Insights In Sound 195 Julio Monroy “Beyond the Rec Button” Live at AES 2025 – S20 E5

Welcome to Insights and Sound, where we talk to the people behind the scenes, behind the technology, and behind the
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music. People you may not know, but you should. And please check out
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action here
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with so
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public speaker and music technology
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I am we producer engineer educator
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studio in Bota records. What I am creating
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content right? Yeah. So let me show you where you live.
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[Music] I had to leave college so I could get an
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education working in film and television. That was my grad school. You can learn the music. You can learn
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the business. But you still have to have talent. You still have to have ears. And you have to be excellent at what you
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do. You want to make sure that you’re evolving. I don’t know what microphone I used. I don’t know what the snare was. I don’t
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know how I did it. My head was so far up my ass, I couldn’t really see. I was sure we were just going to get
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slaughtered, you know, and he had this like worried look on his face. These people don’t care if you’re mad.
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You can’t plan on these things. You can only project what you think might work. There’s this kind of synchronicity
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suddenly and everything gels. Every single person has some stroke of genius in them and you have to just tap
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into it. The whole thing we’re trying to do is capture some magic that makes somebody feel something.
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[Music] Yeah. So, Daniel, this is your YouTube
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channel, right? This is my YouTube channel. We just dropped episode number 188.
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And uh yeah, I started this during COVID as sort of a um a combination of labor
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and labor of love and to keep me from going batshit crazy quite honestly.
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And uh it just kind of grew. I started realizing that
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part of my one of my biggest priorities in this industry is that I love gear. I
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love technology. But we always lose sight of why we are doing this, what the
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technology is for. We’re creating art and we have in our industry,
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we are this perfect balance of left brain, right brain, art and technology.
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And it quite often I think especially
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us, the audio engineering crowd, we get caught up in the gear. We get caught up
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in the process. We get caught up in the I’ve got to have that compressor because
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so and so used it on that album. Yeah. And um I’m here to tell you that it’s not
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about the gear. I love gear. I will kill for a great piece of gear. You know, I
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really do. Uh you know, I came up in studios where I had access to the finest
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gear. My first gig, my first gig was working at Cherokee Studios, four Trident A-range consoles and some
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of the best equipment that that I had ever laid eyes on, that’s for sure. You know, and I went
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from there to Paramount and I was an independent engineer and producer for many, many years. So, I I’ve consulted
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with companies. I’ve helped design gear. I’m a gear freak. I love the stuff, but
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I also always try and keep in mind what we’re doing with the gear. And I’m all
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about the creative process. I’m all about why do we do it? How do we get the best
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performance out of an artist? And that to me is the big priority. And so when I
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started this podcast, that was really what I wanted to talk to all of my
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friends and colleagues about is, you know, not what microphone did you
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use on this vocal, but how did you get that performance out of that person’s head? How did you help to make this
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piece of art a reality? Because we’re capturing lightning. So, so the the podcast is not about the year, it’s
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about how how do you record or how do you make it possible?
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How do Yeah. You know, I I’ll give you a great example. Um, one of the well, a
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couple of episodes are with a a longtime friend of mine, a producer named Michael Binhorn.
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And yeah, Michael Michael and I have known each other 30 something years now. I’ll date us both. Um, but Michael has a
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great story which I’ll share with you um about uh one of the one of the best
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known songs that he produced was a song called Black Hole Sun. Mhm. And uh Chris Carell and I I hope I’m
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doing his story justice here. You know, it’s secondhand relating the story, but
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um Chris Carnell as Michael tells it was a was a very very self-contained artist.
