Episode 69 - Jon Castelli

Show Notes

Live with Matt Rad - Episode 69
October 19, 2021
w/ Jon Castelli - Week 60

Show notes by: Bradley Will

Q: Have you found any good healthy studio foods for long studio sessions?

Matt:
A lot of what’s good in the studio is in line with contemporary views on healthy eating. No sugar.

I like cashews, nuts, and things with a little bit of fat and calories. I love taking snack breaks in the studio.


Jon:
I’m not really a snacker. I like eggs and smoked salmon for breakfast.

• I’m into canned fish for omega-3’s. Smoked mussels, anchovies. Those are my midday snacks.

• Cashews, walnuts, or pistachios are good too

• Cucumbers and feta with olive oil.

I do pretty low-caloric snacking. I don’t want to eat so much food that I get tired digesting it all.


Matt:
If I’m working by myself I’m operating at my own pace and doing what I want, but if I’m working with an artist I’m working at their pace. It’s very important to keep things at their momentum and to not lose that.

I like to just get a big tub of unsalted Kirkland cashews that I can be snacking on.


Jon:
During the day you don’t want a lot of carb-based foods because you’ll crash a few hours later. It’s better to have more protein and fat based foods to keep you energized.

Q: What’s generally the most challenging instrument or thing to mix in a song?'

Matt:
Live bass. It’s challenging because there aren’t a lot of people who know how to record it well. It’s often the instrument that’s the most unruly and uneven.

• There’s usually a mismatch between the sub-harmonics an octave or two above it. They can be uneven from not to note.
  

The things that are the hardest to mix are things that are the worst recording. Whether it’s a poor performance or a poor recording.


Jon:
Ditto for live bass. Upright in particular.

The hardest thing is an instrument where the frequencies are all over the place, like a poorly recorded grand piano.

I think playing a DI-only bass is a very different style of playing versus playing into an amp.

• With an amp you’re going to saturate it and dig in. You’re trying to figure out the harmonic sustain.

• If you receive a DI recording then you need to come up with your own approach to amp sound. You’re looking for sustain via saturation. I’ll usually go all the way with the saturation first and see where that gets me.

  • I don’t like the 80-100Hz area on bass. I’ll usually take that out. It tends to get in the way of the vocal.

  • On Spectre, turn up everything from 100Hz and down pretty high. Then limit that frequency to dial in the proper sustain that you’re looking for. It might be woofy and too much, but you’ll get the saturation, control, and sustain that you’d get with a bass amp. NOW you carve out that 100-120 Hz area that you don’t like to clear it up.

  • The concept is to understand the performance and sustain of the song by overdoing things and see what’s there to work with. From there you can do reductive processing.
    

These days I think a lot about how to bring out the “supernatural” element of an instrument. How to make it larger than life.

Try boosting into dynamic processors. This is how you get the density in a sound.


Matt:
One of the old Eric Valentine tricks to get excitement out of a live snare drum is to split the signal and then boost the 200Hz on an Orban EQ until it’s distorting like crazy. Then blend this into the other signal for a lot of density.

• It’s the process of boosting the body frequency of the snare drums into a saturator in order to get the larger-than-life sounds.
  

You and I are constantly trying new things all of the time, and that’s a large part of why we’re successful.

Q: Would you recommend your career to other people?

Matt:
I would not recommend my career to almost anyone, except for the very few people who can’t stand to do anything else and spend all of their free time doing it.

Jon:
I agree. As a mixer, I would ask people if they like being out of the limelight, and if they are capable of having a deep, rich understanding of the tools and source material. Do you like staring at a screen? Are you willing to sacrifice social activity for ten or more years?

Matt:
You cannot set your own schedule when you’re working under other people. You have to really love that process.

Q: Which new Macbook Pro should you get, as a producer?

Matt:
If you’re not going to be mobile, there are better options than the laptop, but if you’re going to be mobile you’ll need the laptop.

If you have one of the new Macs and it’s relatively maxed out you’ll be fine. Those are fast.

Q: What do you use to pitch audio?

Jon:
Polyphonic mode in Pro Tools.

• Make sure you delete all of the analysis markers that automatically populate.
  

Matt:
Ableton is great for warping and pitching.

• Be careful not to engage the Complex/Complex Pro warp modes if you’re not actually using them, because they can cause degradation to your audio.

Monitor Controllers

Jon:
I use the Grace M905 monitor controller and the Lynx Hilo for my I/O.

• The connectivity in the remote is very functional and very fast.