Was that more of an American thing? Because I think the only music, my brother, I went to college, and I went for architecture. And it was sort of because, you know, my guidance counselor said, "Here's a good choice for you." And I said, "All right." And then my brother shortly after me went to college and chose music. And he went off to study to be a jazz musician. And I think the four years I was in architecture, I saw what he was doing. And I was thinking, "Wait a minute, that's kind of cool. How come you got to do that?" You know, and I was playing in bands and all that. And it wasn't until I finished school, saw the inside of a studio, then thought, "I think I want to learn how to do this," that I looked and found out that there were, in fact, schools. But what was funny is like, you know, up until I actually was looking for a school for recording, because I did go to Middle Tennessee State University here, just outside of Nashville. That's that's why I moved here. I had no clue that, you know, making records was really even a career choice. Like, nobody suggested it in my, when I was growing up. Like you, I didn't have family members that were, um, doing music. I did have a cousin that was, that has been a musician, too, but nobody, you know, my, my parents didn't do it. They, they appreciated music, but they didn't, you know, there was no suggestion that music or recording or making records was any sort of a viable career path.

It's it's strange. You know, not strange, but the more you read people's success stories, um, all of the people that we admire, bar almost none, have that story. They really do. I think the harder it is to come by, the, the more you value it. Yeah. Um, the harder you work for it. So, so, sorry, Warren, what you're telling us is that you've got a chip on your shoulder. Is that what you're trying to say?

Yeah, that's that's my point is like, I don't, I, that that's really kind of the, the thing is like, you don't want to read this stuff and hear about these stories and stuff like that and then, and then let it pull you down. Because the problem, the problem is, is like, you can look around and it's, you've ever read any Malcolm Gladwell's stuff? It's like, if you read the Malcolm Gladwell stuff, he, he will let you know that if you look at people's success and you see the people that it was handed to, it's going to hold you back if you, if you think that way. Because I cannot think that way. That's the reason why, what I'm, what I'm trying to say is like, yeah, I didn't have any of those advantages, and I didn't have the stuff given to me that other people had given to them. But at the same time, uh, I had to work harder to get it. But it makes me appreciate it more, and it makes me look at the outliers and really want to, to sort of like embrace that. And I think that that's what I'm trying to tell people. It's like, I don't believe there's any such thing as luck. What's what, what's the, what's the phrase about luck? It's, um, no, I think it's when hard work and opportunity meet. I, I recently, um, I can't be too specific, but, you know, I had the licensing company, and I had a huge opportunity come for, uh, a theme tune for a big show. And, uh, I put it around a couple of writers that I work with, and I had to like force them to do the work. I had to like, uh, go, they're like, "Waiting for me to go, 'What do you think?'" And I'm like, "I don't know. Why don't you work on the track and get it amazing and send it to me?" Yeah, but I was just wondering, and I was wondering, and I'm just thinking to myself, I had to get some, a guy on the phone, and I had to be like, "You don't understand. There are people that have like huge credit lists who have written thousands of things that have become successful that are dying to get this opportunity to write a theme tune for this song, and this has only gone out to a handful of people." Yeah. And they're like, "Well, but I didn't." And I just, and I'm just like, "Just do it." You know, it's the Wayne Gretzky thing, isn't it? Um, nice. It's, you know, what is, what is up some hockey? What was this? I don't know. Oh, you miss a, you, you miss all the shots you don't take, right?

Good point. Yeah, indeed. I was thinking of another analogy, too. I was recently reading, um, something on negotiation, the power of negotiating. And I think they were using Kissinger as an example, Henry Kissinger, how whenever there was a deal being negotiated, they would bring it to him, and he would always send it back about three or four times until they finally brought it, and they're like, "You know, like, we can't, we've done everything you've asked for. We, like, we can't possibly make this any better." And his response was, "Okay, great. Now that you've finally brought me your very best work, I'll take a look at it." You know, which sounds like, it sounds what you were telling in your story reminds me of that a little bit. It's like, you know, let's talk about it when you're really doing your very best. You, you, you've got to suit up and show up in these opportunities. And, uh, yeah, my thing is the anti-chip on the shoulder. It's like, you got to lose that. And because the great thing about Gladwell is when you, when you read it, he, remember in Outliers, he talks about all of the big tech guys, and he goes, Wozniak, um, uh, Jobs, Gates, all grew up in the same area, all as little kids, like 11, 12, 13, went to this university that was basically inventing, and I'm going to get this all wrong, by the way. So for the experts out there, please, I'm not an expert. I'm just paraphrasing, so excuse me. But they were, it was as they were basically inventing Java and JavaScript and all of the things that now are commonplace, they were in the right place at the right time, and they were learning it before anybody else. And he basically lists like, I don't know how many people it is, like 20 people that all learned this information, and like every single one of them are multi-millionaires. And he says, "Yeah, you know what? What's the differentiator? They were all at the right place at the right time, and they all worked their butts off and took that information." Now, what do you want to do? Do you want to be the guy that's going, "Poor me, I'm never going to be successful because I didn't." Or do you create those opportunities for yourself? I, I love his way of thinking because he, he takes that kind of stuff and puts it in your face. He says, "Yeah, you know what? For every, you know, for every John Lennon, there's a, I can't think of a particular singer, but there is an artist that, you know, dad bought them their first Les Paul Custom when they were nine years old, right? There is. I grew up, I grew up in an area where there was a lot of kids like that. Yeah. But, you know what? All of those kids, every single one of them doesn't do music. Not one of them does music."

Well, it's what you said. It's about luck being when, um, hard work and opportunity meet. So you, in Outliers, they describe the opportunity as presenting itself, but it's the ones that really want to put in the hard work that, you know, see the success with it. That one thing I remember that sticks out is the, the Beatles, by the time they had made their first album, had played more shows or more hours live than U2 have done in their whole career. So much fascinating, because they were doing those 12-hour shifts for three months at a time. Yeah. That stuff is so valuable. You know, I see that, I see an example of that right here in Nashville because we have Broadway, which is the tourist strip right downtown. And there are, you know, when, if you walk down the street, you're going to hear doors open on either side of the street, seven days a week, from, you know, 9 in the morning till midnight, with music and a live band pouring out because there are all these bands that play in every single club, and they're doing country covers, they're doing, you know, top 40 covers, all kinds of stuff. It's, it's mostly covers. It's, you know, not necessarily where you go to introduce your original music. But what an incredible opportunity as a musician to just, you know, if I was starting over and doing this again and just wanted to play guitar, I'd go down there and I'd try and get a gig in every single band I could and just play for years down there. I think you'd become an incredible musician.

It's kind of a catch-22, though, because the reality is is that most of us, um, at least in my, my case, and I think, you know, most people are going to be, not most people, a lot of people are going to be listening to this, are going to be in a town or village in the middle of nowhere, and there isn't that. And that's one of the biggest email questions I get is like, "There are no bands where I live. There are no musicians." And I completely understand. I did grow up in a musical town. It wasn't, there wasn't, you know, a massive vibrant live scene, but there was lots of people in my age group at that time that played music. People loved music, and they still do love music. They just, there's different ways to make it these days. Um, but the great thing is we have the online world. So if you are a producer, engineer, mixer, musician, songwriter, whatever it is you do in music, singer, just make music. Get it out there. Connect with people.

I'm glad you brought that up because that's something that I've asked a lot of my guests, and not everybody always has a great answer for it, but it sounds like something that you've been thinking about. What are some ways that you've seen somebody who's in the middle of nowhere be able to connect?

I think if you're mixing, for example, there are certainly opportunities, uh, through Produce Like a Pro, for example, where you can get access to multitracks and do your mixing and practice it and learn and contribute it back and get feedback. Uh, what, what other ways as far as creating music, too? Where are some places that you see real potential for people to collaborate in music creation with other people?