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He would come to him with demos that were so well realized that he almost
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wondered, you know, what can I add to this? You know, they were so complete in the sense that Chris really played
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everything. He was a good engineer. He was good at everything that he did musically, but he felt that
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Chris would not open up with his vocals. He said, you know, he would just he he
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put a wall between himself and the art and didn’t really want you want you to
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get to know him. And I think the the way Michael described it to me was that Chris would come in and he would sing
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for his first verse, first verse, pause verse verse pause. And he felt like he really wanted to get something else out
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of him. And what he did, which was very kind of odd and creative, but typical of
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those of us who work with artists, he sat him down one day and he said, “You know, I wanted to show him a vocalist
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who really interpreted and used his voice as an instrument.” He sat him down and he played him two songs from Frank
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Sinatra. And he said, you know, at the end of the
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he said he prefaced it by saying, Chris, I know this m this has nothing to do with your music. It’s nothing like the
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music that you do, but I just want you to listen to it. And he said after he played these two songs, Chris kind of
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gave him the hairy eyeball and said, “Yeah, okay. Thanks. Thanks for wasting my time.” Right? And then he went out to
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the microphone and he sang. Now, I don’t happen to have it with me, but you can look it up online. There are YouTube
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videos of the isolated vocal of Black Hole Sun and you can hear Chris Carnell
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going him just like you know cruning in this in this fashion and I think
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that’s the perfect example of getting inside the artist’s head. I had a vocalist that I worked with years ago
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and what I normally do is I sit down with the artist, especially the songwriters, and I try and get from
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them, what was in your head when you wrote this? What’s this song about? Yeah. And when you start when you get them to
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start talking about what the motivation was, you get a completely different
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performance. Yeah. because you’re you’re no longer talking about
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you’re you’re no longer at 30,000 ft. And it’s important if you’re producing
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an artist to be able to zoom out to that 30,000 ft view and see the entire
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composition and see how everything’s going to fit together. But at the same time, it’s also important to zoom really
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close in and get into, you know, the the microscopics of that vocal,
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you know, not to the point of of uh, you know, doing 20 takes and piecing them
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together. I’m not about that. I’m about as getting as few takes as possible, but
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to be able to zoom in and zoom out like that and really see the big picture of it, but also understand the minutiae and
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what that minutiae contributes and the vocal is for for 90% of the music I do
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anyway. Yeah. You know, it’s vocal oriented and you know, there there’s a there’s the famous
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old saying, nobody goes home humming the snare. you know, we’re we’re listening
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to the singer. We’re listening to the song, the interpretation of the song, the lyric.
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What does it mean to us? How is it touching us? Yeah. And so to me, I think that’s one of the
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most important things about it is to get into the artist’s head and really understand.
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Yeah. Asking to the people who recorded the songs and like like the example of Michael.
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Yes. Yes. I had a singer that I worked with years ago and um she had a song
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that u her lyrics were very cryptic, very um
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very esoteric I would say. She was a British songwriter, very very brilliant. Um um and I I sat her down before we did
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the vocal and I asked her, “Okay, tell me what this song is about.” And it turned out that the song was very very
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personal and it had been about um being um being woken up out of a sound sleep
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at 11 years old and molested by a relative. Very very I mean you know
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horrible experience obviously and very traumatic experience. But as she described this and I started to
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understand where the lyrics were coming from, we ended up rearranging the entire song because there were parts of it
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where we wanted to have this sort of musical mood of her floating in this
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dream state and then there’s this violent attack and you know so the the dream state was musically kind of wafty
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and floaty and then you know the the attack part was you know wall of cars
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and you know massive in that sense and I think this arrangement would not have
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happened had I not spoken with her and understood where the song was coming from in here
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and in here. Yeah. So I think that’s to me that’s one
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of the most important things and I think you know going back to your point the the whole idea here of why we do this is
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such a balance of the technology and the emotion. Yeah. Yeah, I I I begin to to
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record a live stream weekly. Uh Daniel was one of my guest Michaels
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YouTube. Uh
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yeah. So I think that your work inspire me a lot. Oh, thank you.
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This Yeah. Well, it’s kind of different, but but let me show you an example. This
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is in in Spanish. It’s like a t-shirt.
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foreign.
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Yeah. So I I began with with this uh project like one year and a half ago.
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Oh, cool. I see a lot of our guests in common, too. Yeah. That’s where and I I remember when I interview you
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and you said this I like you you were talking about Michael too like
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a lot of time a very dear friend of mine I’ve known for about 30 years now
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producer uh his name and my own I have had this ongoing conversation for about
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30 years she’s They should be able to
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book each kind of conversation about different
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with the and I realized that wow we talk about
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how we have done we still haven’t actually what we you know we may
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And I know that consisting with a lot of people and still
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resonate with people. Yeah, I think it does resonate with people, you know, and and I think um
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again, you know, we get caught up in the process. We get caught up in uh you
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know, because there’s so much to learn from a technical basis. There’s so much to learn. Um yeah, I mean it’s it’s
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funny because um when I came up um and I’m I’m I’m sure um Michael Romanowski
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will agree with me on this as well. When when we came up in this industry, we
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didn’t have audio schools to learn from. you know, we went into a studio and
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started out, you know, cleaning bathrooms, you know, uh, schleing gear
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around, getting coffee for people. Yes. Exactly. And, you know, it but
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because of that, we had the opportunity to really watch the process happening.
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You know, I I had the great fortune to look over the shoulders of some amazing
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producers and engineers. You know, I got to watch Phil Raone at work. I got to watch Don W and Peter Asher and, you
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know, people who the thing about it was it wasn’t, you
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know, I wasn’t really as obsessed with, oh, you know, what’s he going to do with
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that ptech? What are his settings? You know, it was it was about what happens when you want to get that
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performance out of somebody. What happens when something goes wrong? because something is always going to go
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wrong. Sure. You know, look, one of my first sessions, I’ll I’ll fess up right here. I erased a vocal track. Okay? And if you
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haven’t done it, you haven’t done it yet. Okay? Everybody screws up. And I think
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that was one of the things that I learned from watching these people is how to then get past that, not mess up.
