Episode 43
Show Notes:
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 43
Mar 9, 2021
w/ Jon Castelli - Week 40
Show notes by: Bradley Will
What if we just stopped, for the time being? If we take some time off and live a little before coming back into public spotlight, ala Bruno Mars coming back with the Silk Sonic record after a few years away.
Jon is considering taking time off to spend a few months in Paris learning at Le Cordon Bleu.
3 months (a season) is the time it takes to build a habit.
Take a break every 15 min (micro)
Take a break every few months (macro)
Zoom sessions don’t have the psychological break of taking time to relax and eat food with people. Or the opportunity to write a song together as you’re walking back to the studio after a break.
Jon:
How do you sustain creativity if you don’t take breaks? Those moments happen when you stop and talk to someone about their hardships and it inadvertently inspires the 2nd chorus.
As a songwriter, If you’re writing things from your heart and you’re doing one or two sessions a day you will run out of things to write about. You need to get outside and live your life.
If you have the luxury to take a few months off and go do something incredible then you should absolutely take it. Go do something incredible.
Matt usually takes 6-8 weeks off every year to get away and do whatever he wants. Often to see a lot of art and be around a different variety of creative individuals.
It’s not Kanye’s budgets that make his records sound great. It’s his relationships with his collaborators that makes it happen.
Full Album Projects
Jon just did Zayn’s record with Denis Kosiak. Zayn was mostly in control of what was going to be on the record.
When it comes to full albums, you want them to feel cohesive.
Jon and Dennis (in the case of the Khalid record) are aligned on their taste and a particular RnB sensibility before they go into the record.
The producers are also going to bring their particular flavors, so Jon will lean on that and then help bring the stylistic outliers more towards the style of the records that make up the bulk of the album.
If a few of the tracks are too EDM, then Jon will find an approach to relax that feel a little bit and bring it more into the RnB feel.
Jon likes full album projects more than singles because he gets to unify the aesthetic across all of the records.
We’re cutting corners on albums and the connection to the artists through their albums because we’re getting that connection elsewhere (Tiktok, videos, Instagram, etc).
The Kid LAROI EP
Jon did the new material for the deluxe edition, which added an EPs-worth of songs to the original album.
Jon didn’t lean on the original album as a reference at all. The EP is it’s own thing.
Two different groups of producers for the EP bundle of tracks. One hip hop oriented. One pop oriented. Jon came in and brought the glue to help bring the two groups’ sound together.
Jon tried to emphasize the low-mids in his voice because Jon thinks that makes him sound more mature and more special. He’s thinking long-term about trying to transition into that sound, instead of mixing “loud” in a way that subtracts the low-mids and makes it feel thin.
Q: What makes a mix translate on different speakers, especially crappy ones?
Balances. Good gain structure. Not too much and not too little of anything (bass, treble, etc) and transients.
Jon:
You can’t judge a song by the hi-hat. There’s not enough differences in patterns to call a hi-hat iconic. The hats never make the song, but it can break it.
On ‘Without You’ by The Kid LAROI. The producer wanted to know how Jon got a no-drum songs to have some much transient energy.
He took the compression off the acoustic guitar. Clip gained it. Saturated it and then added transients. Now the acoustic guitar is filling the role of the hi-hat. It’s like a Bob Dylan guitar in that it now has a ton of energy that can carry the song.
Make sure you have upper-harmonic information in your bass instruments.
Jon doesn’t filter out the sub frequencies on his basses, like some mixers who filter up to 30Hz.
Jon listens to every mix on AirPods before he sends it out. For the most part he doesn’t think about whether something translates on small devices. If his mixes didn’t translate then he wouldn’t get hired.
You can use AudioMovers to check the mix on your phone, if you really want to.
Jon things people should err on the side of NOT splitting 808s and doing parallel things where phasing is induced. Phasing in low-end is dangerous. You risk losing things on small devices.