Well, I mean, you, you hit the nail on the head. The reason why I started that website was to have to build a properly supportive community. Because there's a lot of communities on the on the internet, as you know. I just wanted to get away from the sort of one-upping kind of communities out there where they're all like, "You're doing it wrong. You're not using the Q9174 that doesn't have the frequency response and the phase shift at the..." I just wanted to get away from that stuff. Because we, we all know when us as musical fanatics, and I'm sure most of your listeners have read or read either books, go online, love all the stories of how Beatles records were made and all the terrible mistakes they made that led to these incredible, you know, things. And you, you get the Beatles multitracks and you pull it up, and in the background, you have like different things going in and out of phase, and, you know, weird frequencies being boosted, and like, you know, "Who cares? That's the QF34972Z falling apart live during the session."

Exactly. It's like, so the great thing having a sort of community like the Produce Like a Pro community. It stemmed from the videos. I ran the videos for like a year and a half before I even launched the the online side. And what I love about it is all of all of the guys and girls in there, and there's a great mix of people. They're all just

trying to help each other. And so that's good for that. But outside of that community, there are ways of doing it. It's really a case of, you know, interaction. I mean, I would say everybody these days is their own little mini entrepreneur. Has to be their own little mini entrepreneur, which means, you know, build yourself a website, get a social media presence, start getting a music out there, and don't be afraid to be what is that? There's a couple of those. Don't be afraid to suck is a good one. Um, but also don't just sort of realize that we're all just trying to get validation as human beings and and um help each other. And but also don't be a don't be scared off when people get negative because I find that when somebody leaves a negative comment on one of my videos, I have to take a deep breath and realize that, you know, that they are probably or possibly isolated from everything else and they don't see the big picture. And when I start communicating with them and um listening to them, I find that they are as valid as I am, if not more so. And they just need to be heard. So, you know, karma, you know, treat people the way that you want to be treated. Um, if somebody contacts me, and I'm not perfect. Emails fall through the crack. I get hundreds of them a day. Comments fall through the crack. I try to respond to as many as possible. But the point is is like, and I want to respond to that. You know, I know you were joking about the chip on your shoulder, but no, I'm anti that like 10,000 times. It's like, you know, I I try my darnest to respond to everything and and because I I know that journey. I know that journey of banging your head against a brick wall and having to do, you know, having to practice and get better than everybody else to get noticed. I feel a responsibility when you have success to help others. I think it is really, really important. Yeah.

I don't I don't like if there is a chip part of it, you know, the one part I don't like is I don't like the elitism. I hate the elitism. I hate that world we had in the mid '90s where the same five or six people made every freaking record and they all sounded the same. And we can all agree on that. They just all did. Every It seemed like every major label record sounded like the same band. And the message was that this is the way that you make the right record and the other ways are are It became about the commerce and there's nothing wrong with commerce. Of course there isn't. You know, um what is it? Uh the Dr. John quote. Dr. John said, "Commercialability, the commercialability." And you know, there he is, Dr. John, one of the most credible artists ever. And it's like he got it. It's like, how do I how do I do something which is uh credible and is artistically true but is also, you know, something that somebody would want to listen to, let alone buy, right? So, you know, it's getting that that balance. I strongly believe in the balance. Um because the the greatest bands, the Beatles and and and Zeppelin and Floyd and Queen and all of those bands that have sold millions and millions of albums and did both. They did great art and great music and songs that you can sing. So, there's there's definitely validity in both areas of the pure pop and there's definitely validity in in, you know, listening to Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed of just, you know, I I don't mind the extremes. And, you know, Bowie's one of my favorite artists and Bowie did, you know, Low and Lodger and, you know, he did plenty of things that that were um were dark and um non-pop. But that's a career artist. I mean, that's that's like Radiohead makes the records they make. They're they're they're career artists. They will give you pure pop singalong songs like pretty much every song on The Benz. Um, you know, and then they'll do Amnesiac and Kid A and, you know, and and stuff like and half of In Rainbows and they'll do. But that's that's that's great art meets great music and we we all strive for that, you know, when you can pull it all together. It's It's so the the bottom line is is like grow your sense of community, give back, treat people the way you want to be treated. If you go online and you're going through some stuff and you hear something you like, tell somebody you like it. You know what? Leave a comment. Leave a like. This is really cool. And look past the recording quality. If it's an amazing song and it's recorded with an iPhone and it's an amazing song, leave a comment. You don't have to, but you know, I would leave a comment like, "This is an amazing song." And then don't go, "But, you know, if you'd used the Q179." That dreaded Q179.

Well, so a couple of other takeaways, too. I love, you know, your suggestion to treat other people the way that you want to be treated. I'm pretty sure there was a guy with long hair and a beard who wore a robe that used to say that, too, 2,000 years ago. Yeah, I I heard that as well. Um, and then the other takeaway is something advice I was actually just giving to a young intern here just yesterday, which is, you know, you have to go out there and sort of tell your own story. That's a big shift now that exists in the, you know, the 2010s that wasn't there in the '90s or or was a lot harder to do. Is but, you know, you can create a website. You can let the world know who you are. You can create some sort of content creation to communicate with the world. And it's something that you've done obviously with your YouTube channel, but it's something that every individual songwriter, producer, engineer, mixer can do from their own home studio in the middle of nowhere, too, just by consistently creating and sharing, you know. So, I I agree and 100%.