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you know, the the creative process in itself is is it’s such a fragile thing in certain ways. You know, it really is.
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I mean, if you have somebody say the wrong thing at the wrong time,
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it’s not that you’ll have this disaster all the time. Sometimes it’ll just be like it’ll distract and all of a sudden
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this this direction that you’ve had will be taken to a different place and you’ll
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lose the thread. you’ll lose the the energy, whatever it is. And this happens if you’re not really aware of what
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you’re involved in. And so to me, watching these people and watching the way they handle these situations
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was the biggest education. Yeah. Of course, you know, the best way they’re dealing with
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Yeah. Yeah. and and really understanding that you know it I I mean it’s it’s one
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of the things that I thought was really interesting was when I first started doing sessions in major studios seeing
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that 90% of the time there was a producer and there was an engineer and
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yes there are some really really great people who can do both jobs
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but for the most part even the people that can do both jobs don’t
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because It’s, you know, it it’s it’s hard to do both and give and give
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justice to both. You know, you’re either focused on the artist and that’s the
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right brain part or you’re focused on the process.
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Okay? you know, I mean, and you know, again, there’s some great great artists out there, great great engineers, you
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know, um, the, you know, so many of us admired the great Al Schmidt, you know,
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and I got to watch Al work, you know, and this was a person who literally, you
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know, he could just he understood how to move a microphone. Um, you know, and that’s that’s a
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wonderful thing. And I think to me I always wanted to be a good engineer and
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a good producer because I wanted to understand what a good engineer would do
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so that I would know if they were doing a good job or not. Yeah. You know I um yeah I
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Oh absolutely. But sorry I didn’t want to interrupt you. I I just want to say you’re saying
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what I think is make sure that people you want to go to the mic.
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What? What? Okay, cool. Well, we want to make sure that it’s recorded for posterity. Wanted to add to your awesomeness. I
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just want to say like I want make sure people sort of understand the the verbiage you’re using really great and
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doesn’t go over their head and watching. We talk about here as you say all the time about how we use this. Watch a
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great engineer do stuff. And I was going to bring up Al Schmidt then he did. That’s why I watching Al Schmidt, you
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can kind of like, you know, Al just pulls everything up to pull everything up to zero. He knew what he was doing. He was great. But if you watched his
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hands, it wasn’t about, you know, his technique or things like that. It was just important where he put the microphones and stuff. But just watching
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an engineer, watching a producer, how they handle situations, how they handle stress, how they handle problems, how
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they handle an artist, how they walk through the room, where their hands go, how they do stuff is an invaluable part
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of music education. I think we’re missing these days. You’re spotlighting some awesome things that we need to sort
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of focus on. Not necessarily the YouTube videos that tell us this is how you get a snare sound or whatever, but how do we
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be as individual producers? How do we how do we think about the craft and the art? What comes first? Is it the gear or
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is it the is it this, you know, is it is it a relationship that’s share any motion? So I was just raising my hand to
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say I agree with what you’re saying and I I I wanted that point to come across that watching it with
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I I agree with you and I think that’s and thank you for that. you know, um you
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you brought up something really interesting with the whole um what I call YouTube University
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and you know, there’s it’s really really wonderful that we
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have audio schools now and that we have so much information at our fingertips.
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It’s also really really horrible because number one, you do not know when
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to trust the validity of the information you’re getting and number two, you’re
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removed from the process in that sense. I mean, I’ve I’ve taught at audio schools. I’ve I’ve taught students about
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how to work the gear. But I think what we don’t get by by doing it that way is
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we don’t get that experience of really being in the room and watching the dynamics and the human dynamics. What
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Michael was just talking about. To me, that’s the big part. And that’s the big part that’s so hard to get across in a
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classroom setting. We don’t always get the we don’t the why. They talk about doing stuff, but why do you do that?
