Episode 38
Show Notes
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 38
Feb 2, 2021
w/ Jon Castelli - Week 35
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Q: What are your working hours?
Matt:
Wakes up in the late morning. No alarm. Do a morning routine and then don’t start until 1p.
He’s usually accommodating of the other artists’ hours.
If the other artist wants to work at midnight, Matt will adjust and meet them then.
It’s important to figure out your rhythms and the rhythms of your collaborators.
You’ll be on other people’s schedules for a long time, but once you establish yourself you’re usually able to dictate the schedule for your collaborators.
Jon:
Prefers 10a-6p every day. He’s not working the whole time, but being available at that time.
Jargon:
What is our jargon in music?
Compression, dynamics, gain, etc.
As an engineer, Jon puts an emphasis on talking like an artist, and meeting them at their way of speaking.
Almost every word we use to describe music is appropriated from another sense.
Hard. Heavy. Bright. These all describe non-sonic properties.
So much of what we do is a subjective response from a listener.
When someone says “Can you make the chorus heavier?” the experienced record maker will say “What can I do to emphasize this?”
“I need a lift, here” is a common request. That can mean a harmonic lift, a change in energy, or something else.
Jon:
The brain can focus on three sounds simultaneously before diverting attention.
A lot of people give notes that don’t make any sense, but it’s our job to interpret them.
Jargon and notes are always frustrating to interpret. And once you realize this, you have to admit that this is a skill worth learning and developing.
A good mixer is going to be able to communicate using artist jargon. The artist should not have to feel like they should know engineer jargon.
Q: How important is mixing on flat monitoring?
Jon:
There’s no such thing as flat monitoring. Once the room’s acoustics affect the tone, you can’t achieve truly flat audio.
Flat frequency response only ever occurs in anechoic testing chambers.
Speakers are engineered to be flat, but they always have to interact with the room. Usually monitoring issues are actually room issues.
Forget about “flat” monitoring. Seek great monitoring.
Q: Should an engineer prioritize cheap monitors in a good room, or bad monitors in a good room?
Neither. It’s a marriage of the two. Seek to optimize both at the same time.
How do you connect to music? That’s going to be your reference point for making ultimate mix judgements. So find that space and use it to finish the record. If you listen in the car, go to that if you need to.
Fundamentally you have to have a setup you love to make music on.
You’ve got to have joy in your setup. It’s got to feel good.
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Matt:
It’s funny to get older and realize that all of the philosophical stuff is the most important, as opposed to the technical tricks.
Before you learn anything technical, you’re only existing on the intentions of your moves.
It’s very easy to get bogged down in the technical.
Keep your intentions for a record in mind before you start mindlessly making moves.
Really Wet Mixes:
Matt is now trying to treat reverb and delay as their own standalone mix elements. He doesn’t see the waveform in his DAW so he tends to not think of them as their own sound.
Treat them as their own waveform to be sculpted and edited.
Sometimes it feels wrong to add a ton of verb on stuff that didn’t have it before.
Sometimes a big wet reverb is just a big verb that stays out of the way and this makes it feel like there’s more than there actually is.
Jon EQ’s and saturates his verb regularly.
Jon doesn’t do subtle verbs/delays very often. They’re usually very distinct in the record.
Some of the best producers Jon knows commit their verbs/effects as their own audio files.
All of the effects in Billie Eilish’s songs are so deliberate.
Billie and Finneas are performing the vocals as perfectly as possible, instead of trying to fix them later. This gives the record a realness that doesn’t get softened by excessive processing. It’s not edited perfection; It’s performed perfection. These are very different.
As a producer, you should commit your verbs and delays to audio.
Jeremy Zucker will print and cut his verb/delay waveforms in time to the track, which will make them very dynamic. He is shaping and fine-tuning them.
Jon has never seen Tony add a simple reverb throw onto an instrument and leave it untouched.
Great monitoring will let you hear the difference between 1.7s and 1.8s long reverb.
Q: How much does sonic quality matter if the songwriting isn’t good?
You can’t put great production on a bad song and save it.
A good mix can’t save a bad song, but a bad mix can ruin a good song.
The reason a good mix is so important is because it enhances the record’s intention.
Sometimes the solution to making a mix great is about blurring lines between things. Producers can make things too sterile and sometimes they need something to glue it together and loosen it up.
Q: When does production end and mixing begin?
There’s a lot of roles that are doing both steps at the same time and you’re never going to get all of the credit for things that you do, and that’s okay.
You want to be the person that people trust with their record.
You want them to call you because they trust you.
You want them to call you to finish all of your records.
You want to be the person that they call when they want shit done.
In the long run you want those long term relationships.
Don’t over stress on getting perfect credit on everything you do.
Just be cool about it.