Well, so Warren, we're about to take a break here for a sec, then come back in for the jam session, but I wanted to ask you a couple of geekout questions before we do. You know, you've answered some of them already peripherally in in these other discussions, but let me jump to this one about recording and mixing drums. Let's just geek out on that for a sec. You've made some great videos where you talk about ways to get your drums to sound great. Would you like to share with us a couple of takeaways for the rock stars um about recording and mixing drums that really sound great? Yeah. When I when I was in England, I worked uh you know, with my friends over at their sort of homemade put-together studio and I remember I talked about this the other day, so I I excuse anybody has heard this, but this engineer came in and he um came in with two 87s that he had with him. So, we had these two nice condensers, and trust me, 87s are an expensive mic now, but then it was like like this sort of I'm like, "What is this? A pair of Neumanns." I don't think I'd seen a Neumann at that point. Um, so he came in with a pair of 87s and we had a D12, I believe, that um and 57 like everybody else. And he puts the D12 on the kick and a 57 on the snare and then puts a pair of overheads and measures them to the center of the snare. So they're in phase of each other and then proceeds to get the best drum sound I'd ever heard. And I was like, "Oh, what's what's going on?" He's like, "Oh, yeah." He's like, "I saw your studio. I saw it was a small room. Didn't think it would make any sense to bring in tons of mics." Um, so here it is. This is the drum sound. And I remember for about goodness knows how long, maybe a couple of years afterwards, I didn't change anything of the setup. I just got I can't remember what we had. I don't remember what we had as overheads after that because we didn't have 87s. We had a pair of something and it wasn't even 414s. I God, that's an interesting one. It may have been like whatever generic '80s Shure condensers were at the time. May have been SM81s, 'cause those were relatively inexpensive. Yeah, those are great mics. I love those. Yeah, they're they were like the live overhead mic of choice for so many of us. Um, but um, yeah. Anyway, so so my point is it was like one of the biggest learning experiences and um there's a guy, is it Dave Mattacks? Yeah, Dave Mattacks, the drummer, was a big session player in the '70s and he um he tells a great story which sort of reinforces what I'm talking about here on drums is that he was doing an album with Gerry Rafferty in whatever mid-'70s and uh they all came in to listen to playback and he said to Gerry Rafferty, he's like, "Glenn, my my cymbals are a bit loud in the mix." And Glenn goes, "You know what? You're right. Don't hit them as hard." I love Dave Mattacks, man. He used to play with Fairport Convention. He was my favorite drummer. Yeah, Fairport were amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And um yeah, he's just just a wonderful, wonderful player. He played on so many of those records and a lot he was ghosting on many, many albums in the '70s that probably he's not credited for, but anyway, yeah, it's it's a he's a great drummer and a great, great quote. Um, so ultimately, I think the art of getting a great drum sound is doing as much as you can. um outside of the micing um first or at least in tandem, which means like it's not just a case of like putting the mics in the right position. I I feel like with a lot of what we do, the technical side should be a given, especially now in this world where accessibility is like like you just said, you can go and look at one of my one of my many drumming videos and you'll see how I do it and how I do it isn't a million miles away from pretty much any of my peers recording drums. So, you can watch one of my videos and go, "Okay, great." You know, you can watch the Simon Phillips one where Simon talks about his drum, how he mics the drums. You can look at my one from United, my one from Sunset Sound, and they all have a certain sense of uh similarity. There's a there's a couple of fun things that you can do for different sounds. You can mic the shell a bit more, like take a large diaphragm and mic the shell of the uh of the snare, but depending on your drummer, that may or may not be usable. Some somebody might try that and go say to me, "That sounded terrible. It was awful." And then I'll say to them, "Why?" And they're like, "Oh, all I got was hi-hat bleed." And you know what that tells me? That tells me the drummer played the hi-hat like and the snare like, you know, it's or the snare was like super like light wood, small, not very loud, aggressive snare and the hats were like super thick, you know, 18-inch hi-hats. I mean, it in reality, you know, you're you're what what is the phrase? The you you're only as good as your weakest link. Um, so really just sort of like especially if you've got your own studio, if people listening here, when I say studio, I mean like your own garage, your own bedroom, whatever it is that you're going to stick a drum kit in, kind of dial that in first and then sort of take it from there. Um, I would say it's great to have your own drum kit and you don't have to go out and buy like a specific make of drums. You can sort of beg, borrow, and steal and put together a drum kit. Mine mine is a '64 Ludwig, which sounds very glorious. However, it was $200 on Craigslist 'cause somebody had recovered it. So, it wasn't the original covering of the original '64. Well done. Yeah. And I, you know, that's in LA, but even then, you know, Pro Drum down the street on on Vine, they'll they'll sell like '70s Ludwigs for like $700 bucks. And I know that's not a small amount of money, but it's also not a huge amount of money. But I'd be foolish to say like an '80s Yamaha is not good. I mean, '80s Yamaha is a great drum kit. You know, Tama kits from that period. Don't be again, you know, what we were talking about earlier. Don't be don't be stuck in the dogma. Just just buy something that sounds good. Yeah. Maybe maybe go hit it and see what it sounds like to you. Before you make a decision about it, you know. Yeah. Before you worry about the Before you worry about DW, Yamaha, you know, uh, Ludwig, whatever it is. Before you worry about the name, the catchphrase of the drums. And the wonderful thing about the good old world of Google is you can check anything out. And yes, you will get some varying opinions, but you can also if you do just enough uh, you know, beyond the 30-second thing, if you spend 10 to 15 minutes reading some reviews, you're going to get a consensus. It's not too difficult if you try if you maintain your objectivity to figure out, you know, what is good for the price. And like you said, go and hit things. But even if you don't have the ear yet, um, you'll get it. I mean, the thing about working with that guy who came in and recorded the drums simply and well is he set up the compression on the snare and all I had was this Ashley compressor, which is this um super super cheap compressor. I didn't change the compression setting um for, you know, for the longest time after that. And I'll be honest, at that point in my career, I couldn't hear the difference in ratios. I couldn't hear the difference in attack and release times. I didn't know what he was doing. Now, of course, if I demolished the track and and did it so that it was only attack, right? Or or the opposite and it was just this, you know, then I could hear the difference, but the subtlety I could not hear. And I had to train my ear to hear how attack and release works. And look, there are no geniuses out there. Well, maybe there are. Maybe there's experts and geniuses. I don't know. I don't personally know any. I know some very successful people that don't think they're geniuses or experts. Um, you know, Jack Jack Douglas, when I interviewed him, he's an old friend of mine, but when I interviewed him, one of my first interviews I ever did for my channel, he uh he said to me, he goes, "I hate professionals." He said that on on professionals. I hate professionals. He goes when they were in New York in the late '60s, you know, making, you know, little records by artists like John Lennon and, you know, and then in the '70s, you know, uh, he made New York Dolls, Patti Smith, and of course, Aerosmith and Cheap Trick records. When he was making all those records, all of the engineers there like him and Shelley and Roy Cicala, of course, um, you know, all the all of the best guys, I mean, you know, Jimmy I came up under Jack was his assistant. Jack credits uh, you know, so much of his development um to that period and he was like that all those engineers, all these world-class, you know, Grammy winning nominated whatever engineers would joke about it. They the professionals were the ones that would come in and tell them they're doing it wrong, you know, they were the professionals, right? They they and and they were just making it up as they went. There was this real and it's interesting, you know, on one of my many famous tangents growing up in England. And the scene of the late '70s and early '80s, which is one of the most vibrant scenes in England since the '60s for me, it's like super vibrant time. The punk rock, the new wave stuff, was all us trying to be New York. That's what we were trying to do. We were just trying to make the records and sound like the bands that Jack was producing. Every band wanted to be Patti Smith, Velvet Underground, or New York Dolls kind of mixed together. Interesting. With a bit of the Ramones. I mean, that's all it was. Just wanted to be. And you had your own vibrant scene out here, of course, with the Talking Heads and Blondie and all of those great bands. Um, that's all we wanted to be. We just wanted to be American again, you know. So when we gave you Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, The Smiths, and everything else, that was just us trying to be you. Joy Division, New Order, you know, that was our Joy Division came out of the Velvet Underground. It came out of like, you listen to, you know, System or Heroin or something like that that you're hearing a Manchester band trying to do Lou Reed and trying to do that same duck. Now, obviously they twisted it and made made one of the most copied sounds ever. You know, now every modern band wants to be Joy Division, but we just wanted to be cool New York underground bands. So, my point is is like amateurs make great music. You know, they do. People that don't have a dogma and aren't fixed to one idea, who don't know, who aren't experts, who aren't professionals, they're the ones that we all aspire to be 'cause they're the ones that are breaking down the barriers. And then in in 1989, my band in St. Louis with a bunch of acoustic guitars and I was playing fiddle, we were covering Joy Division, "Love Will Tear Us Apart." So we we're trying to bring it back again to the Midwest, you know, for twang and alt-country. I did the same thing, my friend. I I uh all I wanted to do was I wanted to be the Bauhaus meets Joy Division, you know, and and it's back to that whole story about the diversity about, you know, all all music's great and just choosing what you love. And um I'd started off with classical music and then Queen and then heavy rock and then uh, you know, the Beatles. And then I ended up, you know, in my teens being into super like, you know, Joy Division, like darker, much, much darker music. And I'm glad I'm glad I had all that. Oh yeah, for sure.