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Right. Right. Why did you want to do this? This is like somebody did that now I got to repeat it because they got that sound
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then they got they was successful so I’m going to do that. Why did they do that? Why did they make that choice? You don’t
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talk. Yeah. Yeah. And and you know it’s funny. I mean a lot of times people do try and
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repeat it because they’re trying to repeat that success. Um uh you know I I
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I um I was chatting with somebody I I I had the great privilege of being at Abi
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Road Studios a few years ago and yeah you know I mean for me first of all
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you know I’ll I’ll fanboy out here you know nothing beats walking down those
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steps in studio 2 you know it’s like oh my god greatness you know and then I got
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to play the piano that Lady Madonna was played on you you know. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But but beyond
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that, you know, it occurred to me I’m in this room and
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you know I could give you well at that point I could have given you Jeff Emerick. You know I could give you
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everybody who was involved in that session except for the musicians and you’re not going to give me another Beatles. You know um my friend Robert
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Scoville said something really funny to me recently. We were talking about his days with Tom Petty and he said that
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during soundcheck all the time people would come up to him and say, “What’s Mike Campbell using? I got to see the
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guitar rig. I got to, you know, and he said, you know, dude, I could turn the turn the rig on. I could hand you Mike
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Campbell’s guitar. You’re not going to play like him. You’re not going to sound like him.” You know, and this is the
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thing. It’s it comes from inside of us. And that’s the creative part. That’s the
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creative process. And that’s the biggest thing that we don’t get just from
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learning it on YouTube or even learning it in school. Being there and being involved in that process and watching
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these great people. Um I did a session at Cherokee years ago with a producer um
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wonderful producer um by the name of Roger Basherian. I don’t know if you’ve ever met him, Michael, but uh wonderful
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guy. I was uh we were actually doing the Monkeys album, the Monkeys comeback album. Um and you know this this go
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here’s here’s another little lesson to impart to you. Um those of us who came up in a certain era, we kind of look
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down our noses at the Monkeys because they were a prefab band. You know, they were really kind of created in the TV
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studio and scripted and all of that stuff. Well, we’re working on this
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project and um I’m chatting with Roger and we’re talking about using a specific
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microphone on the snare. I’m I’m a big fan of a of uh using a 441 on the snare.
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Just personal preference. I like it on certain on certain snare drums. And I said, you know, you want to try this?
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And he says he says to me, “Yeah, that’s what we used on Squeeze.” And I had not
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known this guy. I met had not met this guy before. So, I didn’t know who he was or his credentials or anything. And I
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said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. What squeeze album did you do?” Turned out he did two of my favorite squeeze
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albums. Uh, East Side Story and Argy. Um, he also I said, “Roger, what else
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have you done?” Turned out he had done all of the Nick Low and Rock Pile stuff. Um, he had done the first Sex Pistols
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album. He had done Elvis Costello’s album, My Aim is True,
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you know. So, there’s a lesson for you right there. Always, always treat everyone with a certain degree of
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respect, even if you have no idea who they are or what they’ve done, because you’re going to learn from everybody.
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You’re going to learn from every single person you work with. I I learn from my students all the time because they’re
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coming through with a different perspective than me. Now, yes, I’m also teaching them, but I’m learning stuff
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because, you know, you’re you’re working in I mean, all of you have come up in a completely different world than I did,
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you know. I mean, yes, it’s true. You’ve never you pro probably a lot of people in here have never miked a live drum
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kit, you know, but on the other hand, you’ve worked cutting vocals. you’ve
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worked in DAWs, you know, probably to a degree that maybe I haven’t, you know,
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cuz I came up in an analog world. So, we all have something to learn from each other. And that I think comes down to
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the same thing about the process about respecting everybody’s wisdom because we all have something to learn from each
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other because that’s what art is all about is creativity. The perspective is is very important.
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I like the the your videos when you’re asking two people and so just rob us in
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video in the Vegas. Oh yeah. Yeah.
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That was fun actually. Beautiful. And I was wondering how do
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you feel when you are in front of the camera and you have a big responsibility
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because you’re telling the people what is happening in the studio or or other
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places. I’ll be honest with you. Um, I for many, many years, well, okay, so I came up
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wanting to be a rock star. I know that’s a shock to anybody in this industry, but yeah, I came up as a musician. I’m a
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bass player. Uh, I was in bands. I was signed to labels. I wanted to be a rock star. Um, but at the same time, there’s
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a certain insecurity about being on stage that we all have. And when I
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discovered working in the studio, that was like, okay, I want to be the guy behind the scenes. Okay?
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You know, and so when I started doing things in front of people in that sense,
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that was that was a little bit of a struggle for me. I started uh you know I started
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doing things like I was moderating panels at the NAM show you know and uh
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my my one of my first panels at the NM show was talking to a bunch of producers
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and u just before we went on I I looked down and realized that um uh one of the
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producers one of the Beatles producers um was sitting in the front row or one
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of the Beatles engineers rather Ken Scott was sitting like right there looking at me talking about the art of
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production. No pressure. And so when I started doing this
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podcast, um, you know, I’m I
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like a lot of people, you know, John Lennon famously hated the sound of his own voice. I hated watching myself on
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camera. I hated the idea of doing something like that. Um, after 180
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something episodes, I’ve gotten a little more comfortable with it. I’ve gotten a little bit more comfortable with being in front of people and all, but this was
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this is something that also we have to adjust to and we have to um
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you know we we have we it’s hard to sometimes accept
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the fact that we are in a position of I don’t want to say authority because
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it’s not really that but it’s you know we have a certain amount of we have a certain credibility
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and I am grateful and and you know gratitude is my word to live by. Okay.
