Episode 14
Show Notes
Live With Matt Rad - Episode 14
August 18, 2020
w/ Jon Castelli - Week 13
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Tube Traps:
Matt and Jon have two different builds of tube traps.
Matt’s are built to be hollow resonant chambers. Designed by Eric Valentine. 1” thick and constructed by Kieran and Francesco over at Barefoot Recording.
Jon’s are acting as a wall w/ reflective surfaces, absorption, diffusion. There’s a lot going on inside them.
File Management, Session Organization, Etc:
Jon has four hard drives going at a time. Internal, time machine backup, and two archival backups for everything else.
Matt had one main drive w/ two backups. He has since switched over to Backblaze, a cloud backup service that was recommended. He has his main hard drive and a deep backup on the cloud.
Jon thinks Dropbox updating in the background will mess up Pro Tools.
Backing-up is super important as well as labeling things neatly.
Figure out your own way of labeling. Whatever works for you.
There’s no such thing as being too organized.
The more you can get in practice of good organization the easier things are going to be for you.
Jon uses an iMac Pro. He runs his sessions off of an internal SSD drive so that he has no audio drop-outs.
Discussing a Problematic Arrangement With Clients:
Jon rarely changes an arrangement. It’s not the first place that he goes. His complaints to a client are usually about repetition.
Matt gets hired most often as a “finisher”. To take a job from 85% to 100%. Oftentimes he gets an arrangement that’s too dense. Often he needs to pull back the arrangement.
Oftentimes people are hiring you because they want your take and your ears. Keep good communication lines open.
The Politics of a Project:
Know who to reveal your choices to first, so that they can give feedback or serve as ambassador to explain changes to the rest of the team.
You want to be able to have a great relationship with people for years and years. Think of it as compound “relationships” as in compound interest.
Matt feels that this is super-underrated.
Dealing With A+R’s Who Have Bad Comments:
Interpreting these comments are the bulk of our job.
No note is a bad note. If the consensus is that they’re correct, then you correct it.
Jon really doesn’t like getting arrangement notes at Mix 11. That pisses him off.
Hearing Health:
Matt has been wearing earplugs since he was in bands.
Good sleep is the best short-term hearing repair. For fresh ears.
Jon’s biggest fear is tinnitus.
Keep earplugs in when you go out.
Mix quieter than you think.
Jon considers himself a loud mixer.
Jon: Distortion from monitors is what’s hurting your ears.
Set a marker on your monitor controller so that you can set listening limits and repeatability for yourself. Once you set this don’t even think about changing it.
Film mixers aren’t even allowed to change the volume. There is a standard they have to work towards.
Strive for the least distortion possible in your monitoring and your converter.
Upgrade the things that induce unwanted distortion like converters, monitors.
Get rid of the Apollo interface if your converters are distorting. Jon recommends a Lynx Hilo or Aurora.
Jon has an issue w/ all-in-one boxes like the Apollo. If you’re spending $2k on an Apollo w/ 4 preamps, monitor controller, etc. At a certain price point you can’t get the maximized version of those things at that size. Compromises have been made.
Jon thinks everyone should have super hi-end converters/monitoring cause it helps them get closer to finished as early as possible.
A Moog through an Aurora and a Moog through an Apollo is like night and day to Jon.
Guitars:
Listen to Michael Jackson/Prince records to hear how the guitar is blended into those records. Nile Rodgers records.
Prince loves DI guitar sounds.