Well, so hey Warren, we're going to take a break here for a sec, but before we do, the last question I wanted to ask you about drums is I know for me, a typical struggle is recording a big drum kit, trying to go for a big sound, and then I I put the guitars on and I go into mix and things are starting to get really kind of loud. And that's the point at which I discover that the snare is somehow doesn't have that excitement that is needed for for a big track. Are there any directions that people might need to know about as far as, you know, you might want to start with a metal snare versus a wood snare? Or, you know, does everybody need to just make sure they've got a Black Beauty handy or something like that? Any tips about making sure that your snare is sort of exciting by the time you get to mix? Yeah, you you touched on a bunch of different things there. For me, you know, I'm friends with Ross, Ross Garfield, and you know, he's the drum doctor, and we were talking about this recently, and he says that his most recorded snare, bearing in mind, you know, he did the drums from anything from like Nevermind to, you know, Tom Petty's biggest records, Wildflowers, and stuff like that, he said the one that he he gets asked for mainly is a Black Beauty. So, that kind of underscores what you were just talking about there. However, for me, that's the '90s snare. Mhm. The snare that I most love and I use 99% of the time is a Supraphonic. That to me is a little bit more useful. Now, we can have drummers listen to this and they can all disagree with me and that's absolutely fine. Please disagree with me, but a Supraphonic, a Supraphonic is to me my favorite snare. I mean, that's what you would consider it's like the Ringo, the the Stones, early Bonham, you know, that's that's that's the snare people were using. It became the Black Beauty and then became very prevalent in the '90s because people wanted just a little bit more aggression out of the snare. So to touch on what you're saying, if you want a more aggressive sound, you can definitely start with that sort of, you know, that brass kind of sounding Black Beauty. However, uh the snare I've had the most love with has been my Supraphonic. That's "How to Save a Life" by um The Fray. You know, that snare sound, that's a Supraphonic. The whole of the last Aerosmith record, maybe except for one track, was my Supraphonic. As much as Joey would throw up all these different snares, that ended up being the snare. The the tracks that I cut on AC's last two records, I ended up cutting like three or four songs on both records were done in my little studio with the Supraphonic. It's been that same snare. Any record. When I cut the drums on James Blunt, that same Supraphonic, it's just like I can make it I can de-tune it and I can use it um and get that kind of puffy Jeff uh Jett snare, that kind of snare, or I can tune it up and get some more aggressive stuff out of it. But the other thing I like about it between you and me is it's very forgiving with drummers. The thing about Black Beauty, the Black Beauty is it is an amazing snare with a really good drummer. Mhm. But there's something about that it is just this extra projection and the potential ring that it has that doesn't always work with every drummer for me where a Supraphonic you can pick up for I don't know you can pick up used ones for, you know, beaten-up ones like mine for like a hundred bucks or up to 250 used. I mean, but if I was going to my head to say one thing in all of drums that I personally would always bring to every session and always do it's always that snare drum. And I've had Victor Indrizzo, I've had Blair Sinta, I've had all the different LA session players shootout and we 75% of the time we end up with that that crappy old beaten-up snare. And I'm not I'm not one of those guys that it's like vintage. It's really important. It's a it's a it's a 1971. I think it is a '71, but I don't think I think they've been, I mean, drummers will know, but I think they've been making that same snare the same way for time immemorial. It's not it it's not special by any means. It's not better than another particular snare drum of that ilk of that period. It just really it's the most one if that's the thing I would say if I you're going to ask me what's the thing that I use on every drums that I like and always gets me the results. It's that and I think having one of those in your arsenal is great. I have a Black Beauty and I also have an Acrolite as well. So, I have I run the gamut with the uh with with Ludwig, and I love Ludwig snares, but I usually just come back to that. It does the job. Um, it's very forgiving, very forgiving with different drummers. And I think that that's probably as an engineer primarily, that's the kind of gear that you want. Gear that kind of when you've got more money than cents and you can have uh, you know, a 1073, a 312, uh, a, you know, a this pre or that pre, great. But, you know, when you're starting to when you're when you're talking about buying choice pieces of equipment and only, you know, narrowing it down to one thing for drums, if for me it would be a Supraphonic snare above anything else, I think would get you any genre pretty much that you want to do. I think that's great and I'm so glad I asked and I think the rock stars are going to flip out to hear this part of the podcast because I love it. Despite our intentions to, you know, steer people away from thinking there's a secret right answer to anything, it's still a lot of fun to hear for the first time. Especially if you if you didn't know much about snares and you hear something like that, it's exciting. You know, you go check it out. You're like, "What's a Supraphonic?" And you go look it up online. Rockstars, Google it, you know, go to the music store, ask to play one, go hit it, see what it sounds like. Yeah. Yeah. And it's I know it sounds ridiculous the way I kept over-annunciating it, but yeah, it's S U P R A phonic. So, it's Supraphonic. Um, right. The only reason I'm doing that is so that yeah, people can Google it and find it. But yeah, it's it's it's definitely the most recorded snare. Um, I do think the Black Beauty for the '90s became the most recorded snare. Definitely. Um, just because Ross was the guy renting out that snare to everybody's records. That's a good point. That's probably like the Pearl Jam sound, isn't it? Yeah. I think I know he did Nevermind. I know he did Wildflowers. I mean, we're talking those big albums that um people name-check. Although, you know, you can hear the samples on Nevermind, you can hear the the kicks there that Andy Wallace was using and stuff. So, I you know, a lot of the time you got we got to remember that I, you know, that's a big part of drums these days is, you know, depending on who the mixer is, is is the fact that they are using drum samples. Um Mhm. You know, you listen to like um the Black Album for instance, you know, one of the first big big heavy heavy rock albums that was just like square-waving out of the speakers, like massive. Not not close to what it is like now, but for the period when that record came out, I'm sure you remember it was like, "Wow, this is loud. This is in your face." If you listen to that, the room ambience is at a different pitch to the snare. So you hear this kind of but you hear this, you know, you you can tell that that is a you don't need the tracks to be broken down to hear that that is a snare sample. And you hear that with that that kick that kind of that's just the one dynamic the whole time. I mean, it was it was really the sort of birth of of that kind of big drum sound that was definitely sample-laden. And there's no problem with it because it it was a massive record and it's inspired a lot of people. Um I'm not one of those guys that, you know, obviously we're we're making all these jokes about dogma and chips on your shoulder and all this kind of stuff. We, you know, I'm not one of those guys going to get caught up in there's no right way to do it. Um but I think the thing about the Supraphonic and the reason why I use different examples of where I've recorded it is the ace. If you listen to that Ace song with Paul Stanley, we did a cover of "Fire and Water." If you listen to that, the drums are very aggressive and reverbed and roomed out, but my drum room is the size of a common kid's bedroom. So, I did lots of things, you know, I used reverbs. I have no room mics in there because there's no point. A room mic would be like a a 10-millisecond slap. There's no ambience. It sounds like you stuck a mic in the corner. Yeah, exactly. And you know, sometimes I fire up the vocal mic and use it um and put some reverb on it just as there's just no balance in my room that's would make any sense to put a a vocal mic 3 feet away from the snare. I mean, that's about as far as I'm going to get. Maybe 6 feet. Well, the beauty is for you rock stars, if you have most likely a small space for recording your drums, you don't need to buy a lot of drum mics. So, you don't. Good way to go. And you don't have to go spend a bunch of money on expensive room mics and, you know, try and get the perfect thing in the background. My my drum setup while we're on it is I've got the Ludwig drum drum package. I don't know what that is. Six or $700 bucks. So, I have a I have a cheap kick drum mic. I have two pencil overheads, a pencil um hi-hat mic uh the 140 which is like $200 bucks and uh the only the expense comes down to 57s on the snares and I got AKGs on the on the toms. However, 99% of the time the the tom the toms in a track are boom and they might appear twice or possibly three times in the song. So, you know, if I didn't have an expensive tom mic, it wouldn't be the end of the world for that three moments that you hear a rack and a and a floor. So, my point is is like there's less than $1,000 worth of of of mics on there. And the SH make a drum package as well. Ludwig make one. Lots of people Audio-Technica make a good one. And I think they all do competitive ones at the $600, $700. And you know, God bless it. I mean, that that people do this and and you can make with some samples, with some reverb, whatever. If you want death metal drums, you can get it out of your little uh '64 Ludwig kit like I've got. Yeah, absolutely. Well, '80s. I'm a big fan of the Lewitt microphones. I use them myself. Um and I I have the drum pack and and love the way it sounds. You know, another thing for the tom mics is it's a great insight how rarely the tom actually makes an appearance in a song. Now, sometimes you're riding it through a section and that's a little different, but you know, one of the first mics I got great tom sounds with was just the Oktava MK12. So, it was a very inexpensive pencil condenser mic, right? And it sounds terrible when somebody crashes a cymbal next to it, but because we live in the world of ProTools, you just trim those out, you know, and you just have it where the drum hits and and it was easy to get big sounds.