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Um this is something I I’ve always been very very grateful about the fact that I’ve spent my entire life in this
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industry. I’ve rarely had a a real job. I’ve rarely had a day where I go to work
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and I hate what I do. But you know, I’m very very grateful for being able to do
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this and have worked this long in this industry and to have acquired a little
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bit of wisdom that I can impart to other people. And one of the things that has
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been really really uh rewarding to me is being able to impart that information,
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impart that wisdom to another generation. You know, one of the other things that I do, um, I started doing
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this a couple of years ago. I have a, um, I have a nonprofit that I call the
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Artist Brain Collective. And the term artist brain is something that
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I use to basically uh, let let me preface this by saying that every single
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one of us that is a creative person is somewhere on the spectrum.
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Okay? We’re all a little bit neurode divergent. And so when I started when I
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when I came to terms with that myself and realized that, oh yeah, you know, I
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I grew up on the spectrum, too. We just didn’t have a way of measuring it then,
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you know, we were just called socially awkward, you know, but yeah, we’re all, you know,
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in order to be an artist, you have to be highly sensitive. you have to be a little bit different than your average
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person. And when I realized that and I realized that all of my friends, all of
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my highly creative friends, all of my Grammyinning friends are on the spectrum, too.
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I realized that, oh, you know, it’s really helpful to go in front of students,
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younger people, and say, you know what, in plain English, you’re not up,
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okay? There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not broken. There’s nothing to cure here. There’s nothing, you know,
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there’s this whole mentality of, oh, well, you know, you’re ADHD. You need to take this pill or that pill or whatever.
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You’re not broken. There’s nothing wrong with you. And when I can sit when I can stand there in front of a group of
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younger people and say exactly that and say there’s nothing wrong with you.
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This is how we are and it’s a superpower. It’s not a liability.
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That is a really really rewarding thing because then we all start to realize that oh okay you know we’re we’re all
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this is how we are. This is part of the creative process is to be a little bit on the spectrum. It’s helpful. And some
31:36
of the greatest people in the world, some of the most creative people, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, you know, these
31:42
are people who are way on the spectrum just like us. And to be able to bring
31:49
that information to people also has been really really helpful to me.
31:55
And I was wondering what’s the most rewarding versus the most fix houseing
32:02
part of creating business and of creating videos. Yeah. Sharing your knowledge and
32:09
interview people and you know oh man because sometimes it looks easy but it’s
32:16
not easy. It’s not easy. Um I would say the most the most rewarding part is being able to
32:23
share that information. And the most rewarding part is definitely um the most rewarding part to me is having people
32:29
come up to me and say, “Man, I saw your,” you know, I mean, that’s fantastic. Um the most exhausting
32:36
part is really the process, you know. I mean, I I know
32:42
a lot of people in the industry, but and and you know, and I’m constantly meeting more, but it means uh you know, for me,
32:49
I usually go to them. I set up a rig with them, you know. My friend Charles
32:55
is back there right now operating my own rig, you know. Um, but I carry a a video
33:02
rig with me. I go set up in the studio. Um, you know, uh, recently I’ve been fortunate enough to be um, doing a lot
33:09
of my video shoots at Village Studios, you know, and one of my favorite studios
33:14
in the world. I I love most really great recording studios, but Village just has
33:20
a a place in my heart, you know, and um you know, I go in there and I set up and
33:25
then I record these things and I’m you know, I’m I’m sitting there doing exactly what we’re doing now, having a
33:32
conversation and then I’ll go take it back to my studio and edit the whole thing, you know, and I Yeah, I I I’m a
33:40
little bit of a control freak. I like to be in charge of the process myself. So that means that yeah, I’m editing all
33:46
these videos and it’s a weekly show. So you edit all of the videos? I edit everything. Yeah. I, you know,
33:52
I’ve I’ve had a few people help me and um so far I have not found the person
33:58
that can really edit it the way I want it edited, you know, because I’m it’s I
34:04
know what I want out of the content. That doesn’t mean that I won’t find that person and I kind of actually hope that
34:10
I do someday uh because it’s a lot of work and I’d love to have the help but you know it’s it’s an art in itself and
34:18
being able to do that being able to edit those videos and and then you know get it all up online and all of that. And
34:25
then the other thing that I do when I create these videos is um I distill
34:31
short clips out of them. You know these little smart asks. Yeah, I call them. And you know that’s again
34:38
more work. So um it’s work intensive and that is the most exhausting part right
34:43
there. The actual the actual shooting the videos doing the interviews that’s
34:49
easy. That’s the fun part you know. But the editing process and all that. Yeah. It’s a lot of work. Definitely.