Well, so Rockstars, we're going to take a break here and then we'll come back in for the jam session. Before we do, I want to remind you that you can find links to all the stuff we're talking about. Um, I'll have a link straight over to Produce Like A Pro for you. It's in the show notes for the podcast. You can find those at RSRockstars.com and then just use the search magnifying glass and type in Warren or Huert Hu T. or if you're on your iPhone or or your um podcast app on your on your mobile phone, just click through and there should be a link right there you can click with your finger. We'll see you guys in just a moment for the jam session. Hey everybody, it's Lid Shaw and I want to thank you so much for listening to this episode of Recording Studio Rockstars. I really appreciate you and I really appreciate your time. And as a way of saying thank you, I've created a special mix tutorial just for you rock stars, totally free called the Mixmaster Bundle. With it, you get over 2 hours of detailed videos watching over my shoulder as I mix a song in my studio. Plus, I give you the free ebook that explains how I recorded the tracks. And you get downloadable multitracks so that you can practice your mixes, including the ProTools session file using nothing but stock plugins in ProTools. All of which you would find in any other DAW, whether you're on Logic or Studio 1 or Reaper. Maybe you're struggling with trying to improve your mix technique. Or maybe you just simply don't have access to multitrack files or can't record a full drum set in your studio. I wanted to give you a chance to create your own mixes from full drum kit bass and guitars recorded in my studio. The song is called "American Winter" and it's off my instrumental record Scadouch and it's all available for you totally free right now. All you need to do to get it is text MIXBUNDLE to 33444 and I'll send it directly to your email. Again, that's MIXMASTERBUNDLE with no space to 33444 or you can go directly to Mixmasterbundle.com. Enter your email and I'll send all the files directly to you. Thanks so much, Rockstars. We'll see you guys in the jam session. Cheers.

Warren, when you were starting out in recording in music, what was one of the big obstacles that was holding you back? um thinking that I needed really expensive equipment. I I I just sort of I obviously I started, you know, with a couple of cassette players, four-tracks, all that kind of stuff. And uh I think I I didn't really think anybody would take me seriously unless I was making, you know, album quality stuff right from the get-go. And uh I'm so glad that I persevered because I see a lot of people stopping and I could have quite easily have never done anything in music because that was an overwhelming fear of mine. Do you find that people who are starting out today, you know, in your communication uh with people through your YouTube channel that people are still balking at that same fear that they don't have the right stuff or does everybody sort of understand that anything's good to go now? No, people are still the main questions I get are really basic and I I appreciate people asking. They say to me, "I have this particular computer or this, you know, like a maybe a five or 10-year-old computer and will I be able to record music?" And I'm like, "Yeah, anything that, you know, there's free software, free DAWs out there that you can use. It's just difficult because I understand that we do all want to we do want to make something that sounds like it's on the radio immediately and I get that. But there's such a wealth now of music that is almost genre-less that that there's so much that you can do that if you did happen to write the world's greatest song and it was on a cell phone, I still think it would get heard." Yeah. Rockstar is a reminder to you that if you are looking at an old computer in an old recording system, there's a good chance that somebody did make a hit record or a hit song with that. So, don't don't hesitate to use what you got to start out. You can always decide if you need something again later.

Well, now how about some of the best best advice that you receive, Warren? The best advice. I I I think the uh the ones that stick in my mind are the ones I talked about earlier with Dave Jordan where it's really just knowing when to apply the the knowledge that you've got because there's no one way to do anything. And one of the things that we we we were joking about and talking about for the '90s was the fact that there was sort of this one-size-fits-all idea to a production. And like there was all these bands that sounded like the same band. um which was never was never prevalent in the '70s. There were '70s rock bands and yeah, you know, early Aerosmith, you could tell they were huge Zeppelin fans and they went out of their way to try, but there's no way you could put a Zeppelin record on or an Aerosmith record and they sound even close. Do they sound like they have the same influences? Heck yes. Um they both came from blues. I mean, that's where it came from. But Sabbath and Zeppelin both put out records in the late '60s and early '70s and they share nothing in common except for the fact that they both listened to blues. Yeah, good good idea. So I think for me it's Yeah, it it's just sort of the best advice I got was not to sort of just have a uh a template musically about how you make music. Know when to use your tools. And the other thing I remember Dave said to me is he he lent over to his uh his SSL and he twisted the knob on the SSL and he goes, "Anybody can do this. You just have to know when to stop or when to not stop and keep going."

All right. Now, how about sharing with our listeners a recording tip, hack, or secret sauce? Something that the rock stars could use today on their next session. Interesting. Um God, there's too many. uh a hack maybe something for vocals. Yeah, vocals were what came to mind. But I I'll tell you what the biggest thing I learned as a global thing from working uh with Aerosmith was Steven Tyler goes with his gut and his first idea is what he sticks with. So we got a track playing and you know they've been working on a guitar riff or whatever and he'll go, "Give me a mic. Give me a mic." And he's he's intense and he's insanely talented obviously. So we either hand him a mic, a handheld 57 or if the we were in a vocal world, the vocal booth would be run out and running out literally like running out to the vocal vocal mic and go into the track and you go into the track and he's like and he'll just scat and do his thing. Mhm. And then he would come back in and he would write his lyrics around that idea. And when I say that idea, I mean the consonants and the vowels, everything would be. So if it was vowel-consonant, you know what I mean? He would write the lyric to fit it because that is what sounded good to him and that was his gut and that was his reaction. So couple of things. Number one, ABR, always be recording. Yes. That's the number one thing. Always be recording. Do not erase anything. We're in digital. Why would you erase that one little vocal snippet that lasted for 5 seconds is probably less than a megabyte and you got a one terabyte hard drive sitting there. So why are you erasing that vocal idea? Obviously organization, all of that kind of stuff. So, you know, don't have 50,000 tracks all playing at once and unlabeled. But there's no need to erase an idea. Good labeling is great, but the number one thing, always be recording. Yeah. Because if I didn't have that ability to give him a 57 and put down an idea or for him to run, whatever it might be, it could be lost forever because the when the inspiration strikes, you've just got to be ready to go. So, always be recording and be ready for anything. The definition of luck again, right, opportunity meets hard work. The hard work is being always recording and ready for anything. Yeah.

So now, how about sharing with us a favorite hardware tool for the studio? So this would be something physical that you know whenever you've got it with you on a session, you're always glad it's there. Well, I've had a BAE 1073 since since they were called Brent Averill. It's the same company. The same guys build them. It's the same everything. But when they were Brent Averill in 2000, I believe is when he first started, you know, taking old Neve 1073s and rebuilding them and cleaning them up before it was trendy before everybody on the planet did it. You know, I remember you could buy Neve B Neve 1073s in the '90s for about three or $400. Don't do it, man. Don't do it. Don't tell us that. But you remember those days? You could. Nobody cared. Was like I do and I don't. I remember 1073s as they were beginning to trend. So I I kept feeling they were probably $1,500. Oh my god. I think I bought I bought a 1079 for $1,700 and you know the rack cost almost that much. Well, I sold it. Yeah. To Bob Ezrin actually, right? But yeah. Yeah. And who was who I was uh who I didn't mention when we were talking about all the New York guys, but he's probably the the captain of uh of the uh of the New York crew by far. Yeah, he's one of Jack. Jack and Yeah, Jack attributes a lot of his success to Bob because Bob got busy doing things and turned to Jack and said, "Hey, why don't you produce that album?" Mhm. Well, I'll follow that up by saying that I sold my 1079 and the rack that it came in at a time when I needed, you know, paying the bills was more valuable than having this one amazing piece of gear in the studio. And the takeaway there, rockstars, is just as simple as this. Like here I was sitting with this one piece of gear that is fantastic. It's supposed to be one of the best choices for just about everything. And I looked at it, I was like, you know, I know that I can make records using what I've got, the other stuff, and I don't have to have whatever it was at the time, $5,000 invested in one mic pre. I think I'd rather pay my mortgage and my bills and continue to record music. Yeah, absolutely. I agree 100%. I guess that's not that's not a brilliant insight. It's just something that happened. No, no, no. But I understand. I I've done that with guitars. Uh when I was younger, I bought and sold so many guitars that my collection would be worth gazillions. But um hey, I did what I did. But um I think I will go back to the earlier answer as as the exact answer, and the exact answer would be my Ludwig Supraphonic has been on every record I've made in the last 15 years. And I know that they sound great recorded through a 1073, too. You know, when it comes to a hack, you know, a cheapish, and they're not cheap, but a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment, then I I would say this the Ludwig is the biggest thing for me. 1073s, like I said, that that BAE one is um the Fray, Adele, you know, every vocal in the planet has gone through that 1073. It used to live at Harmony down there. So when they were doing, you know, the Adele stuff, I mean, even Miley Cyrus, all of that stuff was all tracked through that particular mic pre. So it's even to this day, it's on the radio in different things. Very cool. So, but it's not a a hack because, you know, it doesn't take more than 10 seconds on Google to find out that a 1073 is pretty close to the sound of rock and roll. You know, if it was recorded in England in the '70s, it went through a 1073. Yeah. You know.