34:55
Yeah. And choose the part that you want to Yeah. to share. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I mean there are
35:02
some there are some things out there that are helpful. Um, I use a a program that will basically take the clips and
35:09
then caption them for me, you know, but I’m the one that picks the clips and I’m the one that uh I mean, you know, again,
35:15
it’s this is something where I feel it’s reflective of not just me but our
35:22
industry, you know, because I’m trying to impart certain bits of wisdom. And so, it’s important to me to make sure
35:28
the messaging is right. And when you um edit the videos and choose the the parts
35:35
of the video to make them reals Mhm. which is the kind of content that do you
35:40
think resonates m most with your audience technical or personal or
35:48
I would say maybe 7030 or 8020 personal. Yeah,
35:56
sometimes technical, but most of the time it’s personal, you know, because I and I think that’s, you know, there’s um
36:05
there are a lot of really really good podcasts out there in our industry. And I’m not trying to compete with anybody
36:11
else, but I think if you ask me what sets mine apart, at least to me, it’s
36:18
that I do try and get more personal. I’m all about getting to know the person,
36:23
the people behind the creative process because to me that’s that’s where I
36:29
live. Yeah. I I remember uh I have interview a
36:35
lot of people too like not not like 200 but like
36:41
70 podcast and all the stories are different. Sometimes they say, “I my my
36:49
my father or my grandfather was a musician.” Others say, “I began working
36:56
as um assistant in in the studio answering calls.” And it’s very
37:02
inspiring because uh you know, like you said, we we came we come from a
37:08
different world. So all of us we we have different um
37:15
beginnings. So, I like the fact that you have like personal interviews with
37:20
people and yeah, I agree with you. I really don’t care. I care, but I don’t
37:27
care too much about how they position the microphone. But why did you decide
37:33
to to, you know, uh, put that microphone because of the song was sad or happy or
37:40
I don’t know. I like that. Yeah. I mean, I you know, listen, I I’m I collect microphones, too. I I confess
37:49
really, you know, I I definitely have some favorite microphones. Um I I was artist
37:56
relations for sure microphones in Europe for many, many years. I brought them to
38:02
the Montro Jazz Festival. Um, you know, I part of what I got to do when I lived
38:09
in Europe was to visit some really wonderful, legendary studios, you know. Um, I nosed around the mic closet at
38:17
Real World, you know. Um, I mean, getting to see some of these incredibly
38:22
great vintage microphones, man. You know, look, I like I said, I’m as much of a gear freak as anybody else.
38:29
I definitely appreciate it. you know, um, I I fanboyed out looking at, you know,
38:35
the microphone that Big Time was recorded with, you know, things like that. But, but really, you know, I’m
38:44
much more interested in the artists. I’m much more interested in what inspired them, you know, what, you know, I mean,
38:52
I I came up as a musician. My parents were not encouraging of me being a
38:58
musician. Okay. Yeah, my my parents were like, “Get a real job, you know. Um have
39:04
some Yeah. Have something to fall back on, you know.” And it’s funny because um
39:10
I did I I I didn’t intentionally study anything technical, but I, you know, I’m
39:17
I’m nerdy that way. You know, I did get into electronics and stuff like that only because I really I I enjoyed it.
39:24
You know, I like seeing how things work. I take things apart. most of the time when I put them back together there’s
39:29
not parts left over so it’s you know it’s kind of good but um but you know I I like to figure out how things work and
39:37
learn about stuff but um really you know
39:42
even though I got involved in all that stuff and I did at one point in my life
39:48
um for a few years I had a job working for a phone company and you know I learned a lot of
39:54
technical stuff you know it it wasn’t something I aspired to and in fact it’s funny
40:00
because I was one of those pe one of those rare people who quit the job at the phone company
40:07
and you know you don’t do that right if you get a job at the phone company you stay with the phone company for life and
40:13
get a pension and you know and all that stuff and I’m just I’m not into that you know I I quit the job I moved I I lived
40:22
in San Francisco I was playing in rock bands uh we had a recording deal that fell through you know like your typical
40:28
rock and roll thing. And I picked up and moved to LA and said, “I’m going to get
40:34
a job in the recording studios.” And all of my friends in San Francisco went, “Sure you will.” You know, and I was
40:41
fortunate enough that I walked into Cherokee Studios at the right time, left
40:47
my resume at the right time, and a guy called me and said, “Hey, I see you used to work for the phone company.”
40:53
Oh. You know, and the truth of the matter is I still
40:58
didn’t know okay? You know, I mean, I knew like, you know, I knew my resistor color codes, okay? But I had
41:05
never worked on a console. I had never worked on a tape machine, you know, but
41:10
I was fortunate enough that this particular person said to me, “Yeah, you know, um, we want somebody who’s never
41:17
worked in a studio before because we don’t want them bringing in their bad habits.”
41:23
So I was lucky enough to get in because I did not already have that experience,
41:28
you know, and I got into a studio that really I mean I was fortunate enough
41:35
there to really learn everything very very quickly. How old were you then?