Well, read your story a lot about about Steven and you know, capture the vocal outline before you write the lyrics. I think that's a great production tip. It It's funny. One of the things that I love is when I find out pieces of information like that. Here you go. I I'll I'll be more succinct. I am the kind of guy that buys something new, looks at the manual, and after 10 seconds goes, "Okay, let's start using this." I look at the manual, I'm like, "What are they talking about? Why? What you do? What? And then I just start playing with it. That's why if you watch any of my YouTube reviews, I just plug it in and sometimes plug it in backwards and wrong and make massive mistakes just like other human beings do. And I film the process of me making mistakes and doing it wrong like other human beings do. And to me, to be honest, that that's kind of the beauty of it. I'm not We don't sit there and research how to use a piece of gear.

For 4 hours before making a video and then pretend that I'm a genius because I've never met one of those. Maybe there are, but I haven't actually met them. So, I like I like to just kind of wing it and and have fun with it. And when Stephen did that, it just all clicked.

I'm like, it's like when somebody says to you, they're recording something and then they send you a mix and go, "What do you think?" What I usually do is I go, "What do you think?" And they're like, "Well, I like it, but it seems really bassy and I feel like the mid-range is really cluttered." And I'm like, "Well, then why are you asking me?" They're like, "Well, because you're a professional." And I said to them, "But if it sounds if it sounds good or bad, that is how it sounds. You don't need a a professional."

Because professionals, frankly, don't buy music. They get it given to them. They, you know, they're too busy to enjoy music. Most of the time they're actually just working in it. The point is is like the person who I think the most imperson is the person that might buy it. Oh, indeed. And I think so I think that that that's another if if there was going to be a hack on the other side is like trust your own ears. Trust your ears. And I've had a few people debate me on this, but no, trust your own ears. Learn to trust your own ears.

Cuz the biggest hurdle, the biggest thing that I have learned by working with others that are better and more successful than me and both of those things combined, the biggest thing I've learned is when they dot the eyes and cross the tees or cross the eyes and dot the tees. Um, when when I hear them say something like, "Ah, yeah, that explains it." when Steven did that and it was only 2011 2012 when I learned that from him. It was only a few years ago and I'm in my 40s so it's not something I learned as a teenager. Um when he did that it made everything make sense to me. It it was like oh yeah that's the reason why this was good and that was good.

It's the reason why when we cut the drums on how to save a life it it it was such a massive song and people love that drum sound and that drum groove. You know why? Because Ben, the drummer, flew in at 11:00 in the morning, drove or got a car, whatever, cab to my studio before they were successful and played the drums on a crappy kit that I had available, which was a 24-in Rogers kick drum with my Lwig suponic, two crash symbols as high hats, and a ride and no toms. And we recorded it through my TAC Scorpion with some API mic pres some 312s and my 11073 was probably on something. I don't remember what it was on. Sorry. Could probably go back from notes and figure it out. And I recorded it. He left. His flight was back at 300 p.m. So he left like after an hour of just doing like three or four drum takes. We did a quick comp like, oh, verse one sounds good on this take, verse two sounds good from that take, and we'll put them into ver take three and then we took that hard drive and drove over to Mark Endo. It was a scream, which was probably 15 minutes away, and gave him the files and he dropped it into the mix that he had already done for the album because the drums on the album would were recorded with hot rods and it just didn't sound very good. It sounded dull and small and we just we didn't want it to be rock, but we wanted it to be just a little bit more aggressive just so it had a chance to be on the radio. And then that song downloaded like 4 million copies within like the first 3 months and at one point was the most downloaded song of all time.

Now it's probably been and why did it work? And I didn't really think twice about it. I just thought, "Oh, this is lucky. This is this." And then and then Steven goes into the studio and does dagadoom dagading writes lyrics around his first idea, the one that feels guttural for him and it is genius and I love it. And then all these things, all these dots start joining together of all these different moments. And I'm like, wait there, this is all like less thought out, more instinctual. Everything that was instinctive and felt right. These are all the things that become successful. Now obviously there's many exceptions to the rule but for me that was a big learning process and it needs not only the success but it needs the validation of a guy like Steven doing it for me to go oh yeah so it's like my way my brain works you know I don't read the manuals I I plug it in and something has to go right or wrong in the right way for me to learn the lesson. I I'm not a freaking genius. I'm not that guy. I'm not I I don't know if you are but I'm not. I'm I'm just I have to screw it up and make mistakes and and and then see it in others and you know it's why you know if you've heard me play guitar and I'm not being bigheaded. I'm a really great guitar player but I actually try not to play I love playing guitar and everything I do but if I want to put a solo down I hate doing solos. cuz I did one last night and I think we did like 14 takes. But if I'd gone to Tim Pierce, I probably would have loved his first take. And my first take may have been great, but I don't have the objectivity in myself to do that.

No, I totally understand. When I made my record, Scadoo, uh, it was just an instrumental one. I I every time I did an overdub, I just kept doing playlists and I'd do 20 25 of them before I was done. And then I just shut it down. still no idea whether it was good until I came back later and comped through them. So, I understand that frustration. I I hear you talk about these takeaways from Steven Tyler and from from your drum session and it's sort of also a lack of preciousness. You know, they didn't they weren't precious about things. It was like, you know, and quick.

I Yeah, I I use that analogy as well. I've been that's actually a good one. I've been saying that one of the things that that was one of the very first things I learned uh was not to be too precious about anything. Um because you write a song and it could be better. Just rewrite it. Um yeah, exactly. But I've I've learned that from doing demos with people because when you first start up and you're kind of one of many guys that could be doing the demos, you'll get artists going around the producer, engineer, studio, local studio owners. I'm sure you've experienced this. Um, they'll go around with the same one, two, three, four songs and they keep recutting them thinking that, you know, me or you or John or Fred or whoever is going to bring the magic to it, but they were they're so attached to that song. You know, yes, bad production can ruin a song.

Um, so speaking of not wanting to read the manual, can you tell us about a favorite software tool? Something that you really enjoy using that maybe you didn't want to read the manual about? That I didn't want to read a manual about. Um, I don't think I've I don't think I've read a manual on any software.

Fair enough. How about some software that's that may be something recent that you discovered that's been pretty cool and exciting. I'm going to we're going to have a good laugh at myself here. We just uh we just got the VMS. So, um, so we got the VMS mic and we fired it up and uh we didn't think at all. We didn't use any brain power in thinking this through. So, we went vocal mic preamp and then we put the preamp, the 1073 simulation after it before going into the mic, thinking naively, oh yeah, there's probably, you know, that cuz there's already a preamp on it. It's like going to simulate the 1073. Didn't even think twice about it. Then reviewed the mic and the video's got loads of views. It's got like 20,000 views and 3 400 likes and comments and it's doing really really well. But there's half a dozen people that are going like, "Yeah, you should have put it around the other way." And Steven texted me, Stephen, uh Steven Slate texts me and goes, "Hey, you know, I just saw the video. You did it around the wrong way." And I was like, "Oh, yeah. It's so obvious." Yeah, it's really obvious. He's like, he's like, "What do you want to do?" And I was like, "I want to leave it up and tell everybody I'm not an expert and I did it wrong." and he he watched it and he said he goes, "I don't care. Sounds really good." He goes, "Leave it up. It's really cool."