41:40
How old was I then? I was uh 28. I had already been playing in bands for
41:46
quite a while, but uh yeah, I I landed in Los Angeles and I started working in
41:53
this studio and literally the first day I was there, I got thrown into an Elton
41:58
John session. That’s cool. Yeah. Um he’s a lot shorter than you
42:04
think he is, by the way. But you know, I I really was fortunate enough to work
42:10
with some of the most incredibly talented people And I’m not just talking about the musicians. You know, the
42:18
Cherokee Studios was run by three brothers, the Rob brothers, and in fact,
42:23
actually, um, Bruce Rob is going to be my guest on on the next panel. Uh, we’re going to be talking about the Trident
42:30
consoles. But, um, you know, I got to watch them work. And uh Bruce’s older
42:37
brother D, who’s no longer with us, was probably one of the most brilliant engineers I got to watch. the man could
42:44
do um the man was not only a brilliant tape editor, and by the way, at this point we were mostly working with tape,
42:52
but um he could do something called a window edit, which um if you’ve ever
42:57
seen a 2-in tape machine, uh a window edit is when you actually edit out a single track in that machine.
43:06
It’s it’s a talent, believe me. And you know, he was able to do stuff like that.
43:11
We really worked with a lot of, you know, gear was different back then, you know, back in the old days,
43:18
you know, but I mean, yeah, we didn’t, you know, we we had automation in one room and it was pitifully poor. It went
43:26
down all the time. So, for the most part, you know, automation was, okay,
43:31
you stand over there and grab those channels. I’ll be over here. Do you know and you do those mutes, you know, or
43:37
we’d mix a certain part of a song and then we’d mix the next part and then the next part and then we splice them
43:43
together, you know, but I really honestly think that those limitations
43:51
they they were an advantage. Yeah. Yeah. you you know and that’s you know
43:56
again I don’t want to sound like you know back in my day or anything like that but you know I think we have the
44:04
blessing and the curse of having so much great technology now because since you
44:09
have so much great technology you you kind of have it all done for
44:15
you. You could pick a preset, you know, you can pick a room that’s, you know, already been convoluted and figured out
44:22
and everything. And man, you know, I had one synthesizer.
44:28
I owned a Juno 106, if you’ve heard of that. It’s an old Roland synthesizer, and I used that on a
44:35
hundred or more albums. And I had to really milk the hell out of that thing
44:40
and figure out how to use it. And I think, you know, there’s a power to
44:45
limits. I recently went into my plugins and I
44:51
got rid of all but two reverbs because, you know, you spend more time
44:59
leafing through reverbs and leafing through snare sounds and stuff like that. And ultimately, again, you know,
45:06
when I was talking about zooming in and zooming out, man, you know, you’d get so caught up in, well, should I use this
45:11
snare? Should I use that snare? You know, I watched engineers and producers spend two days getting a drum sound.
45:21
And yeah, it’s important, you know, but not to the point where you lose sight of
45:27
the song, you know. And I I knew other engineers that could just, you know, like 20
45:34
minutes, man, got a drum sound. Let’s go, you know, and I’m inspired by live sound
45:39
engineers. Same way, man. It’s like, okay, you know, uh, a friend of mine calls it a spit and get mix,
45:47
you know, just like, okay, throw everything up there, you know, get it happening and we’ll fix it on the fly as
45:52
we start working. You know, you can do that with live sound. But I think there really is a power to having those
46:00
limitations because if you’re if you have a certain amount of limits, you have to make it
46:06
work and you have to then learn more about the gear and how to use the gear to get the art that you want.
46:13
Yeah. Well, we are we have a TV, but if if someone has a question
46:20
is there, but I have one last question for you. Yeah.
46:25
What do you what do you want that the young John professionals
46:32
learn or know with all the videos that you are creating? Uh what do you think
46:39
that most important because you said at the beginning uh now the process is
46:46
different but you’re asking the people how was the process of of uh recording
46:52
and you know the this these times are so different. So what do you want that
46:57
people learn from you videos?
47:03
You know, I I end almost all of my interviews with the same question, which
47:10
is, what would you tell 15year-old you coming up now? Because yeah, you you
47:16
guys you guys have come up in a completely different world than I did.
47:22
And you know, at the same time, you’re still
47:27
doing the same thing, which is trying to create some magic that’s going to touch
47:33
someone, you know? I mean, each of us has
47:38
certain music, certain songs or whatever that just hit us right here,
47:45
you know? And that to me is why we do this. And you
47:52
know, if I have one word that I live by, it’s gratitude.
47:57
You know, we are so damn lucky to be doing what we do and to be able to be in
48:05
this business, in this industry, and be able to create create this kind of wonderful
48:11
creation, this this art. And I’d say just, man, you know, never lose sight of
48:18
that. Never lose sight of the fact that you are here because you want to be.