Um, and then another person, company, something did the same shootout. One of the problems this is for them or other people that do it is that they tried very hard to do it so perfectly that it almost becomes We were talking about this off off mic earlier, weren't we? It's like they when you do something out of the ordinary, it doesn't help people. I don't think I think if you go out of your way to do this is my personal opinion everybody you could disagree with me it's okay it's a free country uh world it's a free well okay um anyway but the point is is like when I if I was to try and do a scientific review of anything let alone the VMS and and like be in an aonic chamber there is no room reverberation in this chamber you know and then put two mics up side by side and it's like first of all you put two mics up side by side one's going to be offaxis. It's just nothing you can do about it. You know I'm going to be if I sing into the middle of it then they're both offaxis. If I sing into one the other one's offaxis. So you know if I put the mic up like I did and then record a guitar and then put the mic up again and record the the other mic up and record the guitar. Okay. So the first response would be like, well, why don't you use a DI of the guitar and then change the microphones and then you'll have the same recorded source each time. And I'm like, my brain goes, oh yeah, yeah, you could do that. And then I'm like, but that's not how the real world works. The real world works is that every choice you make in recording affects everything else. So what does that mean? It doesn't just mean the electronics, the all the zeros and ones. It means the performance of the musician.

So when I put a different mic up, when I was doing ribbon mics, I went from uh the Mesanovic, which is the new mic, the new ribbon that's fantastic, to to a Roya 121, which is one of the industry standard rock, I think probably one of the best rock microphones out there. Every other rock guy I know uses a combination of a Roya with a 57 and then the AEA, which I have as well and absolutely love. It's my favorite piano mic. It's sitting on my piano at the moment. And then of course the Coohl's, which is one of the best kind of overhead mics when you're in a really really super bright room with an aggressive drummer smashing the chisel out of his symbols. Put a pair of coals up and your life changes. It's beautiful. And when you do end up boosting the top end, it's sweet. It's not aggressive and harsh. So all these four mics are wonderful microphones. Not one is better than the other. They all are industry a brand new one obviously the measanovic but the other three are industry standards that we all love. And everybody was saying to me well why didn't you put a DI on through the amp on the guitar and then swap out the mics. I'm like but that's not the real world. When I record guitar I respond and play differently. It's like changing the speaker out. If I change the speaker out in the amp Oh yeah. It's like saying, "Well, that speaker's darker on the other one." Yeah, but that's not how you work. When you plug a guitar in, if you are going through a different kind of speaker and it is darker, you'll adjust the tone on the amp, right? Good point. So, that's why you don't want to hear one voice through each mic possibility. You want to you you're going to perform whatever your test sound is. Your test signal needs to hear what that mic possibility is so that it responds and delivers something appropriate.

Yeah. And I'm and I'm not I'm not upstarting a debate cuz what what I'm what I'm saying is like all of the tests have a validity but there is no one way to do anything. And I think that's just kind of a metaphor for everything we're talking about. There is no one way to do anything. But the most important thing thing for me as a you know producer engineer mixer blah blah blah but as a musician and an artist in my own right and a and a songwriter is I relate to all the people I'm working with because the equipment is not always about fact what am I saying always? It's never about capturing. It's never about like it's about inspiring. It's like if you throw up a different mic and it's brighter and it's therefore the guitar suddenly becomes more aggressive sounding. It's like suddenly goes from grand to that high mid comes in. That guitar player is going to play in a completely different way. And I know as a musician you do you play differently. So it's what I like about doing the fly by the seat of the pants reviews that that I do and other people do. It's not just me. lots of people do these these kind of reviews is it gives you gives me at least when I'm watching those kind of videos an idea of what what it's going to be like in the real world. Am I going to throw this mic up and be inspired and am I going to you know you put the Royer on an electric guitar? You just you you distort the amp. Suddenly you're like, "Wow, this is a great mic." you fall in love with it because the way it treats the high-end is just it it allows it to be aggressive, but it just rounds it off just enough that it's really pleasing. You know, you put the measanovic on an acoustic guitar or a vocal and it's just wonderful because has this extended top end that no other ribbon does and you're just like this is incredible. But you put the coals on a really ridiculously overly bright overhead or really super bright room and you're blown away. It's like the best. But not one of those river mics is perfect for every situation, right?

Indeed. And nor should it be. I mean, that's the whole point is like it's a tool tool for us. Um, but I think we just have to get back to the to the the the roots of it. And it's all about the performance of the artist. It's the artist performance. It's about when you're capturing it. The reason why we have different equipment and we don't don't all just use a U87 through a 1073 and 1176 which we could but we don't all you use just that because we want to be able to help influence and inspire our artists. I mean that's the one reason for having different equipment and it's the one reason why the VMS may well be not may well be that technology and that way of thinking is the future and for anybody to argue that they're not they're not doing it because it it is the future because it's going to allow um up and cominging people and anybody these days for a much smaller bankroll to be able to simulate any any particular microphone and you're not going to start thinking about it like C12's more scoopy sounding, you know, smoother mid-range, higher top, good lows, great for female vocals to fill in. Um, 67s, like an 87 kind of response, but with that little bit of grit, great for lead rock. You know, a lot of my friends that use 67s have done like classic rock records. Um, I know, you know, 47 is for me is my favorite vocal mic, but not everybody, most people. Now, suddenly you're going to have tools, you know, that Steven's doing and other people. I'm not making about him but other you know towns and there's these other companies that are coming out with this kind of technology. I'm not a sales representative of anybody. So that's the reason why I'm making it. This technology is the future and I love it and that is what is great and exciting about our industry. This great leveler now that anybody can get in um with the right knowledge and you know and again get get into a community start you know talking to other like-minded people there.

Well, that's cool and and I it's exciting. It ties all the way back to, you know, what you talked about initially about being, you know, with that idea of anybody can get in. You don't need a complex setup, a laptop, headphones, and literally, you know, we're getting into the world where you can just make one mic choice. It might come from one of a few brands, but you could probably make one mic choice to start out knowing that you have many mics uh at your fingertips as a result, which is very cool.

Well, so Warren, let me jump ahead and kind of jump to our closing question here. Um, this one's pretty hypothetical, but uh, we're going to take the studio way back machine for a second. Um, and go back and and I want Warren, you now to go back and take the Wayback Machine to meet young Warren. I guess this is the 80s at this point. And um if you could go back there and give yourself one single bit of advice, what's the single most important thing you would tell yourself for how to become a rockstar of the recording studio?

I mean, I think every every guy who's a dad like us is probably going to answer the same way. The first thing that comes to mind is it'll be okay. I mean really, you know, the the the pitfalls of being a teenager, which I remember infinitely well and first getting into music is it everything is so massively daunting. Even as a teenager where you feel like you can rule the world, you know, and life seems endless. I it it's really daunting. Um and it it will be okay. I mean, experience has taught me is it's just rolling up your sleeves, getting stuck in. And there's two things I think I love this phrase, and I'm sure you you've heard this one. Be a worker amongst workers. Nice. Is a really, really important one. She's like, you know, all this joking aside and all the stuff we've been talking about is like none of us are any better than anyone else. We are all just part of we're just human beings and we're all part of the same consciousness and we should just be here helping each other as much as we possibly can. Being a worker amongst workers is a really important one that I learned. There's a couple of, you know, those sort of more spiritual things I think are really important, but everybody has their own belief systems. But for me, it's like, you know, it's like it's learning to let go and and just, you know, being supportive of the process and not trying to um control the process. There is a difference between maintaining focus and maintaining control. They're two different things. They really are so diametrically opposed. And that's the one thing I've learned is like controlling something is not keeping it focused. It's just controlling it is by nature making a recording the way that you want it to be or that you think you want it to be. Yeah. But keeping it focused is is channeling the artist that you're working with creative energy and and directing it. Not controlling it, but directing it in the right areas. And I have learned the biggest thing I've learned. Here you go. Here's the biggest thing. The biggest thing I've learned is stop the debating because there are really stupid ideas in the studio. Crazy ideas. There is the bass player who turns around and goes, "Hey, what happens if we did the blah blah blah and changed the verse to a 128 and tempo changed it and changed the key and blah blah blah." All this kind of stuff. And you could do one of two things. You can sit there and have a full band meeting for an hour and a half. And I can tell you, I have seen that 50 times. You can have a massive discussion. You can take it personally. You can do all kinds of things. And this is the artist, the producer, the engineer, the whatever. You can get involved in all of the negativity. Or as Jack Douglas taught me, you can just throw up the mic and go and try it out quickly. I love it. And that version works so much better. I love it.