48:24
You’re not going to get rich. Okay? If you want to get rich, if you want to, you know, if you have dreams of, you
48:30
know, becoming, you know, very, very wealthy off of this industry, I suggest
48:36
you go into tech or something like that. But if you’re into this industry because
48:41
you really, really love creating art, just be think about that every day, man.
48:48
get up every day and just remind yourself, just be grateful for the fact that you are fortunate enough to be
48:55
doing what you’re doing because man, this is, you know, there’s nothing better than being able to make music,
49:01
being able to make great art. I’m grateful for it.
49:07
Yeah, I I think that we are grateful for that. Uh because we are living like our
49:13
dream. I I can’t believe that I’m really well music. So, yeah, man.
49:20
Yeah. Thanks a lot. Thank you. If anybody’s got any questions on on
49:26
Yeah. Yeah. I had a question as a student. Um, you
49:32
know, learning it’s very tough to to get kind of obsessed with here and kind of
49:38
it can that problems. But what I realized after a few semesters studying
49:46
it kind of kind of made me think mindset of okay it’s not gear that I and it’s not you know something that I have to
49:53
figure out and now they throw together exactly okay maybe there is a specific
49:58
need to use this um or there’s a specific purpose of using this gear for
50:04
this sound or whatever um I guess my question is do you have any advice on
50:11
knowing how to tell the difference between when the situation requires a specific tool and knowing when it’s just
50:20
a gap in your vision and you don’t know exactly how to articulate it. So you
50:25
kind of the idea that the school sol that makes sense. Yeah, it it does make
50:32
sense. And um I’m a little bit of a renegade in terms of that because I
50:37
think that um I would say that there’s never a
50:42
situation where you need a specific piece of gear. You might need a specific type of gear. You know, uh you might
50:50
need to know how to use a specific piece of gear. Like, you know, if I talk about EQ, for example, I tell people, you
50:57
know, do your best to never add EQ. It’s always subtractive, you know, um, things
51:03
like that. But, man, I I have had people record on the cheesiest, shittiest
51:09
microphones you can find. I had a guy give me a demo where he didn’t even own a microphone and he plugged his
51:15
headphones in and sang into the headphones, you know. So, no, it’s not about the gear. That’s kind of and you
51:22
know I and I get into arguments with people on on on social media about that sometimes because yeah there’s you know
51:29
like I said there’s always a good purpose to a good piece of gear but it’s
51:34
never essential. It’s always a good option. And I’m grateful when I’ve got a
51:41
great mic selection, a great rack of gear behind me or some great plugins or whatever. But ultimately,
51:48
ask yourself this. Is the person hearing this going to know the difference?
51:55
You know, I mean, because nine times out of 10, they’re not going to care what reverb you used. You know, I don’t have
52:02
people coming up to me and saying, “Man, your snare is awesome.” You know, they like the song. It’s all
52:08
about the song. Yeah. It’s all about the music.
52:13
Yeah. Exactly. You have a panel in a few minutes. Oh, help.
52:18
You talked a lot about getting to the heart of the song and the meaning behind it and that great conversation you had
52:25
with us. When you’re working with someone and beauty, what do you think is the the
52:31
secret to developing that trust and that relationship to have that? That’s a
52:36
great question and I I I wish I had more time to get into it, but um I will tell you that one of the first things I do
52:43
when I meet an artist is to sit down with them. We do um uh I I recently
52:49
talked with another producer who I really really admire, a woman named Susan Rogers. She did a lot of Princess
52:54
stuff. She did um u Bare Naked Ladies and she called it a u a record pull. And
53:01
that’s one of the things that I do also. I sit down with an artist and and you know we talk about music you know what
53:08
resonates with you what’s your favorite you know this or that and even beyond that you know we just have we talk about
53:14
life I like to get to know them a little bit because yeah you are entering into a
53:19
relationship and there has to be a certain amount of trust and so yeah you I spend time trying to get to know the
53:25
individuals especially in a band where you have a lot of different individuals and a lot
53:32
of different dynamics and all of that. I spend time trying to get to know them because that’s the only way you’re going
53:37
to establish that trust. So yeah, and especially I work with a lot of singer songwriters and um quite often we’ll do
53:45
things like, you know, they’ll come in with an acoustic guitar and just lay down a track and then we’ll lay down background stuff with either other
53:51
musicians or a lot of times I’ll play a lot of the stuff myself. I I play a bunch of different instruments. So, you
53:58
know, we’ll but but always it’s about getting to know them because if I don’t know them, I don’t know what they’re
54:04
trying to say in their song. So, I hope that answers it.
54:09
Thank you. Well, thank you, Daniel, for for for this and this is our network web and
54:18
yeah, thanks for everything. Thank you, Julio. Pleasure.
54:24
Thank you. And thank you all for coming.
54:30
Hey, I’m Daniel Keller. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and join us each week for Insights and Sound.