Um, yeah, it's a lot quicker, too. You know, when people come in sometimes and they want to talk about the last take, I find myself often pointing out, hey, you know, guys, it might actually take less time for you to play the song for another three and a half minutes than for us to discuss these previous takes and then we'll just move on knowing we've either got it or we don't, you know? Yeah. I think no matter how crazy the idea is, indulge it. Yeah. Because you will always spend longer debating it and talking about it than actually doing it. And the the reason why I like that idea is that yeah, the crazy idea 90% of the time is really crazy, but 10% of the time or more, it's absolutely amazing. And as stupid as that idea might seem, you're like, "Wow." I mean, think about um, you know, live and let die goes to a reggae, give the other fell hell, you know, really. I mean, that's like what is it 8 seconds long or something? It's not even a full bridge. Now, imagine you're you're in the room. You're Jeff Emmerick or um I know who uh Jeff was probably the engineer on that session, you know, and George Martin and Paul McCartney goes, "Hey, you know, I've got this idea for a bridge." And he plays it on piano and they're like, "Really? You want to go to a reggae feel for 8 seconds in the middle of a I mean, it's it's completely a crazy idea. It makes absolutely no sense. It takes you out of the whole mood of the song and it might lose everybody's interest and they might just click to the, you know, go to the next, you know, uh, station. Is this when they when Wings was recording, weren't they recording on a studio out in the boat for a while too? Probably. Yeah. Now I listen to that section or even as a kid when I first heard it, I was just like, "Oh, wow. Why isn't it longer?" So, how does it get to be longer? Yeah. Press repeat and I listen to the song for a second time or a third time or a fourth time. And so, it turns to be absolute genius. So the craziest ideas can be the genius ideas. So yeah, that's the that's a big thing of all the things I've learned is is is to spend less time debating every idea and more time trying the ideas. And that's the that was the beauty one of the biggest things about Jack Douglas is he is uh one of the most inclusive people. And I think that that also is a big deal is to be inclusive. And I'm not talking about, you know, running down the street and pulling people in or going to the assistant engineers assistant and asking them their opinion. I don't mean it like that. It's not about soliciting opinions. It's about listening to opinions and and and allowing the musicians. Because when I when you work with a band like Eer Smith and you see Jack Douglas navigating all of the different personalities that he has known for 40 plus years, every single person in the room, whether it be Tom or Brad or Joey or Joe or Steven, all feels as important as each other when Jack Douglas is in the room. Now, when he's out of the room, who knows what the dynamic is, but the point is is when he's in the room, Brad has a guitar idea. If Brad has a bass idea to tell Tom, if Tom has an idea to tell Joe, whatever it is, that is a great producer and that will get better results than knowing how to edit drums really fast, you know, you know, because that's the technical side. That's going back to the thing we touched on briefly, talking about the technical over the over the creative. The creativity will trump the technical side a million times. When you have amazing musicians like Eer Smith or any any band specific, you know, any great rock band or any great band, you know, when when they've been together for many many years and they have a chemistry and they're all very technically proficient at their instruments, your job is to really facilitate the creativity. And when you work with a guy like Jack, you see how that works. You see how he, like I said earlier, he he makes everybody in the room feel equally important. that that's his that's his job is a facilitator. He's becomes the uh you know if it was the Beatles the fifth Beatle, you know.

That's wild. I think that's a great bit of advice to go out on too. I won't even say anything about it. You said it all, man. Yeah. Just nurture the creativity. Yeah.

Well, Warren, thank you again so much for joining us on Recording Studio Rockstars. I feel like we've been on quite a journey together. It's been through some awesome awesome advice and stories and it's really great to get to know you better and to hear your story and to really hear all these amazing stories you shared with us. Can you let our listeners know how they can find you and how they can learn more about what you're doing and and check out Produce Like a Pro and all that?

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Um, well, you can go to produce likeapro.com. You can sign up on the email list. You'll get a whole bunch of free goodies. You'll also get an opportunity to try out the 14-day free trial and that's the community we were talking about. It's kind of our trollless community. We we make it all about being super supportive. I've been really blessed to watch people just grow so fast within there because everybody's only out to help each other. Um otherwise, of course, you can go to Produce Like a Pro um the YouTube channel and try and try that out. There's a lot of free stuff on there. It's only been going two years, but I think we're up to 272 videos, I think, in two years. To me, there's there's a lot of there's a lot of amazing content online, and I just wanted to kind of pull as much of the information that I've learned and focus it and just remind everybody that, you know, like we're talking about, there's there's no experts. This is creativity. So, yeah, there's no experts. There's just all of us. Yeah, it's just all of us. Yeah, let's Well, there are a lot of self-proclaimed proclaimed experts, but there's just all of us. So, so let's do this everybody. Yeah. Let's do this. Let's get together. Let's help each other. Let's make it really about supporting each other. Yeah. And uh Yeah. So, it's wonderful. Very blessed to um um I'm very blessed to have a career in music. As as long as the hours have been and the struggles and all of the brick wall banging ahead, I'm still blessed. And I'd be really really uh naive to believe that, you know, that I deserve any more than I've got. I this is all just about really taking every opportunity I possibly could. And of course, I blew many of them. But I can just say just stick at it and don't give up. Because my favorite quote was Siggoia, you know, the father of modern guitar, the guy that brought brought classical guitar back. And he said, "Bearing in mind, Siggoia taught all of the most famous classical guitar players that are alive today." Wow. And this is his quote. He goes, "All of my best students gave up." Interesting.

Well, is there a deeper meaning to that or is that was that just a fact? There's a deeper meaning because the fact the fact is is that when things come easily to you, you move on and try something else. And the story I can relate to that being the oldest sibling, right? I'm the oldest sibling, too. It's like oldest sibling um syndrome where you're the first one to be good at stuff. So there's, you know, we have this tendency to just want to like lean back on our skills and go, "Well, I'm the best at this." And then years later, I looked and I was like, "Well, what? Wait a minute. What just happened? My brother's way better at me on piano than I ever was or drums or whatever it was, you know, because he just had the diligence." I'm the oldest for me. the oldest thing sort of fits into that sort of producerly, fatherly kind of thing cuz cuz my sister's two years younger than me, my brother's 10 years younger than me. So I was kind of like a, you know, a surrogate sort of parent when my brother was super little, you know, you end up becoming like the other person. So I think um yeah, I think that's a good thing about being in the eldest as well. You know, they say, I think with one one or two um exceptions, they say all astronauts are the oldest and presidents and stuff like that. Interesting. With a couple of exceptions. It's just it's just because, you know, you you become that sort of caretakery kind of personality. That might not be the right word to use, but you end up becoming parental, I suppose, is probably a better way.

Well, Groovy. Well, Warren, again, thank you for joining us. I look forward to meeting you in person, and maybe it'll be at, you know, whatever the next event is here in Nashville or LA. And meanwhile, are you going to go to N? I I don't know yet. I don't know yet. It was easy for us cuz it's down the street, but we'll definitely come back to Summer N. Um I think it was wonderful. And all of the people I know that didn't go all regretted it pretty quickly cuz they they heard the buzz around it was so big this year. They're like, "Oh, why didn't we go?" Well, maybe I'm just brainstorming here, but maybe I can figure out a way to uh uh ask the rock stars to help me go to NM this this winter. It'd be cool to go there and and just shoot video with everybody and interview as many people as possible. So, Rockstar, maybe I'll do it. May maybe I'll put up a send me to N button or send us all the NAM button. Groovy, hey, uh thanks so much again. I'll see your face, smiling face on YouTube, I'm sure, sooner rather than later. All right, wonderful. Thank you, Mitch. All right, cheers.

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